Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

"Grandfather, do you want anything?" Jenny Blair was at his side, carefully holding the glass of currant jelly. "You were thinking aloud."

"Was I, my dear?" He looked round at her wistfully, for the still shape had dissolved in her shadow. "What was I thinking?"

"Something about character, something about fortitude."

"I remember now. I was dreaming of Mrs. Birdsong."

"I am going there. She likes to have me run in very often."

"Has George come back?"

"She expected him. If he doesn't come, I've promised to spend the night with her again."

"Well, I'm glad you are a comfort, my child. She needs comfort."

"She likes to have me," Jenny Blair repeated, patting his shoulder. "Is there anything I can do for you before I go?"

"Nothing, my dear. Give her my love."

"Shall I tell her you were dreaming of her when you said something about character, something about fortitude?"

"Tell her I am always dreaming of her. The old live in dreams."

"She says you must come to see her. You haven't been near her for days."

"I thought I depressed her." He was glad that she had noticed his absence; but the truth was, strange as it sounded, that he felt happier, he felt nearer to her when he was not with her. Here, beside this dim outline of light, his heart was suffused with profound tenderness. There were instants, lost in memory, when the glow, the warmth, even a breath of the old rapture, brushed him and was gone like the fall of a leaf. But when he was with her he knew that she was beyond reach of his love, that she resented his pity.

"Oh, you don't depress her," Jenny Blair insisted. "How can you say things like that, Grandfather?" Though the child's look was sweet and reproachful, he recognized the hollowness of the words, and it seemed to him that her voice was blown out of vacancy.

"Well, run on, darling. I must not keep you," he answered. "I have everything and more than a man needs at my time of life."

"No, it isn't my fault," Jenny Blair said aloud. She had not wished to fall in love. She had not, she repeated defiantly, even wished to be born. Something bigger than herself had swept her away in its claws. And even now, after all her struggle to escape, she was still tormented by restlessness. For days she had put him out of her mind; she had refused to think of him even at night in the dark; she had flung herself passionately into trivial amusements. Then, without warning, just as the hawk swooped and pounced on its prey out of the sky (she had watched one light on a bird in the summer), she was seized again with the suspense, the misery, the unsatisfied longing. If only he had been less distant, she thought, shutting the door behind her and descending the steps. If only he had let her see by a look that he cared, she could have borne it more easily, she could have been almost contented.

At the Birdsongs' gate she paused an instant, and practised, before she moved on, the careless smile and the innocent upward curve of her mouth. To give up may be hard, she told herself, summoning her resources, as she opened the door and went into the hall, but to be given up is far worse—oh, far worse than anything! "I can't bear it, I can't bear it," she thought, glancing from the stairs into the library, where she saw George showing his wild ducks to John. "I brought back twenty-five," she heard him say, "and I shot three times as many." He spoke with pride; she could tell that he had forgotten her; that his whole mind was filled with the whirring of wings and iridescent bunches of feathers! But he liked them dead. He was never so happy, she knew, as when he had just killed something beautiful. They were scattered everywhere, on the chairs, on the table, on his desk, with his gun and his game-bag beside them. She watched him pick up a duck here and there, look it over with boyish pride, and then lay it down again. He appeared to be perfectly happy. He was not troubled by love; he was not troubled by self-reproach.

Looking up, he caught sight of her on the stairs, and called cheerfully, "Jenny Blair, I'm sending some ducks to your grandfather. Come and see what beauties they are." But he was not thinking of her while he stood there, lean, vigorous, ruddy with pleasure. His mind was still on the ducks; he was still, she could tell when she looked at him, feeling his power. As he held out a large, handsome mallard, he barely glanced at her, and she told herself that this was what she had not expected. Had he looked at her in the old way, she would have known, she would have understood, and everything might have been smoothed over between them. But he did not look at her. He never looked at her now if he could help it. "Aren't they beauties?" he asked, as proudly as if he had created instead of destroyed them.

"Beauties," she replied in an indifferent tone, and felt resentfully that John had his eyes on her—John, who had told her not long ago that what she needed was to break the glass of her hothouse and get outside of herself.

"They were superb in flight," George said, while he drew back and looked down on the fine plumage. But he did not mean it. He enjoyed killing. He was possessed, she could see, by that strange exultation which comes to the sportsman when he has shot something that was alive the minute before. "I'm taking them to my friends," he added, pointing to a card he had attached to a splendid neck. "It's a good way to pay off scores. Eva scarcely touches them anyway."

How absurd it was, Jenny Blair thought suddenly, to send out these handsome dead birds in pairs, with visiting cards bearing playful messages attached to their necks. Well, we were like that. Men, especially, were like that. And all the time, while he arranged the ducks and wrote the messages and tied the cards, she said to herself, "If I knew he cared, I shouldn't mind anything. It would be so much easier if he would only show by a look that he has not forgotten." For she was again in the clutch of that misery. She could not help it; she had resisted with all her strength; but she was again in the clutch of unsatisfied longing.

Turning away without a word, she went out into the hall and upstairs. Her whole being was shaken as a pool is agitated by the sudden dropping of a pebble. Why? she wondered, with hot resentment. What had happened? Nothing. She had seen him; she had heard his voice speaking proudly of wild ducks. He had tried not to look at her. That was all; and yet she was in a quiver of emotion when she entered Mrs. Birdsong's room and found that she had just come back from one of her desperate flights into the street.

"Oh, you haven't been out by yourself!" the girl cried reproachfully.

"I had to go. I couldn't stay in the house." Mrs. Birdsong was slipping out of her street dress into a tea-gown. "George and John were so busy with the ducks they didn't hear me slip down the back stairs. I didn't go far, but when that terror seizes me, I am obliged to rush out of doors, to get away from myself—or the part of myself I leave in the house. No matter where I may be, I am obliged to start up and go to some other place. In the night, I go downstairs to the drawing-room, or the library, or even the kitchen. Half the time George sleeps so soundly he never knows I'm awake." While she talked she was busily hanging her dress in the closet, putting away her hat and gloves, and drawing the silk robe over her knees when she had dropped on the couch. "You don't know what it is," she continued, after a pause. "Nobody who hasn't felt it can possibly know what it is. You feel it is useless, but still you go. You are trying to run away, and you can't make yourself stop." Colour had flamed into her face, and her blue eyes were living once more. Though her beauty had frozen into stillness, she had not lost it. Nothing, not even death, Jenny Blair told herself, could take it away.