Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

"You must not go out alone," she said caressingly. "Send for me, and I will go with you. I will go with you anywhere." For it was true that she adored her. She adored her until it was like a wound in her heart.

"When it comes, I can't wait, darling. I can't wait even for you. This morning, I was reading downstairs on the back porch. I was quite peaceful one moment, thinking about nothing, and then the terror rushed over me. That is the way people felt when they were fleeing from Pan. They couldn't wait. They dropped everything. But they didn't know, of course, that Pan was life. They were running away from life."

"You will get over it. All the doctors say you will get over it."

Mrs. Birdsong smiled listlessly. Her loveliness, so vivid an instant before, had died down into pallor, into apathy. "Yes, I may get over it. One gets over everything." She stopped, drew a long, slow breath, and repeated wearily, "Everything."

"But promise me you won't go out by yourself."

"Unless I go alone, I can never find myself. When you've never been yourself for forty years, you've forgotten what you are really." She had been pleating the thin silk robe into folds, but pushing it away with a gesture of irritation, she threw that bright searching look round the room and broke into a laugh. "I don't mean half I say, darling. Only I'm worn out with being somebody else—with being somebody's ideal. I want to turn round and be myself for a little while before it is too late, before it is all over. But I've frightened you enough for to-day," she added in a natural tone. "Did you see George when you came in? Did he show you his ducks?"

"Yes, he called me as I was coming upstairs."

"He brought them up here, every one of them. They were all over the couch and the chairs, and I had to stop his putting them on the bed. But I don't like to look at dead things. I can never understand why men enjoy killing, especially killing beautiful wild creatures."

"He likes it more than anything in the world. All men do. Now he is busy thinking of people to send them to."

"I know. He sends them with visiting cards." Her smile was twisted with irony, but her eyes were still restless, watchful, searching.

"Grandfather sent his love to you," said Jenny Blair, who had forgotten the message. "He told me he had dreamed of you out there in the garden. He is beginning to show his age, but he insists this is the most interesting time of his life."

Mrs. Birdsong's face softened. "I wonder what he thinks of now that life is behind him."

"He says it isn't behind him, that he has just learned how to live with the whole of his nature. It's funny, isn't it, but he told me yesterday that all the rest was nothing more than an experiment. All day long he sits there in the sun. He says he is living with his mind. Only I can't imagine what he is thinking about."

"About wild ducks perhaps." Mrs. Birdsong lay back on the pillows and drew the robe over her bosom. "Nobody ever seems to think of what is really important. Though, I suppose," she continued mockingly, "ducks are more important to themselves than anything else. Do you imagine they would consider it an honour to be sent round to one's acquaintances with visiting cards tied to their necks? Oh, I hope he hasn't forgotten Doctor Bridges! I promised him the finest pair of ducks George brought back. I must go down and select them."

As she sprang up, Jenny Blair pushed her back. "No, lie down. Don't get up. I'll run down and tell him, or call John. Perhaps he has not forgotten."

"I'm not sure I told him. I knew there was something I wanted to do; but I couldn't think what it was. When that terror comes, it sweeps my mind bare." A frown knitted her forehead and her mouth worked convulsively. "It is dreadful to have no memory. But I knew there was something."

"Well, don't get up. I'll run down and remind him. He can easily change one of the cards." Bending over, she kissed Mrs. Birdsong's cheek. "It is so late, I shan't come up again, but I'll see you early to-morrow. You'll try to rest now, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll try to rest now." The frail arms fell away from the close embrace. Turning on the threshold, the girl watched Mrs. Birdsong's eyelids waver and droop over the flickering glow in her eyes.

Downstairs, the house was very quiet, and the windows were filling slowly with twilight. The hall looked as if it were asleep, and the furniture wore the insubstantial air objects assume before daybreak. John must have gone up to his room, for he had left his hat and stick with an open book on the sofa. Maggie, she supposed, was in the kitchen; but since Mrs. Birdsong's return negro spirituals no longer wailed and sighed through the vacant rooms. In the library the ducks were still spread on the table and the desk. She saw the cards attached with bits of narrow green ribbon to the superb necks; and she remembered that Mrs. Birdsong had ripped that ribbon from an old dress yesterday afternoon. Never could she bear to throw away scraps. Her work-basket was brimming over with odds and ends. When George was searching for a string, he must have picked up those loose ends of green ribbon. "Men never see things," the girl thought. "It is strange how they can go through life seeing so little." For there was something pathetic, as well as comic, in the picture the ducks made, lying there, with clots of blood in some of the proud beaks, on some of the noble breasts, decorated, as if for a wedding feast, with bits of green ribbon.

A shadow moved on the porch beyond the open lattice-door, and she saw that George was sitting on one of the benches, with a Scotch and soda beside him. As he sprang up and looked at her expectantly, she felt, without thinking, without speaking, that nothing made any difference. All the world throbbed with longing, and the old misery came to life again in her heart. So sharp was the realization that she cried out, though not in words, "I can't bear it! I can't bear any more!"

"Is anything the matter, Jenny Blair?" he asked quickly. "Do you want me?"

Did she want him? Her throat ached with desire, and she turned her head away because she could not bear to look in his face. She could not bear to see him hard, vigorous, ruddy, and indifferent to the suffering he caused.

"Do you want me?" he repeated, and came toward her, as if he were about to go into the house.

She found her voice, though it seemed scarcely more than a thread trembling there in the dusk. "Did you remember Doctor Bridges?"

"Bridges?" He looked puzzled. "She isn't worse, is she?"

"No, oh, no. It is about the ducks. She promised a pair to Doctor Bridges."

"Oh, did she?" Immense relief brightened his look. "No, she hadn't told me, but I'll make it all right. I can give him the pair I'd put aside for the Morrisons. I shan't even have to change the card," he added cheerfully, as he drew out his watch. "Well, it's time I was going on, if I'm to leave them all before dinner. Just a minute. There's no use, if you'll forgive me, in wasting this good highball." With an airy gesture, he drained his glass and put it down on the wicker table beside him.

He was about to leave her. In another moment, she knew, it would be too late to speak; and with the knowledge, her whole body was invaded by that sharp violence, that jealous despair. "You mustn't," she breathed in a whisper. "Oh, you mustn't."

"Mustn't? My dear little girl, what have I done? What is the matter?"

"You mustn't treat me like this. I can't bear it. You know I can't bear it."

He stared at her in silence, while a light flooded his face. "My dear child, what can I do? What can I do without hurting you?"

"You are hurting me. Oh, you are hurting me! If you cared--!"

"I do care. You can see that I care. Haven't I cared for months? Haven't I cared until I am almost out of my mind?" His arms were round her, and looking up she saw a single vein beating like a pulse in his forehead. "You know I care," he said over and over, as if he were suffocated by words, and in his voice, too, she felt the throbbing of anguish.