Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

Jenny Blair, who was still gazing after Mrs. Birdsong, cried out abruptly, "Her face looks like a pink heart, Mamma."

"Don't be silly," Mrs. Archbald retorted. "You are letting your imagination run away with you again."

"But her face is like a pink heart, Mamma. I mean a pink heart on a valentine."

"I can see what she means," Etta said, pausing to wipe away a tear that trembled, without dropping, on the end of her eyelashes.

"Please don't encourage her, Etta," Mrs. Archbald returned, as coolly as she ever permitted herself to speak to her frail sister-in-law. "Now, run away, Jenny Blair, and play a while out of doors. You don't get enough sunshine."

With a ceremonial sweep, the curtains dropped back into place; Jenny Blair disappeared, and Mrs. Archbald threaded her needle. Presently, before beginning a seam, she let her work sink to her lap. With a sigh, she glanced round the library, where the afternoon sunshine splashed over the ruby leather, over the floral designs in the Brussels carpet, and over the old English calf in the high rosewood bookcases. On the mantelpiece, an ornamental clock of basalt, with hands that looked menacing, divided two farm groups in red and white Staffordshire ware.

General Archbald was a man of means according to the modest standards of the nineteenth century, which meant that he was sufficiently well off to provide for his only son's widow and child, as well as for two unmarried daughters and the usual number of indigent cousins and aunts. His daughter-in-law had been left a penniless widow at an age when widowhood had ceased to be profitable. At first she had made an effort to support herself and her child by crocheting mats of spool cotton and making angel food for the Woman's Exchange. But, after that long lost endeavour, nothing had seemed to matter but rest—the perfect rest of those who are not required to make noble exertions. Still disposed to fill out in the wrong places, she had pulled in the strings of her stays and settled down into security. After all, one could bear any discomfort of body so long as one was not obliged to be independent in act.

Gradually, while the sheltered life closed in about her, she had retreated into the smiling region of phantasy. With much patience, she had acquired the capacity to believe anything and nothing. Her hair was just going grey; her fine fresh-coloured skin was breaking into lines at the corners of her sanguine brown eyes; but when she talked the wrinkles were obliterated by the glow of a charming expression. All her life, especially in her marriage, she had been animated by earnest but unscrupulous benevolence.

Now, as she thrust her needle into the stubborn material upon which she was working, she murmured irrelevantly, "I sometimes wonder--"

"Wonder?" Etta's bloodshot eyes opened wide. "About Jenny Blair or Eva Birdsong?"

"Oh, about Eva. Jenny Blair, thank Heaven, hasn't reached an age when I need to begin worrying about her. But the idea has crossed my mind," she added slowly, "that Eva suspects."

"Who could have told her? Who would be so heartless?"

"There are other ways of finding out."

"I can't believe," Isabella broke in, "that she could look so happy if she suspected."

Mrs. Archbald shook her head while she wound the braid on the edge of a sleeve and prodded it with her needle. "You never can tell about that. I am perfectly sure that if she knew everything, she would never betray herself. When happiness failed her, she would begin to live on her pride, which wears better. Keeping up an appearance is more than a habit with Eva. It is a second nature."

"She adores George," Etta's voice trailed off on a wailing note, "and he seems just as devoted as ever."

"He is." Mrs. Archbald gave a short stab at her work. "He is every bit as devoted. I believe he would pour out every drop of his blood for her if she needed it. Only," she hastened to add, "that is the last thing she is likely to need."

"If he feels like that," Isabella demanded impatiently, "why doesn't he let other women alone?"

Mrs. Archbald shook her head with a reserved expression. "You will understand more about that, my dear, when you are married."

"You mean I shall never understand," Isabella retorted defiantly; and to the distress of her sister-in-law, who had been innocent of such meaning, and indeed of any meaning at all, she sprang up and flounced into the dining-room and out of the French window.

"Do you think," Etta asked in a breathless whisper, "that she is going too far?"

"With George Crocker? No, my dear, how could she? Why, he wears overalls. She is only amusing herself, poor girl. I suppose it helps to take her mind off Thomas Lunsford."

"That doesn't seem fair to Joseph. Even in overalls, he is far more attractive than Thomas."

"All the same, I don't believe there is any real harm in it." No, there wasn't any real harm in it, she assured herself, glancing through the dining-room and the French window to the dappled boughs of the old sycamore. Though it was true that young Joseph Crocker was dangerously well-favoured, she had convinced herself that he carried a steady, if too classic, head on his shoulders. The Crockers were good people, plain but respectable, the kind of plain people, she had heard the General remark, who could be trusted in revolutions. Even if poor Isabella, desperate from wounded love and pride, should grow reckless, Mrs. Archbald believed that she could rely, with perfect safety, upon the sound common sense of the two Crockers. Surely men who could be trusted in revolutions were the very sort one could depend upon in a love affair. Only, and here doubt gnawed at her heart, could she be sure that her father-in-law meant what he said or exactly the opposite? His opinions were so frequently unsound in theory that there were occasions, she had observed, with tender reproach, when she should have hesitated to rely upon him, not only in a revolution, but even in an earthquake, which, since it is an act of God, seemed to her a more natural catastrophe.

"I sometimes think," Etta was saying, "that it is a mistake for a man to be too good-looking. That is the trouble with George Birdsong. It isn't really his fault, but his charm is his undoing. I wonder why it is that women seem to bear the gift of beauty better than men? Look at all that Eva gave up when she was married. Yet I am sure she would never waste a regret on her sacrifice if only George would be faithful. I was a child when she ran away with him, but I remember that everybody said he was the only man in Queenborough handsome enough to walk up a church aisle with her."

"I saw her the night she eloped," Mrs. Archbald said softly, "and I shall never forget how lovely she was in peachblow brocade, with a wreath of convolvulus in her hair. Her hair, too, was worn differently, with a single curl on her neck and a short fringe on her forehead. But it wasn't only her beauty. There was something brilliant and flashing—summer radiance, Father used to call it—in her look. Every one stopped dancing to watch her waltz with George. Just to look at them, you could tell they were madly in love, though nobody seemed to think Eva's preference would last. But, of course, we were wrong. Passion like that, after it once runs away with you, cannot be bridled. I shall always remember the way she seemed to float in a transfigured light. You could see it flaming up in her smile. It is the only time," she finished sadly, "that I have ever seen what it meant to be transfigured by joy."

"I suppose," Etta sighed hungrily, "that it was a great passion."

"It is." Mrs. Archbald altered the tense with a smile. "She is still, after twelve years, transfigured by joy—or pride."

"But her life hasn't been easy. They can't afford more than one servant, and I've heard Eva say that old Betsey has to be helped all the time."