"How adorable she looks," Etta sighed, with an emotion so intense that it was almost hysterical. Leaning out, she asked eagerly, "Eva, can't you come in for a minute?"
Mrs. Birdsong shook her head with a gesture of regret that was faintly theatrical. Her expression, so pale and wistful the moment before, was charged now with vitality. "Not this afternoon, dear. George will be waiting for me." Then, as if she had drained some sparkling delight from admiration, she passed on to the modest house at the other end of the block.
"I can't believe she was ever more beautiful," Etta murmured, without envy. Her long, bleak face, tinged with the greenish pallor of the chronic invalid, broke out into wine-coloured splotches. Several years before, when she had lost faith in men and found it difficult to be romantic about God, she had transferred her emotion to the vivid image of Mrs. Birdsong.
"If you gush over her too much, she will grow tired of you," said Isabella, who looked subdued but encouraged by what she had found in the garden.
"She won't," Etta rejoined passionately, and burst into tears. "You know she will never tire of me." For a few minutes she sobbed deeply under her breath; then, since nobody tried to quiet her, she stopped of her own accord, and picked up the sleeve of Jenny Blair's coat. Her eyes were usually red, for she cried often, while her family looked on in silent compassion, without knowing in the least what to do. She had come into the world as a mistake of nature, defeated before she was born and she was denied, poor thing, Mrs. Archbald reflected, even the slight comfort that Isabella found in attributing her misfortunes to man. Yet the more tenderly Etta was treated, and her poor health dominated the household, the more obstinate her malady appeared to become.
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.