Elizabeth’s Child
by
The Ingelows, of Ingelow Grange, were not a marrying family. Only one of them, Elizabeth, had married, and perhaps it was her “poor match” that discouraged the others. At any rate, Ellen and Charlotte and George Ingelow at the Grange were single, and so was Paul down at Greenwood Farm.
It was seventeen years since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family. Sheldon was a handsome, shiftless ne’er-do-well, without any violent bad habits, but also “without any backbone,” as the Ingelows declared. “There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad,” Charlotte Ingelow had said sententiously, “but who ever heard of reforming a jellyfish?”
Elizabeth and her husband had gone west and settled on a prairie farm in Manitoba. She had never been home since. Perhaps her pride kept her away, for she had the Ingelow share of that, and she soon discovered that her family’s estimate of James Sheldon had been the true one. There was no active resentment on either side, and once in a long while letters were exchanged. Still, ever since her marriage, Elizabeth had been practically an outsider and an alien. As the years came and went the Ingelows at home remembered only at long intervals that they had a sister on the western prairies.
One of these remembrances came to Charlotte Ingelow on a spring afternoon when the great orchards about the Grange were pink and white with apple and cherry blossoms, and over every hill and field was a delicate, flower-starred green. A soft breeze was blowing loose petals from the August Sweeting through the open door of the wide hall when Charlotte came through it. Ellen and George were standing on the steps outside.
“This kind of a day always makes me think of Elizabeth,” said Charlotte dreamily. “It was in apple-blossom time she went away.” The Ingelows always spoke of Elizabeth’s going away, never of her marrying.
“Seventeen years ago,” said Ellen. “Why, Elizabeth’s oldest child must be quite a young woman now! I–I–” a sudden idea swept over and left her a little breathless. “I would really like to see her.”
“Then why don’t you write and ask her to come east and visit us?” asked George, who did not often speak, but who always spoke to some purpose when he did.
Ellen and Charlotte looked at each other. “I would like to see Elizabeth’s child,” repeated Ellen firmly.
“Do you think she would come?” asked Charlotte. “You know when James Sheldon died five years ago, we wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to come home and live with us, and she seemed almost resentful in the letter she wrote back. I’ve never said so before, but I’ve often thought it.”
“Yes, she did,” said Ellen, who had often thought so too, but never said so.
“Elizabeth was always very independent,” remarked George. “Perhaps she thought your letter savoured of charity or pity. No Ingelow would endure that.”
“At any rate, you know she refused to come, even for a visit. She said she could not leave the farm. She may refuse to let her child come.”
“It won’t do any harm to ask her,” said George.
In the end, Charlotte wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to let her daughter visit the old homestead. The letter was written and mailed in much perplexity and distrust when once the glow of momentary enthusiasm in the new idea had passed.
“What if Elizabeth’s child is like her father?” queried Charlotte in a half-whisper.
“Let us hope she won’t be!” cried Ellen fervently. Indeed, she felt that a feminine edition of James Sheldon would be more than she could endure.
“She may not like us, or our ways,” sighed Charlotte. “We don’t know how she has been brought up. She will seem like a stranger after all. I really long to see Elizabeth’s child, but I can’t help fearing we have done a rash thing, Ellen.”