In that hour when Sheila, flinging herself into his arms, cried out to Ted, "Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing. I want to believe it!" she struck a high note that, during the succeeding days and weeks and months, she could not always sustain. And yet, from the moment when she attempted to reconcile her will to Nature's, she did begin to perceive that her sacrifice would have its recompense.
Perhaps she perceived it the more clearly because it was given to her to see what motherhood meant to other women. For she was enough like the rest of humanity to value what others held precious.
On the day after her interview with Mrs. North, Sheila went to confide her expectation of maternity to her grandmother. She found Mrs. Caldwell in her sitting-room, a peaceful, lonely figure, lifted, at last, above the stress and surge of life—and above all its sweet hazards, its young delight. She turned a pleased face to Sheila: "Dear! Ah, what would I do without my child?"
At the words, Sheila's news rushed to her lips: "Grandmother—grandmother—Iam going to have a child!" And then she was on her knees, and her face was hidden against Mrs. Caldwell's breast.
There was an instant of silence. Then: "How happy you and Ted must be!" murmured Mrs. Caldwell, "how happy!" And something in her tone touched Sheila more nearly than even her close-clinging arms, something that was at once joy for Sheila's joy and a measureless regret for herself. Suddenly the girl, trembling in the fold of those gentle old arms, realized how far behind her grandmother lay all youth's dear hopes and adventures. And she realized, too, that she herself held treasures in her hands—the treasures of youth and youth's warm love. After all, even if she must lay her work aside, she was happy. Youth and love were hers—youth and love!
Nor was it only from her grandmother that she received confirmation of her fortunate estate. A few days later came Charlotte, to congratulate her upon Mrs. North's belief in her gift.
"Alice North says that you have a wonderful future before you," she told Sheila glowingly. "I'm so glad for you!—so proud of you!"
"Mrs. North said I had a future before meif I did not have children," corrected Sheila. "She thinks I can't be a writer and a mother, too."
"Ah," remarked Charlotte reflectively, "then thatwaswhy—" She paused a moment, leaving the significant sentence unfinished, and then went on more earnestly, "Sheila, she was wrong! Don't be persuaded to her views. She judged you by herself. Probably she couldn't be both writer and mother—she isn't really strong, you know. But that is not true for all women. Why, there have always been women who have done great things intellectually and had children, too! Don't be discouraged; don't let yourself believe that you need lose your art if you should have a child. You'd be all the finer artist for it. And—you are going to have a child, aren't you, Sheila?"
Sheila had been passionately shy about her expectancy of motherhood, but the grave directness of Charlotte's inquiry disarmed her, and she answered as frankly and simply: "Yes, I am going to have a child."
Charlotte looked at her with an expression new to the shrewd blue eyes that were habitually so cool and smiling. Then, with an impetuous and lovely gesture, she drew Sheila to her: "I'm so glad for you, dear!—so glad!"
A little while before she had been glad for the promise in Sheila's work. Now she used the same word, but how differently! For her mind had spoken before, and now speech leaped from her very heart.
"I have never loved a man," she said presently, in her outspoken way, "I have never loved a man, but I hope that I may some day—and that I may have a little child for him."
So Mrs. Caldwell was not alone in her attitude toward love's consummation! The desire for motherhood possessed not only the women of yesterday, of old-fashioned standards and ideals, but Charlotte, too; Charlotte, the "modern" woman incarnate, who had always appeared so self-sufficient, so bright and serene and cold, even so hard. It seemed incredible that she should have confessed to the dreams of softer women, of women less mentally preoccupied and competent.
Sheila stared at her: "Youfeel that way? You—with your music, your chances to study, to make a career for yourself?"
"Of course I feel that way! Every real woman does. I want my music and motherhood, too, but—if I ever have to choose between them—do you doubt that I'll take motherhood?"
There was indignation in her tone; evidently she was wounded that Sheila had misjudged her—so strong was the mother-instinct, the sense of maternity's supreme worth, within her. Realizing this, it appeared to Sheila that no one but herself—no woman in all the world—was reluctant for maternity. After all, Ted had only asked of her that she should share the universal hope and joy of wifehood. It was she who had demanded the exceptional lot; not he who had imposed a unique obligation upon her.
With this conviction, the last flicker of her resentment toward him was extinguished, leaving her gratefully at peace with him, not only in the high moments, but even in those occasionally recurrent ones of rebellion and fear. In the latter, indeed, she turned to Ted now for courage and strength, and in the fullness and tenderness of his response she felt herself more his than she had ever been. But her resolve not to tell him about her talk with Alice North persisted. It had been, at first, the resolution of a determined opposition to his views, but it endured through motives more generous. Ted should have his happiness in approaching parenthood unspoiled. He should not be hurt by knowing that she had ever looked forward to it with a divided heart. She could at least conceal that she was unlike other women, and perhaps, in time, a miracle might be wrought upon her and she be made wholly like her sisters.
Perhaps, too, in the fullness of time, her work and her motherhood might be adjusted to each other in her life. As Charlotte had said, there were women—many of them—who were both artists and mothers. She herself might be such a woman—some day. She might convert Ted to this, and go forward to a destiny of complete fulfillment.
But just now, with a sudden and intense accession of conscience, she yielded herself entirely to the new life that had sprung up within her. The sum of her strength belonged to it, she told herself, and she could give herself as completely as other women, whatever the difference between her mental attitude and theirs. All the while, too, she prayed for her miracle; prayed that she might become altogether like other women, altogether like those glad mothers of the race.
She did not pray in vain. There came a day when, with her little son upon her arms, she whispered, "Oh, Iamglad! I amglad—glad!"
Glad? Ah, that was a poor, colorless word for the rapture that descended upon her. Never was the ecstasy of motherhood granted a woman more utterly. It was like an angel's finger on her lips, answering her questionings, satisfying her longings, silencing her discontents.Thiswas life, and it was not cruel and tyrannous, as she had thought, but infinitely gracious and benevolent. It had used her, but it had used her for her own happiness. For upon her arm lay her son!
That she ever could have wanted to escape motherhood, that she ever could have resented it, now seemed to her unbelievable. She admitted it to be worth any renunciation, and she gave not one regret to the renunciation that she had made for it—the temporary renunciation of her work. It absorbed her fully and gloriously; it flowed through her with her blood; it was a part of her body and the very fiber of her soul. And it shone through her like a light: it was in the softer touch of her hand, the deeper note of her voice, the more brooding sweetness of her eyes. Shewasmotherhood, indeed; a young madonna whose halo was visible even to unimaginative Ted.
Had the question occurred to him then, Ted would have said that no artist could surrender herself thus to maternity. Peter Burnett, reverently watching, did say, "No one but a poet could be a mother like that!"
Sheila had been very ill at the time of the child's birth, and a year passed before she regained her natural vigor. It was, perhaps, the happiest year of her life. Every now and then in the course of a lifetime, there come seasons of pure, untroubled joy, when all the practical concerns of ordinary existence pause for a little while, and the petty cares and worries make way, and even the commonplace pleasures stand aside, abashed. Such a season of joy was Sheila's then. She could never recollect it afterward without a quickening and lifting of her heart, and she knew at the time—Oh, very surely—that she had drawn down heaven to herself.
Of course it did not last. As her strength increased and the every day business of living became more and more her affair, she dropped to the level of a normal contentment, and thus to the interests that had occupied her before the miracle was accomplished.
Eric, her little son, was well into his second year, however, before she felt the urging restlessness of her gift, and even then she denied the creative impulses stirring within her; she put them from her—while she longed to yield herself to them instead. "Go away!" she said to them fiercely. "Oh, go away before you spoil my beautiful peace!" But for every time that she drove them forth, they returned the stronger, as if they would proclaim: "You can't be rid of us! You may narcotize us with the sedative of your content. You may banish us altogether. But we'll always waken! We'll always come back! For we're a part ofyou—just as much a part of you as your son is!"
It was true. They were, indeed, a part of her. She would always be different from other women after all—because of them. She would always have to reckon with them; to appease them, or to deny them at her own bitter cost.
And now there came the question: "Why deny them any longer?" Eric had been a very healthy baby from the first; he had, also, an excellent nurse, a young mulatto girl who shared her race's enthusiasm for children. In the kitchen ruled an old cook who brooked no interference from "Li'l Miss." Obviously, neither her child nor her house demanded all of Sheila's time. So in the quiet afternoons, when Eric had been taken outdoors, she began to write for an hour or two. Surely, she argued, she now had a right to those two hours out of each twenty-four, especially since she did not take them from her husband, her son, or her home. It was her own leisure, her own opportunity for rest, that she sacrificed, if sacrifice there was.
But though she justified herself, she somehow said nothing about the matter to Ted. She agreed with him now—Oh, warmly enough!—that motherhood was the greatest thing in life for a woman; but she did not, she never would, believe with him that it must be the only thing. Nor should he believe it always, she told herself. She would prove to him that a woman could be both mother and artist. She would prove it to him, as she had dreamed of doing—but not just yet. They loved each other so dearly, they were so happy together, that she shrank from disturbing their harmony by any discussion or dissension. And discussion and dissension there would be before Ted could be converted. Amiable as he was in his healthy, hearty fashion, he would be intolerant and irritable about this. So she worked on in secret; and for a couple of months nothing and no one was the worse for it.
Then, when Eric was two years old, he was taken ill; suddenly, swiftly, terribly, as a little child can be smitten from rosy vigor to death's very brink. The disease was scarlet fever.
"How can he have gotten it?" Sheila and Ted asked each other, bewildered and agonized. But soon—only too soon—they knew. Lila, the nurse, disappeared directly after the verdict was pronounced. "Afraid!" cried Sheila scornfully, "afraid—though she said she loved him!"
"Yes'm," agreed old Lucindy, who had come from her kitchen to help nurse the boy with a loyalty that was in itself a scathing comment on Lila's defection, "yes'm, she's feared all right—but not ob gittin' fever."
There was something savage in her tone at sound of which Sheila and Ted straightened from their little son's crib and looked to her for explanation.
"She's feared," continued Lucindy, "'cause she knowsshedone gib dat chile fever takin' him to dem low-down nigger shanties she's allus visitin' at. Dat's what Lila's feared ob."
"She took thebabyto—?" It was Ted who tried to question Lucindy. Sheila could not, though she had opened her dry lips for indignant speech.
"Yassah, she sho did—jes befo' he was took sick. She taken him to 'er no 'count yaller sister's—an' 'er sister's chillun's got scarlet fever. I heared it dis mornin'."
"Are you sure, Lucindy? Are yousure?" It was still Ted who pursued the inquiry.
"Deed I'se sho, Marse Ted. She tole me herse'f whar she'd been when she come back wid de baby, an' 'bout how cute an' sweet dey all say he is. Course she didn't know 'bout de fever—it hadn' showed up on dem chillun yit—but she knowed mighty well Miss Sheila wouldn' want our baby in nigger housesno-how. She knowed she was doin' wrong takin' him. I sho did go fo' dat yaller gal, too! She wouldn' never do it no mo'—not while Lucindy's a-livin'!"
Ted turned to Sheila, and the expression of her white face startled him. Much as he loved her, his heart hardened to her as he looked—hardened with a sudden, instinctive suspicion—and when he spoke, his voice was stern:
"Did you know where Lila was taking the baby when she had him out?" he asked. "Sheila, did you know?"
"Sheila, did you know?" repeated Ted.
Sheila shook her head. Lila had had orders never to take Eric out of the yard without permission. She had risked the disobedience, only too sure of her mistress's absorption. For Lila knew the secret of those afternoons; she had not been a confidante, but she had been a witness. Sheila realized all this now, as she faced Ted across the crib of their little stricken son. She realized that she had not known where Eric was because she had been engrossed in her work—and that not to have known, as things had come to pass, was criminal.
"Oh, how could it have happened?" cried Ted. And looking into Sheila's tortured face, sternness vanished from his eyes for an instant, and love and grief yearned toward her from them instead. In that instant speech came to Sheila and the truth rushed out of her.
"It happened because—because I was up in my room and didn't overlook Lila. It happened because I was up in my room,writing a story!"
It was as if she had bared her breast to a sword—and he could not plunge it in. In his turn he was silent; but his silence was scarcely easier to bear than the harshest upbraiding. He stood there, gazing at her, and she knew all that was in his mind, in his heart. And then, after a moment, he went out of the room, still without a word. When he came back, several hours later, he was very gentle to her, but Sheila knew, nevertheless, that his father's heart condemned her, condemned her as she condemned herself.
Together they nursed their son, with Mrs. Caldwell and old Lucindy to help them. And as Sheila watched her baby fight for the tiny flame of his life, her own heart, so much more burdened than Ted's, broke not once, but a thousand times! He was so small, so weak, so helpless, that little son of hers, and he suffered. That was what she felt she could not bear—that he should suffer. Even his death she could endure if she must, she who deserved to lose him. But hispain——!
As she went back and forth upon the ceaseless tasks of nursing, apparently so concentrated upon them, she was in reality living over days long past, the days before Eric's birth. Clear and practical as was her grasp of the present and all its necessities, she was yet obsessed by her memories of that time before her child's coming; by her memories of it and her penitence for it. In the beginning, she had not been glad. It was upon that, quite as much as upon her later carelessness in trusting Lila, that her agonized conscience fixed. How could she ever have hoped to keep her child—she who had not been glad of his coming? It all sprang from that. For if she had been glad enough in the beginning, the idea of writing would not have persisted with her; would not finally have led her to that negligence for which Eric might pay with his life.
She had not been glad in the beginning! Over and over that sentence shrieked through her brain: She had not been glad in the beginning! She had not been glad!
She never spared herself by reflecting that she had not been reluctant for motherhood until Ted had shown his antagonism to the work that was already the child of her brain, and Mrs. North had, from her different viewpoint, justified his attitude. She never conceded in her behalf that it had not even occurred to her, until then, to regard motherhood and art as conflicting elements, and that it was the shock of seeing them thus in her own life that had made her temporarily resentful of maternity. She never excused or exonerated herself by that ultimate joy of motherhood which had possessed her so utterly. She had not been glad in the beginning; later, she had not been glad enough to give him—her little, helpless son—all her life. How, indeed, could she hope to keep him now?
Over and over this she went; and all the while she kept on about her tasks, deft, skillful, terribly calm.
Mrs. Caldwell observed her with an alarm hardly less than she felt for the child. "It will kill Sheila if Eric dies," she said to Ted.
"Yes," he groaned, "I think it will."
"What is it, Ted?—the thing that's eating into her heart? There's more here than even a mother's grief."
"She was writing a story when—when Lila exposed the boy to the fever. Of course, if she hadn't been—! Oh, poor Sheila!—poor Sheila!" he ended brokenly.
For all blame had gone out of Ted; his gentleness to Sheila was no longer that of forbearance, but of an immense and inarticulate pity. It racked him that he could not stand between her and her contrition, her pitiful sorrow; it hurt him intolerably that he could not hold them from her with his very hands. Almost he lost the sense of his own sick pain in watching hers. Once he tried to take her in his arms and comfort her. "Don't suffer so!" he pleaded. "Don't suffer so!"
But she pulled away from him, denying herself the solace of his sympathy. "I can't sufferenough!" she cried. "I canneversuffer enough to atone for what I've done!"
There came a night when they put Sheila out of the room—Mrs. Caldwell and Ted; literally put her out, with hands so tender and so firm.
"I have a right to be with him when he dies!" she cried.
"Sheila—he will need you to-morrow. Youmustrest—for his sake." So they sought to deceive and compel her.
"No," she insisted, "he will not need me to-morrow. But he needs me now—to die with."
"He may not die."
"He 'may' not die. You don't say hewillnot die! Oh, he will die!—and he's too little to die without his mother!"
And then they put her out.
Ted led her away to the room where she was to "rest" and shut her within it, and she lay down on the couch as he had bidden her to do. It was easy enough to be obedient in this, since she was barred out from the one place where she yearned to be. Since she could not be there, it did not matter where she was or what she did. It was easiest just to do what she was told.
She knew only too well that she had spoken truly when she had said that her little son might die that night. She knew only too surely why she had been shut out. And almost she submitted—the blow seemed so certain, so close. The despair that resembles resignation in its apathy almost conquered her, as she waited for the hand of death to strike.
But while she waited, lying in the quiet darkness, there suddenly came to her the idea that she might still save Eric. Morbid from grief and fatigue, she had not a doubt that his death was a "judgment" on herself; a punishment. Because she had neglected him for her own selfish ends; nay, more, because she had not been glad of his coming in the beginning, God was about to take him from her. She was mercilessly sure of this—sure with the awakened blood, the inherited traditions of many Calvinistic ancestors, the stern forefathers of her father. Her own more liberal faith, her personal conception of a God benignant and very tender, went down before that grim heritage of more rigorous consciences. But with the self-conviction springing from that heritage, there came, too, the suggestion that she might make her peace with God; that with sufficient proof of her penitence, she might prevail upon Him to spare Eric.
Again and again the suggestion reached her, in the "still, small voice" which may have been the voice of her own inner self, or of the surviving, guiding souls of her ancestors, or of God Himself. Again and again it spoke to her—whatever it was, from whatever source it rose; again and again, until it was still and small no longer, but strong and purposeful, and its message unmistakable.
She could but heed it—thankfully. And so she began to cast about in her mind for the proof of her contrition. It could be no light thing, no trivial surrender of self. It must be a sacrifice—a sacrifice such as the ancient tribes of Israel would have offered an incensed God. It must be—she saw it in a flash!—it must be her work.
"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
This, then, must she do. She must pluck out that thing which had offended her, which had betrayed her into a sin against her own motherhood, and cast it from her. She must pluck out her gift and offer it up in expiation.
And so she knelt there in the darkness and tendered her sacrifice; so she thrust from her the thing which had been so dear to her; so she entered into her compact with God.
"Oh, God, grant me my child's life, and I will never write again. I have sinned in selfishness and vanity, but I am repentant and will sin no more. I have plucked out my right eye. I have cut off my right hand. I have cast my gifts from me forever. Grant me my son's life, and I will never write again!"
Hour after hour she entreated God to make terms with her. The night crept by, slow-footed and silent, but she was not aware of the passing of time, or of the deepening of the stillness within the house, or of the quivering of the sword above her head. She no longer listened for sounds from that distant room. She no longer strove to pierce the intervening walls with her mother's sixth sense. She heard nothing but the voice which had counselled her; she strove for nothing but to obey that voice. Her whole being concentrated itself into a prayer. She was conscious only of herself and God, and of her passionate effort to reach Him.
"Oh, God,hearme! I have sinned, but I will sin no more. My heart is broken with remorse. I will never write again!"
So she pleaded with God throughout the long night. And pitiful and insolent as was her bargaining, God must have found in it something to weigh.
For with the first light of the morning, Ted opened the door—and there was light in his worn face, too.
"Sheila—Sheila!——"
And then they fell into each other's arms, sobbing—sobbing as they could not have done if their little son had died.
With tragic sincerity Sheila had entered into the compact for her son's life, and she kept it to the letter. She saw no reason why she should have a poorer sense of honor toward God than she had toward men and women; her child had been spared to her, and henceforth it was for her to fulfill her part, to keep her given word.
She had never understood, indeed, why people made—and broke—promises to God so lightly. She had found them ready enough to complain if they considered God unjust to them, but they never seemed to think that it mattered whether they were "square" with God or not. To them He was a sort of divine creditor who need not be paid. They even made it a proof of reverence—a comfortable proof!—to place Him far above the consideration they had to show their fellow men. This viewpoint was impossible to Sheila. Morbid, hysterical, as her offered price for Eric's life had been, she felt herself bound, and she paid punctiliously.
It was easy enough thus to pay as she watched her child growing strong and rosy again. His little life—Ah, what was it not worth? A dozen times a day the memory of that night when she had believed that he would die sent her shuddering to her knees with fresh prayers and promises. And always the recollection of that loss escaped roused in her a very passion of thanksgiving. She had her son!—that was her answer to all the dreams which, unrealized, sometimes stole back to tempt her with their wistful faces.
When Eric was well enough for her now and then to leave him—at first she could not leave him lest, with her sheltering hands removed, his life should flicker out—she gave burial to the little brain children that, for the child of her body, she had sacrificed. Every bit of verse, every little sketch, and the unfinished story which was, in her sight, most guilty, and most dear of all, she laid away; not with ribbon and lavender and rites of sentiment and tears, but sternly, barely, ruthlessly, as one puts away things discarded by the heart itself. She might have burned them less harshly, and that she did not was only because she conceived it a finer deed to keep them and resist them. So she put her honor to the uttermost test.
It was thus, and with her own hands, she poured her life into the mould Ted had desired for it; it was thus she thrust from her all that did not pertain to her husband and her child and her home. Yet between Ted and herself not a word about it passed. He never reproached her for what her writing had so nearly cost them; he never asked her to give it up; he never even inquired as to whether she were still pursuing it. He simply stood aloof from that element in her, with what queer mixture of disapproval and pride and magnanimity she could but guess.
They continued to be happy together, the happier as the months passed and Ted saw her more and more his and Eric's. In the beginning he had probably thought that, after the shock of Eric's peril receded, Sheila would try to write again; that fear must have lurked behind his non-committal silence; but time gave him his security about it. Sheila never told him of the compact of that anguished night, but gradually he became as sure that she had given up her talent forever as if he had heard her pledge. "Little wife!" he often called her, "Little mother!" And always it was as if he said to her, "What other name could be half so sweet?"
And she told herself that he was right. Never had there been a better husband. And to be loved by a man like that, a man clean and fine and kind; to be the mother of such a man's child, she was very certain was worth more to a woman than any other honors or fulfillments which life could bring her. She had known that always, even when she first discovered—so bitterly!—that Ted was not in sympathy with her gift and her ambitions; and she knew it more surely as time went on. There were moments when she wished ardently that the sympathy between them had been more absolute; when she thought that, happy as she was, she would have been happier if their tastes had gone hand-in-hand like their hearts. But there was never a time when she would have exchanged Ted for any other man, or when she felt it possible to have done without him. There are women who, married, feed their discontents with visions of what life could have been in freedom or with some other man than they have chosen. Sheila was not of this sort. Having crossed the threshold of marriage, she did not look behind her at the alluring—and elusive—road of might-have-been.
She hoped, now, for other children. With this utter surrender of herself to the woman's life, there came to her the longing for many children, for all her arms could hold. The sum of that creative force which, under different circumstances, would have flowed into her work, all its denied passion and vitality, was transmuted into the instinct of motherhood. Because of her creative gift, there was literally more life within her, more life to bestow, and so, the channel of artistic expression being closed to her, she yearned to spend it all upon maternity; to have, indeed, as many children as her arms could hold.
Had these desired children come to her, peace might have been hers finally and entirely. But the desire was not granted. Eric grew out of his babyhood to a fine, sturdy boyhood, and was still the only child. And now Sheila, a woman of thirty and ten years married, began to feel again, and more strongly than ever in her life, the urge of her gift, the unrest of dreams stifled, thwarted, but never destroyed.
She had made a compact with God, and she continued to keep it; but more and more hunger stared out of her eyes and a nervous restlessness betrayed itself in her manner. She was happy, but she was not satisfied. Something clamored in her unappeased.
If she had lived in a large city, there would at least have been food, if not activity, for that clamoring, aching thing within her. There would have been pictures and music and plays to lift her, at times, into the world of poetic beauty for which she longed. But Shadyville could offer nothing to one of her mental quality; as a girl she had found diversion in its social gaiety, but as a matron, the mother of a nine-year-old son, even the social life of the town was restricted for her to card-parties and the doubtful amusement of chaperonage.
For in Shadyville, the young married people early abdicated in favor of those still younger, those still seeking mates. Society was, in fact, merely a means of finding one's mate, so primitive had the little town remained; companionship between men and women, save as an opportunity for the eternal quest, was unknown. Wives and mothers sat placidly, or wearily, against the walls at dances, watching the game of man and maid, and slaked their thirst for entertainment, for stimulating comradeship, at the afternoon teas and bridge parties of their own sex. Now and then a reading club or a study class was organized, a naïve effort toward an understanding of things which Shadyville vaguely perceived to be of importance beyond its boundaries; and always the class or club died of insufficient nourishment. Within thirty miles of a large town, the life of Shadyville remained uncorrupted—and unimproved; a healthy, simple, joyous affair of the love-quest in youth; a healthy, simple, and usually contented, matter of home-making and child-rearing later. Sheila, having stepped over into the second stage with her marriage, was not supposed to feel any longings which her domestic existence could not satisfy; and feeling them, in defiance of Shadyville's standards and traditions, she could but suppress and starve them.
"Let me go down to the office every day and help you," she suggested to Ted finally, "I used to help you—before we were married."
But Ted, whose limited ambitions had realized themselves and whose work had now settled into a comfortable routine for which he was more than capable, evinced no enthusiasm for the project. She had helped him; he had never forgotten nor disparaged that. But he did not need or want her at the Star office now, and he did need and want her in his home.
"You have enough to do as it is—with Eric and the house," he said.
"But, Ted, Ihaven'tenough to do," she insisted. "There's nothing for me really to do in the house. I overlook everything, but that doesn't occupy all my time. And with Eric at school—don't you see, my dear, that it's something to do I need? Don't you see how—how restless I am?"
"We ought to have more children!" he exclaimed wistfully.
"Yes," she agreed, "yes, we ought to have more children. But if they do not come—?" And she stared before her, her hands lying empty and listless in her lap. "If they do not come—?" she repeated presently. And now she turned her brooding eyes to his face and a purpose gathered and concentrated in them. "I wonder if you could understand—" she began.
But he cut into the sentence: "I must hurry back to the office. I take too much time for lunch. Don't get discontented, little girl. I'll take you down to Louisville for the horse show next week. We'll have a bully spree. That's what you need." And he went off whistling blithely, sure that he had solved the problem of Sheila's "moods"—as he always called any symptom of depression in her.
Sheila watched him go, smiling. "Of course he wouldn't have understood," she said to herself. "And how I would have bothered him if I'd tried to analyze myself for him—poor dear!" But the reflection, amused, yet wholly tender, did not end her unrest, her perplexity.
After a futile attempt to interest herself in duties about the house, she set out for a walk, hoping to capture something of the outdoor peace. It was October, always an exhilarating month in Kentucky, with its crisp air and its flaming banners of red and gold, and soon her blood was stirred and her heart lightened, and she was swinging along at a brisk pace. She had started in the direction of her grandmother's house, but suddenly she wheeled about and took to another street.
Never since Eric's illness had her grandmother spoken to her of her writing, and she had been glad of the silence. It seemed to her that if they talked at all, they who had been so close, so much would have to be said; she could not conceive of a reserve in anything which she undertook to discuss with Mrs. Caldwell at all. Ted's views on the duty of a wife and mother would therefore have to be told with the rest, and she did not want to tell them. Her grandmother would have little patience with them, she was sure. As a devoted husband, most of all as the father of Sheila's child, Ted seemed to have won a secure place in Mrs. Caldwell's affection at last, and Sheila, who had clearly seen Mrs. Caldwell's original reluctance to the marriage, had no intention of jeopardizing that place now. Understanding, sympathy, advice would have meant much to her, but she could not take them at Ted's expense.
So she walked on, away from her grandmother's house; onward until she left the town behind her and found herself upon the road leading to Louisville. Just ahead of her, she saw, then, a familiar figure trudging along in leisurely fashion, the figure of Peter Burnett.
"Peter!" she hailed joyously. And as he hastened back to her, her heart lifted buoyantly; her somber mood departed. She did not say to herself, "Hereis understanding," but she felt it. A sudden warmth possessed her, and that other self of hers, so long banished—the Other-Sheila of dreams and visions—suddenly looked out of her eyes.
"A constitutional?" inquired Peter. And then, to her nod, "May I go with you?"
"Oh, yes, Peter, do! Let's have a good old-time talk! Let's play I'm young again!"
Peter grimaced: "You? You're still a child! ButI—! It's a sensitive subject with me nowadays—that of youth."
"It needn't be," laughed Sheila. "You've discovered the fountain of eternal youth."
And indeed, Peter at forty-six had changed curiously little from the Peter of twenty-eight. Still slender and of an indolent grace, his aspect of youth had wonderfully persisted. And having passed his life far more in contemplation than in struggle, his face matched his figure with a freshness rare to middle years. He was, it must be admitted, a convincing argument in favor of laziness—except for the expression of his eyes; they had something of the look of Sheila's; their gaze seemed turned inward upon a tragedy of unfulfillment. And unfulfilled, in very truth, was all the promise of Peter's attainments; of his exceptional parts. He was still teaching rhetoric to little girls at the Shadyville Seminary, and, because he had not married, he was still leading cotillions. He read his Theocritus as of old; he called often upon Mrs. Caldwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila, such as this. So his years had passed; too smoothly to age him; too barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense. No one appeared to see his pathos, but pathos was there.
He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had for each other. And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's understanding sympathy—for anything that she might choose to tell him.
The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its crest just as the sun grew low and vivid. A glow was upon the autumn fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere; tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to them, a crooning indescribably mournful. And then they espied, crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature as weird and mournful as the sound.
"Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila.
Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged, unkempt being—yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags and her beggar's life by her insanity. Long ago she had ceased to work at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous effort, however simple. But she had resisted the obvious havens of asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the precarious charity of those who had once employed her. She made her home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to another in a sad progress of destitution. And whenever the days were fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them. To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed. For she held something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.
Sheila went a step nearer, but Lisbeth did not look up or appear aware of her presence. She was not aware of anything in the world but the treasure within her arms. Watching, Sheila's eyes filled with quick tears and her throat ached with a pity almost unbearable. For the thing in Lisbeth's arms was a battered doll, and the crooning was a lullaby.
Very softly Sheila turned to Peter. "Let us go back," she said. "She hasn't seen us—she mustn't see us. We must not wake her from her dream. It's a doll she's rocking, and she's dreaming—she's dreaming it's a child."
They started back without speaking, hushed and saddened by what they had seen of another's tragedy; and as they went, Sheila was thinking of the occasion in her childhood when she had pretended to be Lisbeth's little daughter. It had happened so long ago, but in all the years since then Lisbeth had been intent on the one dream, the one hope—that of motherhood. All definite remembrance of the child she had borne and lost was gone from her clouded brain, but the instinct and desire of motherhood had remained; it had been life to her. Her mind, flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp from one uncompleted thought to another, had been steadfast enough in that; her heart, detached from every human tie, had never faltered in its impulse of maternity. The tears filled Sheila's eyes again, filled and overflowed so that Peter gave an exclamation of concern and dismay.
"Poor Lisbeth!" she murmured. "Poor thing! And I who have my child am discontented. What is the matter with me?"
It was the question she had put to Ted long ago—after that other episode of Lisbeth—and he had been as bewildered as she. But there was no bewilderment in the glance that met hers now. Nevertheless, Peter did not answer her directly. But after awhile he said musingly:
"A bird's wings may be clipped, but its heart can't be changed. Always—always—it is mad to fly!"
Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold on life. As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever, taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer. He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk finally turned.
"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked. "It's rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays. Marriage swallows women terribly, doesn't it?"
"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs. Caldwell. "I'm fond of Ted—really very fond of him, in fact—but I've always expected marriage to swallow his wife. He's that sort of man."
"You think he demands so much of her then? I'd felt that it was the boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life—her old self."
"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly—through the boy?"
Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand. I understandher—to the soul! But there's something in her life I don't understand. I'm sure Ted's good to her. I'm sure they love each other. But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell. The trouble is that she wants to write—and she doesn't. I can't understand why she doesn't. When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd, that she doesn't take up her work again. And I can't tell her so—well as I know the value of the gift she's wasting. She isn't frank with me. I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."
"She isn't frank with me either, Peter. But I'm a little more informed about the situation than you are. Sheila was writing a story when Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to scarlet fever. That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for Sheila's giving up her work."
Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that? Do you think he blamed her?"
"No—I'm sure he didn't. He was terribly, terribly sorry for her. Ted is capable of generosity at times, Peter—I'm not fond of him for nothing!—and he was generous then. But of course Sheila reproached herself. I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she censured herself. I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever since. It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a mistake, an accident. If she had married another man—it wouldn't have happened."
"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"
"Ah, that might have happened in any case. I meant the atonement."
"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her. How, then, could he be responsible?"
"He could let the atonement go on! He isn't a subtle person, but I believe he's divined that, and let it continue. I knew, before Sheila married him, that he would not care for her art. I knew that he would resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage. And knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't help taking the advantage circumstances had offered him."
"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"
"Capable of generosityat times, Peter. And so he is. Most of us have our generosities and our meannesses. Ted's like the rest of us in both respects. The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila. If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the atonement wouldn't. Foryouwould havewantedher to write; you would have made her feel it wrongnotto write. It's not that you're a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for Sheila. You ought to have married her, my dear. I meant you to marry her!"
Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell. Very rigidly he stood, his hands at his side, tightly closed. When he finally turned again into the room, his face was white.
"Why do you tell me that now—now that it's too late?" he asked. And his voice shook with the question.
At something in that white face of his, at something in his unsteady voice, Mrs. Caldwell grew very gentle: "Because I'm a blundering old woman, Peter dear. But, since I have blundered, let us talk frankly. I did intend you to marry Sheila. I plotted and planned for it from the time she was a little girl in your rhetoric class. I believed that in a marriage with you lay her chance to be both a happy and a wonderful woman. And then—Ted married her instead! But there's still something you can do for her. You can watch over her when I'm gone, Peter. You can put out a saving hand now and then, if you see she needs it. When I'm dead—and that will be soon, my dear—you'll be the only person in the world who understands her. If I can feel that you'll always be there ready to help her, I can die in peace. Bottled up genius is a dangerous thing. Sometimes I am afraid for Sheila! But if you'll promise to watch over her for me, I can die with my heart at rest."
"There is nothing I would not do for you or for her!" he said.
"I know that, Peter. What wonder that I had my dreams about you?"
"They were dreams, just dreams," he responded, and now he was speaking more easily. "I wasn't the right man for Sheila after all. If I had been, she would have realized it; she wouldn't have married some one else."
"How could she realize it—at twenty? And she was barely twenty when she married. Peter, there's a moment in a girl's life when, consciously or not, her whole being, soul and body, cries out for love. And if a man is at hand then—any presentable man—to answer, 'Iam love,' she believes him. That moment came to Sheila—and Ted was there!"
"Oh," cried Peter, "Oh, surely there was more to it than that! Surely there was real love!" And when she did not answer, he repeated earnestly, "Surely there was real love!"
"You plead for Ted?" asked Mrs. Caldwell with a touch of irony.
"I plead for her. Ted doesn't matter, and I don't matter. ButSheila—Oh, I can't bear that she should have only a second-rate thing, an imitation. I can't bear that."
"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted. And as long as she thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy. What we have to do for her—what you have to do for her when I'm gone—is to keep her thinking that. It isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may rouse in her; the awfulvisionit may bring her. I see so clearly how she was married—and she mustneversee! If ever you find her beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow. I've often thought that women should be born blind—or that their eyes should be bandaged at birth."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Peter.
"No—kind! All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then; all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid. We'd create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch us."
"It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter.
"There's nothing so tragic as the truth—when it comes too late," said Mrs. Caldwell sadly. "Your grandfather and I found out that. He was already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when—it happened. We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter. But people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days. They thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor. It seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt; ever to have acknowledged it. So we went on with our obligations, your grandfather and I. He was a good husband, and I was a good wife. Our lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we would have been happy if—if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart and reflected it for him in my own eyes. We would have been happy if I had been blindfolded! As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept less was tragedy for us."
"You were both free at last," said Peter. "Why didn't you—Oh, whydidn'tyou—take what was left to you?"
"My dear, we were already old. Romance was still in our hearts, but we hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives. We had felt a great love, and been brave enough to deny it. But when we could have satisfied it honorably—we were afraid of the change in our lives; we were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even afraid of what the town would say! In the beginning we had striven not to dare. In the end we could not dare. It is sad that we should be like that, isn't it, Peter? It's sad that as the strength of our youth goes from us, the valor of our love should go too. But it is so, it is so for all of us, my dear. The day before your grandfather died, something flamed up in us again. The courage of new life came to him, and he made me promise to marry him the next day. But the next day he was—dead!"
She fell silent, her eyes fixed broodingly upon the fire, eyes that looked strangely young. Peter, silent too, was remembering that day before his grandfather's death; remembering Mrs. Caldwell's presence in the house, and the indescribable sense of some other presence also. He had felt it so strongly, that other presence, that the whole house had seemed to him to be pervaded and thrilled by it. His father was living then, and they two had spent the afternoon in the library, while Mrs. Caldwell had sat with his grandfather in the room above. He had said to his father—he recalled it quite clearly—"I feel something—something—in the very air." And his father had appeared startled and had replied, "Perhaps death is in the air." But Peter knew now that it had not been death he had felt; that it had not been death that had filled the air as if with rushing wings and shooting stars and invisible, ineffable glories. It had not been death; it had been love. And glancing at Mrs. Caldwell's musing eyes, something like envy came into his own. He went to her, knelt, and kissed her thin old hand.
"After all, youhadlove," he murmured. And then, "I wish you had been my grandmother. Iwishyou had."
"Oh, Peter!" she cried. "Oh, Peter! Peter!" And suddenly her arms were around his neck.
As she clung to him, her tears on his face and her heart's secret in his hands, he almost told her; he almost said what he had resolved never to say. And yet he did not.
"He's never loved her," concluded Mrs. Caldwell when he had gone. "There was a moment when he looked as if—but he's never loved Sheila. If he'd loved her—ever—he would have told me."