Peter had engaged to dine with Charlotte that night, but after his talk with Sheila, his first impulse was to excuse himself. It seemed to him impossible to get back, at once, to the safe level of everyday life, of commonplace affairs. It seemed impossible, too, to meet Charlotte without betraying embarrassment. But after an hour's solitude, he had sufficient command of himself to fill the appointment, and he appeared at the Davis house with all his usual placidity of manner. After all, he had to go on as if nothing had happened, and it was as well, he told himself, to begin immediately. That was, perhaps, the worst of secret disasters like his and Sheila's—that one had to go on as if nothing had happened; that one had to wear, from the first, a bright mask of concealment. But it was, in a way, the best, too—this necessity for taking up tangible, practical matters, for continuing duties, obligations, enterprises that, perforce, diverted at least a part of one's mind from the contemplation of an inner tragedy. There was effort in having to talk, to listen intelligently, to laugh, but there was relief, too, and the sense of safety that, when adrift on chaotic seas, one feels at the touch of something solid. So he talked and listened and laughed with conscientious care. And watching Charlotte across the dinner table, he considered Sheila's plea.
As he had said to Sheila, he thought Charlotte clever and handsome and kind. Whole-heartedly he liked and admired her; he enjoyed her; he was stimulated by her. He was even prepared to admit that, if she would marry him, she might actually make something of him, middle-aged though he was. His attainments, his really brilliant qualities of mind, were there to build with—and she was, by nature, a builder. He could see her taking hold of his life and creating out of its hitherto negative stuff a thing worth while. He could see her thus active for him and with him, and feel a certain pleasure in the picture. To think of himself as dear to a woman like Charlotte could not but touch a man pleasantly and warmly. And yet, thus touched, thus drawn, he knew still that his whole-hearted admiration and liking would never be followed by whole-hearted love. His passion for Sheila had gone too deep to be effaced. Unhappily for himself, he was not one of those whose heart can be enlisted sincerely more than once. He looked across the table at Charlotte and noted the strong, rich gold of her hair, the dark, definite blue of her eyes, the gracious lines of her shoulders; he heard her clear, positive, courageous voice, her blithe laughter; he looked and listened and thought of her as his—and his heart clung to its dream of a woman far less compellingly vital and lovely. Against Charlotte's vivid reality, he set a little ghost with a pale face and wistful gray eyes and a plaintive voice, a little ghost too sensitive to be quite strong, too shy to be self-confident and self-sufficient, too tender to be altogether brave; and with this very sensitiveness, this shyness, this uncourageous tenderness, the little ghost held him. She held him because her eyes were wistfully gray instead of triumphantly blue, because her voice was hauntingly plaintive instead of firmly buoyant; she held him because in her soul there was a strain of weakness, of timidity, of childlike helplessness and innocence that to him was at once piteous and exquisite. She held him by all those qualities—and shortcomings—most unlike Charlotte. He saw that Charlotte was, as Sheila had asserted, just the woman for a man of his indolent, dallying temperament; he saw that he needed such a woman. But he saw, too, that Sheila needed him, that she had always needed him, that she would always need him; and from that consciousness of her need he could not wrench himself free.
He would never be free of his little, pale ghost. If he married Charlotte, it would be for Sheila's sake.Ifhe married Charlotte——!
Well, he might marry Charlotte. Sheila had said that he could, and perhaps she had been right. In these later years, since Charlotte had been a woman, a cordial friendship had sprung up between them. Whenever she had been in Shadyville, he had been much with her, and in her absences there had been letters. For several years, whether in Shadyville or away, she had been a presence in his life; they had many tastes and interests in common; she was kind to him—encouragingly kind. It seemed probable that he could marry her; at least there was ground for trying to do so. Yet how could he offer less than his best to a creature so fine, so honest, so loyal as he knew Charlotte to be?
That something weighed on his mind, that he was observing her with unwonted gravity, Charlotte perceived before the dinner was over.
Afterward she took him with her into the garden and they sat down there in the mild spring night, surrounded by flowers, regarded by innumerable stars. The night, the flowers, the stars, all appeared to be conspiring for Charlotte. They created an atmosphere of poetry for her; they threw over her a glamour that, with her obvious type of beauty, her downright and positive nature, she had missed. It was as if the night, with its stars and flowers, were striving to invest her with that subtler allurement which, in Sheila, was so poignant and enchanting to Peter. And instinctively Charlotte took up the night's cue; sat a little in shadow; spoke with unusual softness.
"What have you been thinking of so seriously all evening?" she asked.
"I've been wondering," said Peter, "whether a man whose heart is committed, in spite of himself, to a hopeless love, has any right to marry."
Charlotte did not answer at once; she stirred, moved deeper into protecting shadow. "That depends, I believe, on whether he's sure that the love his heart is committed to is really hopeless—will be hopeless always," she replied finally.
"In the case I was considering—the man is sure of that."
"Then he would get over his unfortunate love in time—wouldn't he? Ill-fated love does not often last forever. Life—life is more merciful than that, isn't it?"
It was his chance with her; he realized that she was giving it to him—giving it to him understandingly and deliberately. He had only to agree that an "ill-fated" love—that his ill-fated love—would die at last. But he could not take his chance like that. He could not be less than honest with her.
"He would never get over it altogether," he said. "The woman he could not marry would always be—dearest to him. And, granting that, would it be fair for him to ask another woman to take what was left of—of his affection? Would it be fair to ask her to take—a spoiled life?"
"She might feel that what was left of his life was well worth having—the woman hecouldmarry. She might feel that—even if he had suffered much, missed what he supremely wanted—his life need not be spoiled after all. She might feel that she could prevent its being spoiled. If he were frank with her, and she felt like that about it, I think it would be fair for him to marry her—perfectly honorable and fair."
"It could not be happiness for her," argued Peter.
"Perhaps not. Perhaps she could do without happiness."
"That would require a great love of her," said Peter gravely, "a great love for a man who could not give a great love in return."
"Yes," she agreed, her voice very low now, but as clear and steady as ever, "yes, it would require a great love from her. But it is not impossible to find a woman who can feel a great love without hope of a full return."
She was still in her sheltering shadow, but upon Peter's end of the garden seat the moonlight, unchecked by the trees, streamed white and strong. She looked into his face, fully revealed to her now, and she realized, before he spoke, that he was going to refuse her sacrifice; she realized it because she saw in his face a deeper emotion for her than he had ever shown before. He loved her not enough—and yet too much!—to marry her. She saw that and was prepared for his next words.
"To such a woman the man I have in mind could not give less than his best," he said. And there was no longer any question, any hesitancy in his tone. "To one so generous no man could be ungenerous—I should have known that! Perhaps," he went on, with a note of distress and apology, "perhaps such things should not be talked about. Perhaps it is—humiliating——"
"To me the truth could never be humiliating," she answered, with quick reassurance.
"Then it is best to speak it?" he pleaded, as if for self-justification. "Then it is best to speak it, after all? For it does make things—plain; it does show one the right, the decent course."
"It's best to speak it," she assented kindly; and she held out her hand to him.
He lifted her hand and kissed it. And when he spoke again, his voice faltered: "When a man knows a woman like you, Charlotte, he sees that happiness—or unhappiness—doesn't matter so much as he's thought. There are other things—better things—to live for. You've found them—and now I'm going to find them, too, my dear."
So, for the second time that day, Peter went from a woman who loved him. The night and the stars and the flowers had done their best to quicken his pulses; to blur his vision of the truth; to blunt his sense of absolute, unswerving honor. But in the end Charlotte herself had defeated what the night was fain to do for her with its witchery; she had defeated the night's intents with her measureless honesty and generosity—to which Peter's own generosity and honesty could but respond. To use a woman like Charlotte as a barrier between himself and another woman was impossible to him. Neither for Sheila's safety, nor for any benefit to himself, could he do a thing so base. He recognized now that marriage with Charlotte—even without that utter love he had given to Sheila—might be a gracious, even a happy destiny for him. But having found her so ready to sacrifice herself, he could not sacrifice her. He could not rob her of the chance of being loved as she could love. Such a love might come to her some day; he could but leave her free for it.
As he walked homeward along the silent, wide street, other gardens than Charlotte's flung their fragrance to him; the night still whispered to him of the sweetness of being loved, of all those compensations from which he had turned away. But he was not allured; he was not vanquished. His course stretched before him—through the befogging, unmanning sweetness—to daylight and self-respect and an uncompromising sincerity of life. It stretched before him farther than he could descry—as far as the great fighting, suffering, achieving world. Mrs. Caldwell had once told him that he had never grown up, and that some day he would have to grow up; that there could be no escape for him. She had been right about it. Until now he had not grown up. Not even in his love for Sheila and the pain of it, had he grown up. He had been like a child playing in a garden, and though the sweetest rose there had torn him with its thorns, he had stayed on in the garden. But now he was a child no longer; there had been no escape from growing up. He had put it off a long time—more than half his lifetime perhaps—but he had not been able to put it off forever. And now, yielding at last, he was willing to leave his garden; he was willing to go out into the world of men.
As he neared the hotel where he lived, he met Ted Kent, quitting his office—going home to Sheila.
At once Ted stopped and put out his hand. For in his mind no hostility against Peter had lingered. Indeed, on the occasion when he had upbraided Sheila about Peter, he had felt very little animosity toward Peter himself, and several months having passed in a strict compliance to his wishes on Sheila's part, the whole matter had almost vanished from his memory. His was not a nature to cherish resentment, to brood over fancied wrongs; he liked to be at peace with all his fellow-men and upon genial terms with them. He was animated by a distinct cordiality toward Peter now, as he extended his hand to him.
"Been calling on the girls, Burnett?" he inquired jovially.
"On one of them," admitted Peter.
"Well, it's been a long while since I did anything like that—a long while. And I'm not sorry either. There's nothing like your slippers and your pipe and your paper at home! When I have to work late, as I did to-night, it's a real hardship. Have a drink with me before I go on?"
"Thanks," said Peter pleasantly, "but I'm in a bit of a hurry. I've got to pack up. I'm leaving town in the morning."
"Leaving town? For a vacation?"
"No, for work. I've had a job offered me in New York. Brentwood, of the Brentwood Publishing Company, has been asking me to come to them for years, and I've finally decided to go."
"High-brows, aren't they—the Brentwood Company?" Ted questioned, somewhat impressed.
"Perhaps you'd call them so. They publish real literature—a good many translations; that's what they want me for."
"Well, well," pursued Ted, still detaining him, "and so you're going to leave little old Shadyville for good! And after spending all your days here, too—after making so many friends. I believe you'll miss us, Burnett!"
"I'm sure I shall," agreed Peter, with patient courtesy.
"Then why go? It may be a good change for you in ways, but I'm convinced there's more to be said against it than for it. For the life of me, I can't see why you're doing it."
"No," said Peter, a little drily, "you wouldn't see, Kent. But I'm sure it's the only thing to do. Tell Sheila I think so, please, and that I send her my good-byes."
"You aren't going to tell her good-bye yourself?"
"I'm afraid I can't." And as Peter spoke, he was acutely conscious of all that Ted did not see, of all that he would never understand. "I'm afraid I can't—I start early in the morning."
"All right! You know what's best for yourself, no doubt. Sorry you can't say good-bye to Sheila, though—she cares a lot for you, as much as if you were one of the family. I'll give her your message, but she'll be disappointed that you didn't deliver it yourself. Good luck to you, old man, and don't forget us!" And shaking hands again, Ted went cheerfully on his homeward way, serenely unaware of the sorrow—and of the irony!—that had confronted him from Peter's quiet eyes.
Up in his little room, Peter began to carry out his sudden plan for leaving Shadyville. It was true that he had had an offer, more than once, from Brentwood. Brentwood had been a chum of his at college, a friend who had never ceased to remember and appreciate him. The offer was still open, and it solved Peter's problem. He had told Sheila that he would marry Charlotte or do something else that would answer as well. He found that something else in going away.
He had not many possessions; shabby clothes—with an air to them; shabby books—that shone with their inner grace. The books took longest, and when he had finished packing them, it was dawn. He went to his window and watched the slow coming of the light, and in that silent, gray hour, he felt himself more alone than he had ever been. Everything seemed to have been stripped from him; this town where he had been born, and where generations of his family had been born before him; his friends; the little room, so dismantled now, that for years had been his home-place; all these—and his hope of happy love. He remembered how, in his early, romantic boyhood, he had hoped for that—for happy love; and now that hope was gone and everything was gone with it. Everything was gone because of Sheila; he had given up everything that she might be safe, that she might have peace—the peace, at least, of being unafraid. He thought of her now with a calm tenderness—as if, having given so much for her peace, he had somehow gained peace for himself, too. And then he thought of Charlotte, and it was for Charlotte, not for Sheila, that tears—a man's slow, difficult tears—forced themselves into his eyes.
But Charlotte was strong. It was her strength that had roused strength in him; strength to leave the garden, to escape the insinuating, ensnaring sweetness of the night and go forth into the daylight world of men.
And just then the first ray of sunlight touched his window sill, touched it and stole within the room. The day had come; and though he was forty-six years old and not born for fighting, a sudden elation seized upon Peter's sad heart—as if the finger of the sunlight had touched it, too.
Sheila had thought herself acquainted with loneliness in the days immediately following her grandmother's death—days when she had had the consolation and companionship of Peter's frequent visits; but after Peter left Shadyville, she knew loneliness indeed. Charlotte had taken flight to Paris soon after Peter's departure, and there remained in Sheila's small world not one to comprehend the depths of her, the real needs and desires and aspirations of her mind and spirit.
To all outward seeming, her life flowed on in its usual channels; she occupied herself with her housewifely duties, with her care for her husband's and child's well-being; she exchanged visits with her neighbors and went to afternoon tea-parties. Certainly her life appeared to flow on smoothly enough, but in fact it did not flow at all—that which was really the life current; it was checked, stemmed, thrown back upon itself in a tempestuous flood. Heart, mind, spirit, all had come up against an obstacle which there was no surmounting, no eluding—the indestructible obstacle of a mistaken marriage. Those were the bitterest days of Sheila's existence—the days when all the vital, matured forces of her throbbed and surged and clamored, prisoned things that beat in vain against the walls of circumstances.
Worn out at last by this inner rebellion and conflict, she began to question whether she might not write once more. What she felt for Peter must forever be suppressed; must, if possible, be crushed out altogether; for her heart, importunate though it was with her woman's maturity, there could be no satisfying outlet. And in her conscientious recognition of this, in her resolution to abide by it, her very genuine affection for Ted—despite all the differences of temperament that divided them, despite even her realization and resentment of the wrong his selfishness had done her—was her greatest source of strength. But though she thus armed herself with her affection for her husband, though she so strove for utter loyalty to him, the suppression of her gift was no part of her conception of wifely duty now. And, thanks to Charlotte, she no longer regarded her compact with God for Eric's life as a thing sacred and binding. Even before Charlotte had expressed herself so vigorously on the subject, Sheila had, indeed, grown to see that her vow to renounce her gift had been unfairly wrung from her by a too effective combination of accident and Ted's opinions. And after Charlotte had cried out upon that vow as "morbid, hysterical nonsense," after she had exclaimed that Sheila's only fault had been in wasting her gift, it was but a step for Sheila to the conclusion that her vow could not—shouldnot!—bind her. At last she saw herself free for work, if not for love; she saw herself the more free for work because love must be denied. Her work should be her recompense; she had earned it now, as all things worth the having must be earned—by what one suffers for them. And she believed that her work would be the better for all that she had suffered, all that she had endured. It would be the better for that secret, unceasing ache of her heart for a love forbidden to her; and it would be the better for all the hours of pure suffering for itself alone.
She had suffered for the loss of her work—Oh, very really! Even through years that had been altogether happy otherwise, the restlessness and hunger and depression of a talent unappeased had come upon her at times, come upon her almost unbearably. Though she had set her little son between it and her, it had reached her; it had harassed her unspeakably with demands that she had, perforce, refused to gratify. The sudden note of a violin, the sight of a flowering tree pearly against an April sky, a glimpse of tranquil stars through her window at night—such things as these had been enough to bring her gift's importuning and torment upon her. Earnestly and sincerely as she had tried to steel herself from such importunity and torment, they had come upon her again and again; they still came; they would come always—unless she flung off the shackles of that foolish, unnecessary vow.
Fling off its shackles she did, with a sudden, blessed sense of liberty and strength. With neither confession to Ted, nor any attempt at concealment, she set herself to write. For the first time since her marriage—at least since her motherhood—she felt her life, in some measure, her own. That she made no announcement of her independence to Ted was significant of the complete independence she had begun to feel. Perhaps it was significant of it, also—of the extent to which she conveyed, without words, her emancipation—that Ted, discovering, in the ensuing days, what she was about, said nothing of it either.
When she sat down, at last, to her writing-table, to her clean sheaf of paper, it was with the conviction of her individual rights spurringly upon her. But though she was finally so sure of her right to set free her gift, she felt within her no stir and flutter of a thing mad to fly and now released to do it. No winged words sprang upon her paper to leave bright traces of a heavenly flight. At the end of a long, uninterrupted morning, there was upon her paper no word at all.
Not for lack of ideas did the paper remain thus bare. There were ideas enough and to spare in the treasure chamber of her brain, ideas long hoarded, but still fresh with the glamour of their first conception. There was one idea which had especially tantalized and allured her through years of resistance on her part, an idea for a story really insolently quiet and unpretentious—because its stuff was such pure gold. How that gold would shine through the cunningly chosen medium of her simple, unassuming phrases! She had seen it shining so through all the time that she had resisted it. But now—though she gave herself unreservedly to the cherished idea, though she turned over and over, with a passionate preoccupation, the little golden nugget of it—the simple, delicate phrases that were to reveal, to exploit it, did not appear.
She had always written with a singular ease, and it seemed strange to sit before her tempting pages and write not a word. But on the first morning, she felt no alarm. After all, it was but natural that she should have to spend some time in coaxing it out to the light—that talent of hers so long confined. It was but natural that it should not have courage to soar and sing at once. But on the second day her paper was as empty as before; it lay upon her table like a useless snare for some wild and lovely bird that no longer had vitality enough to flutter within reach of it.
And now, sitting at her writing-table in vain for several days, fear seized upon Sheila, fear that she would not name or analyze.
Well, as one grew older, one often wrote differently, with more difficulty. She had heard that, she reflected eagerly. She had heard that deliberate, intellectual effort had often to succeed the flushed, panting rush of youthful inspiration. This was probably the case with her now; of course it was, indeed. She must undertake the effort; she must accept and master a new method. Then all would be right with her.
And so she went about deliberately translating the gold of her idea into those dreamed-of words which were so fitly to interpret it. She went about it with an energy, a will to accomplish the feat, that should have been sufficient to achieve miracles. If there had been, hitherto, a strain of weakness in her, she was now all strength. And by that sheer strength—of purpose, of determination—she sought to realize her dream of perfection.
Now the white sheets on her table were no longer barren. Slow, painful writing covered them. She wrote and discarded, and wrote again. Day after day, she sat there at her table, engaged, as she came at last to perceive, in her final, her ultimate tragedy.
For when the thing that she had visioned as a little golden masterpiece was finished, she knew it for what it was. There was no felicity of phrase, no cunning art of construction, no conviction of truth, no throb of vitality within it. As surely as a still-born child had it been brought into the world dead. And it was incredibly ugly and deformed. There was not a gleam of gold upon it!
She recognized all this with unsparing clearness. Not one illusion was left to her, not one merciful deception; with a single glance at her completed story, illusions and self-deceptions were swept from her—and hope was swept from her with them.
Her gift was dead—or, at the least, it was forever ineffectual. There would be no more mad, glad flights; no more songs high in the sunlit heavens. The flights and songs and ecstasies were over for all time. Not for an instant did she cheat herself with sophistries of an eventual recovery. She knew that if it lived at all—this gift of hers which had once been more alive than she herself—it would but live within her as the pain of a thing balked and futile, restless still perhaps, but not restless with any power. Always—always now—the too exquisite note of a violin, the sight of blossoming trees at dawn, of silver, inscrutable stars at night would waken in her the hunger, the grief, of the unsatisfied. There would never be a time when she could look on poignant beauty with the peace of one who is herself a part of all beauty—having created something beautiful. For the ultimate calamity had befallen her; her gift had been killed, or hopelessly maimed.
Under the tremendous impact of this blow she was curiously unresentful. She wondered a little how it had happened. She wondered if she had suffered too much, suffered to the point of numbness—a thing fatal to one whose work had been fine largely through her capacity for emotion; or if the habit, the superstition, of her vow, persisting within her after the vow itself had been cast aside, had thus finally broken the wings of her talent. She wondered if her marriage alone, or her motherhood, or her shamed and hopeless love for Peter had been most disastrous to her. She had been conscious of them all as she had sat there trying to write. Eric's face and Peter's had drifted between her and her pages. Ted's cold declaration that talent was a bad thing for a married woman, and her own impassioned promise to God to renounce her work for Eric's life had both drowned for her the voice of her gift. It was as if all these factors in her destiny had had too much of her; it was as if they had claimed her too entirely and tenaciously ever to release her. Even in silence and solitude and a belated sense of liberty and rights, she could not be free of them. She could not decide whether one or all of them had been responsible for this final frustration. She wondered—and then she ceased to wonder at all. She knew that the frustration had been accomplished—and that she was suddenly too weary even to cry out.
It was at the moment when she realized all this fully, when she sat staring at the deformed and lifeless thing which she had brought forth, that a letter from Charlotte was handed to her. It came from New York—where was Peter. Sheila opened it with shaking fingers—and found what she desired:
I have seen Peter [wrote Charlotte] and he seems to have fitted himself, very happily, into the right place. I say happily, but I do not use the word literally, for Peter is scarcely happy. But he is appreciated here, and he likes his work. I'm sure you'll be glad of that.
As for happiness—I sometimes question whether those of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the reality. I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand, unimpaired, by that vision. It may be that we have to choose between the vision—beheld for an instant and forever remembered—and an earthy, faulty, commonplace little happiness. We may have to choose between a fairy tale that can never be anything but a wonderful fairy tale, and a grubby reality that will spoil fairy tales for us evermore. If that be true, Peter is not to be pitied. He is manifestly one of the chosen; he's had his matchless vision; he still believes in the fairy tale.
I told you, once, that I might marry him—in spite of him, as it were! Now I know that I will never marry him. But you must not be sorry for me, my dear. I, too, have had my vision. I'll always believe in the fairy tale.
Sheila laid the letter down—beside the stillborn child of her gift. And fleetingly she saw again the pure gold of her idea—saw it gleaming through the misshapen thing she had actually fashioned. After all, though she could never create masterpieces, she had had her vision of them; that, at least, had been vouchsafed to her. And she had had her vision of the perfect love; not even unspeakable sorrow and humiliation had dimmed it. She, also, was one of the chosen; she would always believe in the fairy tale.
It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us that we stumble upon life's real gift to us. And thus it happened for Sheila. It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her. But beneath the apparent caprice was a fine justice—for life was at last kind to Sheila through her son.
As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as, even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen. He was a manly boy, fond of other boys and of boyish sports, but for all that his companionship with his mother persisted, and as he matured somewhat, deepened into an intimate, understanding relation such as Sheila had not thought to know again. Their kinship was not of the flesh only; that was the thing that Sheila began presently to see.
It was then that she began to dream once more; to visualize a future beyond her own unrealized future. But she didn't so much as stretch out a shaping hand; she didn't say an illuminating, a determining word. She remembered instances—many of them—of children's lives having been moulded by their parents, and with pitiful mischance. She had known men and women who, with entirely unconscious tyranny, had thrust ready-made destinies on their sons and daughters, saying in extenuation:
"We want our children to do all the brave deeds we've failed to do. We want them to fulfill our defeated ambitions and to become what we have never become. We want to save them from our mistakes and our regrets. We haven't done much with our own lives—but we're going to live again, more wisely and effectually, in our children's lives."
And so they had advised and coerced, and destroyed individuality and independence, and extinguished, only too often, the very joy of life itself by striving to transfer the flame to a vessel of their own choosing.
This she must not do to Eric, Sheila told herself. From the despotic impulse of parenthood—queer mixture that it was of too zealous love and a thoroughly selfish desire for a second chance through the medium of the child—she must protect Eric. Therefore she restrained herself; she simply waited—as she might have waited for a seed to spring up from the secret sprouting place of some deep garden bed. It requires a sort of earthy, benign patience thus to hold back one's hand and passively wait—especially when one has, in spite of oneself, the dominating parent instinct!—but Sheila forced herself to it.
And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through the soil and turned its face to the light. The boy came to Sheila one day, obviously bent upon a confidence. Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he was, but so eager. She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers, child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some portentous thing upon his cheek. She wanted to kiss him—but she didn't. For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than kisses.
"Mother, here's—here's a story I've written."
That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in his eyes. What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.
And then Sheila knew that she was crying.
It was not a marvellous story—that first effort of her young son's—butsomething was there; something that raised the crude, immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale better than itself. And sensing it—that evanescent, impalpable, but infinitely promising thing—she saw the future shining through the present.
But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery. She longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it, and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.
Ted had not desired talent in his wife. Would he desire it in his son? Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a poet, a worker in mere beauty? Would he ever regard art as more than a shadow of life?
Sheila sought him now to learn that—with Eric's story to plead for itself.
Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and possessions which he did not share with her. Only for momentous affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.
"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little manuscript.
"Now? Is it important?"
"Yes, now. It is very important. I must have a talk with you when you've read it."
He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict. The story was short. Her suspense could have lasted but a little while. But Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years.
She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's life. But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent—if talent he really had. She was prepared to fight for it, if need be. Yet, as she watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them. That hot, rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace. The affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven. She had given up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and she sickened now at the prospect of conflict. For at conflict, old wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her, a devastating flood. If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she had striven to outlive. And she could not bear that this should happen. She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus jeopardized.
She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him when he had condemned Alice North for her art—and, however innocently, through Alice North, herself. She remembered how indignant she had felt, how hurt anddivided. And she remembered, too—thinking, against her will, of Peter—how divided from Ted she had felt in later years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly. She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in the destruction of her talent, all too clearly—and how her heart had turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love. She had driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to its duty—in so far as the heart can be constrained. She had even achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with which they had begun life together—but she trembled now at thought of any further pressure being brought to bear upon it. It was as if she held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you! Do nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"
And yet—though conflict between them should destroy the love she had so endeavored, in spite of everything, to feel—if Ted opposed Eric's gift, there must be conflict.
For she considered what her own unappeased gift had cost her—the hunger, the restlessness, the pain. She considered how, throughout all the years of her marriage, she had suffered her gift's insistence and its reproach. She thought of how she had never been able to look upon the miracle of the spring, the majesty of the stars, without an aching heart. All beauty had been transmuted for her into unassuageable sorrow—because she had been born to create beauty and had failed of her destiny. And it would be transmuted into sorrow for Eric, too—unless he were given the freedom she had foregone. He, too, would face the stars with an aching heart; all high and exquisite creation would be for him the material of suffering—unless he were allowed to create also.
She had nerved herself to any effort, any struggle that might be necessary, when Ted at last laid down Eric's story and turned to his desk without a word. Was there as little hope as that?
"Ted?" she cried.
"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back toward her. And his voice sounded queer—almost as if it were choked with tears. "Wait, Sheila."
He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too, unsteady with some rarely deep emotion. Thus he had looked when he first bent over her after Eric's birth. That flashed through Sheila's mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to have him. Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded ribbon. In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters. But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters. Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets. She stared at them curiously. What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
But to Ted they had their significance. He carefully untied the dingy ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her—and she noticed that his fingers were shaking.
"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
She picked up one of the discolored pages—and her own writing confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever—the story that, in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
"Why, Ted—Ted—!" But even then she did not understand.
"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them—Oh, years ago!—just stuck off in a cupboardlike trash that nobody wanted any more. And so—because Ididwant them—I brought them down here."
"Youwanted them?" Sheila gasped. "But, Ted——"
And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes—full of the tears he had tried to repress—were gazing down into hers!
"Don't you suppose I realize what you might have done? Don't you suppose I've seen what you've given up for me—for me and Eric?"
She could not speak. She could only gaze back at him, incredulous still of the comprehension that he had so long concealed from her.
"I've been a selfish brute, Sheila," he went on. "I've craved all of you for myself and my child, and I've had all of you. It's been my man's way, I reckon, for I couldn't have helped it. If I had it to do over again, it would be just the same—though I'm ashamed of myself now. Of course I didn't ask you to give up your writing, but I'd quite as well have asked you. For I guessed that you'd done it—after Eric had scarlet fever—and Iletyou, without a word. I've let you sacrifice your talent ever since, too—needlessly. Yes, I'veletyou—for I've seen the whole thing."
She had sometimes felt that the tragedy of her life had been in all that Ted had not seen. Now, finding that he had seen so much more than she had ever suspected—so much of what had been profound suffering to her—she might readily have blamed him more than she had ever done before. But generosity rushed out of her to meet his generosity—belated though his was.
"No, no," she interrupted, "it isn't that you let me give up my work. The fault isn't yours. That awful night—when it seemed that Eric would die—I offered my work for his life—I offered it toGod! That was why I didn't write afterward."
Ted fixed pitying eyes upon her: "You poor little girl! Was it as bad as that with you? I knew I was taking advantage of your conscience, but I never dreamed you'd carried your remorse so far. Did you really believe you had to buy God's mercy? Oh, no, dear. It's only your husband that's seized the opportunity to extract a sacrifice from your Puritan conscience. But with all my selfishness, I haven't stopped you—I haven't been the end of your talent."
She started to tell him of her late emancipation from that unnecessary vow of hers; to tell him that she had tried to write again—and discovered that she could not. But she did not tell him after all. For that could only hurt and shame him—in the hour of his penitence. So she was silent, and he continued with appealing eagerness.
"I haven't been the end of your talent," he repeated. "Don't you realize, dear, that your talent isn't ended at all?"
"You mean—Eric?"
"Yes, I mean that you've handed on your gift to Eric. And he's going to have the chance I wasn't unselfish enough to let you have. Don't be afraid for him—he's going to have his chance, And he'll know what to do with it! I believe you'll be the mother of a great man—and that Eric will probably be the father of great men. I believe it will go on and on and on—what you are, what you might have done."
"But, Ted—Eric is only a child. We cannot be sure yet—
"I believe!" he insisted. "I believethisis to be your work—the work I haven't stopped."
And as she listened, there came to her, too, a faith in Ted's prophecy. Her gift would have its fruition in Eric—and perhaps in Eric's sons and his sons' sons. She was granted a vision of a torch passed on from one trustworthy hand to another throughout the years; and beholding that vision, she was aware that nothing she had suffered mattered at all. She could face the stars now with a heart at peace. She could watch the earth's miracles, feeling herself a part of them. From the earth sprang flowers; from her flesh had sprung her son—her son who had been born to carry on the torch. She had created beauty indeed—beauty that would outlive her life in her son's art.
Even Peter's image was blurred for her as she beheld her supreme vision.
And then she recalled Charlotte's words: "I sometimes question if those of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the reality. I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand unimpaired by that vision."
Charlotte was mistaken. There were visions which became realities; this final vision of hers would become a reality—and it would be none the less perfect and transcendent for that.
Sheila laid her hands on her husband's shoulders. "I'm glad that I've lived!" she said. And again, with a little sob, "Oh, my dear, I'm glad that I've lived!"