The moment when Sheila had that terrifying inward vision of her own
inconsistencies marked the beginning of her self-consciousness. For a
while this was acute and painful. She was always afraid of finding
herself, quite unintentionally, involved in a labyrinth of untruth, and
her conscience, which passionately rejected any dishonesty that it
perceived, was continually occupied in analyzing her emotions and
impulses, her most guileless thoughts and her simplest actions.
"I am naturally a liar," she told herself solemnly. "I must watch
myself all the time--because I am naturally a liar!"
But she said nothing of her self-revelation and ensuing struggles to
Mrs. Caldwell. It was a thing to be overcome in shame and silence, and
alone, this innate wickedness of hers.
Her shame was indeed so genuine that she met Ted, for the first time
after he had shown her failing to her, with deep reluctance. He must
have been thinking of her awful tendency ever since they had parted--as
she had been. And he could not possibly respect her! But to her
amazement, he greeted her with his usual manner of untroubled good
fellowship. Clearly, she had not sunk in his estimation. She was
astounded, and shocked at him as well as at herself, until it occurred
to her that he might have forgotten the matter altogether. This was
incredible, but more honorably incredible than that he should remember
and not care. And if it were the case, she must not take advantage of
his forgetfulness; she must not unfairly keep his esteem.
"Ted," she said, with an effort worthy of a more saintly confessor,
"Ted, I reckon I ought to remind you about the way I acted with
Lisbeth."
"What about it? Did your grandmother scold you much?"
"Why, no. Don't you understand what I mean?" It was too painful to
put her sin into words.
"Has Lisbeth been after you again?" But the question was obviously not
one of sympathy, for Ted's voice was sharp now. At the mention of
Lisbeth he had recalled his grievance.
"No," repeated Sheila. "I meant I ought to remind you about--_me_."
And as Ted stared at her with no gleam of comprehension in his eyes,
she was forced to become explicit: "I mean--the way I let Lisbeth
believe what wasn't so."
Ted looked at her speculatively for a moment, wondering if he had
better rebuke her again for her folly, so that she should not commit it
a second time. She would be capable of doing the whole thing over,
under the impression that she was benefiting Lisbeth. She was so queer!
"You were very silly," he said finally.
"I was wicked!" she exclaimed in a fervor of repentance.
Ted continued to regard her with that speculative gaze. "Well, you
_are_ a queer one!" he ejaculated slowly.
Sheila flushed. She had abased herself in penitence, and he only
thought her queer. He _always_ thought her queer! She turned on him
with a flare of temper that burned up her humility so far as he was
concerned:
"How _dare_ you call me queer? How _dare_ you call me silly? I hate
you, Theodore Kent! I never want to see you again as long as I live!
You're--_you're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord_!"
And with this scriptural anathema, plagiarized from the Presbyterian
minister's latest sermon, she flung away from him in a fit of wrath
that did much to restore her normal self-respect.
However, though she felt no further uneasiness in the presence of
Ted--whom she forgave the next day with the readiness that is the
virtue of a quick temper--she continued her vigil over herself until
time softened her impression of her iniquity. And even then, when her
self-criticism had relaxed, her consciousness of her individual
temperament remained. She had discovered herself, and this self, like
her shadow which she had discovered with wild excitement in her
babyhood, would be her life companion. After she ceased to fear it, as
a possible moral monster, she began to take a profound interest in it
and its behavior.
"What will you be doing next?" she would inquire of it quaintly, "what
_will_ you be doing next, Other-Sheila?"
She did in fact credit this newly realized self of hers with a very
distinct and separate personality. All her caprices, her unexpected
and unexplainable impulses, her mystic imaginings, she laid at its
door, and in her fantastic name for it--"Other-Sheila"--she probably
found the true name for something that the psychologists define far
more clumsily.
But stung into sensitiveness by Ted's taunt about her queerness, she
kept her discovery of Other-Sheila to herself. Not even to Mrs.
Caldwell, who was a friend as well as a grandmother; not even to Peter,
who was all the while feeding her eager young mind with food both
wholesome and stimulating, and becoming, in his task, a comrade who
rivalled Ted in her affections, did she confide the existence of this
other self. With self-consciousness came the instinct of reserve--not
a lack of frankness, but a kind of modesty of the soul.
She had passed her fifteenth birthday before Other-Sheila roused her to
unrest. Until that time, the shadowy self dwelling deep within her,
and every now and then flashing forth elusively just long enough to
manifest its reality, had been a secret and delightful companion, one
with whom she held animated conversations when alone, and from whose
acquiescence to all her wishes and opinions she extracted considerable
comfort.
"Other-Sheila," she would say to herself, "is the only person who
always agrees with me." And then she would add, with a glint of
whimsical humor in her gray eyes, "I reckon that's what an Other-Sheila
is _for_!"
But after a while Other-Sheila became less acquiescent and more
assertive. And for the first time in her life, Sheila felt within her
the troubling spirit of discontent. She wanted something, wanted it
desperately as the very young always do, but she did not know what that
something was. It was a tantalizing experience, and she saw no end to
it.
"If I could only find out _what_ I want, I might get it," she mused.
And then, "Don't you know what it is, Other-Sheila?" But Other-Sheila
was provokingly unresponsive, though it was probably her desire that
fretted the objective Sheila's mind.
Mrs. Caldwell saw the unrest in the young girl's face and recognized it
for what it was--the unrest of growth. It was a look of unborn things
stirring beneath the surface, stirring and quivering as flowers must
stir and tremble beneath the ground before they break their way through
to the sun. But though she watched eagerly from day to day, ready to
do her part when the hour for it should come, Mrs. Caldwell was too
wise a gardener to hasten bloom.
"Peter," said she one day, when he had paused in an indolent stroll to
chat with her over her garden hedge, "Peter, it's a terrible thing to
be young!"
"Is it?" he laughed. "Why?"
"So many things have to happen to you!" And out of the security of her
placid years Mrs. Caldwell spoke with an earnest pity.
Peter laughed again. "Well, I'm young--at least, I suppose I would be
so considered. And _nothing_ ever happens to me!"
Mrs. Caldwell surveyed him with mischievous eyes. "No, Peter," she
contradicted, "you're not young--yet. You're not even alive yet.
You're too lazy to really live! But you'll have to come to it some
day. We all have to be born finally."
He chuckled at her comprehension of him. Then a disturbed look
fluttered across his face: "Do you actually mean that there's no
escape?"
"None! It's better to yield gracefully--and have it over. And if you
don't hurry a bit, Sheila will be through her growing pains while yours
are still before you!"
"Little Sheila? The master's star pupil?"
"Yes," she insisted, "little Sheila. You'll be taking her to parties
in a long frock before you know it. She graduates from the Seminary
next year."
But Peter was nearer to meeting Sheila in a long frock than either he
or Mrs. Caldwell dreamed. For at that moment Sheila was planning to
wear one before she was a week older.
She and Charlotte Davis were in the latter's dainty room, and spread on
the bed before them was Charlotte's new party frock. Charlotte's
father was the wealthiest man in Shadyville, and both she and her frock
did his wealth justice. She was now at home, for the Easter vacation,
from a fashionable boarding-school in Baltimore, the Shadyville
Seminary not satisfying Mr. Davis's requirements for his youngest and
favorite daughter. Her absence from the little town during the greater
part of the past two years had enabled her to erase its traces. She
had become a typical city-bred girl and she appeared pert, smartly
dressed and, for her sixteen years, amazingly mature. She had always
been prettier than Sheila, though no one had ever realized it and
probably no one ever would. For her prettiness was so informed with
sharp intelligence that her face had a challenging and almost
aggressive quality. Boys had never admired her, and men were not
likely to do so either, so lacking was she in the softer and more
appealing charms of her sex. Even at sixteen her bright blue eyes were
a trifle hard, not because of what they had seen--for she was, in
experience, still the nice little ingenue--but of what they had seen
_through_. The veil of credulity never dimmed her clear, bold glance.
But for Sheila she was always gentle, so strong in this shrewd,
fastidious young creature was her one deep and uncritical affection.
As the two girls examined the frock on the bed--a rose chiffon over
silk that fairly shrieked of expense--Sheila sighed. "Will you wear it
Friday night?" she inquired wistfully.
For on Friday night Charlotte was to give a party--a real evening party
to which the debutantes and even the older set were coming, as well as
the school-girls and boys. It would be Sheila's first grown-up
party--and she had only a white muslin and a blue sash to make herself
fine with. Thus Mrs. Caldwell had dressed for parties until her
marriage, and it had never occurred to her to provide any other costume
for Sheila, who was not yet quite sixteen. Besides, in Mrs. Caldwell's
opinion--and even in the exquisite Peter's--there was no sweeter sight
than a young girl in white muslin and blue ribbons. But to Sheila, in
comparison with Charlotte's splendor, the white muslin seemed
unspeakably dowdy. And so, when she asked Charlotte about her toilette
for the great occasion, it was with a heart of unfestive heaviness.
"Of course I'll wear this. That's what I got it for. Oh, Sheila,
aren't the little sleeves cunning? Just half way to the elbow--it's
lucky my arms aren't thin!"
But Sheila only sighed again in response to Charlotte's enthusiasm, and
now Charlotte heard the sigh and glanced at her with sudden
attentiveness. "What will you wear?" she demanded.
"I'll have to wear my white muslin. I haven't anything else."
"Oh, Sheila, that's too bad!"
"I wouldn't mind so _very_ much except for--" And Sheila's eyes,
wandering sadly toward Charlotte's chiffon, finished the sentence.
But Charlotte's dismay had already vanished. "You won't have to wear
your white muslin either," she announced in her positive, capable way.
"You can wear one of my frocks, Sheila. You must! Why"--this in a
burst of generosity--"why, you can wear this one!"
"Oh, no, I couldn't do that. Not your new frock, Charlotte! But
you're a dear to offer it!" And Sheila gave her friend a grateful hug,
though Charlotte never encouraged caresses.
"Well, then, perhaps not this one," agreed Charlotte, to whom, used
though she was to her pretty clothes, it would have been something of a
hardship to surrender the first wearing of them to anyone else,
"perhaps not this one--rose is more my color than yours. But
another--a blue silk mull that will be lovely with your blue-gray eyes
and black hair. I've worn it only two or three times, and never in
Shadyville."
"No, I couldn't," said Sheila again. "Grandmother wouldn't let me.
I'm sure she wouldn't."
"I don't see why."
"She wouldn't," persisted Sheila regretfully.
"Now look here, Sheila. She wouldn't _know_. You're going to spend
the night with me and dress after you get here. And _she's_ not coming
to the party."
It was the same form of temptation which Ted had offered Sheila in the
woods three years before, but now it was tenfold stronger. Then a mere
good time was at stake; now the gratification of her young vanity, of
her first girlish desire to make herself charming, was to be gained.
And as she had hesitated that day in the woods, for the sake of the
fun, she hesitated now for the sake of this new, clamoring instinct.
"I'd have to tell her," she temporized.
"Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her
until afterwards."
It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time--a middle path between
conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both.
"I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully. "If I told her--even
afterwards--it wouldn't be quite so wicked. And I _want_ to wear the
frock dreadfully!"
"Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly,
"as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that
evening. Then she won't mind it a bit. You'll see she won't!"
"Yes, she will. She won't like my wearing your clothes. She won't
think it's _nice_. And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing--the way
it really happened. But"--and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth
straightened into a thin line of resolution--"I'm going to do it
anyway, Charlotte!"
Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days
for Sheila. Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time,
especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence. For
Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.
But when the eventful night arrived, and she beheld herself at last in
Charlotte's blue silk mull, with its short sleeves and little round
neck frothy with lace, and its soft skirt falling to her very feet, she
forgot every scruple that had been sacrificed to that enchanting end.
Charlotte, gay as a bright-hued bird with her blue eyes and yellow hair
and rose-colored gown, and her mother and young Mrs. Bailey, her
married sister, all stood around Sheila in an admiring circle, every
now and then breaking out anew into delighted exclamations over their
transformed Cinderella.
"Isn't she too sweet?"
"And look at her eyes--as blue as Charlotte's, aren't they?"
"And what a young lady she seems! Isn't that long skirt becoming to
her?" cried Charlotte.
Charlotte had worn her party frocks long for the last year, and she
approved emphatically of the dignity thus attained for a few hours. It
gave her a delicious foretaste of the real young ladyhood to come, when
she meant to be very dignified and very brilliant indeed.
But to all their pleased outcry, Sheila said nothing at all. She
merely stood, radiant and silent, before them until they had to leave
her for a last survey of the rooms downstairs, the flowers and the
supper. Then, sure that she was quite alone, Cinderella stole to the
mirror.
For a long time she gazed at the girl in the glass; a straight, slim
girl in a delicate little gown that somehow brought out fully, for the
first time, the charming delicacy of her face--not the delicacy of
small features, of frail health, nor of a timid temper, but of an
exceeding and subtle fineness, partly of the flesh, partly of the
spirit, like the fineness of rare and gossamer fabrics. Sheila, of
course, did not perceive this, which was always to be her one real
claim to beauty, but she saw the frock itself, and white young
shoulders rising from it, and above it a pair of shining eyes. And
suddenly an ache came sharply into her throat and the shining eyes
filled with tears.
"Oh," she whispered, leaning to the figure in the mirror, "Oh, _this_
is what I wanted! _I wanted to be beautiful_!"