The evening was half over when Sheila, still up-borne on the tide of
her feminine exultation, glanced across the room to find that Peter
stood there quietly regarding her. Straightway she forsook the youth
who was administering awkward flattery to her new-born vanity, and
hastened to the side of her old friend.
"Oh, Peter, don't I look nice?" she demanded eagerly.
But Peter ignored the frank appeal for a compliment. "I think you'd
better call me Mr. Burnett," said he. And his tone was so serious that
she failed to catch the banter of his eyes.
"Why, I've always called you Peter, just like grandmother does--always!"
"Yes," admitted Peter, "and it's been very jolly and friendly. But,
Sheila, I must have _something_ to remind me that you're still a little
girl and my pupil. There's nothing in your appearance to suggest it,
but perhaps--if you will address me with a great deal of respect----"
At that, Sheila laughed and patted her frock: "Oh, I understand you
now! Do I really seem so grown-up?"
"So grown-up that I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell came to let you
do it."
"Oh, Peter! _Oh, Peter_!"
"Why, what's the matter?" he asked, surprised at the poignant
exclamation. But she turned abruptly away from him, and presently he
saw her blue gown flutter through a distant doorway.
"Now I wonder," he pondered, "what in the world I've done. Offended
her by appearing to criticize Mrs. Caldwell, I suppose."
But Peter had done a much graver thing than that. Unconsciously, he
had summoned Sheila's conscience to its deserted duty; and already,
like any well-intentioned conscience that has taken a vacation, it was
making up for lost time.
With that comment of Peter's--"I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell
came to let you do it"--Sheila's little house of pleasure suddenly
tumbled to the ground. She had not meant to be sorry about the
deception of the frock until _after_ the party, and until her encounter
with Peter she had been successful enough in holding penitence at bay.
That vision of herself in the mirror, seeming to answer some longing of
her very soul, had indeed kept her forgetful of everything but a sense
of fulfillment and triumph. But now, reminded of her grandmother, she
began to be sorry at once--impatiently, violently sorry.
"I must go home," she murmured to herself distressfully, as she slipped
unobserved through the crowded rooms. "I must go home. I can't wait
until morning! I must tell grandmother _now_!"
And so it happened that Mrs. Caldwell, looking out from her
sitting-room window into the early spring night, saw a slim figure
speed up her garden path as if urged by some importunate need; and the
next moment Sheila was kneeling before her, with her face hidden upon
her shoulder.
"Why, Sheila!--dear child!"
"Oh, grandmother, will you forgive me?"
"What should I forgive you? I'm sure you've done nothing wrong this
time!" And Mrs. Caldwell, who was accustomed to the rigors of Sheila's
conscience, smiled above the face on her breast with tender amusement.
But Sheila sprang to her feet and stepped back a pace or two. "Don't
you _see_?" she cried tragically.
And then Mrs. Caldwell discovered the transformation of her Cinderella.
No demure little maiden this, in the white muslin and blue ribbons of
an ingenuous spirit, but a fashionably clad "young lady," who appeared
to have grown suddenly tall and rather stately with the clothing of her
slim body in the long, soft gown.
"Sheila!" exclaimed Mrs. Caldwell involuntarily. And then, with her
hands outstretched to the impressive young culprit, "Tell me all about
it, dear."
And sitting on the floor at her grandmother's feet, regardless of
Charlotte's crushed flounces, Sheila poured out her impetuous
confession, from the first moment of temptation and yielding to the
final one of Peter's awakening words.
"And when he spoke of you, grandmother, I just couldn't _bear_ it! I
wondered how I could have been happy at all--I wondered how I could
have forgotten you for a minute! I hated the frock! I hated the
party! And I hated myself most of all! I had to come home and ask you
to forgive me right away!"
And down went her head into Mrs. Caldwell's lap. "Do you---think--you
can forgive me?" came the muffled plea.
For answer Mrs. Caldwell bent and kissed the prostrate head, and it
burrowed more comfortably against her knee. But Mrs. Caldwell did not
speak. She was waiting for something, and when Sheila continued to
burrow, in the contented silence of a penitence achieved, she inquired
quietly: "Well, dear?"
Sheila lifted her head at that, and looked straight into the wise,
sweet eyes above her: "I wanted something! I wanted something
dreadfully! And I didn't know what it was. And then, when I saw
myself in Charlotte's frock--and so changed--I thought I'd found what I
wanted. I thought--I thought I'd wanted to be beautiful!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Caldwell gently, "I used to think that, too."
"Oh, grandmother, did you? Then you understand how I felt! But--but,
you see, it didn't last. I wanted to be good _more_. That's what made
me come home. Grandmother, do you suppose _that's_ what I've wanted
all the time, without knowing it--to be good?"
At the question, Mrs. Caldwell, wise gardener that she was, realized
that one of the flowers which she had divined, stirring in the depths
of Sheila's being, was pushing its way upward to the light, and that
the moment had come for her to help it. She slipped her arms around
the girl kneeling before her, as if seeking in love's touch inspiration
for love's words.
"I think you will always want to be good," she said, "and I think you
will always want to be beautiful. Women do, Sheila dear--even the
women who are least beautiful and least--good. It's part of being a
woman--just like loving things that are little and helpless.
"But, Sheila, being beautiful isn't enough! Even being good isn't
enough, though of course it ought to be. It's essential, but it isn't
enough. Every woman must have something else besides to make her
happy--something that is hers, _her own_! She must have that to be
beautiful _for_, and to be good for--she must have that to live for!
"And that is what you want, dear--the thing that is your own. You have
been born for that--you cannot be complete or content without it."
Mrs. Caldwell's voice rose, grave and rich with the harmonies of life,
through the peaceful room, and Sheila quivered responsively in the
circle of her arms. To the young girl, womanhood, that only yesterday
had been so far away, now seemed to be drawing thrillingly near with
all its attendant mysteries. And in her next question she took a step
to meet it:
"Grandmother, what is it?--the thing that will be mine?"
"Dear, how can I tell? It isn't the same for us all. For one woman it
is love; for another it is work; for some it is, blessedly, both work
and love. For me--now--it is _you_! How can I tell what it will be
for my little girl?"
"I want it!" whispered Sheila. "I want it!"
"You must wait for it, dear. You must wait for it to come to you. You
can't hurry life."
"But can't I do _anything_?"
"You can be good, and you can be beautiful, so that you'll be ready for
it when it comes. But"--and now Mrs. Caldwell smiled, and with her
smile the stress of the moment passed--"but not in Charlotte's frock!
It wouldn't be fair to make yourself beautiful with borrowed plumage,
would it, little bird of paradise? You'd only get a borrowed happiness
out of that--one that you hadn't a right to, and couldn't keep."
Sheila rose from her knees, smiling, too. "I'll go right upstairs and
take it off," she declared. "I want to play fair from the start--I
only _want_ what's really mine!"
And so, coming back, under Mrs. Caldwell's tactful guidance, from the
deep waters to the pleasant, shallow wavelets that lap the shores of
commonplace life, she began to busy herself with the small duties of
the night, closing the windows and putting out the lamps. Then, with
bed-time candles after the fashion of Mrs. Caldwell's own girlhood, the
two started up the stairs, Sheila leading and lighting the way--as
youth always will, despite the riper wisdom of age. Once she smiled
over her shoulder; and before they had gained the top of the flight,
she paused and reached back her hand to help her grandmother up the
last few steps. There was something gracious and strong in the
gesture--something that had not been in the nature of the Sheila who
had bent her head to Mrs. Caldwell's knee an hour before. It was as if
the womanhood of which Mrs. Caldwell had spoken had already awakened in
her and with it, not only the longing for something of her own, but
that kindred tenderness for things little and helpless--or helpless and
old.
"Take my hand," she said sweetly, and there was in her voice the lovely
gentleness that young mothers use toward their children.
The next day, when Charlotte came to inquire why her guest had flown,
without warning and apparently without cause, she found a Sheila who,
though garbed once more in her own short frock, seemed in some
mysterious way more grown-up than she had in the trailing splendor of
the night before.
"What's happened to you?" demanded Charlotte shrewdly, when the two
girls were shut into the privacy of Sheila's little white bedroom, a
room that resembled the despised white muslin and blue sash which had
been discarded for Charlotte's furbelows. "I know _something's_
happened to you. You're--different. Did somebody make love to you?"
"Goodness, no!" denied Sheila in a horrified tone, and the alarmed
young blood rose in a slow, rich tide over her neck and face and
temples.
"Oh, you needn't be so shocked. Somebody will some day!" And
Charlotte laughed lightly out of her own precocious experience.
Of the two girls, Sheila was the one to be loved, but Charlotte was the
one to be made love to--if the love-making were only the pastime of the
hour. Charlotte was clever and daring and cold, and could take care of
herself. She knew, even at sixteen, all the rules of the game: when to
advance, when to retreat, and, most important of all, when to laugh.
But Sheila would never be able to laugh at love or love's counterpart.
"Somebody _will_ make love to you some day!" repeated Charlotte
teasingly.
"Well, nobody has yet!" Sheila assured her crossly. "And what's more,
I hope nobody will! _That_ isn't what I want!"
"What do you want?" asked Charlotte curiously, detecting the underlying
earnestness of the words. But she received no response, and so, bent
upon an interesting topic, she harked back to Sheila's flight from the
party: "If nobody made love to you, why did you run away? Did your
conscience hurt you, Sheila?"
"Yes," admitted Sheila, "that was what made me come home. But I stayed
home because of something else."
"What?"
Sheila groped for the language of Mrs. Caldwell's lesson: "Because I--I
didn't want to be pretty in somebody else's clothes. I was happy for a
little while, but it didn't last. You see, I'd borrowed that--the
happiness--along with the frock. And of course I couldn't keep it. I
just want what belongs to me after this, Charlotte. It isn't fair to
take anything else--and it isn't any use either."
Charlotte stared at her with puzzled eyes. "You _are_ queer," she
remarked reflectively. "You _are_ queer, Sheila. Theodore Kent always
said so, and he was right. I wonder what he'll think of you when he
gets back from college."
But Sheila, who had blushed painfully at the suggestion of a lover who
did not exist, heard Ted's name without a flush or a tremor; and in
despair of any conversation about dress or beaux, the guest presently
took her departure.
A few days later Charlotte went back to her city school for further
"finishing," though she had already been sharpened and polished to a
bewildering edge and brilliancy. And left to herself, Sheila resumed
her unsophisticated, girlish life.
"We aren't going to have any young ladies at our house after all,
Peter," Mrs. Caldwell announced triumphantly over her teacup one
afternoon.
And Peter, lounging on the leafy veranda and appreciatively sipping
Mrs. Caldwell's fragrant amber brew, lifted a languidly interested
face: "How are you going to stop time for Sheila? Of course you've
done it for yourself, but not even you, fairy godmother, can do that
for other people."
"I don't intend to try. I don't want to try. Because--when my little
girl goes--it's time that will bring me some one better."
"The young lady, dear Mrs. Caldwell. The young lady--inevitably."
"No, Peter--the woman!" And Mrs. Caldwell's voice rang with pride and
confidence. "There's the making of one in Sheila, Peter--of a real
woman!"
"What's become of the poet you used to see in her?" he inquired.
"Oh, you've shut that safely into a cage of books. I'm not afraid of
it any more."
"It can still sing behind the bars, you know," he warned her.
"No," she said, growing serious again, "it wouldn't--in Sheila's case.
At least it wouldn't unless it got into just the right cage, hung in
the sunshine and the south wind. That's what I'm afraid of,
Peter--that Sheila herself will be snared into the wrong cage!"
But even while Mrs. Caldwell spoke, Sheila was standing at the open
door of the right cage, gazing in with illumined eyes.
The spring was at its height, as warm and ripely blooming as early
summer, and Sheila had slipped away to her favorite haunt of the back
garden. She had taken a book with her, one of Peter's recommendation,
and as she lay on the soft, fresh grass, she idly turned the pages, not
from any desire to read, but for the pleasure of touching the leaves
and knowing that, if she liked, she had only to look within for words
that would create a fairyland as easily as the fingers of the spring
had done.
But presently, sated with mere earth-sweetness, she lifted herself on
her elbow and opened the book widely where her hand had finally rested.
It was the choice of chance, that page; but, as happens every now and
then, chance and the Shaping Power were at that moment one. For
shining on the white leaf, as if written in silver, were the lines that
have stirred every potential poet to rapture and self-knowledge:
--magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Sheila read them with no fore-warning of their moving music. They
flashed, winged, into her tranquil world--and shook it to its
foundations. For the first time the full sense of beauty rushed upon
her, and she caught her breath with the keen, aching ecstasy of it:
--magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
She read the lines again, and now aloud, softly, with a beauty-broken
breath. She had wanted something, and all the while this--_this_--had
been waiting for her. Compared to the joy of it, what was the joy of
looking into a mirror and finding oneself fair? What was any other
beauty beside this beauty of words, of subtle harmony and exquisite
imagery?
And then there came to her the thought that some one--some one just
human like herself--yes, human and young--had written these lines, had
drawn them from the treasure house of himself.
"Oh," she whispered, "how happy he must have been! How happy! To have
written this! If I had done it----"
She paused and sat up straight and still, the book falling unheeded
from her hand. Slowly her eyes widened, filled first with light and
then with tears.
"If I had written this! If I could write _anything_!"
And suddenly, for that moment and for life, she knew!
"_That_ is what I want--to _write_!--to _make_ something beautiful!"
And then her guardian angel should have pushed her into the cage and
fastened its door. For the sun was shining and the south wind was
blowing--and it was the right cage!