"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 his _pain_----!
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 suffer _enough_!" she cried. "I can _never_ suffer
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. You _must_ rest--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 he _will_ not 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, _hear_ me! 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.