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 naive
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, I _haven't_ enough 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, "_Here_ is 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! But _I_--! 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!"