Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were
ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold
on life. As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but
to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever,
taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer.
He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day
after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk
finally turned.
"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked. "It's
rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays. Marriage swallows
women terribly, doesn't it?"
"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs.
Caldwell. "I'm fond of Ted--really very fond of him, in fact--but I've
always expected marriage to swallow his wife. He's that sort of man."
"You think he demands so much of her then? I'd felt that it was the
boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life--her old self."
"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly--through the
boy?"
Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand. I
understand _her_--to the soul! But there's something in her life I
don't understand. I'm sure Ted's good to her. I'm sure they love each
other. But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell. The trouble is that
she wants to write--and she doesn't. I can't understand why she
doesn't. When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should
give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd,
that she doesn't take up her work again. And I can't tell her so--well
as I know the value of the gift she's wasting. She isn't frank with
me. I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."
"She isn't frank with me either, Peter. But I'm a little more informed
about the situation than you are. Sheila was writing a story when
Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to
scarlet fever. That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for
Sheila's giving up her work."
Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that?
Do you think he blamed her?"
"No--I'm sure he didn't. He was terribly, terribly sorry for her. Ted
is capable of generosity at times, Peter--I'm not fond of him for
nothing!--and he was generous then. But of course Sheila reproached
herself. I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she
censured herself. I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever
since. It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a
mistake, an accident. If she had married another man--it wouldn't have
happened."
"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"
"Ah, that might have happened in any case. I meant the atonement."
"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her. How, then,
could he be responsible?"
"He could let the atonement go on! He isn't a subtle person, but I
believe he's divined that, and let it continue. I knew, before Sheila
married him, that he would not care for her art. I knew that he would
resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage. And
knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the
line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't
help taking the advantage circumstances had offered him."
"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"
"Capable of generosity _at times_, Peter. And so he is. Most of us
have our generosities and our meannesses. Ted's like the rest of us in
both respects. The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila.
If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the
atonement wouldn't. For _you_ would have _wanted_ her to write; you
would have made her feel it wrong _not_ to write. It's not that you're
a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for
Sheila. You ought to have married her, my dear. I meant you to marry
her!"
Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing
there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell. Very rigidly he stood, his hands
at his side, tightly closed. When he finally turned again into the
room, his face was white.
"Why do you tell me that now--now that it's too late?" he asked. And
his voice shook with the question.
At something in that white face of his, at something in his unsteady
voice, Mrs. Caldwell grew very gentle: "Because I'm a blundering old
woman, Peter dear. But, since I have blundered, let us talk frankly.
I did intend you to marry Sheila. I plotted and planned for it from
the time she was a little girl in your rhetoric class. I believed that
in a marriage with you lay her chance to be both a happy and a
wonderful woman. And then--Ted married her instead! But there's still
something you can do for her. You can watch over her when I'm gone,
Peter. You can put out a saving hand now and then, if you see she
needs it. When I'm dead--and that will be soon, my dear--you'll be the
only person in the world who understands her. If I can feel that
you'll always be there ready to help her, I can die in peace. Bottled
up genius is a dangerous thing. Sometimes I am afraid for Sheila! But
if you'll promise to watch over her for me, I can die with my heart at
rest."
"There is nothing I would not do for you or for her!" he said.
"I know that, Peter. What wonder that I had my dreams about you?"
"They were dreams, just dreams," he responded, and now he was speaking
more easily. "I wasn't the right man for Sheila after all. If I had
been, she would have realized it; she wouldn't have married some one
else."
"How could she realize it--at twenty? And she was barely twenty when
she married. Peter, there's a moment in a girl's life when,
consciously or not, her whole being, soul and body, cries out for love.
And if a man is at hand then--any presentable man--to answer, '_I_ am
love,' she believes him. That moment came to Sheila--and Ted was
there!"
"Oh," cried Peter, "Oh, surely there was more to it than that! Surely
there was real love!" And when she did not answer, he repeated
earnestly, "Surely there was real love!"
"You plead for Ted?" asked Mrs. Caldwell with a touch of irony.
"I plead for her. Ted doesn't matter, and I don't matter. But
_Sheila_--Oh, I can't bear that she should have only a second-rate
thing, an imitation. I can't bear that."
"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted. And as long as she
thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy. What we have to do for her--what
you have to do for her when I'm gone--is to keep her thinking that. It
isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may
rouse in her; the awful _vision_ it may bring her. I see so clearly
how she was married--and she must _never_ see! If ever you find her
beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow. I've often thought
that women should be born blind--or that their eyes should be bandaged
at birth."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Peter.
"No--_kind_! All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then;
all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid. We'd
create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch
us."
"It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter.
"There's nothing so tragic as the truth--when it comes too late," said
Mrs. Caldwell sadly. "Your grandfather and I found out that. He was
already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when--it happened.
We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter. But
people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days. They
thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor. It
seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt;
ever to have acknowledged it. So we went on with our obligations, your
grandfather and I. He was a good husband, and I was a good wife. Our
lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we
would have been happy if--if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart
and reflected it for him in my own eyes. We would have been happy if I
had been blindfolded! As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept
less was tragedy for us."
"You were both free at last," said Peter. "Why didn't you--Oh, why
_didn't_ you--take what was left to you?"
"My dear, we were already old. Romance was still in our hearts, but we
hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives. We had felt a
great love, and been brave enough to deny it. But when we could have
satisfied it honorably--we were afraid of the change in our lives; we
were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even
afraid of what the town would say! In the beginning we had striven not
to dare. In the end we could not dare. It is sad that we should be
like that, isn't it, Peter? It's sad that as the strength of our youth
goes from us, the valor of our love should go too. But it is so, it is
so for all of us, my dear. The day before your grandfather died,
something flamed up in us again. The courage of new life came to him,
and he made me promise to marry him the next day. But the next day he
was--dead!"
She fell silent, her eyes fixed broodingly upon the fire, eyes that
looked strangely young. Peter, silent too, was remembering that day
before his grandfather's death; remembering Mrs. Caldwell's presence in
the house, and the indescribable sense of some other presence also. He
had felt it so strongly, that other presence, that the whole house had
seemed to him to be pervaded and thrilled by it. His father was living
then, and they two had spent the afternoon in the library, while Mrs.
Caldwell had sat with his grandfather in the room above. He had said
to his father--he recalled it quite clearly--"I feel
something--_something_--in the very air." And his father had appeared
startled and had replied, "Perhaps death is in the air." But Peter
knew now that it had not been death he had felt; that it had not been
death that had filled the air as if with rushing wings and shooting
stars and invisible, ineffable glories. It had not been death; it had
been love. And glancing at Mrs. Caldwell's musing eyes, something like
envy came into his own. He went to her, knelt, and kissed her thin old
hand.
"After all, you _had_ love," he murmured. And then, "I wish you had
been my grandmother. I _wish_ you had."
"Oh, Peter!" she cried. "Oh, Peter! Peter!" And suddenly her arms
were around his neck.
As she clung to him, her tears on his face and her heart's secret in
his hands, he almost told her; he almost said what he had resolved
never to say. And yet he did not.
"He's never loved her," concluded Mrs. Caldwell when he had gone.
"There was a moment when he looked as if--but he's never loved Sheila.
If he'd loved her--ever--he would have told me."