Peter had felt that he could not be much with Sheila henceforth; that
neither his own heart nor conventional Shadyville's standards would
permit it. But Sheila herself ordained otherwise, and under the
circumstances of her bereavement, Peter could but obey her.
Never had Sheila been so lonely as in the weeks immediately following
Mrs. Caldwell's death. Whatever reserves of speech had existed between
the two in these latter years, there had been no reserve of feeling, of
comprehension. Close friends they had always been; and if Sheila was
alone in a shared life, so far as her marriage was concerned, she had
had a satisfying refuge in her grandmother's sympathetic companionship.
Now, with that companionship lost to her, she began to feel, as she had
never done before, the limitations of her marriage. Her nervous
restlessness increased and sharpened to a positive hunger which Ted's
affection and compassion were powerless to alleviate. In her loss and
sorrow he could do nothing for her, earnestly as he tried. It was as
if he could not reach her, and she realized it with amazement. If he
had not compelled from her the greatest passion of which she was
capable, he had certainly won love of a kind from her, love warm and
sincere, and their life together had bound her to him with such ties of
loyalty and habit and common experience, with such dear memories of
young tenderness and joy, that she had never doubted the completeness
of their union. That he could not reach her now, that he could bring
no peace to her in her trouble, seemed to her unexplainable--until she
recalled the fact that he and Mrs. Caldwell, though fond of each other,
had not been really near each other in spirit. Theirs had been a
pleasant, light affection, an amiable, surface relation, bred of the
accident of their connection rather than of any genuine attraction
between them. Remembering this, Sheila assured herself of its being
the reason that Ted could not comfort her for Mrs. Caldwell's death.
There was so much in her grandmother that he had never seen, so much of
which he could not speak at all.
Peter, on the other hand, had been almost as dear to her grandmother as
she herself had been--almost as dear and quite as near. He had a
thousand sweet and intimate memories of Mrs. Caldwell, and he suffered,
in the loss of her, a grief akin to Sheila's own. So to Peter she
turned. With the perfect unconsciousness of self that a child might
have shown, she made her demands upon him, upon his pity, upon his
time; and if he did not come often to see her, she sent for him.
She was really strangely unworldly, and in this renewed comradeship
with her old friend, she saw nothing for anyone to criticize. Neither
did she recognize in it any danger for Peter or herself. Peter had
always been there in her life, an accepted and unexciting fact. She
did not allow for change in him or herself in the ten years of her
marriage, years during which they had met hut seldom and casually. She
had simply resumed the way of her girlhood, her childhood, with him,
never considering that it might now be surcharged with peril for them;
never for an instant fearing that she might some day find herself
unable to do without him. She needed him; he was at hand; and she
demanded fulfillment of her need. He brought her the consolation that
Ted could not bring her; he gave her aching heart peace. Repeatedly he
displayed a disposition to efface himself, after the first days of her
mourning were over, but she would not have it so. In her innocence she
still insisted on his frequent presence, and was sometimes puzzled and
hurt that he evinced so little gladness in being with her. That he had
the look of one harassed almost beyond endurance, she did finally
perceive, but she understood it not at all, and at last dismissed it
from her mind as something outside her province. Men had worries,
worries about money and trivial things like that, she reflected. Peter
was probably bothered about something of the sort, something that did
not greatly matter after all. A real trouble he would have brought to
her; of that she was sure.
So the winter passed in a close companionship between them, and it was
to Peter's honor that she knew neither her own heart nor his at the end
of it.
Ted it was, and not Peter, who made the situation impossible of
continuance. Ted it was who plucked from it, at least for Sheila, its
concealing innocence. He had been cordial to Peter; at first he had
even been grateful to him, seeing Sheila comforted by him. But after a
time he grew tired of Peter's face at his dinner table two or three
times a week; he wearied of finding Peter in his little sitting-room
whenever he came home particularly early; he sickened, with a sudden
and profound distaste, of having Peter drawn into all the intimate
concerns and happenings of his own and Sheila's life. Not for a moment
did he suspect Sheila of any sentimental inclinations toward Peter, for
he fully appreciated and trusted her fidelity. But he thought her
behavior foolish and imprudent, and in spite of his trust in her, he
_was_ jealous of this friendship which so absorbed and satisfied her.
Why should she require a man's friendship at all? Why should she
require anyone but himself and Eric? And having once questioned thus,
his patience speedily gave way, and a climax ensued.
"Sheila," he said to her one day, a day when he had come home to
discover Peter reading Maeterlinck to her, "Sheila, why on earth do you
have Burnett here so much?"
"Because he's my friend--my dear old friend," answered Sheila, her eyes
clear with the surprise of a clean conscience.
"Wouldn't a woman friend do as well?" Ted was trying to hold himself
in check, but something in his words or his tone made Sheila stare, and
he repeated, with a touch of asperity, "Wouldn't a woman friend do as
well?"
"The only woman friend I have whom I really care for is Charlotte--and
she won't be here until April."
"Then you'd better wait for her. You'd better wait for her--and see
less of Burnett."
"What do you mean?" she asked. And now her puzzled eyes grew
steel-cold with intuitive resentment.
"I mean that you'll get yourself talked about if you go on as you're
doing at present. A married woman can't be so much with a man not her
husband _without_ being talked about."
"That is absurd!" she retorted, and her voice was as cold as her eyes;
it put miles between them. "Peter has always been my friend. He's
been like one of my family to me all my life. He's more than ever like
a relative to me now that all my own people are dead. It's absurd to
suggest that our friendship could be so misinterpreted. It's _low_ to
think of such a thing!"
"Low or not, it's _wise_ to think of such things. You'll get yourself
talked about if I let you. But I'm your natural protector, and I
_won't_ let you. I forbid you to have Burnett here as you've been
doing. _I forbid you_!"
"I am to tell him that?" she inquired scornfully.
"You're to tell him nothing. He'll soon stop coming if he's not asked.
The fact is, I don't believe he's wanted to come so often. You're the
one to blame, Sheila. You've invited him--you've sent for him when he
hasn't come of his own accord." And then, as they faced each other in
their unaccustomed hostility, Ted added, with a final flare of wrath,
"_You've run after him--that's what you've done_!"
As if he had struck her, Sheila's face went livid, then scarlet. She
opened her lips to answer, but no sound came. So, for an instant, they
looked at each other, silent, motionless, transfixed by this horror
that had risen between them, this horror of anger--almost of hate.
Then Ted took a step toward her; already he was contrite: "I didn't
mean that. I lost my temper and went too far. Forgive me, Sheila!"
But she did not say that she forgave him. She only said: "Never speak
to me of this again--never in all our lives!" And then she turned from
him and walked out of the room, leaving him to feel himself far more at
fault than he had ever believed her to be.
But though her pride, her insulted innocence, had carried her unbroken
through the interview, she was in reality cruelly humiliated. That
final sentence of Ted's anger--"You've run after him--that's what
you've done!"--rang in her ears for days afterward, shaming her as only
the very proud can be shamed. It was not true of her, she told
herself; it was not true--but it was hideous that it could have been
said of her nevertheless. That Peter had never thought it of her, she
was confident. It was impossible that Peter should misunderstand her
in anything. But she dreaded seeing him with the accusation in her
mind. She could not meet him now without an acute and painful
self-consciousness. Her happy friendship with him was changed, was
forever spoiled. At last she wrote to him, telling him not to come to
see her for awhile--not to come until she should bid him. After she
had sent the note, however, she suffered more than before, feeling that
she had brought constraint between them, that she had suggested to
Peter, by her request that he stay away from her, the same unworthy
thoughts about them that Ted had flung at her. Far, far worse than
meeting him was the growing certainty that she had made him
self-conscious about their friendship, too; that she had shown it to
him as possible of degrading misconstruction. For he would read from
her note, carefully though she had refrained from reasons or
explanations, just what had happened. Peter would never comfortably
miss a thing like that; sensitive and subtle to a degree, he could
never be spared by mere omissions, by lack of plain and definite
statement.
It was unbearable that such a situation should have come about. Not
for a moment did she forgive Ted for creating it. But she lived on
with him in cool outward harmony, realizing that in marriage one may
have to endure hurt and disappointment, and being much too high-bred a
woman to take her revenge in petty breaches of courtesy.
That she was disappointed in Ted, as well as hurt by him, she now
admitted to herself for the first time. It is curious how some final
and serious issue between two people living together will cast a light
on all the past; will disclose anew, and more flagrantly, lapses and
shortcomings and injuries that had once seemed trifles and been ignored
or condoned or forgotten. Thus Sheila now looked backward along the
years of her marriage and saw how Ted had failed her in understanding,
in generosity, in any selfless consideration and love. Small instances
of his selfishness recurred to her and promptly became as signposts
directing her to greater ones. His care for his creature comfort, his
innocent vanities, his rather smug pleasure in his success--things
which she had smiled over with a tender lenience--served now to remind
her that he had never taken any account of her preferences, of her
independent possibilities, of her talent; that he had not, at any time,
made the least effort to comprehend or share her interests. He had
used her in his own work, and he had dismissed hers with a wave of his
hand, as he might have pushed away a child's toy. Whatever he had
discerned of her mental quality and power, he had regarded only in its
relation to himself; if she had been wonderful for him, she had been
wonderful as his helpmate, not as the individual. He had wanted her to
be wife and mother only, and he had accomplished that. With anything
else in her nature, in her life, he had had neither tolerance nor
patience nor sympathy.
Of course she went too far in her arraignment of him. She forgot, in
her sudden bitterness, the warmth and kindness of his heart, the
staunchness and integrity of his character, his desire and attempt to
shield her from all things harsh and hard--even though he shielded her
in his own particular way!--and the very real sincerity of his love for
her. She forgot that, by his own standards, his own conception of a
husband's duty, he had honestly and steadfastly done his best for her.
She saw her whole life fed to his selfishness as to an insatiable
monster; and most terrible of all, she knew that she saw too late.
Their marriage was made. As a husband Ted was formed and could not be
changed. If, in the beginning, she had had a clearer conception of his
nature; if she had had a stronger sense of her own rights as an
individual and the courage to assert those rights, everything would
have been different. She would never have been subdued to mere
wifehood and motherhood if that had been. She would never--she saw it
now!--she would never have made that compact of renunciation with God!
It was to the matter of that compact she came at last--inevitably. And
she said to herself, over and over now, that she would never have made
it if she had known herself and Ted better in the beginning. She would
never have made it because she would not have seen her work as a guilty
thing.
Nor had her work been a guilty thing! No woman watched her child every
moment; at least no woman did so who could have the relief of a nurse.
She might as readily have been paying an afternoon call or playing
bridge when Eric was exposed to scarlet fever. It was just an accident
that she had been writing then instead of doing any one of a dozen
other things of which Ted would have approved. Yes, it was an accident
that she had been writing then, she repeated to herself. But back of
that accident had been her morbid conscience and Ted's
narrow-mindedness; and together they had translated it into a crime.
Thus she had been driven into the compact with God for Eric's life--the
compact that had ruined her own life. Her morbid conscience and Ted's
selfish narrow-mindedness had wrought together for the frustration of
her gift, of her happiness. And it was upon Ted that she put far the
greater share of the blame.
Oddly enough, though she saw her husband so plainly now; though she
censured his faults so unsparingly and regretted so passionately her
own mistakes with him--mistakes of weakness, of cowardly submission,
she told herself--she did not, even now, take the final step of
considering what might have been if she had not married him; of what
might have been if she had married some one altogether more congenial
and unselfish.
It was Charlotte who thought of that for her.