It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us
that we stumble upon life's real gift to us. And thus it happened for
Sheila. It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no
longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her. But beneath
the apparent caprice was a fine justice--for life was at last kind to
Sheila through her son.
As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as,
even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen.
He was a manly boy, fond of other boys and of boyish sports, but for
all that his companionship with his mother persisted, and as he matured
somewhat, deepened into an intimate, understanding relation such as
Sheila had not thought to know again. Their kinship was not of the
flesh only; that was the thing that Sheila began presently to see.
It was then that she began to dream once more; to visualize a future
beyond her own unrealized future. But she didn't so much as stretch
out a shaping hand; she didn't say an illuminating, a determining word.
She remembered instances--many of them--of children's lives having been
moulded by their parents, and with pitiful mischance. She had known
men and women who, with entirely unconscious tyranny, had thrust
ready-made destinies on their sons and daughters, saying in extenuation:
"We want our children to do all the brave deeds we've failed to do. We
want them to fulfill our defeated ambitions and to become what we have
never become. We want to save them from our mistakes and our regrets.
We haven't done much with our own lives--but we're going to live again,
more wisely and effectually, in our children's lives."
And so they had advised and coerced, and destroyed individuality and
independence, and extinguished, only too often, the very joy of life
itself by striving to transfer the flame to a vessel of their own
choosing.
This she must not do to Eric, Sheila told herself. From the despotic
impulse of parenthood--queer mixture that it was of too zealous love
and a thoroughly selfish desire for a second chance through the medium
of the child--she must protect Eric. Therefore she restrained herself;
she simply waited--as she might have waited for a seed to spring up
from the secret sprouting place of some deep garden bed. It requires a
sort of earthy, benign patience thus to hold back one's hand and
passively wait--especially when one has, in spite of oneself, the
dominating parent instinct!--but Sheila forced herself to it.
And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through
the soil and turned its face to the light. The boy came to Sheila one
day, obviously bent upon a confidence. Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he
was, but so eager. She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before
her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers,
child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some
portentous thing upon his cheek. She wanted to kiss him--but she
didn't. For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than
kisses.
"Mother, here's--here's a story I've written."
That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in
his eyes. What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at
something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.
And then Sheila knew that she was crying.
It was not a marvellous story--that first effort of her young
son's--but _something was there_; something that raised the crude,
immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale
better than itself. And sensing it--that evanescent, impalpable, but
infinitely promising thing--she saw the future shining through the
present.
But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery. She
longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it,
and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.
Ted had not desired talent in his wife. Would he desire it in his son?
Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a
poet, a worker in mere beauty? Would he ever regard art as more than a
shadow of life?
Sheila sought him now to learn that--with Eric's story to plead for
itself.
Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and
possessions which he did not share with her. Only for momentous
affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now
Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.
"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little
manuscript.
"Now? Is it important?"
"Yes, now. It is very important. I must have a talk with you when
you've read it."
He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict. The story
was short. Her suspense could have lasted but a little while. But
Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years.
She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing
within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's
life. But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent--if talent he
really had. She was prepared to fight for it, if need be. Yet, as she
watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within
her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them. That hot,
rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace. The
affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had
become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven. She had given
up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and
she sickened now at the prospect of conflict. For at conflict, old
wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her,
a devastating flood. If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she
would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she
had striven to outlive. And she could not bear that this should
happen. She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus
jeopardized.
She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him
when he had condemned Alice North for her art--and, however innocently,
through Alice North, herself. She remembered how indignant she had
felt, how hurt and _divided_. And she remembered, too--thinking,
against her will, of Peter--how divided from Ted she had felt in later
years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly.
She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in
the destruction of her talent, all too clearly--and how her heart had
turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love. She had
driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to
its duty--in so far as the heart can be constrained. She had even
achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through
disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with
which they had begun life together--but she trembled now at thought of
any further pressure being brought to bear upon it. It was as if she
held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you! Do
nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"
And yet--though conflict between them should destroy the love she had
so endeavored, in spite of everything, to feel--if Ted opposed Eric's
gift, there must be conflict.
For she considered what her own unappeased gift had cost her--the
hunger, the restlessness, the pain. She considered how, throughout all
the years of her marriage, she had suffered her gift's insistence and
its reproach. She thought of how she had never been able to look upon
the miracle of the spring, the majesty of the stars, without an aching
heart. All beauty had been transmuted for her into unassuageable
sorrow--because she had been born to create beauty and had failed of
her destiny. And it would be transmuted into sorrow for Eric,
too--unless he were given the freedom she had foregone. He, too, would
face the stars with an aching heart; all high and exquisite creation
would be for him the material of suffering--unless he were allowed to
create also.
She had nerved herself to any effort, any struggle that might be
necessary, when Ted at last laid down Eric's story and turned to his
desk without a word. Was there as little hope as that?
"Ted?" she cried.
"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back
toward her. And his voice sounded queer--almost as if it were choked
with tears. "Wait, Sheila."
He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too,
unsteady with some rarely deep emotion. Thus he had looked when he
first bent over her after Eric's birth. That flashed through Sheila's
mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to
have him. Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but
a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded
ribbon. In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters.
But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at
any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters.
Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets. She stared at
them curiously. What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
But to Ted they had their significance. He carefully untied the dingy
ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her--and she
noticed that his fingers were shaking.
"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
She picked up one of the discolored pages--and her own writing
confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been
working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever--the story that,
in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
"Why, Ted--_Ted_--!" But even then she did not understand.
"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but
attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them--Oh, years
ago!--just stuck off in a cupboard _like trash that nobody wanted any
more_. And so--because I _did_ want them--I brought them down here."
"_You_ wanted them?" Sheila gasped. "But, Ted----"
And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes--full of the tears he had
tried to repress--were gazing down into hers!
"Don't you suppose I realize what you might have done? Don't you
suppose I've seen what you've given up for me--for me and Eric?"
She could not speak. She could only gaze back at him, incredulous
still of the comprehension that he had so long concealed from her.
"I've been a selfish brute, Sheila," he went on. "I've craved all of
you for myself and my child, and I've had all of you. It's been my
man's way, I reckon, for I couldn't have helped it. If I had it to do
over again, it would be just the same--though I'm ashamed of myself
now. Of course I didn't ask you to give up your writing, but I'd quite
as well have asked you. For I guessed that you'd done it--after Eric
had scarlet fever--and I _let_ you, without a word. I've let you
sacrifice your talent ever since, too--needlessly. Yes, I've _let_
you--for I've seen the whole thing."
She had sometimes felt that the tragedy of her life had been in all
that Ted had not seen. Now, finding that he had seen so much more than
she had ever suspected--so much of what had been profound suffering to
her--she might readily have blamed him more than she had ever done
before. But generosity rushed out of her to meet his
generosity--belated though his was.
"No, no," she interrupted, "it isn't that you let me give up my work.
The fault isn't yours. That awful night--when it seemed that Eric
would die--I offered my work for his life--I offered it to _God_! That
was why I didn't write afterward."
Ted fixed pitying eyes upon her: "You poor little girl! Was it as bad
as that with you? I knew I was taking advantage of your conscience,
but I never dreamed you'd carried your remorse so far. Did you really
believe you had to buy God's mercy? Oh, no, dear. It's only your
husband that's seized the opportunity to extract a sacrifice from your
Puritan conscience. But with all my selfishness, I haven't stopped
you--I haven't been the end of your talent."
She started to tell him of her late emancipation from that unnecessary
vow of hers; to tell him that she had tried to write again--and
discovered that she could not. But she did not tell him after all.
For that could only hurt and shame him--in the hour of his penitence.
So she was silent, and he continued with appealing eagerness.
"I haven't been the end of your talent," he repeated. "Don't you
realize, dear, that your talent isn't ended at all?"
"You mean--Eric?"
"Yes, I mean that you've handed on your gift to Eric. And he's going
to have the chance I wasn't unselfish enough to let you have. Don't be
afraid for him--he's going to have his chance, And he'll know what to
do with it! I believe you'll be the mother of a great man--and that
Eric will probably be the father of great men. I believe it will go on
and on and on--what you are, what you might have done."
"But, Ted--Eric is only a child. We cannot be sure yet--
"I believe!" he insisted. "I believe _this_ is to be your work--the
work I haven't stopped."
And as she listened, there came to her, too, a faith in Ted's prophecy.
Her gift would have its fruition in Eric--and perhaps in Eric's sons
and his sons' sons. She was granted a vision of a torch passed on from
one trustworthy hand to another throughout the years; and beholding
that vision, she was aware that nothing she had suffered mattered at
all. She could face the stars now with a heart at peace. She could
watch the earth's miracles, feeling herself a part of them. From the
earth sprang flowers; from her flesh had sprung her son--her son who
had been born to carry on the torch. She had created beauty
indeed--beauty that would outlive her life in her son's art.
Even Peter's image was blurred for her as she beheld her supreme vision.
And then she recalled Charlotte's words: "I sometimes question if those
of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever
experience the reality. I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand
unimpaired by that vision."
Charlotte was mistaken. There were visions which became realities;
this final vision of hers would become a reality--and it would be none
the less perfect and transcendent for that.
Sheila laid her hands on her husband's shoulders. "I'm glad that I've
lived!" she said. And again, with a little sob, "Oh, my dear, I'm glad
that I've lived!"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis