The Torch Bearer Part 13

"Alice North says that you have a wonderful future before you," she told Sheila glowingly. "I'm so glad for you!--so proud of you!"

"Mrs. North said I had a future before me _if I did not have children_," corrected Sheila. "She thinks I can't be a writer and a mother, too."

"Ah," remarked Charlotte reflectively, "then that _was_ why--" She paused a moment, leaving the significant sentence unfinished, and then went on more earnestly, "Sheila, she was wrong! Don't be persuaded to her views. She judged you by herself. Probably she couldn't be both writer and mother--she isn't really strong, you know. But that is not true for all women. Why, there have always been women who have done great things intellectually and had children, too! Don't be discouraged; don't let yourself believe that you need lose your art if you should have a child. You'd be all the finer artist for it.

And--you are going to have a child, aren't you, Sheila?"

Sheila had been pa.s.sionately shy about her expectancy of motherhood, but the grave directness of Charlotte's inquiry disarmed her, and she answered as frankly and simply: "Yes, I am going to have a child."

Charlotte looked at her with an expression new to the shrewd blue eyes that were habitually so cool and smiling. Then, with an impetuous and lovely gesture, she drew Sheila to her: "I'm so glad for you, dear!--so glad!"

A little while before she had been glad for the promise in Sheila's work. Now she used the same word, but how differently! For her mind had spoken before, and now speech leaped from her very heart.

"I have never loved a man," she said presently, in her outspoken way, "I have never loved a man, but I hope that I may some day--and that I may have a little child for him."

So Mrs. Caldwell was not alone in her att.i.tude toward love's consummation! The desire for motherhood possessed not only the women of yesterday, of old-fas.h.i.+oned standards and ideals, but Charlotte, too; Charlotte, the "modern" woman incarnate, who had always appeared so self-sufficient, so bright and serene and cold, even so hard. It seemed incredible that she should have confessed to the dreams of softer women, of women less mentally preoccupied and competent.

Sheila stared at her: "_You_ feel that way? You--with your music, your chances to study, to make a career for yourself?"

"Of course I feel that way! Every real woman does. I want my music and motherhood, too, but--if I ever have to choose between them--do you doubt that I'll take motherhood?"

There was indignation in her tone; evidently she was wounded that Sheila had misjudged her--so strong was the mother-instinct, the sense of maternity's supreme worth, within her. Realizing this, it appeared to Sheila that no one but herself--no woman in all the world--was reluctant for maternity. After all, Ted had only asked of her that she should share the universal hope and joy of wifehood. It was she who had demanded the exceptional lot; not he who had imposed a unique obligation upon her.

With this conviction, the last flicker of her resentment toward him was extinguished, leaving her gratefully at peace with him, not only in the high moments, but even in those occasionally recurrent ones of rebellion and fear. In the latter, indeed, she turned to Ted now for courage and strength, and in the fullness and tenderness of his response she felt herself more his than she had ever been. But her resolve not to tell him about her talk with Alice North persisted. It had been, at first, the resolution of a determined opposition to his views, but it endured through motives more generous. Ted should have his happiness in approaching parenthood unspoiled. He should not be hurt by knowing that she had ever looked forward to it with a divided heart. She could at least conceal that she was unlike other women, and perhaps, in time, a miracle might be wrought upon her and she be made wholly like her sisters.

Perhaps, too, in the fullness of time, her work and her motherhood might be adjusted to each other in her life. As Charlotte had said, there were women--many of them--who were both artists and mothers. She herself might be such a woman--some day. She might convert Ted to this, and go forward to a destiny of complete fulfillment.

But just now, with a sudden and intense accession of conscience, she yielded herself entirely to the new life that had sprung up within her.

The sum of her strength belonged to it, she told herself, and she could give herself as completely as other women, whatever the difference between her mental att.i.tude and theirs. All the while, too, she prayed for her miracle; prayed that she might become altogether like other women, altogether like those glad mothers of the race.

She did not pray in vain. There came a day when, with her little son upon her arms, she whispered, "Oh, I _am_ glad! I am _glad_--glad!"

Glad? Ah, that was a poor, colorless word for the rapture that descended upon her. Never was the ecstasy of motherhood granted a woman more utterly. It was like an angel's finger on her lips, answering her questionings, satisfying her longings, silencing her discontents. _This_ was life, and it was not cruel and tyrannous, as she had thought, but infinitely gracious and benevolent. It had used her, but it had used her for her own happiness. For upon her arm lay her son!

That she ever could have wanted to escape motherhood, that she ever could have resented it, now seemed to her unbelievable. She admitted it to be worth any renunciation, and she gave not one regret to the renunciation that she had made for it--the temporary renunciation of her work. It absorbed her fully and gloriously; it flowed through her with her blood; it was a part of her body and the very fiber of her soul. And it shone through her like a light: it was in the softer touch of her hand, the deeper note of her voice, the more brooding sweetness of her eyes. She _was_ motherhood, indeed; a young madonna whose halo was visible even to unimaginative Ted.

Had the question occurred to him then, Ted would have said that no artist could surrender herself thus to maternity. Peter Burnett, reverently watching, did say, "No one but a poet could be a mother like that!"

Sheila had been very ill at the time of the child's birth, and a year pa.s.sed before she regained her natural vigor. It was, perhaps, the happiest year of her life. Every now and then in the course of a lifetime, there come seasons of pure, untroubled joy, when all the practical concerns of ordinary existence pause for a little while, and the petty cares and worries make way, and even the commonplace pleasures stand aside, abashed. Such a season of joy was Sheila's then. She could never recollect it afterward without a quickening and lifting of her heart, and she knew at the time--Oh, very surely--that she had drawn down heaven to herself.

Of course it did not last. As her strength increased and the every day business of living became more and more her affair, she dropped to the level of a normal contentment, and thus to the interests that had occupied her before the miracle was accomplished.

Eric, her little son, was well into his second year, however, before she felt the urging restlessness of her gift, and even then she denied the creative impulses stirring within her; she put them from her--while she longed to yield herself to them instead. "Go away!" she said to them fiercely. "Oh, go away before you spoil my beautiful peace!" But for every time that she drove them forth, they returned the stronger, as if they would proclaim: "You can't be rid of us! You may narcotize us with the sedative of your content. You may banish us altogether.

But we'll always waken! We'll always come back! For we're a part of _you_--just as much a part of you as your son is!"

It was true. They were, indeed, a part of her. She would always be different from other women after all--because of them. She would always have to reckon with them; to appease them, or to deny them at her own bitter cost.

And now there came the question: "Why deny them any longer?" Eric had been a very healthy baby from the first; he had, also, an excellent nurse, a young mulatto girl who shared her race's enthusiasm for children. In the kitchen ruled an old cook who brooked no interference from "Li'l Miss." Obviously, neither her child nor her house demanded all of Sheila's time. So in the quiet afternoons, when Eric had been taken outdoors, she began to write for an hour or two. Surely, she argued, she now had a right to those two hours out of each twenty-four, especially since she did not take them from her husband, her son, or her home. It was her own leisure, her own opportunity for rest, that she sacrificed, if sacrifice there was.

But though she justified herself, she somehow said nothing about the matter to Ted. She agreed with him now--Oh, warmly enough!--that motherhood was the greatest thing in life for a woman; but she did not, she never would, believe with him that it must be the only thing. Nor should he believe it always, she told herself. She would prove to him that a woman could be both mother and artist. She would prove it to him, as she had dreamed of doing--but not just yet. They loved each other so dearly, they were so happy together, that she shrank from disturbing their harmony by any discussion or dissension. And discussion and dissension there would be before Ted could be converted.

Amiable as he was in his healthy, hearty fas.h.i.+on, he would be intolerant and irritable about this. So she worked on in secret; and for a couple of months nothing and no one was the worse for it.

Then, when Eric was two years old, he was taken ill; suddenly, swiftly, terribly, as a little child can be smitten from rosy vigor to death's very brink. The disease was scarlet fever.

"How can he have gotten it?" Sheila and Ted asked each other, bewildered and agonized. But soon--only too soon--they knew. Lila, the nurse, disappeared directly after the verdict was p.r.o.nounced.

"Afraid!" cried Sheila scornfully, "afraid--though she said she loved him!"

"Yes'm," agreed old Lucindy, who had come from her kitchen to help nurse the boy with a loyalty that was in itself a scathing comment on Lila's defection, "yes'm, she's feared all right--but not ob gittin'

fever."

There was something savage in her tone at sound of which Sheila and Ted straightened from their little son's crib and looked to her for explanation.

"She's feared," continued Lucindy, "'cause she knows _she_ done gib dat chile fever takin' him to dem low-down n.i.g.g.e.r shanties she's allus visitin' at. Dat's what Lila's feared ob."

"She took the _baby_ to--?" It was Ted who tried to question Lucindy.

Sheila could not, though she had opened her dry lips for indignant speech.

"Ya.s.sah, she sho did--jes befo' he was took sick. She taken him to 'er no 'count yaller sister's--an' 'er sister's chillun's got scarlet fever. I heared it dis mornin'."

"Are you sure, Lucindy? Are you _sure_?" It was still Ted who pursued the inquiry.

"Deed I'se sho, Ma.r.s.e Ted. She tole me herse'f whar she'd been when she come back wid de baby, an' 'bout how cute an' sweet dey all say he is. Course she didn't know 'bout de fever--it hadn' showed up on dem chillun yit--but she knowed mighty well Miss Sheila wouldn' want our baby in n.i.g.g.e.r houses _no-how_. She knowed she was doin' wrong takin'

him. I sho did go fo' dat yaller gal, too! She wouldn' never do it no mo'--not while Lucindy's a-livin'!"

Ted turned to Sheila, and the expression of her white face startled him. Much as he loved her, his heart hardened to her as he looked--hardened with a sudden, instinctive suspicion--and when he spoke, his voice was stern:

"Did you know where Lila was taking the baby when she had him out?" he asked. "Sheila, did you know?"

CHAPTER X

"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 pa.s.s, 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!