The Torch Bearer Part 17

For the first time he longed for a home. He looked about his tiny, dingy room with a feeling of desolation, seeing in his mind so different a place--a home with her. He longed for simple, innocent things--her face across the table from him at his meals; her little possessions scattered about with his; the sound of her step in the rooms around him. And he longed to reach out in the night and touch her; he longed to reach out in the night and take her into his arms.

He wanted--and now soul and flesh merged in one flame--he wanted her to bear him a child.

Back and forth he paced, his nails digging into his palms, his teeth cutting his lips, driven by the flame that could never be extinguished, never be satisfied. And all the while, he pictured her in his arms; he pictured her with his child at her breast.

Then, suddenly--and quite as plainly as if he were in the room--he saw _Ted's_ child, and he staggered toward a chair and fell, sobbing, into it.

How long those horrible sobs shook him he did not know. He felt himself baffled, beaten, inconceivably tortured. He watched the gray morning steal into the room as one who has kept a death vigil beside his best-loved watches it. A new day had come, but there was no hope in it for him. There was no hope for him--though his days should be ever so many.

He fell asleep at last, sitting there in his uncomfortable chair, with the cold light of the dawn creeping over his haggard face, and he dreamed that Ted came into the room and said, "Sheila needs you. She needs you to keep alive her love for me." And in the dream, he answered, as he had really answered Mrs. Caldwell the day before, "There is nothing I would not do for her." So vivid was all this that when he opened his eyes and found Ted actually in the room, he was not in the least surprised.

"You left your door unlocked," Ted explained apologetically, "and I came on in. Mrs. Caldwell died in the night--and Sheila's gone to pieces. She's been asking for you. Would you mind going to her for a bit?"

"There's nothing I would not do for her!" replied Peter, in the words of his dream. And for an instant he thought he still dreamed.

"That's awfully good of you. You look done up, Burnett. But if you're equal to it, I'll be grateful to you."

As he gazed at Peter, whose face was gray still, though the morning light was now golden, Ted added to himself, "Poor chap! He's growing old." To him it would have been incredible that Peter's scars had been won in youth's own great battle--the battle with love. A certain complacency stole warmly through him then, ruddy and robust as he knew himself to be, a complacency that led him to lay a kindly, solicitous hand on the older man's shoulder; and so intent he was upon his self-satisfied kindliness that he did not see Peter wince at the touch.

"You do look done up, Burnett. Maybe I ought not to ask you----"

But Peter cut him short. "I'd do anything for Sheila," he repeated.

After all, this was left to him, Peter reflected; it was left to him to do things for Sheila. And perhaps he would find nothing she needed of him impossible. The love that had been so dark with the dark and secret hours could have its white vision, too.

CHAPTER XIV

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 circ.u.mstances 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 companions.h.i.+p.

Now, with that companions.h.i.+p 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 compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sured 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 comrades.h.i.+p 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 hara.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed in a close companions.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p which so absorbed and satisfied her.

Why should she require a man's friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+eld her from all things harsh and hard--even though he s.h.i.+elded 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 a.s.sert 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 G.o.d!

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately 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.

CHAPTER XV

It was toward the end of April that Charlotte arrived in Shadyville.

She had never lived in Shadyville since her first flight from it to boarding-school. After school had come New York and Paris, where she had studied singing; and for the last five years she had been on the concert stage, filling engagements all over the continent--much to the distress of her family who, though inordinately proud of her, could not understand why any woman with plenty of money at her disposal should work. Charlotte had always decided things for herself, however, and once convinced that her happiness lay in the active pursuit of her art, no one could dissuade her from it. Certainly no penniless woman could have worked harder or with more zest than she. Musician to her finger-tips, and with a remarkably beautiful, silver-clear soprano voice, she had also the modern woman's desire to earn her living; to justify her existence by doing something well. An independent and a busy life was necessary to her, and it was impossible to see her without realizing that she had chosen wisely for herself.