Conflict (Prouty)/Book 1/Chapter 1
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She came in through the side door, and stole up the back stairs to her room. She didn't want her mother and father to know that she had come home. She wanted to be alone.
She closed and locked the door of the room, once—safely inside, then stood for a moment considering. No. Better not lock it. A locked door would be sure to make her mother ask questions. Her mother might have heard her, and come upstairs at any moment. She had ears for certain noises like a cat's. So now Sheilah turned the key back, then tiptoed cautiously across the room to the light over her dressing-table (the electric button by the door would send off a report like a cap-pistol), and pulled its tasselled cord. A warm pink effulgence flooded the room, flowed over Sheilah. She gazed at herself in the mirror.
Her cheeks were flaming. She pressed her hands against them hard. How hot they were! She hated hot cheeks. She hated feelings. What was the matter with her lately? Even happiness hurt her sometimes now. Even beauty. Got inside and seemed to swell and press. But this was not happiness. This was not beauty. No! Oh, why had she gone skating this afternoon on Sabin's Pond?
She still wore her heavy white sweater and cap to match. The cap was pulled down over her forehead close above her eyes, as clear and blue as aquamarine and as full of sharp white lights now. She pulled off the sweater over her head, dragging the cap away also, and emerged, tossed and crumpled. She sat down before her dressing-table and gazed at herself again.
'Felix Nawn.' She repeated the words out loud slowly as if feeling of them with her voice. 'Felix Nawn.'
Felix. What a name! The boys called him 'Pastey'—because he was so pale and white, she supposed. Well—it was better than Felix. More American. Less to be made fun of. She was ashamed of his name. She was ashamed of him, yet sorry for the name too. Sorry for him. She was pleased and gratified by his strange, silent caring. Displeased and humiliated. Desired it, and desired to escape it. Sought it, and fought it. Was allured and repelled, was exhilarated and dejected, confident and afraid, all in one day—all in one moment, it seemed to her. Strong opposing feelings gripping her simultaneously, like strong hands pulling on her in opposite directions. Why couldn't she shake the hands off? Why couldn't she shake Felix off?
Oh, let her be honest at least. She could shake him off, if she would. It was she who had suggested to the other girls that they go skating on Sabin's Pond this afternoon as they were crossing the top of Sabin's Hill on their way to the Park, where there was a hurdy-gurdy on Saturdays.
It was dusk. The skaters in the cove on the pond below were indistinguishable to the casual observer—like so many water-bugs, darting back and forth on the surface of a glassy pool. But not to Sheilah. Sheilah could always pick out Felix Nawn, from the top of Sabin's Hill, in a crowd of skaters below. Thick and bulky in outline. Long-overcoated. Slow, swooping glides. Usually to be found on the outskirts of a group. Usually alone.
'Why not stay here and skate, girls? It's so far to the Park, and already growing dark?' she had remarked.
The girls had acquiesced after a moment or two. She wished now they hadn't. Why was it afterwards there was always the same depression and regret? Before, always the same high animation and excitement? What would the girls think of her if they knew of the nagging curiosity that tugged and pulled at her lately, every time she saw Felix Nawn in a group of skaters? They believed she simply tolerated Felix. She had heard one of them say, in explanation of her kindness to him, that Sheilah Miller wouldn't hurt the feelings of a stray mongrel, if he came licking her hand. They would be surprised if they knew how she schemed and connived to make it easy for Felix Nawn—shrinking, cowering, afraid of crowds (like a stray mongrel, indeed, and a stray mongrel who had had experience with boys and stones)—to approach her. More than to approach her! What would they whisper to each other if they knew of her ruse this afternoon?
Halfway down Sabin's Hill Sheilah had remarked that she was cold, and had gone back to the house, for an extra sweater, she told the girls. She had put on the extra sweater, true enough, but really she had gone back to change the long white wool gloves she wore, which bound her arms in soft thick armor to the elbow, for gloves of wrist length. She was as guilty as that!
Suddenly Sheilah leaned forward and buried her head in the curve of her arm on top of the litter of flat toilet silver on her dressing-table. Why hadn't her mother sent her away to school last fall? She had begged to go. Ever since she was thirteen years old Felix Nawn had hung above her, like a cloud, hiding more and more of her sunshine, darkening more and more of her sky, growing heavier and heavier with the weight of what he took from her, as a cloud with the weight of what it takes from the earth.
Nothing new had happened this afternoon. Nothing unexpected. As usual Felix had lurked in her vicinity on the pond for half an hour or more before he spoke to her, gliding past her, time and time again, with no sign or look of recognition, biding his time like a hawk circling round and round a nest it means to rob, awaiting the propitious moment, before making its final swoop and dive.
Sheilah was standing quite alone when finally Felix Nawn slid up to her and, with averted eyes, and through lips that didn't move, mumbled a furtive 'Hello.'
'Hello,' Sheilah replied brightly. The word, as she spoke it, was a thing of beauty in comparison, clean-cut and full of lovely curves.
Felix murmured, still not looking at Sheilah, still through lips that didn't move, in a tone that didn't move either, 'Want to skate?'
'Yes,' said Sheilah, and again her voice made something exquisite out of a single word.
Sheilah had just been skating with Nevin Baldwin, knickerbockered and tight-sweatered, a veritable Mercury on the ice. One could almost see the wings at the back of his sleek, slender ankles, as he skimmed over the surface, sprang into space, twisted, turned, and pirouetted with the perfect balance of a gyroscope.
Felix did not indulge in fancy skating nor in fancy skating clothes. Sheilah swept him from head to foot with a swift glance as he stood before her. Poor Felix! The long overcoat he wore was like a truck-driver's, who must protect himself well below the knees. It was black and heavy, and from beneath it appeared an expanse of the baggy legs of long trousers, turned up above stout boots, with mountainous toe-caps and thick soles, onto which were clamped substantial hockey-skates. He wore a dark wool, long-visored cap—Sheilah thought it was the longest visor she had ever seen on any cap—pulled down over his head as far as it would go. There was something resembling the silhouette of a longbeaked crow about Felix, as he stood before her, his arms close to his sides, like folded wings, for he still kept his hands in the deep side pockets of his overcoat. He took them out finally. They were bare and white, in the growing dark. Like sudden unexpected slugs in dark brown loam, Sheilah thought.
'Come on,' he said, and he held the white hands out to her.
She put hers into them and, with arms crossed, in the old-fashioned position, they struck off.
'The river's still clear,' Felix murmured.
'All right,' Sheilah acquiesced.
The houses on the hill had become a mass of twinkling pin-pricks when Sheilah and Felix sought the river. The stars in the sky, too. Silently, surreptitiously, the lights above and below had stolen into bloom, like a bed of evening primroses under cover of the dusk. The skaters in the cove had become dim and indistinct—a shadowy, mothlike swarm, that diminished as the night-lights increased, and much in the same baffling manner. It was easy to slip away from the crowd in the cove after it began to grow dark. The girls usually disbanded singly at the end of an afternoon of skating, lost to one another among the purple shapes and shadows of early nightfall.'
The river ran north, away from the lights on Sabin's Hill, towards the lights of the big dipper in the sky, across a bare stretch of meadow-land that was swampy in the spring-time. There were seldom many people on the river. To-night there had been none in spite of the shining ribbon of satin it offered between its alder-shrouded banks.
Sheilah liked to skate with Felix Nawn over long, smooth stretches of glare ice. He could go gloriously fast. There was a rolling, swinging motion about his speed that was like a sailboat on a windy day. And the accompanying song of the steel, cutting through the ice, grinding it into fine white powder, reminded Sheilah of the song of the keel, cutting through the water, grinding it into fine white spray, that rose up and slapped her deliciously in the face. But lately her simple joy in Felix Nawn's skating had been lost in a consuming interest in the stealth of his hands, grasping hers, his bare fingers creeping slowly bit by bit up beyond her short wool gloves to her unprotected wrists, where they would lie long and terrifyingly.
Sheilah raised her head now and stretched out her wrists and gazed at them. The doctor counted her heart-beats beside that little blue vein there. It was just as if Felix had laid his fingers against her bare heart!
Suddenly she pushed back her chair and stood up. She had heard her mother's step in the hall. Quickly she leaned and picked up her comb, and began dragging it through her tangled hair. Lovely hair. The color of beach-sand just after the tide has left it tawny and gold.
Her mother entered the room without knocking. Lately it seemed to Sheilah as if she must run away and hide when she heard her mother's advancing steps coming down the hall, followed by the sudden turning of the knob and immediate throwing open of the door, without as much as a tap or a murmur of a 'by-your-leave.'
'Why, Sheilah, dear, you home?' her mother exclaimed now from the threshold. She was a woman of over fifty. Sheilah had been the last of her three children. Youth had definitely left her. She was thick in hip and shoulder, and her hair was the color of old pewter now. 'I didn't hear you come in.'
Sheilah replied, 'Yes, I'm home,' and then suddenly, vehemently, 'Mother, I wish you'd knock!'
'Knock?'
'Before coming into my room.'
'Why, Sheilah! What nonsense! Knock before coming into my own little daughter's room!'
'Oh, don't, mother.'
'What could she possibly have to hide from mother?'
'Oh, please, don't talk like that.'
'Like what?'
'That baby way you do! "Daughter and mother." Say "you and me." I can't bear it.'
'Why, Sheilah!'
Oh, of course she wouldn't understand!
'Well, I can't, and please knock. Please.'
'Why, Sheilah!'
Very quietly Sheilah's mother turned and closed the door behind her, went up close to Sheilah, took the comb out of her hand, and laid it on the dressing-table. Then put her arm around her shoulders.
'What is it, dear? Tell mother,' she murmured.
Sheilah wanted to scream!
But she didn't scream. She didn't even push her mother away. It would hurt her mother dreadfully. She mustn't hurt her mother. She stood very still, as motionless as some wild animal, caught, and despairing escape. In silence she endured the soft, torturing stroking of her mother's hand on her arm, and the soft, torturing stroking of her mother's voice, as it pursued a familiar line of thought, each phrase and soft endearment of which were as familiar to Sheilah as the details of an often traveled road.
'What's troubling my little daughter? Tell mother. Between you and me there must never be any secrets. There must never be anything but sympathy and understanding.' Mrs. Miller owned half-a-dozen volumes on the modern methods of bringing up girls, and had read them all, marking the important paragraphs. 'We're such friends, you know. Come. Let's sit down, dear,' and she drew Sheilah, listless and unresisting, backwards a step or two to a rocking-chair, and sank down into it, pulling Sheilah down onto her knees. 'There!' she exclaimed brightly, triumphantly. 'Now we're right! Now we can talk!' And she began to rock.
Sheilah sat rigidly on her mother's knees with her feet on the floor. It was like being made to ride a Shetland pony, after one has grown up, and one's legs were too long.
'Tell me, why should my little daughter want her mother to knock?'
Sheilah replied, 'Oh, don't knock if you'd rather not.'
How awful to feel, instead of the sympathy and understanding which her mother so wanted, distaste and something like disgust. Why, lately her feelings seemed determined to act contrary to every duty and ideal she had in the world. Liking Felix Nawn's hands on her wrists! Loathing her mother's arms around her waist!
'Tell me,' her mother persisted. 'Why did you want me to knock, Sheilah?'
'Oh, only because I was so hot and mussy after skating and I thought I might take a bath, and'
Her mother laughed lightly, playfully, flicking the end of Sheilah's nose.
'And didn't want her own mother to come in! Oh, Sheilah, Sheilah! Go ahead and take your bath, and we'll talk, like the two chums we are. You can tell me everything that has happened to-day. We always tell each other everything that has happened.'
'Nothing's happened,' said Sheilah and stood up. By now her mother would be unaware that she was drawing away from her caresses. 'Mother,' she broke off, 'isn't there any chance at all of my going away to boarding-school?'
'Why, Sheilah, I thought we'd settled that long ago, you and father and I together—the way we always do.'
'No, you and father settled it, and I gave in, the way we always do. But I can't stay given in. I want to go awfully, mother.'
'Don't be unreasonable, Sheilah. No school that has any standing accepts girls in the middle of the year.'
'I don't care about its standing.'
'But, Sheilah, why should you go away? A girl with a lovely home like yours?'
'I'm so tired of everything around here.'
'Then you're probably overworking, dear. Possibly you're carrying too heavy a schedule at school. I'll look into it.'
'Please don't. It isn't that. I just want to get away. That's all. Please let me. Oh, please let me.'
She was vehement again. Her voice trembled. But Mrs. Miller's serenity was not in the least disturbed.
'We never arrive at conclusions,' calmly she went on quoting, 'by that old method of pleading and granting in our family. We confer and agree.'
But in spite of the announcement, 'Please let me go. Oh, please. Please,' Sheilah persisted, and there were tears in her eyes now.
'Oh, be calm, dear. Be calm,' purred Mrs. Miller in the quieting tone the books advised. 'Never let your emotions guide you, dear.'
Sheilah turned away. It was always like that. Oh, it was useless, useless. She was caught in a net—a soft, clinging net, and every effort she made to get out of it, simply seemed to bind the meshes closer and closer. Oh, well
She crossed the room to the tiled bathroom adjoining, and flashed it full of white light. Her mother and father had had the bathroom put in for her two years ago. Her mother had sacrificed her sewing-room to provide Sheilah with this luxury. Her mother was always making such sacrifices. She deserved a daughter who could reward her without effort. Sheilah had to use all the self-control that she possessed, not to turn upon her mother now, and tell her that she wished she would go out of the room and leave her alone. Instead, she approached the pedestaled washstand, turned a porcelain handle, and gushed the shining bowl full of steaming water. Then shoved up her sleeves.
'Oh, aren't you going to take a bath?' her mother inquired.
'I guess not, after all. It's so late.'
Sheilah's mother sighed. Sheilah in her bath was beautiful. Like a magnolia blossom that blooms in the early spring, before there is any foliage to cover its white nakedness. Every curve and undulation was as firm and staunch as the upstanding petals of the young flower, and the surface of her as soft and satiny. Ever since she was a baby Mrs. Miller had loved to see Sheilah in her bath. Ever since she was a baby Sheilah hadn't minded. Until lately. Lately her mother's admiring gaze was torture to Sheilah.