Conflict (Prouty)/Book 2/Chapter 2

by Olive Higgins Prouty

Chapter II

I

Hunt LeBaron and Bertie Percival both insisted that no such street as Greene existed. But Nevin at the wheel of the big yellow roadster said he thought he'd heard of a Greene Street. Finally a policeman directed them across the railroad track.

Sheilah was sitting in the middle of the back seat, between Hunt LeBaron and Peggy McLaughlin. Both Peggy and Sheilah had proved very popular at the fraternity house. And at the Prom, too. Opposite types. Peggy—noisy, bold, hoidenish, a scintillating little brunette, dressed in bright scarlet on the night of the Prom, with a quick, infectious laugh, and a quick, infectious response to every squeeze of the hand or more you gave her. Sheilah—still, silvery, mysterious—dressed in white over something shining, with a soft, phosphorescent quality about her, and an indefinite something that made Nevin want to press her hand more than he ever wanted to press Peggy's. But didn't dare.

They were both Nevin's guests. Nevin had invited Peggy for his room-mate, Hunt LeBaron. He had invited Sheilah for himself. On this last afternoon he had wanted to run away alone with Sheilah in the car somewhere, and escape the private spreads and tea-dances. But she had insisted on looking up this Nawn fellow. Said she thought she ought to.

Of course she ought to. Felix's note had been waiting for her on the mail-table at the fraternity house when she arrived. He had delivered it himself apparently. There was no stamp.

Dear Sheilah,

Could you come and see me Friday afternoon about four? I will wait for you. I would like to show you my room. I live at 17 Greene Street.

Sincerely

Felix Nawn

Sheilah had supposed she would run across Felix before Friday, but she had seen him nowhere. She had asked two members of his own class at the fraternity house if they knew Felix Nawn. One of them had replied, 'Only by name,' and she thought she detected a smile pass between them. The more Felix's obscurity at college became apparent to Sheilah, the more determined she was to look him up.

'You see,' she had explained to the frowning Nevin, just before lunch on the last day,' he wrote and asked me.'

'And you always do everything every one asks you?'

'Well, I used to know him in the high-school.'

'Oh, if you have such an experience in common as all that!'

'Don't be absurd, Nevin. He's an old friend.'

'Well, when am I going to see you?' Nevin demanded. 'Alone, I mean. I had it all planned to run out in the country in the car this afternoon. Just you and I.'

'Can't we cut the Glee Club Concert, and go to-night for a little while?'

'Will you?' eagerly Nevin demanded.

'If you'll be nice and take me to see Felix this afternoon.'

'All right. It's a bargain. Shake.'

He clasped Sheilah's hand hard in his and looked straight into her blue eyes. She looked back straight into his blue eyes. 'It was as if blue steel struck blue steel and there was a sudden spark.

II

It was after five o'clock when Nevin's car crawled up Greene Street on second, and stopped at number seventeen.

'This can't be it!' exclaimed Bertie, staring incredulously at the battle-ship gray three-decker, with the long flight of wooden steps leading up to the front door with the tier of bells and tubes beside it.

'Doesn't look as if he'd invited much of a crowd,' commented Hunt.

'I hope you're going to be properly chaperoned,' remarked Peggy.

'What sort of a guy is this, anyhow?' inquired the still-staring Bertie.

'I'll hop out and see if we're barking up the wrong tree,' said Hunt.

'No, I will.' Sheilah insisted with the old queer feeling of protection for Felix. She wished she could have managed to come alone.

'It's all right,' she called back from the piazza. Felix's name was written in pencil, beneath Mrs. Sparks's on a card over one of the bells. 'Come back for me in half an hour.'

She pressed the bell. There was a clicking sound at her side. She pushed open the door and stepped into a dim, carpeted hall.

'Come right up,' a voice said from above.

She mounted the stairs. Two flights.

'That's his room.' The voice belonged to a little old lady in glasses at the top of the stairs. 'He's been expecting you since before four. I'll knock.'

III

Felix was standing by his desk. It was dim in the room, although there were the remains of a yellow sunset stealing into it from across white fields outside. The little old lady had closed the door behind her.

Sheilah said brightly, 'Hello, Felix.'

Felix murmured, 'I'd about given you up.'

He was leaning against his desk for support, staring at Sheilah with the sunset shining on her. She had on a little round black velvet hat that totally eclipsed her crown of shining hair except for a fluff of gold that escaped from beneath the close brim, like a corona. Her eyes were like two stars shining in the twilight of the room.

This wasn't the first time Felix had seen Sheilah since she had arrived in the college town. He had been lurking behind a pile of trunks at the station when she first stepped off the train. On the night of the Prom itself he had watched her for an hour through one of the windows. Her matured loveliness had frightened him at first. Her radiance and self-confidence and popularity had made her seem remote and inaccessible. He had wished, for a miserable hour or so after the Prom, that he had never asked this stranger to come and see his room. But now, when she stood before him alone, and he heard her voice, he discovered she hadn't really changed at all. She came up to him, laughing a little nervously, for he stared so.

'Well, aren't you going to say you're glad to see me?'

'I guess I don't need to.'

'And aren't you going to ask me to sit down? You've got me on your hands for the next half-hour.'

'Won't you sit down?'

'No, thanks, I won't just yet. I want to look around first. What a nice room you have, Felix.' And very slowly she pirouetted on the spot where she stood. 'And oh, what a lovely view!' She walked over to the window. 'I can imagine rooming here just for the sake of this view. Those hills and the fir trees at the top!'

She contemplated them in silence for the next half-minute, her back towards Felix. He walked up behind her, and raised the shade above her head.

'You can see the mountains in the next State on a clear day,' he remarked.

'Really? Can you?' She grasped gratefully at this contribution. 'What mountains are they?'

Felix replied, 'I didn't think you'd come.'

She laughed lightly, and turned and faced him. 'Why wouldn't I?'

'I was afraid you wouldn't, after——' he lowered his voice, he lowered his eyes too, 'after last time.'

'Oh, but that was years ago. I've forgotten all about that. Do you like college, Felix?'

'I haven't forgotten about it.'

'But we were just children. Tell me about what you're taking. I'd love to hear about your courses.' And half-leaning, half-sitting on the low window-sill, she looked up at him with a smile she tried to make frank and open and friendly.

Felix turned away.

'I shan't be taking anything any more. I've flunked.'

'Oh, have you?' Immediately her manner changed. There was no lightness in her tone now. 'In your midyears? Oh, I'm awfully sorry.'

'Oh, I'm no good, I guess.'

'Of course you are! Of course you're some good!'

It was the way she had always talked to him. The creases of the old cloak fell about her as naturally as if it had not been folded and put away.

'No. I'm no good. I ought to have known I couldn't have gotten through college.'

'But you got in! You got through your freshman year! That's a lot. That's splendid.'

'Yes, but I wanted to graduate. I thought you wouldn't look at me unless—— It was for you. But it's all over now. I've got to go home next week. I didn't cram hard enough. I have to study about four times as much as any other boy. But, perhaps, after all, it's just as well, if all that's happened between us doesn't mean anything to you. I don't care what I amount to if you don't care.'

'Oh, don't say that. Please.' Suddenly she felt the burden of him on her again. 'I do care, Felix. I mean,' she added, struggling against it, trying to push it away, 'I mean I——'

'You went away without a word.'

'I know. The doctor thought it was better.'

'And you never answered my letter.'

'I never knew you wrote me a letter.'

'I did. In the fall.'

The color mounted to Sheilah's cheeks.

'They didn't show it to me. That wasn't fair. I was fair with them. What did you say in your letter?'

'Not much. Only that I wished you'd write once in a while, and that I felt just the same. About you, I mean. And I guess I always will.' His sentence came brokenly with pauses between, like confessions spoken unwillingly. 'I can't help it. I see you all the time. Like the last time. In the ice-house. At night I see you. After the lights are out. When it's dark. Every night. I haven't skipped a night.'

'Oh, you mustn't! You mustn't!'

Her light banter had disappeared entirely now. Her brave defense of simple comradeship had been swept away. How was it, that crude and uncouth as Felix was, lacking in all the qualities she admired most, he possessed the power to do this thing to her—to wipe out intervening years and sweep her back to a time and place long left behind? 'You mustn't, you mustn't,' had been the identical words she had said to him the last time she had seen him in the ice-house. In a twinkling she had become the identical girl again, struggling, resisting, fighting something she didn't want.

IV

But she would not be conquered this time against her wish, against her will.

'It's getting dark. Let's have a light,' she said, in a bright, practical voice, and she drew her foot away from Felix's, which he had stealthily shoved against hers when last she spoke. It was as if she had repulsed a dog who had come back faithful to her after many years. He seemed to cower.

'All right,' he acquiesced. 'I guess I understand.'

'Oh, I'm so sorry, Felix.'

How was it he contrived always to make her feel sorry?

'Oh, I'm not good enough.'

'Yes, you are!'

'I'll never amount to anything.'

'Yes, you will!'

'Not if you don't care, I won't. Everything I do is for you, Sheilah,' he added in a dull voice, as if stating a very old and familiar fact.

'After all these years?' she queried gently.

He nodded and stood very still before her, aware of the sudden gentleness, and moved his foot against hers again.

This time she did not draw away. They both stood very still for a few seconds.

Then, 'I've made something for you,' Felix said.

'You've made something for me?' she repeated, still gently.

He nodded.

'Why, what?'

'Oh, nothing you want.'

'Let me see it.'

'It's in the closet.' He left Sheilah then, and crossed the room, mumbling, 'It's no good. I did it just to pass the time. You don't have to take it. I don't go in for college life much—so I have to have something to do. It's no good. It's nothing anybody'd want——' And he went all through his apologies still another time, when he came back to her with a big square package done up in white paper.

Sheilah took the package in her arms. He left her with it and went over to the window, and looked out. Her first soft exclamations came to him amidst the rustle of the wrapping paper.

'Why, Felix! How beautiful!' Then, after a pause, 'A box! With my name! And you made it! Why, I—I just can't say anything!' And she couldn't. There was a sudden tightening in her throat that made speech impossible for a moment.

She brushed her hand over the top of the box. It was as smooth as a piano-key almost. The execution of the inlay-work was exquisite. But oh, the design—the design! It wasn't right somehow. The letters were too tall for their width—and were framed too close. It was simply tragic to Sheilah, sensitive to nice proportions, that such infinite pains had been expended on a piece of work that could never be anything but crippled and deformed when finished. Well, Felix shouldn't guess! She went on exclaiming gently, softly. 'There must be hundreds of little pieces! And each one so beautifully fitted! I didn't know you could do this sort of thing! And yet I do remember back in the high-school how you loved manual training. But this is like a piece of jewelry, with the mother-of-pearl in the corners, and everything. It's beautiful!'

'There's something inside,' he told her apologetically.

She placed the box on the desk under the droplight, which he had lit now, and raised the cover. The box was lined with bright blue satin (Mrs. Sparks had lined it), loose and puffy like a choppy sea with a generous ruffle of white lace all around the edge, and rosettes of lace here and there in the troughs of the waves. It was just like the inside of a work-box, which a sister of Mrs. Sparks had sent her from Canada twenty years ago, with the addition of a whole package of rose and heliotrope sachet which Mrs. Sparks had shaken generously underneath the blue waves.

It was equipped like the Canadian work-box too. Silently, fora moment Sheilah gazed upon the array before her. There were rows of needle-books of every size. There were bodkins; there were stilettos; there were crochet-hooks; there were knitting-needles; there were carpet needles; there were curious scythe-like-shaped needles.

Sheilah said finally, 'I don't believe there's a thing I shall ever want but what's here,' wondering the while in her heart if there was a thing there she would ever want. 'Who helped you, Felix? Who got all the things?'

He told her. In her mind's eye she saw him slinking into various dry-goods shops, standing, big and awkward and clumsy, before various shopgirls, courageously inquiring for pink darning cotton, blue celluloid thimbles, knitting-needles, and crochet-hooks. Another girl would have felt only a desire to laugh, perhaps. Peggy could have made a delicious story out of it afterwards, no doubt. But not Sheilah. Compassion alone possessed her.

Felix showed her the work-bench later, all beautifully brushed and neat for her inspection. She handled the tools. She stood beside him and tried cutting a thin strip of orange wood herself.

Suddenly she exclaimed, suspicion gripping her, 'When did you begin the box, Felix?'

'When I first knew you were coming. In January sometime.'

'Felix,' she demanded, 'was it the box that made you fail in your exams?'

He lowered his eyes. 'Of course not.'

'It was!' She ejaculated, 'It was the box! You had no time to study!'

'I liked doing it.'

'It was my fault!' she despaired.

'I tell you I liked doing it. I wanted to do it. If you like the thing, I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I flunked. I'd flunk again for you, Sheilah.'

There was a knock on the door.

'They've come for you in the automobile,' Mrs. Sparks announced.

'Tell them I'll be right down,' Sheilah replied, and began wrapping up the box.

Felix went up to her close.

'If I write to you, will you answer it, Sheilah?' he pleaded.

'Of course I will, Felix,' she promised him.