Conflict (Prouty)/Book 3/Chapter 9
'Oh, here you are! I've looked everywhere.'
She fluttered in unexpectedly like a moth. He rose. Thank Heaven, the white bar was covered by the light coat she had put on.
'Felix has gone to put the automobile in the garage,' she explained. 'I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about to-night. I can't go with you now, of course.'
'Of course.'
There was a pause.
'I'm sorry.'
'So am I.'
There was another pause.
'I may not have another chance to see you again. And I want to tell you how much I appreciate everything you've done for me here, and thank you for all—'
'Please don't,' he interrupted.
There was a third pause.
Why did he make it so difficult? It had always been so easy to talk to him before. Now a great space seemed to yawn between them.
'Well, good-bye,' she brought out abruptly, and offered him her hand. But he didn't take it. Oh, very well! She folded her hands behind her. 'We're leaving to-morrow,' she announced curtly. 'We're leaving early in the morning. I shan't see you again.'
'I shall see you in Boston,' he announced.
'Oh, no you won't,' she retorted gayly. There was always the mask of facetiousness to hide behind if necessary. 'You forget I have never given you my address.' And she made her eyes sparkle with assumed merriment.
'Don't be artificial now, please,' Roger frowned. 'There are always ways of finding addresses. Don't you want me to see you?'
She looked away from him, slipping off the mask. 'No! I think you'd better not,' she said.
'That isn't saying you don't want me to. Look at me, Sheilah.'
She obeyed. He held her eyes, uncovered now, bared and honest, very carefully, very gently, in his for a half-dozen heartbeats or so. Neither spoke but something definite seemed to happen. The space between them disappeared as if some invisible gossamer thread had been spun between their eyes and the chasm spanned.
'Sheilah, tell me,' Roger said afterward. 'I want to know. I must know. Are you happy?'
'Why, of course,' she quavered, 'of course I'm happy. It's a woman's job to be happy, isn't it?'
'That's Baird's idea. That it's every one's job to be happy. Can't I help you in your job a little? I would be so glad if I could.'
'How could you?'
'Oh, just by seeing you occasionally. Being friends. Talking about books and poetry, andpine trees,' he smiled, 'and other things we both love, once in a while.'
She considered it for a moment, then shook her head.
'No, Roger.' She called him Roger now on rare occasions. It always gave him a thrill, all out of proportion to the cause for it. 'I don't think Dr. Baird would advise it,' she said, her cool little head ruling her with the autocracy of a merciless little queen. 'I don't think seeing you would help me to be a better mother and wife. Do you? And that is my job, too. That, in fact, is my real job. Being happy is just one of the indirect results. Not the goal. Besides,' she added, 'there's no place for you to see me. I live, you see, in a sort of tenement.' She said it with a toss of her head as if it was rather of a joke.
'I think I love you more for that,' Roger exclaimed in a low voice.
She didn't take him too seriously. 'That's nice of you,' she smiled. 'It's a compensation. Dr. Baird says there are always compensations. Oh,' she burst out, 'I'm so glad to have you know all about me at last! Isn't it good to be honest together for these last five minutes before I go away?' Her eyes were luminous. She was beautiful.
'Come out on the porch,' said Roger. 'The moonlight is lovely—not so lovely as on the little lake, but better than nothing. Won't you, please? For our last five minutes?'
The roof of the porch outside the library cast a black shadow in one corner, and thither Roger led the way. Not with malice aforethought. Simply as an artist seeking the best location from which to view a lovely picture. For it was like looking at a lighted scene upon the stage from the black auditorium of a theater, to gaze upon the illumined valley from the dark corner of the porch. The moon was full—a big, benignant Rubensesque figure, riding the sky with slow, lazy grace, shedding light like a ripened piece of fruit fragrance, or a heavy cloud mist. The valley was bathed with the sifted phosphorescence, falling silently upon the trees below, holding up their feathery branches to catch the heaven-sent spray.
Roger and Sheilah gazed silently upon the scene, Roger half-sitting on the piazza railing, leaning against a supporting pillar behind him; Sheilah standing beside him, poised lightly, like a bird. Roger drew in a deep breath of the moonlight-burdened air. So did Sheilah. They didn't speak. They didn't stir, but each heard the other breathe, and suddenly the beauty of the moonlight (or was it the beauty of each other's nearness?) and the realization that the minutes were narrowing to seconds became too much to bear. Roger reached out his hand, met Sheilah's, and drew her unresisting to him. She was conscious of his arms about her, and as she sank against him, of a feeling of solidity and safety.
He held her carefully, tenderly, as he had her trusting eyes a little while ago. His coat felt rough and strange against her cheek. She closed her eyes an instant. She could hear a low, deep, muffled thudding, slow and strong and steady. Suddenly Roger was aware of a motion of submission. His heart leaped, and he leaned, searching. But she pushed against him at that. 'Trust me,' he whispered. And she did! He placed his lips long and gently on the edge of the wine-cup, but he did not drink.
All the next day, rattling down over the dusty roads in the little car beside Felix, Sheilah lived over and over again her last five minutes alone with Roger—her last half-minute. She wasn't sorry. She regretted nothing. He hadn't kissed her. If her lips had been the petals of a flower he couldn't have been more careful not to crush them. Oh, had ever any woman before received such a strange, illusive, and provocative caress? What had he meant by it? What had he felt? There was reverence in it, tenderness, protection—all dear to every woman—but there was besides, she thought, that which is sometimes dearer. His breathing had been difficult. His lips had trembled. She had felt them tremble. It was then that she had suddenly realized where she was, what she was doing, and with a start had broken away from him.
He had released her instantly. She had sped quickly back through the library to the main hall, to lights and voices and people again, and the part she had yet to play. Just in time to answer to her cue—just as Felix entered from another door, and one of the Outsiders rose to meet him.
Roger, left alone, watched her flutter away from him like a moth, as she had come, or a butterfly which he had caught, held a moment, and then let go.
Sheilah hadn't seen him again till morning. In spite of her remonstrances several of the loyal survivors of the Outsiders rose at seven-thirty to wave her good-bye. She made her departure from the front porch of the hotel, with no word of apology for the overburdened little car, taking her proper place beside Felix, with a smile, gallantly waving, and calling a last bright, crisp 'good-bye,' as the car fussed and sputtered out of the drive.
'How sporting,' remarked Judith in a low tone to Roger beside her.
He didn't reply. He couldn't, for the little car was bearing away beyond his sight and beyond his reach the woman that he loved!
'Kauffman?' brightly Sheilah inquired an hour later. 'Did you say the name of the woman who bought the doll-house was Kauffman?'
She simply must control her wayward thoughts, her wayward feelings, still quivering with disappointment because there hadn't been an opportunity to see Roger alone to say good-bye to him properly.
'Yes,' replied Felix, 'Kauffman, or Hoffman—something like that.'
But their eyes had met for a moment, after she had taken her place beside Felix and the car had begun to move—for a precious moment, for there had been a strange new light in Roger's eyes, a sort of scorching brightness, as if, it occurred to Sheilah now, the sherry had suddenly caught fire.
'She lived in Chicago somewhere,' Felix was saying. 'It was like this. You see . . . ' he went into a long and detailed explanation. 'I've got her address put away somewhere, I guess, if you want to see it,' he finished, five, ten, fifteen minutes later.
'Oh, no,' said Sheilah, 'it doesn't matter. Just so she bought it and paid for it, and had a friend who did the same.'
Oh, it was much simpler deceiving Sheilah than he had feared.
'I've got some other orders, too, for little pieces of furniture,' he dared announce.
'How nice! How very nice!' softly she exclaimed, and lapsed into a long silence.
She would probably never see Roger Dallinger again. He would never know whether or not she was offended by his kiss. Was it a kiss? She closed her eyes. She could see the sifting moonlight better in the dark, and relive more vividly the pulsing seconds of the strange, unnamable caress—so indefinite, so evanescent in quality, and yet so piercing. The fragrance without the flower. The sharp edge without the blade. Strange the edge cut even deeper in retrospect, the fragrance was even sweeter. Suddenly Sheilah opened her eyes wide. This wouldn't do!
'And you say Phillip has grown fat?' she exclaimed, 'and Roddie tall, and Laetitia freckled?' (The children had been at home for a week now.) 'I'm ever so anxious to see them. I can hardly wait.'
She wouldn't let herself think about Roger Dallinger any more. She was an intelligent human being. Surely she could select her own thoughts—her own acts.
'Let me run the car,' desperately, in the middle of the afternoon, she suggested to Felix. 'I used to run one years ago.'
But even with her hands upon the wheel and her eyes upon the road she couldn't escape Roger. It was as if a spring long buried had suddenly broken through the surface of her consciousness, and try as she might she could not stem its steady, gentle flow.
Sheilah had decided not to attempt the campingout venture, but to push through to the children in one day. The little car drew up to the curb in front of the apartment house at about eight o'clock at night. Before Sheilah had stepped out onto the sidewalk there was a surprised shout from one of the windows, and before she could reach the front door the children were upon her, all three, flushed and excited, all talking at once, calling her name.
'Hello, Mother. You all well, Mother? Do you like our new car, Mother? Were you surprised, Mother? We got a telephone, Mother. I got a medal at camp, Mother. You going to stay at home now, Mother?'
Her heart swelled with something she had been too tired to feel for a long while. She hugged them to her tight—each in turn, Roddie, Laetitia, Phillipher children! She had forgotten they were so dear to her—that she was so dear to them.
Later they all sat down together on the couch in the dining-room; Phillip, grown rosy and almost round, in her lap; Roddie on one side of her, straighter and manlier somehow with his close haircut; and Laetitia, on the other, with the new, dear freckles on her nose. And no powder at all! Nor even the smell of it! They all had such long stories to tell, that it was nearly ten o'clock before Sheilah even thought of the time, or of the fact that she and Felix had had no supper. They all five foraged in the refrigerator. How it cried out for her attention! And other things too! She was eager to get at them. Duties that had seemed like bars to imprison her a few weeks ago, were now opportunities—strings of a harp upon which to play, and show her skill.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Sheilah heard Phillip's prayers that night. After she rose from the bedside she crossed the room to the window ta lower the upper sash. As she raised the window-shade, she was struck by the sight of a great big moon, peering at her from over the roof of the next apartment house. She peered back at it defiantly. She wasn't afraid now. She hadn't thought of Roger Dallinger for two hours and a half! She crossed the hall to her own room, triumphant and light-hearted.
'Come, Felix. Time to go to bed,' she called.
Sheilah had brought back much new practical knowledge from the log-cabin in the woods, and she applied it to her own particular case with diligence and determination.
Maladaptation to one's own peculiar circumstances (and almost every one's circumstances are a little peculiar) is often the result of ignorance. Sheilah had been taught by Dr. Baird the rules of efficient living, and she intended to profit by her knowledge.
At the end of the first fortnight she wrote Dr. Baird that everything was going beautifully. She rose early; she performed her household duties smilingly; not kicking against the pricks of their homeliness and drudgery (there can be joy and beauty in every job done well); sending the children off to the public school (the influence of which she had so deplored for them) with no futile regrets, because it was inevitable; holding always before her Dr. Baird's assurance that a mother's influence was the stronger; acting as wisely as she knew how for the best, and then not worrying about results over which she had no control. Ignoring her physical sensations as if non-existent, but following the rules for keeping physically fit. She rested an hour a day. She exercised outdoors an hour a day. She ran the little Ford out into the country, whenever there was a chance, climbed a hill, lay down on it, and drank of its beauty and strength and peace. And thought of Roger sometimes. She let herself think of him now. For as the moon had waned, so mercifully had the acuteness of his memory.
Gazing up at the sky one day in late September, Sheilah observed with a little pang that the luxutious queen of a fortnight ago who had ruled the sky with such magnificence and splendor was now but a frail white ghost—a broken half-circle of transparent cloud, pierced by faint blue sky. But the frail white ghost was simply a disguise the queen wore, while she bided her time.