CHAPTER VI
There was nothing spectacular or startlingly precocious about Sheila's development during the next few years.
On her seventeenth birthday, her frocks were lowered to her slender ankles; on her eighteenth, she permanently assumed the dignity of full length skirts; on her nineteenth, she lifted her hair from its soft, girlish knot on her neck to a womanly coronet upon the top of her head. But despite her regal coiffure, she remained very much of a child.
Mrs. Caldwell had achieved the apparently impossible; she had eliminated the rôle of the "young lady" from Sheila's repertoire. At nineteen the girl was ready, at the touch of fate, to merge the child in the woman; but there was nothing of the conventional young lady about her, though she led the same life as other girls in Shadyville, a life that abounded in parties—-in town through the winter and at the country houses in the summer—and little sex vanities and love affairs.
Sheila herself had never had a love affair. She was a charming young person—not quite pretty, but more alluring in her shy, wistful fashion, than handsomer girls—so it followed that susceptible youths sued for her favor. But they sued in vain. She smiled upon them until they said some word of love, and then she was on the wing like a wild bird.
Whatever ardor there was in her she had expended thus far upon her ambition to write. Under Peter's restraining tutelage, she had long since foresworn odes to the evening star for prose fantasies, and these were in turn being superseded by what promised to become a clean-cut, brilliant gift for narrative. She had a rich imagination, an unusual facility for characterization, a certain quaint, whimsical humor—that she never displayed in her speech; all of which raised her work, crude though it still was, distinctly above the level of the commonplace.
She had recently sold a little sketch, in her later and better manner, to an eastern magazine with a keen eye for young talent, and the event had been to her as truly the pinnacle of romance as a betrothal would have been to another girl. It had shed a veritable glory over life for her, and all her dreams were now of further triumphs, of approving editors and an applauding public. She would be a famous woman, she told herself, with the naïve assurance of youth. That was her destiny!
So it was small wonder, after all, that Shadyville lads had not induced her to regard them seriously. She would marry some time, of course. Everyone married—at least in Shadyville, where the elemental simplicities of existence prevailed for very lack of its complexities. There was really nothing to do in Shadyville except to participate, in one capacity or another, in birth, marriage and death. Sheila therefore considered marriage an inescapable end, but she thought very little about it along the way thither.
And yet, when the hour of sex romance finally struck for Sheila, when, for the first time, she realized love's moving power and beauty, her surrender to it was tenfold quicker and more unquestioning than would have been that of a girl who had dallied with sentiment from the days of her short frocks. Her very years of indifference were her undoing. Owing to them, love came to her with the shock of an instant and supreme revelation; she who had been blind suddenly beheld a whole undreamed of world, as it were, and the vastness of the vision inevitably dazed her to a degree that made clear perception of it impossible.
Perhaps Sheila would have been less ingenuously innocent, and more effectually prepared for this crisis, had Charlotte Davis been at hand during the formative period of her girlhood. But Charlotte had been traveling in Europe for a couple of years, and her letters—clever, witty, worldly-wise—were too infrequent to equip Sheila for the defense of her heart. So she went forward—profoundly unconscious, pitifully unready—to capture.
She was nineteen years old, and the season was summer, and the moon was shining—when it began. And summer is an opulent thing in Kentucky; a blue and golden thing by day; a thing of white witchery by night; and whether in the burnished glamour of the sun, or the pallid glamour of the moon, too sweet, too full-blooded, too poignant with the forces and the purposes of nature to leave the pulse unstirred.
Sheila, restless with this earth-magic, was standing at the garden gate one evening, when a young man came up and paused, smiling, before her. At first glance, and in the uncertain moonlight, she thought him a stranger, but a second look revealed his sturdy identity.
"Why, Ted!"
And Ted he was; a Ted grown to a fine, vigorous manliness—the manliness of a thoroughly healthy body and a cheerful, literal mind. It was obvious at once that there was not a subtlety in him; that, in his early maturity, he was of the same substantial quality that he had been as a child.
Sheila had not seen him for a long time—as time is measured at nineteen—for during his first year at college, his family had removed to Lexington, and neither they nor he had ever returned. But it seemed as natural to her to have him there as if they had parted only yesterday, as natural to have him, and as natural to admire him. She had admired him devoutly when she was a little girl, though she had sometimes had disconcerting glimpses of his limitations. And she admired him now. Instantly she felt that splendid, radiant materialism of his as a charm.
She walked up the path to the house at his side, in a flutter of girlish delight—all sex, all softness, the weaker, the submissive creature. So he had dominated her in the past—except in her rare, "queer" moments when the wings of her quick fancy had lifted her on some flight beyond his reach. Her wings did not lift her now, however; they were folded so meekly against her shoulders that they might as well not have been there at all.
They sat down on the veranda together, and a climbing rose shook down a shower of night fragrance upon them, and the moonlight streamed over their faces as if with the intent to glorify each to the other.
Mrs. Caldwell was playing whist at the house next door, so Sheila and Ted were there alone, save for the cook's tuneful presence in the kitchen. Her song floated out to them in her warm, caressing negro voice—"Weep no mo', my lady! Oh, weep no mo' to-day!" And suddenly Sheila felt that she would never weep again—life was such a joyous thing!
Ted sat on a step at her feet, and he leaned his head back against a pillar of the veranda as he talked. She noticed how crisp and strong his fair hair was, and the sense of his vitality weighed upon her like a compelling hand.
He was telling her what had brought him back. The editorship of the Shadyville Star, the town's semi-weekly paper—the editorship and part ownership in fact—was open to him, and, alert as ever, he was seizing the opportunity.
"It's a chance—a good chance—to go into the newspaper game as my own boss, or as part proprietor anyhow," he explained. "Mr. Orcutt is making the Star into a daily, and he wants a live man—a young man—to take charge of it. Father's let me have a couple of thousand dollars, and I've borrowed three thousand more, and I'm going in with Mr. Orcutt as a partner. It's a big thing for me if I can pull it through. And I will pull it through. I was editor of our college magazine, and I've worked on one or another of the Louisville papers every summer, so I know a little about the game—and I like it tremendously. Oh, I'll succeed all right!"
"Of course you will!" she agreed heartily. At the mere sound of his bright, confident voice she believed in his ability to succeed in anything whatever.
"Yes, of course I will. And it's nice to have you say so. The only question about it," he pursued, "is whether it's a big enough opportunity for me. But I'll make it big enough. I'll make the paper grow—and the paper will make the town grow. See? All Shadyville needs is enterprise—enterprise and advertising."
"Yes," she agreed again. An hour earlier she would have been ready to protect Shadyville's sacred precincts from the vandals of "enterprise" and "advertising" with her own slim fist, but here she was handing over the keys of the town to modern commercialism without a qualm of hesitation. "You're just what Shadyville needs, Ted," she added earnestly.
"I thought you'd feel that way about it!" And his voice was exultant. "You always were a good pal, Sheila!"
And at the tribute Sheila had a swift conception of woman's mission as the perfect comrade. Oh, that was a mission to thrill and inspire one, to move one to high and selfless endeavor! And she dedicated herself, in the secrecy of her own mind, to the cause of Ted and the Shadyville Star.
Throughout the next few weeks she was, indeed, the perfect comrade. She who had never before been interested in the spectacle of actual, contemporary life, flung herself now, with a fervor which not even her personal ambitions had excited, into the business of life's presentment through the daily press, and in particular through the medium of the Shadyville Star. She read newspapers avidly; she suggested subjects for editorials to Ted; she came down to the office of the Shadyville Daily Star—under Mrs. Caldwell's reluctant chaperonage—to see the linotype machine which had been installed in honor of Ted's reign. She even read proof on the tumultuous day which preceded the transformed Star's first appearance.
Peter watched her in amazement. "But I thought newspapers bored you!" he exclaimed one afternoon when, coming to read his beloved Theocritus with her, he found Sheila immersed in a whirlwind of New York papers, from which she was industriously clipping items for reprint in the Star.
"Oh," she cried, in the rapturous voice of the devotee, "I didn't understand how wonderful newspaper work could be! Why, Peter—I've got my finger on the pulse of the world!"
At which Peter put his Theocritus back into the safety of his pocket lest even its tranquil spirit be corrupted by the fever of journalism.
To Ted Sheila's magnificent energy in his behalf, her unflagging comprehension and sympathy, were steps by which he mounted blithely to his goal. How could he fail with Sheila to stimulate him, to assist him, to believe in him?
And indeed, the Star did reward the efforts of both its new editor and his silent partner. It made a triumphant debut, and it continued daily to fulfill the expectations which that debut had aroused.
Toward the end of the summer, Ted at last drew a breath of complete security. He was on Mrs. Caldwell's veranda at the time, and he and Sheila were alone together. It was just such a night as the first one of his return to Shadyville; the moonlight poured prodigally downward upon them, showing to each the other's face, silver-clear; the scent of the climbing roses stole to them on the light wind; from kitchenward came the soft notes of black Mandy's song as she finished her evening tasks—"Weep no mo', my lady!"
Everything was as it had been on that first night two months before—and yet everything was different. Within those two months Ted had proved himself as a man—a man who could do his chosen work. And Sheila—Ah, what had she not taught him—what had she not taught herself—of the woman's part in a man's work—a man's life? The same? No, everything was different!
Ted was sitting at Sheila's feet, in what had become his accustomed place. He glanced up at her, sweet and serene in the moonlight, and something rose within him as resistlessly as a mighty tide.
"I'm winning!" he said triumphantly, "I'm winning! But I couldn't have done it without you. Oh, Sheila, you've been the making of me! What a girl you are!—what a woman! You'd always back a man up in his undertakings—if you loved him—wouldn't you?"
"Oh—if I loved him!—" And she looked past him with dreamy eyes. She had never looked like that before, though love had been named to her by others and in more persuasive language. To back up a man in his undertakings—because she loved him— Why, that would be life!
Ted had never had the superfine discernment of natures more delicately wrought than his, but he had the discernment of sex—as all young and healthy creatures have. He saw her dreaming look, and he knew something of the kindred thought.
"Sheila"—and his voice was less sure and bold—"Sheila, have you ever been in love? Is there—anybody else?"
"No," she answered simply. And she drew her gaze down from the stars to his upturned face. That which was in her eyes made him catch his breath and close his own for an instant; but she was unaware of the shining thing he had seen—the soul, not only of one woman, just awakening, but of all womanhood, at once innocent and passionate, brave and piteous. He had not needed any subtlety to perceive that—so frank and beautiful was its betrayal.
"Sheila"—and he fixed his eyes upon her now—"Sheila, maybe the town does need me—as you said when I first came back. I'll do my best to make it need me. Because—because I want to earn the right to a home. I want to be able to—marry!"
"To—marry?" she whispered.
He leaned forward and laid his hands upon her wrists—importunate hands that sent the blood swirling through her veins.
"Oh, Sheila—don't you understand? I need you!"
For a moment the world swayed around her. Her heart was beating, not in her bosom, but in her throat—up, up to her dry and quivering lips. To back up a man in his undertakings—because she loved him!—that was what Ted was asking her to do for him—to do for him always. Yes—and that was life!
Then, slowly, the world grew still once more; the night wind blew down the fragrance of climbing roses; again she heard the familiar refrain—"Weep no mo', my lady! Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"—and now it seemed tender with the tenderness of insistent and protective love.
And all the while Ted's hands were on her wrists, silently imploring. This was life! Oh, she would never weep again—never again in her joy!
"Sheila?"
She bent toward him—as irresistibly as the rose above her head was drawn to the wind—and smiled.
"Oh, Sheila!—when you look at me like that!"
And then Ted's face was against her breast, his arms around her. She would never weep again—for this was life!