CHAPTER XII
Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold on life. As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever, taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer. He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk finally turned.
"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked. "It's rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays. Marriage swallows women terribly, doesn't it?"
"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs. Caldwell. "I'm fond of Ted—really very fond of him, in fact—but I've always expected marriage to swallow his wife. He's that sort of man."
"You think he demands so much of her then? I'd felt that it was the boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life—her old self."
"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly—through the boy?"
Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand. I understand her—to the soul! But there's something in her life I don't understand. I'm sure Ted's good to her. I'm sure they love each other. But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell. The trouble is that she wants to write—and she doesn't. I can't understand why she doesn't. When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd, that she doesn't take up her work again. And I can't tell her so—well as I know the value of the gift she's wasting. She isn't frank with me. I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."
"She isn't frank with me either, Peter. But I'm a little more informed about the situation than you are. Sheila was writing a story when Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to scarlet fever. That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for Sheila's giving up her work."
Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that? Do you think he blamed her?"
"No—I'm sure he didn't. He was terribly, terribly sorry for her. Ted is capable of generosity at times, Peter—I'm not fond of him for nothing!—and he was generous then. But of course Sheila reproached herself. I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she censured herself. I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever since. It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a mistake, an accident. If she had married another man—it wouldn't have happened."
"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"
"Ah, that might have happened in any case. I meant the atonement."
"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her. How, then, could he be responsible?"
"He could let the atonement go on! He isn't a subtle person, but I believe he's divined that, and let it continue. I knew, before Sheila married him, that he would not care for her art. I knew that he would resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage. And knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't help taking the advantage circumstances had offered him."
"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"
"Capable of generosity at times, Peter. And so he is. Most of us have our generosities and our meannesses. Ted's like the rest of us in both respects. The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila. If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the atonement wouldn't. For you would have wanted her to write; you would have made her feel it wrong not to write. It's not that you're a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for Sheila. You ought to have married her, my dear. I meant you to marry her!"
Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell. Very rigidly he stood, his hands at his side, tightly closed. When he finally turned again into the room, his face was white.
"Why do you tell me that now—now that it's too late?" he asked. And his voice shook with the question.
At something in that white face of his, at something in his unsteady voice, Mrs. Caldwell grew very gentle: "Because I'm a blundering old woman, Peter dear. But, since I have blundered, let us talk frankly. I did intend you to marry Sheila. I plotted and planned for it from the time she was a little girl in your rhetoric class. I believed that in a marriage with you lay her chance to be both a happy and a wonderful woman. And then—Ted married her instead! But there's still something you can do for her. You can watch over her when I'm gone, Peter. You can put out a saving hand now and then, if you see she needs it. When I'm dead—and that will be soon, my dear—you'll be the only person in the world who understands her. If I can feel that you'll always be there ready to help her, I can die in peace. Bottled up genius is a dangerous thing. Sometimes I am afraid for Sheila! But if you'll promise to watch over her for me, I can die with my heart at rest."
"There is nothing I would not do for you or for her!" he said.
"I know that, Peter. What wonder that I had my dreams about you?"
"They were dreams, just dreams," he responded, and now he was speaking more easily. "I wasn't the right man for Sheila after all. If I had been, she would have realized it; she wouldn't have married some one else."
"How could she realize it—at twenty? And she was barely twenty when she married. Peter, there's a moment in a girl's life when, consciously or not, her whole being, soul and body, cries out for love. And if a man is at hand then—any presentable man—to answer, 'I am love,' she believes him. That moment came to Sheila—and Ted was there!"
"Oh," cried Peter, "Oh, surely there was more to it than that! Surely there was real love!" And when she did not answer, he repeated earnestly, "Surely there was real love!"
"You plead for Ted?" asked Mrs. Caldwell with a touch of irony.
"I plead for her. Ted doesn't matter, and I don't matter. But Sheila—Oh, I can't bear that she should have only a second-rate thing, an imitation. I can't bear that."
"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted. And as long as she thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy. What we have to do for her—what you have to do for her when I'm gone—is to keep her thinking that. It isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may rouse in her; the awful vision it may bring her. I see so clearly how she was married—and she must never see! If ever you find her beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow. I've often thought that women should be born blind—or that their eyes should be bandaged at birth."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Peter.
"No—kind! All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then; all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid. We'd create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch us."
"It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter.
"There's nothing so tragic as the truth—when it comes too late," said Mrs. Caldwell sadly. "Your grandfather and I found out that. He was already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when—it happened. We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter. But people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days. They thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor. It seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt; ever to have acknowledged it. So we went on with our obligations, your grandfather and I. He was a good husband, and I was a good wife. Our lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we would have been happy if—if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart and reflected it for him in my own eyes. We would have been happy if I had been blindfolded! As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept less was tragedy for us."
"You were both free at last," said Peter. "Why didn't you—Oh, why didn't you—take what was left to you?"
"My dear, we were already old. Romance was still in our hearts, but we hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives. We had felt a great love, and been brave enough to deny it. But when we could have satisfied it honorably—we were afraid of the change in our lives; we were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even afraid of what the town would say! In the beginning we had striven not to dare. In the end we could not dare. It is sad that we should be like that, isn't it, Peter? It's sad that as the strength of our youth goes from us, the valor of our love should go too. But it is so, it is so for all of us, my dear. The day before your grandfather died, something flamed up in us again. The courage of new life came to him, and he made me promise to marry him the next day. But the next day he was—dead!"
She fell silent, her eyes fixed broodingly upon the fire, eyes that looked strangely young. Peter, silent too, was remembering that day before his grandfather's death; remembering Mrs. Caldwell's presence in the house, and the indescribable sense of some other presence also. He had felt it so strongly, that other presence, that the whole house had seemed to him to be pervaded and thrilled by it. His father was living then, and they two had spent the afternoon in the library, while Mrs. Caldwell had sat with his grandfather in the room above. He had said to his father—he recalled it quite clearly—"I feel something—something—in the very air." And his father had appeared startled and had replied, "Perhaps death is in the air." But Peter knew now that it had not been death he had felt; that it had not been death that had filled the air as if with rushing wings and shooting stars and invisible, ineffable glories. It had not been death; it had been love. And glancing at Mrs. Caldwell's musing eyes, something like envy came into his own. He went to her, knelt, and kissed her thin old hand.
"After all, you had love," he murmured. And then, "I wish you had been my grandmother. I wish you had."
"Oh, Peter!" she cried. "Oh, Peter! Peter!" And suddenly her arms were around his neck.
As she clung to him, her tears on his face and her heart's secret in his hands, he almost told her; he almost said what he had resolved never to say. And yet he did not.
"He's never loved her," concluded Mrs. Caldwell when he had gone. "There was a moment when he looked as if—but he's never loved Sheila. If he'd loved her—ever—he would have told me."