CHAPTER XVII
Sheila had thought herself acquainted with loneliness in the days immediately following her grandmother's death—days when she had had the consolation and companionship of Peter's frequent visits; but after Peter left Shadyville, she knew loneliness indeed. Charlotte had taken flight to Paris soon after Peter's departure, and there remained in Sheila's small world not one to comprehend the depths of her, the real needs and desires and aspirations of her mind and spirit.
To all outward seeming, her life flowed on in its usual channels; she occupied herself with her housewifely duties, with her care for her husband's and child's well-being; she exchanged visits with her neighbors and went to afternoon tea-parties. Certainly her life appeared to flow on smoothly enough, but in fact it did not flow at all—that which was really the life current; it was checked, stemmed, thrown back upon itself in a tempestuous flood. Heart, mind, spirit, all had come up against an obstacle which there was no surmounting, no eluding—the indestructible obstacle of a mistaken marriage. Those were the bitterest days of Sheila's existence—the days when all the vital, matured forces of her throbbed and surged and clamored, prisoned things that beat in vain against the walls of circumstances.
Worn out at last by this inner rebellion and conflict, she began to question whether she might not write once more. What she felt for Peter must forever be suppressed; must, if possible, be crushed out altogether; for her heart, importunate though it was with her woman's maturity, there could be no satisfying outlet. And in her conscientious recognition of this, in her resolution to abide by it, her very genuine affection for Ted—despite all the differences of temperament that divided them, despite even her realization and resentment of the wrong his selfishness had done her—was her greatest source of strength. But though she thus armed herself with her affection for her husband, though she so strove for utter loyalty to him, the suppression of her gift was no part of her conception of wifely duty now. And, thanks to Charlotte, she no longer regarded her compact with God for Eric's life as a thing sacred and binding. Even before Charlotte had expressed herself so vigorously on the subject, Sheila had, indeed, grown to see that her vow to renounce her gift had been unfairly wrung from her by a too effective combination of accident and Ted's opinions. And after Charlotte had cried out upon that vow as "morbid, hysterical nonsense," after she had exclaimed that Sheila's only fault had been in wasting her gift, it was but a step for Sheila to the conclusion that her vow could not—should not!—bind her. At last she saw herself free for work, if not for love; she saw herself the more free for work because love must be denied. Her work should be her recompense; she had earned it now, as all things worth the having must be earned—by what one suffers for them. And she believed that her work would be the better for all that she had suffered, all that she had endured. It would be the better for that secret, unceasing ache of her heart for a love forbidden to her; and it would be the better for all the hours of pure suffering for itself alone.
She had suffered for the loss of her work—Oh, very really! Even through years that had been altogether happy otherwise, the restlessness and hunger and depression of a talent unappeased had come upon her at times, come upon her almost unbearably. Though she had set her little son between it and her, it had reached her; it had harassed her unspeakably with demands that she had, perforce, refused to gratify. The sudden note of a violin, the sight of a flowering tree pearly against an April sky, a glimpse of tranquil stars through her window at night—such things as these had been enough to bring her gift's importuning and torment upon her. Earnestly and sincerely as she had tried to steel herself from such importunity and torment, they had come upon her again and again; they still came; they would come always—unless she flung off the shackles of that foolish, unnecessary vow.
Fling off its shackles she did, with a sudden, blessed sense of liberty and strength. With neither confession to Ted, nor any attempt at concealment, she set herself to write. For the first time since her marriage—at least since her motherhood—she felt her life, in some measure, her own. That she made no announcement of her independence to Ted was significant of the complete independence she had begun to feel. Perhaps it was significant of it, also—of the extent to which she conveyed, without words, her emancipation—that Ted, discovering, in the ensuing days, what she was about, said nothing of it either.
When she sat down, at last, to her writing-table, to her clean sheaf of paper, it was with the conviction of her individual rights spurringly upon her. But though she was finally so sure of her right to set free her gift, she felt within her no stir and flutter of a thing mad to fly and now released to do it. No winged words sprang upon her paper to leave bright traces of a heavenly flight. At the end of a long, uninterrupted morning, there was upon her paper no word at all.
Not for lack of ideas did the paper remain thus bare. There were ideas enough and to spare in the treasure chamber of her brain, ideas long hoarded, but still fresh with the glamour of their first conception. There was one idea which had especially tantalized and allured her through years of resistance on her part, an idea for a story really insolently quiet and unpretentious—because its stuff was such pure gold. How that gold would shine through the cunningly chosen medium of her simple, unassuming phrases! She had seen it shining so through all the time that she had resisted it. But now—though she gave herself unreservedly to the cherished idea, though she turned over and over, with a passionate preoccupation, the little golden nugget of it—the simple, delicate phrases that were to reveal, to exploit it, did not appear.
She had always written with a singular ease, and it seemed strange to sit before her tempting pages and write not a word. But on the first morning, she felt no alarm. After all, it was but natural that she should have to spend some time in coaxing it out to the light—that talent of hers so long confined. It was but natural that it should not have courage to soar and sing at once. But on the second day her paper was as empty as before; it lay upon her table like a useless snare for some wild and lovely bird that no longer had vitality enough to flutter within reach of it.
And now, sitting at her writing-table in vain for several days, fear seized upon Sheila, fear that she would not name or analyze.
Well, as one grew older, one often wrote differently, with more difficulty. She had heard that, she reflected eagerly. She had heard that deliberate, intellectual effort had often to succeed the flushed, panting rush of youthful inspiration. This was probably the case with her now; of course it was, indeed. She must undertake the effort; she must accept and master a new method. Then all would be right with her.
And so she went about deliberately translating the gold of her idea into those dreamed-of words which were so fitly to interpret it. She went about it with an energy, a will to accomplish the feat, that should have been sufficient to achieve miracles. If there had been, hitherto, a strain of weakness in her, she was now all strength. And by that sheer strength—of purpose, of determination—she sought to realize her dream of perfection.
Now the white sheets on her table were no longer barren. Slow, painful writing covered them. She wrote and discarded, and wrote again. Day after day, she sat there at her table, engaged, as she came at last to perceive, in her final, her ultimate tragedy.
For when the thing that she had visioned as a little golden masterpiece was finished, she knew it for what it was. There was no felicity of phrase, no cunning art of construction, no conviction of truth, no throb of vitality within it. As surely as a still-born child had it been brought into the world dead. And it was incredibly ugly and deformed. There was not a gleam of gold upon it!
She recognized all this with unsparing clearness. Not one illusion was left to her, not one merciful deception; with a single glance at her completed story, illusions and self-deceptions were swept from her—and hope was swept from her with them.
Her gift was dead—or, at the least, it was forever ineffectual. There would be no more mad, glad flights; no more songs high in the sunlit heavens. The flights and songs and ecstasies were over for all time. Not for an instant did she cheat herself with sophistries of an eventual recovery. She knew that if it lived at all—this gift of hers which had once been more alive than she herself—it would but live within her as the pain of a thing balked and futile, restless still perhaps, but not restless with any power. Always—always now—the too exquisite note of a violin, the sight of blossoming trees at dawn, of silver, inscrutable stars at night would waken in her the hunger, the grief, of the unsatisfied. There would never be a time when she could look on poignant beauty with the peace of one who is herself a part of all beauty—having created something beautiful. For the ultimate calamity had befallen her; her gift had been killed, or hopelessly maimed.
Under the tremendous impact of this blow she was curiously unresentful. She wondered a little how it had happened. She wondered if she had suffered too much, suffered to the point of numbness—a thing fatal to one whose work had been fine largely through her capacity for emotion; or if the habit, the superstition, of her vow, persisting within her after the vow itself had been cast aside, had thus finally broken the wings of her talent. She wondered if her marriage alone, or her motherhood, or her shamed and hopeless love for Peter had been most disastrous to her. She had been conscious of them all as she had sat there trying to write. Eric's face and Peter's had drifted between her and her pages. Ted's cold declaration that talent was a bad thing for a married woman, and her own impassioned promise to God to renounce her work for Eric's life had both drowned for her the voice of her gift. It was as if all these factors in her destiny had had too much of her; it was as if they had claimed her too entirely and tenaciously ever to release her. Even in silence and solitude and a belated sense of liberty and rights, she could not be free of them. She could not decide whether one or all of them had been responsible for this final frustration. She wondered—and then she ceased to wonder at all. She knew that the frustration had been accomplished—and that she was suddenly too weary even to cry out.
It was at the moment when she realized all this fully, when she sat staring at the deformed and lifeless thing which she had brought forth, that a letter from Charlotte was handed to her. It came from New York—where was Peter. Sheila opened it with shaking fingers—and found what she desired:
I have seen Peter [wrote Charlotte] and he seems to have fitted himself, very happily, into the right place. I say happily, but I do not use the word literally, for Peter is scarcely happy. But he is appreciated here, and he likes his work. I'm sure you'll be glad of that.
As for happiness—I sometimes question whether those of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the reality. I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand, unimpaired, by that vision. It may be that we have to choose between the vision—beheld for an instant and forever remembered—and an earthy, faulty, commonplace little happiness. We may have to choose between a fairy tale that can never be anything but a wonderful fairy tale, and a grubby reality that will spoil fairy tales for us evermore. If that be true, Peter is not to be pitied. He is manifestly one of the chosen; he's had his matchless vision; he still believes in the fairy tale.
I told you, once, that I might marry him—in spite of him, as it were! Now I know that I will never marry him. But you must not be sorry for me, my dear. I, too, have had my vision. I'll always believe in the fairy tale.
Sheila laid the letter down—beside the stillborn child of her gift. And fleetingly she saw again the pure gold of her idea—saw it gleaming through the misshapen thing she had actually fashioned. After all, though she could never create masterpieces, she had had her vision of them; that, at least, had been vouchsafed to her. And she had had her vision of the perfect love; not even unspeakable sorrow and humiliation had dimmed it. She, also, was one of the chosen; she would always believe in the fairy tale.