CHAPTER XVIII
It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us that we stumble upon life's real gift to us. And thus it happened for Sheila. It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her. But beneath the apparent caprice was a fine justice—for life was at last kind to Sheila through her son.
As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as, even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen. He was a manly boy, fond of other boys and of boyish sports, but for all that his companionship with his mother persisted, and as he matured somewhat, deepened into an intimate, understanding relation such as Sheila had not thought to know again. Their kinship was not of the flesh only; that was the thing that Sheila began presently to see.
It was then that she began to dream once more; to visualize a future beyond her own unrealized future. But she didn't so much as stretch out a shaping hand; she didn't say an illuminating, a determining word. She remembered instances—many of them—of children's lives having been moulded by their parents, and with pitiful mischance. She had known men and women who, with entirely unconscious tyranny, had thrust ready-made destinies on their sons and daughters, saying in extenuation:
"We want our children to do all the brave deeds we've failed to do. We want them to fulfill our defeated ambitions and to become what we have never become. We want to save them from our mistakes and our regrets. We haven't done much with our own lives—but we're going to live again, more wisely and effectually, in our children's lives."
And so they had advised and coerced, and destroyed individuality and independence, and extinguished, only too often, the very joy of life itself by striving to transfer the flame to a vessel of their own choosing.
This she must not do to Eric, Sheila told herself. From the despotic impulse of parenthood—queer mixture that it was of too zealous love and a thoroughly selfish desire for a second chance through the medium of the child—she must protect Eric. Therefore she restrained herself; she simply waited—as she might have waited for a seed to spring up from the secret sprouting place of some deep garden bed. It requires a sort of earthy, benign patience thus to hold back one's hand and passively wait—especially when one has, in spite of oneself, the dominating parent instinct!—but Sheila forced herself to it.
And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through the soil and turned its face to the light. The boy came to Sheila one day, obviously bent upon a confidence. Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he was, but so eager. She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers, child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some portentous thing upon his cheek. She wanted to kiss him—but she didn't. For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than kisses.
"Mother, here's—here's a story I've written."
That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in his eyes. What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.
And then Sheila knew that she was crying.
It was not a marvellous story—that first effort of her young son's—but something was there; something that raised the crude, immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale better than itself. And sensing it—that evanescent, impalpable, but infinitely promising thing—she saw the future shining through the present.
But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery. She longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it, and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.
Ted had not desired talent in his wife. Would he desire it in his son? Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a poet, a worker in mere beauty? Would he ever regard art as more than a shadow of life?
Sheila sought him now to learn that—with Eric's story to plead for itself.
Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and possessions which he did not share with her. Only for momentous affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.
"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little manuscript.
"Now? Is it important?"
"Yes, now. It is very important. I must have a talk with you when you've read it."
He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict. The story was short. Her suspense could have lasted but a little while. But Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years.
She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's life. But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent—if talent he really had. She was prepared to fight for it, if need be. Yet, as she watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them. That hot, rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace. The affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven. She had given up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and she sickened now at the prospect of conflict. For at conflict, old wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her, a devastating flood. If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she had striven to outlive. And she could not bear that this should happen. She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus jeopardized.
She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him when he had condemned Alice North for her art—and, however innocently, through Alice North, herself. She remembered how indignant she had felt, how hurt and divided. And she remembered, too—thinking, against her will, of Peter—how divided from Ted she had felt in later years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly. She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in the destruction of her talent, all too clearly—and how her heart had turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love. She had driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to its duty—in so far as the heart can be constrained. She had even achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with which they had begun life together—but she trembled now at thought of any further pressure being brought to bear upon it. It was as if she held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you! Do nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"
And yet—though conflict between them should destroy the love she had so endeavored, in spite of everything, to feel—if Ted opposed Eric's gift, there must be conflict.
For she considered what her own unappeased gift had cost her—the hunger, the restlessness, the pain. She considered how, throughout all the years of her marriage, she had suffered her gift's insistence and its reproach. She thought of how she had never been able to look upon the miracle of the spring, the majesty of the stars, without an aching heart. All beauty had been transmuted for her into unassuageable sorrow—because she had been born to create beauty and had failed of her destiny. And it would be transmuted into sorrow for Eric, too—unless he were given the freedom she had foregone. He, too, would face the stars with an aching heart; all high and exquisite creation would be for him the material of suffering—unless he were allowed to create also.
She had nerved herself to any effort, any struggle that might be necessary, when Ted at last laid down Eric's story and turned to his desk without a word. Was there as little hope as that?
"Ted?" she cried.
"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back toward her. And his voice sounded queer—almost as if it were choked with tears. "Wait, Sheila."
He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too, unsteady with some rarely deep emotion. Thus he had looked when he first bent over her after Eric's birth. That flashed through Sheila's mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to have him. Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded ribbon. In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters. But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters. Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets. She stared at them curiously. What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
But to Ted they had their significance. He carefully untied the dingy ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her—and she noticed that his fingers were shaking.
"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
She picked up one of the discolored pages—and her own writing confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever—the story that, in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
"Why, Ted—Ted—!" But even then she did not understand.
"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them—Oh, years ago!—just stuck off in a cupboard like trash that nobody wanted any more. And so—because I did want them—I brought them down here."
"You wanted them?" Sheila gasped. "But, Ted——"
And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes—full of the tears he had tried to repress—were gazing down into hers!
"Don't you suppose I realize what you might have done? Don't you suppose I've seen what you've given up for me—for me and Eric?"
She could not speak. She could only gaze back at him, incredulous still of the comprehension that he had so long concealed from her.
"I've been a selfish brute, Sheila," he went on. "I've craved all of you for myself and my child, and I've had all of you. It's been my man's way, I reckon, for I couldn't have helped it. If I had it to do over again, it would be just the same—though I'm ashamed of myself now. Of course I didn't ask you to give up your writing, but I'd quite as well have asked you. For I guessed that you'd done it—after Eric had scarlet fever—and I let you, without a word. I've let you sacrifice your talent ever since, too—needlessly. Yes, I've let you—for I've seen the whole thing."
She had sometimes felt that the tragedy of her life had been in all that Ted had not seen. Now, finding that he had seen so much more than she had ever suspected—so much of what had been profound suffering to her—she might readily have blamed him more than she had ever done before. But generosity rushed out of her to meet his generosity—belated though his was.
"No, no," she interrupted, "it isn't that you let me give up my work. The fault isn't yours. That awful night—when it seemed that Eric would die—I offered my work for his life—I offered it to God! That was why I didn't write afterward."
Ted fixed pitying eyes upon her: "You poor little girl! Was it as bad as that with you? I knew I was taking advantage of your conscience, but I never dreamed you'd carried your remorse so far. Did you really believe you had to buy God's mercy? Oh, no, dear. It's only your husband that's seized the opportunity to extract a sacrifice from your Puritan conscience. But with all my selfishness, I haven't stopped you—I haven't been the end of your talent."
She started to tell him of her late emancipation from that unnecessary vow of hers; to tell him that she had tried to write again—and discovered that she could not. But she did not tell him after all. For that could only hurt and shame him—in the hour of his penitence. So she was silent, and he continued with appealing eagerness.
"I haven't been the end of your talent," he repeated. "Don't you realize, dear, that your talent isn't ended at all?"
"You mean—Eric?"
"Yes, I mean that you've handed on your gift to Eric. And he's going to have the chance I wasn't unselfish enough to let you have. Don't be afraid for him—he's going to have his chance, And he'll know what to do with it! I believe you'll be the mother of a great man—and that Eric will probably be the father of great men. I believe it will go on and on and on—what you are, what you might have done."
"But, Ted—Eric is only a child. We cannot be sure yet—
"I believe!" he insisted. "I believe this is to be your work—the work I haven't stopped."
And as she listened, there came to her, too, a faith in Ted's prophecy. Her gift would have its fruition in Eric—and perhaps in Eric's sons and his sons' sons. She was granted a vision of a torch passed on from one trustworthy hand to another throughout the years; and beholding that vision, she was aware that nothing she had suffered mattered at all. She could face the stars now with a heart at peace. She could watch the earth's miracles, feeling herself a part of them. From the earth sprang flowers; from her flesh had sprung her son—her son who had been born to carry on the torch. She had created beauty indeed—beauty that would outlive her life in her son's art.
Even Peter's image was blurred for her as she beheld her supreme vision.
And then she recalled Charlotte's words: "I sometimes question if 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."
Charlotte was mistaken. There were visions which became realities; this final vision of hers would become a reality—and it would be none the less perfect and transcendent for that.
Sheila laid her hands on her husband's shoulders. "I'm glad that I've lived!" she said. And again, with a little sob, "Oh, my dear, I'm glad that I've lived!"
THE END