CHAPTER XV
It was toward the end of April that Charlotte arrived in Shadyville. She had never lived in Shadyville since her first flight from it to boarding-school. After school had come New York and Paris, where she had studied singing; and for the last five years she had been on the concert stage, filling engagements all over the continent—much to the distress of her family who, though inordinately proud of her, could not understand why any woman with plenty of money at her disposal should work. Charlotte had always decided things for herself, however, and once convinced that her happiness lay in the active pursuit of her art, no one could dissuade her from it. Certainly no penniless woman could have worked harder or with more zest than she. Musician to her finger-tips, and with a remarkably beautiful, silver-clear soprano voice, she had also the modern woman's desire to earn her living; to justify her existence by doing something well. An independent and a busy life was necessary to her, and it was impossible to see her without realizing that she had chosen wisely for herself.
To Shadyville she had always seemed a brilliant figure; now, as a successful professional singer, she was a dazzling one. Even Sheila was a little awed by her, although the two had kept up their childhood's friendship during all these years of separation and of such diverse interests. Every now and then Charlotte descended on Shadyville for a brief visit to her parents, and then she invariably took up with Sheila their dropped threads and wove a new flower into the pattern of their affection. On this occasion she came to Sheila with more than her usual warmth, divining what a grief Mrs. Caldwell's death must have been to her, and she watched her friend, as the days passed, with an increasing solicitude.
To all appearances everything was well with the Kent household. Sheila and Ted seemed to be on the best of terms; Eric had grown into a fine, healthy, handsome little lad, particularly fond of his proud mother; prosperity, as Shadyville measured it, fairly shone from the charming and well-ordered little house. Certainly all appeared to be well with Sheila, yet Charlotte was not satisfied about her. Six months had passed since Mrs. Caldwell's death, and though Charlotte allowed for the sincerity and depth of Sheila's mourning, she rejected a sorrow already somewhat softened by time as sufficient cause for the change she found in Sheila. There was something else, something of an altogether different nature, that was responsible for the hunger of Sheila's eyes, the restlessness of her manner. Charlotte remembered, with a rush of indignation, Sheila's unfulfilled ambitions, her wasted gift. That was the trouble; of course that baffled gift of Sheila's was the trouble. And something must be done about it. She was with Sheila when she came to this conclusion, and immediately she acted on it, impulsive, decisive creature that she was.
"What of your writing, Sheila dear? I can't recall your speaking of it to me for a long, long while."
"Oh—that's over!" replied Sheila, with unhappy emphasis.
"But why?"
It was a warm May afternoon and they were sitting on Sheila's veranda. Out on the lawn Eric and another boy of his own age frolicked about like a couple of animated puppies. Sheila pointed to them:
"You remember what Mrs. North said—that a woman couldn't be both mother and artist?"