There had been of course a few embarrassing moments when, according to the nature of human beings, Sheilah's new acquaintances attempted to discover mutual friends in or about the city in which she lived. But they were too well bred to pursue their search, after several failures at establishing any such contacts. Nor, mercifully, did they insist upon locating her street and number. They soon learned, that like many of Dr. Baird's patients, Mrs. Nawn was inclined to be noncommittal about her present life, and they avoided asking questions.
But certain facts about her early career cropped out. For instance, she and Judith Lorimer discovered one day that they had graduated from the same school in Connecticut. It would have been a source of satisfaction to Sheilah's mother to have seen her insistence upon a boarding-school for Sheilah of the 'select' variety bearing fruit at such late date. Judith Lorimer had attended the school a year after Sheilah had left it, but she had heard of 'Sheilah Miller from Wallbridge.'
'From Wallbridge?' Persis Palmer had caught at that. 'Are you from Wallbridge? I once knew such a nice boy from there. He was killed in the war. His name was Nevin Baldwin.'
Yes, Sheilah had known Nevin Baldwin. She had been to his Junior Prom with him.
A few such establishing facts helped Sheilah enormously to play her rele with confidence. Was it a rele? Or was her life with Felix ardle? And had she returned for a little while to be the real Sheilah? She felt so at ease. Especially with Roger Dallinger.
She glanced at him now, surreptitiously, from beneath half-closed lids, contemplating him and their intimacy, lightly, dreamily, suppressing a shrug as she told herself there was nothing flattering in his attentions. He was just a very kind-hearted man, whom it amused to assume a sort of big-brother responsibility for a lonely woman's entertainment in a strange place; and for whom she was a convenient companion for the daily walk prescribed for him, also. For it appeared that Mr. Dallinger had come to Avidon's for its healing qualities, too. He had had an operation last spring, followed by pneumonia. One lung, lightly one day he had told Sheilah, had needed toning up.
To look at him one wouldn't think anything needed toning up. He was as rugged in appearance as the pine tree he leaned against; as physically sound, it flashed over Sheilah gazing at him, as a perfectly ripened piece of fruit, browned and weathered by sun and wind, firm and solid to the core. Just the sight of him had an invigorating effect on her.
His hands were clasped now about his knees as he sat upon the ground, head thrown back against the trunk of the pine, gazing up into its needles. He was dark, very dark. His eyebrows were like the outspread wings of a black raven, and there was always that dark, violet bloom on his close-shaven cheeks, with a deep red glow underneath. Like red wine glowing in old bottles when you hold them up to the light, thought Sheilah. How surprised he'd be, if he knew she was making similes about him!
How surprised she'd be, if she knew he was making similes about her!
She had tossed aside her hat. The sun was shining on her hair. He had seen gold-brown meadows in the fall, silvered with frost, shine like that in the early morning. Strange to find beauty in the silver in a woman's hair! To discover in the wake of her disappearing youth, loveliness and charm!
He had always taken it for granted that freshness, vivid coloring, firm, white, solid flesh appealed to him most, but to his surprise he discovered he was delighted by this woman's blent tones and faded coloring, as a connoisseur in art is delighted, he supposed, by the blent tones and faded coloring of a lovely old piece of brocade. Even her physical weariness, her inability to walk very far without frequent rests; the way she had, sometimes, when sitting on the hotel verandah in her rocking-chair, unaware of observation, of closing her eyes, and letting her hands hang limp and lifeless, appealed to him in some strange way. A flower drooping—a—sailboat beached—a child tired.
Amazing, that her languishing loveliness should so stir his imagination! Well, she mustn't guess it. She was so sure his interest was purely impersonal, indulged in carelessly, without reserve, because so safe. She trusted him implicitly. Well, he trusted himself, didn't he? He wasn't a boy, nor a young man, either, any more. She wasn't a girl. Thirty-five—thirty-eight—older, perhaps. He wasn't good at ages. Married. Three children. And the sort of married woman to whom, he felt sure, it would not be happiness, but only shock and pain, to be tempted from out of the path of her ideals for even a harmless détour, however steep and difficult that path proved to be.
Was it steep and difficult? She had told so few facts about herself. What sort of a home had she? What sort of a life did she lead there? Gardened a good deal, he guessed, to judge from her hands when she first came. So many of Carl's patients gardened asacure. Dressed very well. Not too much variety. She must be fairly well fixed financially. The corner suites with private balcony at Avidon's were occupied only by those who could afford luxuries. Nawn? Felix Nawn? Roger had never heard the man's name mentioned in financial circles. What sort of a fellow was he? Was she happy with him? Many of Carl's patients were victims of domestic incompatibilities of one sort and another. Useless, of course, to question Carl. Useless, too, to question her. She wouldn't even tell him where she lived. In a spirit of playful retaliation she had assumed an air of mystery about herself from the first, to pay him back, she said, for his refusal to satisfy her curiosity as to when and where he had seen her before, and in what way she had ever influenced an act of his.
Why had he ever told her that? Foolish, headlong impulse. It hampered him. It would be conceited and caddish to reveal the name of a woman who had once been jealous of him, even if the woman herself had forgotten all about the long-buried episode, as doubtless Cicely had. It had been years since he had seen Cicely Morgan. Nice of her to have sent him those flowers last spring when he had been in the hospital. He would run up to Wallbridge and thank her in person in the fall. He had written her to that effect. What would she be like now? He wished he could ask Sheilah if she had ever known Cicely Morgan. But it might lead to an explanation.
Strange Cicely had never married. Strange he had never married himself. He had so positively intended to once. It might have worked. It might, anyway, have been better than living alone all these years. Children, home, roots. As it was, simply friends, companions, good-fellowship. Wanted everywhere. Indispensable nowhere. Surprising he'd never met any one since Cicely whom he'd wanted to marry. He had thought he would. He had hoped he would. He had never met any one who had even stirred his imagination until—until
Roger glanced at Sheilah. Her hand, upturned, lay across her eyes, closed now, the fingers curled like the petals of a lotus-flower. She was asleep perhaps. Once before she had fallen asleep beside him like that, her eyes hidden from him, as if she were shy of letting him see them closed. He closed his own, sharing her darkness.
Finally in a low tone, 'Asleep?' he inquired.
'Of course not!' instantly and indignantly she assured him.
'I've thought of something else the pine sounds like,' he remarked from behind closed lids.
'What?'
'A certain woman's name.'
'Whose?'
'Can't you guess?'
'Not possibly.'
'Well, listen,' and gently he repeated Sheilah three times—more gently than he realized.
She turned and stared at him. There he sat against the tree, eyes closed, chin uplifted, like a magician, under some strange hypnotic spell. He became aware of the silence, and opened his eyes, meeting hers, brimming with suspicion.
'What's the matter?' he inquired in the innocent, injured tone of a child surprised. 'Don't you like my simile? I thought it such a pat one, and much more poetical than a buzz-saw.' He spoke flippantly now, forcing his eyes to sparkle with fun at her; and still further to set her fears at rest, he picked up a pinecone near by and flung it at her. It hit her grotesquely on the chin. 'Oh, I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm a brute.'
Instantly she flung the cone back at him. He caught it laughing.
'Do you think,' she inquired a moment later, now entirely reassured. (After all he'd been only teasing. She might have known! He was always only teasing.) 'Do you think I should have taken you out of that no-trump bid last night?'
He was immensely relieved. He explained elaborately and at length why she should.
She played a very good game of bridge, but had been a little rusty. He had taught her all the new rules and conventions. The same with dancing. He had taught her all the new rules and conventions of dancing that he knew. She danced exquisitely, with instinctive grace. He loved to dance with her. So did the other 'Outsiders.' So did many of the other guests in the hotel.
Now, Roger, stretching out his arm in front of him, glanced at his wrist watch. 'Time to be moving,' he remarked. 'Five o'clock.' And he got up and strode over to her. 'Come!' he said peremptorily. He often assumed an exaggerated manner of command with her—it was part of the teasing—and usually she responded with an exaggerated manner of docility.
'All right, if you say so, but I hate to go. It's so heavenly!'
'I know,' he agreed, looking away over the rolling clouds of treetops below, toward the far, still horizon. 'Sharing beauty like this is the next best thing to sharing things we can't, isn't it?' he commented quietly, and then quickly, cutting off any possibility of reply, 'Come, we've got to go,' and he stretched out his hand toward Sheilah.
She placed her own in it, and he jerked her to her feet. For an instant she stood very close to him, the wind blowing her short skirt against his knees. Their eyes were now on the same level. How glossy the raven's wings were! Like charred wood in the sunshine. And how gold were the eyes beneath the wings. Not brown at all as she had thought. But like—like
'What are you looking at?' banteringly he inquired.
The boldness of him! Well, she could be bold too! 'Sherry.' She retorted instantly. 'What are you?'
'Two of the blue tiles of Heaven,' he replied, as instantly. And suddenly they both burst into laughter as if they had been very witty.
It was, you see, nothing but persiflage, playful competition, a harmless combat of the wits.
They swung down the hill, side by side, in great long strides, letting the force of gravity carry them along as if they were rolling stones. They plunged into the woods at the foot of the hill; on the level walking more slowly, he taking the lead, as usual, on the narrow trail that meandered for half a mile through leaf-draped aisles of trees, bordering a tumbling brook, crossing it twice, breaking out with it finally into a meadow, startlingly bright and colorful after the curtained woods.
There was a group of birches at the further end of the meadow where the brook spilled over into a marsh. Roger stopped to-day and remarked upon the birches.
'They're like young girls in green chiffon in wading,' he said to Sheilah, as he had to Cicely years ago.
Sheilah flashed him one of her brightest smiles and then turned meditatively toward the birches. 'No, not young girls—little girls. Their legs are so spindly and straight.'
How different from Cicely! Oh, really she was too good to be true, too absolutely satisfying to be made of flesh and blood. He was possessed with a sudden desire to squeeze her hard, as if she, too, were a little girl, who would squirm and want to get away, and preen herself afterward like a ruffled bird.
That night Sheilah dressed three times for dinner. The gray chiffon made her look so pale, the green chiffon made her look so gray. Standing before her mirror, the two discarded dresses cast aside, she gazed at herself critically. Her appearance had not been a matter of great importance to Sheilah since her marriage. She touched her hair, and sighed. It used to be rather nice. At least people used to say so. But it was spoiled now—the gold all gone to silver; the clear, shell-pink of her cheeks to faded bois-de-rose; and when she smiled, fans of tiny wrinkles instantly spread open at the corners of her eyes. Oh, she would give a great deal to be young and lovely to-night. Only her eyes remained unchanged, retained their same calm, undisturbed blue. What had Roger Dallinger said he had been looking at back there on the hill? 'Two of the blue tiles of Heaven.' The quotation really read, 'The blue tiles of the sky.' What a lovely thing to say! What lovely things he was always saying! She would wear her blue dress to-night. The last time she had worn it, he had remarked, glancing first at her dress and then significantly at her eyes, 'My, what an orgy of blue!'
She went to her closet and took down the blue dress, and slipped it over her shoulders, smiling indulgently at herself as she emerged from its calyx. Sheilah Nawn dressing fora man! Well, what harm? In a few weeks she would be going back into obscurity again. She would be going back to her job.
Dr. Baird had made it so clear that a woman's husband and children were her job—her first responsibility, and that making a success of one's job, one's first responsibility, was simply a matter of learning the rules of efficiency, and being strongwilled enough to apply them. So many hours of rest, of work, of play, equally divided. Calm, persistent control of one's thoughts and acts; calm, persistent ignoring of one's sensations and emotions. She could hardly wait to go home and test her new knowledge. In the meanwhile—in the brief two weeks and a little more that remained. . . . Was her name like the wind in the pines? What was his name like? 'Roger Dallinger, Roger Dallinger?' She spoke it twice out loud. Funny how familiar the name always sounded, never failing to give her that tantalizing feeling of a particular time and place in her past, evading capture. To-night, as she repeated it, the vision of dazzling snow and sunshine flashed before her, and afterward, freakishly, Felix in the schoolroom sunk down under his desk, and herself beside him, covered with chalk-dust, feeling so sorry.
There had been a letter from Felix to-night. He wrote to her faithfully every few days. Slow, labored notes. There wasn't much to write about. But his letter to-night had contained a startling piece of information. He had sold his chef-d'œuvre! He spelled it 'shay durve.' All these years, then, he had never known what it meant. Poor Felix! He had sold the doll-house for two hundred dollars! To a woman in Chicago, who had taken a fancy to it. And he was working hard on a duplicate order for a friend of hers. How happy Felix would be! The sale of a single piece of his furniture would set him to work for days afterward, with renewed energy, inspired by some deep-buried dream of success. And now an order, an actual demand for his wares! His joy would be a little like that of a poet's at recognition . . . Really the blue dress was rather nice. And now that it was dark enough to draw the shades, and flood the room with artificial light she wasn't so bad after all.
Seven o'clock already! She must hurry. The Outsiders were all dining together to-night, in the grill. It was Judith's birthday. There were to be cocktails in Roger's room at seven-fifteen. Oh, ought she to be having so good a time? The mother of four children? And one of them dead? Ought she to be so happy away from her children? Ought she to be all dressed up in pretty clothes going to a party, when Felix, stoop-shouldered and alone, was seated in his shirt-sleeves at the work-bench in the dining-room, making another 'shay durve?'