Sheilah didn't tell Felix about Cicely's letter for two days. They had just finished the supper dishes. Felix always helped her with the supper dishes now. She preferred his help to Laetitia's. His clumsiness was so much more gentle.
The children had all gone out for an hour of the cool evening air. Felix was sitting at his carpenter's bench, Sheilah lying on the couch near by, as usual now. Felix was working on a baby-grand piano, staining it a mahogany red. He laid it down, before Sheilah had spoken many words, wiped his hands on a bit of waste near by, and listened with a stillness and concentration that disquieted Sheilah a little.
'Of course, I don't have to go, Felix,' she said to break the silence that followed her story. 'I don't really want to go. It seems too much trouble to get ready, but Cicely doesn't intend to send Laetitia and Roddie to camps unless I do, nor Phillip to the farm, and it would be so wonderful for them!'
'Of course,' murmured Felix, his eyes upon his idle hands.
'Laetitia and Roddie would be with such fine companions. They've never had a taste of the woods. Laetitia has never been anywhere, but once to Detroit to visit Gretchen, and Gretchen has asked her again for this summer. You know I don't like Gretchen's influence on Laetitia. And Roddie—I think if Roddie could be under the influence of camp standards for a while—clean play in sport, honesty in all things, it might make a difference to him all his life.'
'Of course,' murmured Felix again.
'And Cicely has thought of you, too, Felix,' Sheilah went on, 'she suggests I arrange with the little negro girl I told her about—Pansy, you know—to come oftener and look out for you.'
'I don't need Pansy.'
'Don't you want me to go, Felix?'
'Of course I do. It's only' He stopped.
'It's only what, Felix?'
'It's only it shows how much I amount to—not to be able to do it for you myself,' he brought out finally, through lips that scarcely moved.
'You've always done everything you could for me, Felix.'
'Nevin Baldwin could have done more, I guess,' he murmured.
'Nobody could have done more than their best, could they?' Sheilah inquired with her kindest smile.
But Felix didn't see the smile. He didn't even look up. He fell to shredding the piece of waste into tiny bits, as he went on speaking—half to himself, half as if to the waste.
'The doctor told me how important the vacation was. I knew. I asked for a raise. But they said they were letting help go. I tried. But it was no use. It didn't work. Nothing much I try to do ever does work.'
Later, after the children were in bed and asleep, and Sheilah's room dark and still, Felix got up from his couch in the dining-room, groped his way to the china closet (converted into a coat closet) and took down from a back hook, an old brown overcoat which had once belonged to Gretchen's husband. It was a lined overcoat, rather heavy for summer, but it was light in color, and Felix had used it for a raincoat ever since Gretchen had sent it on.
He carried the overcoat into the kitchen, stepping softly in his bare feet across the floor, carefully avoiding the threshold, which always squeaked. After closing the kitchen door he leaned and turned the key noiselessly, then pulled down both the window-shades and turned on a light.
Sheilah kept her small kitchen utensils in a drawer beside the sink. Felix opened the drawer and took out a sharp-pointed vegetable-knife. Then sat down by the kitchen table, shoved one hand into a pocket of the overcoat, turned it inside out, raised his head, listened a moment, and proceeded to apply the sharp point of the vegetable-knife to a row of coarse black linen stitches. When he had ripped a slot big enough for his hand he pushed it down deep between the coat and its lining, and pulled out a folded paper from the far lower corner.
He had hidden the paper there a week ago and sewed the pocket up afterward. But now there was no more necessity to hide the paper. There was no more necessity to keep the paper. He could give it back to Mr. Fairchild now, and explain just how it happened. An accident, pure and simple. He hadn't stolen the paper.
It had happened that the very week after the doctor had talked to Felix about Sheilah, and the very day after Felix had tremblingly asked for a raise in his salary, and been refused, Mr. Fairchild, his employer, went down to the bank to cut coupons, and took Felix with him. They were closeted in a small sealed cell, underground, for an hour or more.
Mr. Fairchild was not a very systematic man. He was always misplacing his pencil, or pen, or glasses. His safe-deposit box bulged with disorder. On the particular morning he had asked Felix to accompany him to the bank, Mr. Fairchild had torn off his coupons very hastily. And though he did wait until a bank employee had shoved the long, narrow tin casket safely back into its steel pocket, he rushed off ten or fifteen minutes before Felix left the vault, with instructions to Felix to fill in the customary forms in ink, and deposit the coupons to his account in another bank, farther downtown. He had a rough copy of the coupons, which he had tucked into his waistcoat pocket along with his pencil. It occurred to Felix that Mr. Fairchild would as likely as not misplace the paper before morning.
But it did not occur to Felix to fail to deposit the coupons, immediately, and with scrupulous accuracy. But before depositing them something happened that made the blood pump hard around Felix's heart as he wove his way from one bank to the other through the midday crowds.
It was a rainy day, and raw for June. Felix had worn the light brown overcoat. When he and Mr. Fairchild had been shown into the little sealed room underneath the sidewalk, Felix had taken off his overcoat, and laid it across one end of the glasscovered table. He was alone in the little sealed room when he put on his overcoat.
As he slipped one hand into an open armhole, and swung the coat up on to his shoulder, something dropped on the floor. Something that had been lying on the table underneath the coat. A piece of paper. A stiff piece of paper. It made a sharp, shrill click that echoed. Felix leaned and picked the paper up. It was a bond! A thousand-dollar City of Charlestown bond!
There had been ten City of Charlestown bonds. Mr. Fairchild had cut the coupons from all ten. Felix had just recounted them and listed them in ink. Evidently one of the bonds had gotten shoved out of sight on the slippery surface of the table, and Mr. Fairchild had carelessly returned only nine to the tin box.
Felix stood contemplating the paper in his hand with slow and sluggish comprehension. He would give it to a bank official as he went out. No. Better return it directly to Mr. Fairchild. But Mr. Fairchild had said that he was not returning to his office until the next morning. Well, he wouldn't miss the bond before morning. More than likely, he would never miss it, or, if he did, he would lay its disappearance to his own carelessness (of which he was quite aware, and quite ashamed, too), and in selfprotection say nothing of it. He had once told Felix not to mention to Miss Ward, his secretary, the fact that he had misplaced an envelope in which there was two hundred and fifty dollars that she had just cashed for him for a business trip. The envelope had been found in the scrap-basket later by an office boy.
To Mr. Fairchild two hundred and fifty dollars wasn't enough to bother about. Nor, it suddenly dawned upon Felix, was a thousand either, for that matter. The loss of either amount wouldn't make Mr. Fairchild suffer, nor anybody he cared about. While to Felix, while to the person Felix cared most about in the world, it would mean He drew in his breath sharply and looked at the paper with new and sudden interest.
He had left Sheilah in bed that morning. In his mind's eye he could see her now—lying on her side, listless and unresponsive, one bare arm extending beyond the edge of the bed, and her hand hanging down limp.
Quickly Felix raised his eyes and looked at the closed door, swiftly his glance darted from corner to corner of the sealed cage like a frightened bird, then sought the roof—made of round disks of glass set in metal, across which now hurried hundreds of tramping feet, careless and unconcerned.
It wasn't so much to make sure that he was alone and unwatched that made Felix search the little room with frightened eyes, as it was a wish to escape the sudden opportunity thrust before him. He didn't want to take the bond. Since his marriage he had never been anything but honest in his various positions. But he had a sneaking feeling that it was because he was afraid of being anything else. He had seen other young men (other young men whom Sheilah had referred to asexamples for him to follow) win positions of responsibility by running risks with honesty, as he had seen other boys, in his school and college days, cheat without discovery and shame. The doctor had said Quickly Felix shoved the bond into the deep side pocket of his overcoat.
For days afterward Felix searched for a plausible explanation to give Sheilah for his sudden acquisition of wealth. Sheilah had always been the family treasurer. Felix could make no deposits at the bank where they kept their savings, or draw out any checks without her knowledge. Nor could he tell her his pay had been raised. He always passed over his pay envelope to Sheilah unbroken. Nor that he had borrowed the money. She despised borrowing. She would insist that he send it back.
Felix was sole custodian of but one source of income. The money he made on his miniature furniture was his alone, to save or spend as was his whim. But it was so little. Of course there was the 'chef-d'œuvre.' It occurred to Felix to tell Sheilah that the doll-house had finally been sold at an excessive figure. But what if she should wander into the toy-shop in town some day, where his things were exhibited, as she did occasionally, and discover it still there? Felix had sewn the bond into the lining of the overcoat to keep it safe, till he could think of an explanation.
For a week he had thought of little else. Night after night it had kept him awake for hours and hours. Well—it needn't any more! He could go to bed and to sleep now. He would leave the bond in its deep hiding-place till morning and then slip it hastily into his bag, when Sheilah wasn't looking (she always lay down now right after breakfast) and give it back to Mr. Fairchild as soon as he reached the office.
With a sigh of relief he got up, put out the light, and stole softly back into the dining-room, hung up the overcoat on its back hook, and crawled between the covers on the couch.
Just when would he return the bond? Just how? He seldom saw Mr. Fairchild alone. Would he ask if he might see him alone? And once alone, how would it be best to begin? How would he explain to Mr. Fairchild the fact that he had kept the bond so long without mentioning it? Mr. Fairchild had often said that the moment his faith in an employee's honesty was disturbed, however small the offense, he dismissed him immediately, as a fairer arrangement for all concerned. Wouldn't giving back the bond be likely to disturb Mr. Fairchild's faith in Felix's absolute honesty? He mustn't run the risk of losing his position, now, of all times.
Couldn't he perhaps drop the bond in the back of a drawer of Mr. Fairchild's desk, and let him run across it himself some day? Or possibly mail it to him in a government envelope and a typewritten address? No! Either would arouse investigation sooner or later. He alone had been with Mr. Fairchild that day at the bank. He would be sure to be questioned. He wasn't clever at deceit.
Felix didn't sleep much that night after all.