Sheilah walked along the country road carrying a sheaf of flaming leaves. It was late October. The air was full of the smell of fall—apples and wild grapes, fallen leaves, smouldering fires—and full too this afternoon of a golden glow that tinged the rolling pastures, distant hills, and sky beyond, as if the sun was shining through amber glass. Sheilah breathed deep of the clear, apricot-colored air, rich and thick and sparkling like a liqueur, she thought, or some rare nectar, distilled from many fruits—the essence of summer, the loveliness of all the days from May to October, condensed and concentrated.
There was no wind stirring. She stopped beneath a motionless beech tree for a moment, and gazed up into its canary-yellow foliage. Several of the leaves floated languidly down upon her, and made tiny soft sounds as they touched the ground. A little bird of some sort chirped twice on a hidden branch. Adistant chipmunk chattered. Sheilah smiled. Only one whose heart is very calm and quiet can hear such little sounds. As she swung down the hill that led into the town she observed the various roadside signs and symbols of the New England autumn—piles of orange-colored pumpkins on the back porch of almost every house she passed, mounds of discarded apples beneath the bared branches of the orchards, Indian wigwams in place of the waving cornfields.
Ten minutes later, walking along the main street of the town, beneath the tawny elm trees, Sheilah stopped several times to speak to neighbors whom she met (this was her second autumn in Terry, Vermont), passing on each time with a deepening smile. Little sounds beneath a tree, simple sights along a road-way, homely expressions of friendliness from neighbors, all gave pleasure to Sheilah now.
She turned in at a gateway half a dozen houses beyond the first elm tree of the long colonnade, and approached a house painted ginger-snap brown of ugly, nondescript architecture. It had a steep A roof facing the street, a front door off the center, and a bay-window beside the front door. Sheilah saw only the glorious garland of scarlet woodbine festooned over the front door as she walked up the path.
'I'm home, Mother,' she called cheerfully up the front stairs as she shoved open the front door.
She laid down her autumn leaves for a moment on one of the morris-chairs crowded into the sitting-room at the left of the door (there were six morris-chairs in all dispersed through the brown house. Felix's mother had had a fancy for morris-chairs), and went into the kitchen to get a pitcher of water for the leaves before taking them upstairs to the invalid.
Sheilah liked the kitchen. There were cupboards, hand-grained in golden brown along one side of the room; two rush-bottomed maple chairs she had found in the loft of the barn; a table with a red cloth; and a low, legless, unornamented stove squatting on the floor like a comfortable old cat, its kettle softly purring.
Sheilah ran upstairs with her leaves and brought into the sick-room not only her flame of color, but a smile besides, and a bright, 'I'm going to feed the hens now. I'll turn your chair so you can see me.'
Felix's mother smiled at her. 'You're a good girl, Sheilah,' she murmured, with a significant thickness in her speech.
Sheilah leaned and kissed the invalid gratefully on her forehead.
A few minutes later, standing amidst a fluttering flock: of feathery white leghorns, coral-tipped, sprinkling golden nuggets amidst them, she looked up and waved gayly at Felix's mother.
When she returned to the house she took off her hat and coat—rough, brown, practical affairs, and hung them in a closet off the kitchen, then lifted her head and listened, glancing toward the woodshed. The door was ajar.
'Phillip, is that you?'
'Yes,' a boy's voice replied, and Phillip appeared in the doorway, frail, pale, as he used to be—he would always be frail and pale—but smiling.
Phillip had a strangely sweet smile, Sheilah had come to think, deep and still and abiding, as if there was some secret source of joy in him no one knew about but himself. Only lessons that were too hard for him could contort Phillip's smile into the anguished expression of a hunted animal. Sheilah had decided to preserve Phillip's smile at whatever cost. He still attended school, but she chafed no longer at his slow progress, nor allowed his teachers to prod or urge him.
'School out so soon?' she smiled.
'Yes,' he replied, 'and I'm going over to the shop to help Father now.'
He had a board under one arm, and a saw. Phillip very often had a board under one arm, and some carpenter's tool or other. Sheilah looked at him now, standing in the glow of the late afternoon sunshine, his face alight with that deep smile of his, and was suddenly reminded of another boy, often pictured by artists, with a board under one arm and a carpenter's tool. Oh, the carpenter's craft was not one to be despised!
She crossed the kitchen, put both hands on Phillip's shoulders and said quietly, 'You're going to be a wonderful carpenter some day, Phillip.'
'Yes,' he agreed confidently, 'just like Father.'
Felix was a carpenter now, working daily in the box-factory near by. Phillip was always saying he wanted to be like his father, and following him closely about like a dog his master. Phillip's devotion to his father, like his smile, was deep and abiding. And Sheilah was as anxious to preserve it. It seemed to her as if Phillip's little hot coal of love for Felix must compensate a little for all she had failed to give him.
'Were there any letters?' she now inquired.
Phillip usually stopped at the post-office on his —way home from school.
'Yes,' he replied. 'I forgot. Three. For you.'
Phillip could read handwriting now. Sheilah usually had him tell her whom the letters were for, and when the postmarks were clear enough, from what city they were mailed. But to-day she was too eager to stop for the spelling lesson. It was Tuesday. Laetitia's and Roddie's Sunday letters came on Tuesday.
Laetitia was in college now. Sheilah's early fears about Laetitia, and her tendency toward cheapness in taste and manners, had disappeared. A desire for an education, and the fineness that goes with it, had been instilled in Laetitia when she was at boarding-school, under the soft, steady influence of a very wise and a very lovely head-mistress.
Also Sheilah's graver fears about Roddie were disappearing. Roddie was at a boarding-school where there was an equally wise head-master. 'Your boy is not a scholar,' he had written not long ago. 'I do not advise college for him. But you have reason to be proud of him. He is a hard, conscientious, and honest worker.'
How Sheilah had treasured that word 'honest'! With what joy she had shown it to Felix!
As soon as she was alone she drew up a chair close to the kitchen table and read her letters. First Laetitia's, then Roddie's, smiling fondly as she scanned the pages, unconsciously laughing out loud, now and then. No woman unconsciously laughs out loud if her heart is aching very hard; nor hums to herself over her work, as Sheilah caught herself doing often here in this kind, homely kitchen. Her life in Terry was dull, drab, monotonous, but the dullness and drabness and monotony had covered her, comforted her, and slowly healed—well, anyway, almost healed. Not entirely, she supposed, or she wouldn't have dreaded opening her third letter. It was from Cicely. Every time Cicely wrote to Sheilah now, she mentioned Roger Dallinger.
Cicely had returned from Europe. She had been in Wallbridge for nearly two years. She still acted as Sheilah's fairy godmother. But for Cicely, Roddie and Laetitia could not both be away at school at once. Cicely wrote to Sheilah regularly, every two weeks or so.
It appeared from her letters that she was seeing a great deal of Roger. He was running up to Wallbridge almost every week-end. Well, was not that as it should be? Roger had intended to marry Cicely once. He had told Sheilah about it. And Sheilah was well aware now that Cicely had always loved Roger. 'I ought to be glad he's going to see her,' Sheilah told herself over and over again. 'I want him to be happy, don't I? At least I ought to want him to be happy. And, anyway, it was I who suggested that he go and see Cicely. I must remember that.'
She opened Cicely's letter with straightened shoulders, steeling herself against the reference she feared. Cicely had bought a new horse, she read on the third page, and Roger (ah! here it was as usual) had been good enough to exercise him for her over the last week-end. They had had a glorious ride together. Did Sheilah remember the high hill just beyond the golf club? They had ridden to the top of that hill and had stopped their horses a moment beneath the pine trees that crowned it—and listened to the music of the wind in their needles. Something stabbed Sheilah sharply at that. Oh, she wished Cicely wouldn't write her any more.
She arose from the table, and began her preliminary preparations for supper, but she did not hum. If she had read Roddie's and Laetitia's letters after Cicely's she would not have laughed out loud. Always Cicely's references to Roger broke through the smooth surface of her serenity like this, and riled the quieted waters underneath.
There was no reason of course for Roger to be constant to her. But she had thought that like herself, perhaps he would not escape constancy. It hurt her terribly that he could so quickly share experiences with another woman that she had believed were sacred to herself alone. It robbed her renunciation of much of its beauty and glory. 'Oh, well,' she shrugged and sighed. A man's constancy, she guessed, even Roger's, depended upon propinquity. Just as well to find it out. Her cure would prove more permanent, the sooner she stopped idealizing Roger. Anyhow, what difference did it make to her now, what he did, whom he saw? She was happy, wasn't she?
'Yes, I am happy.' Stoically she assured herself and mechanically, with the efficiency of long practice, turned her mind to happy subjects—the children all doing so well, Felix more contented than he had ever been in his life before, the revelation that there was much to love in his parents, and the immediate pleasure of mixing a fresh johnny-cake for supper.