The Torch Bearer Part 4

The words flashed their accusation at her with unmistakable clarity.

"Yes," she a.s.sented once more, slowly, "I did." And then, with pained surprise, "Why, that _was_ a lie, wasn't it?"

"And now," finished Ted ruthlessly, "you're making up lies about heaven for yourself! What's the matter with you, Sheila?"

They had reached Mrs. Caldwell's gate, and for a moment they stood staring at each other, the question hanging in the air between them.

Then there came to Sheila a swift, inward vision of the contradictions of her own temperament, a vision untempered by the merciful knowledge that, in the final a.n.a.lysis, all human nature is very much alike.

"Oh," she cried, "what _is_ the matter with me?"

And with a sob, she fled up the path to the house, leaving Ted frightened, ashamed, and more bewildered than ever.

CHAPTER III

The moment when Sheila had that terrifying inward vision of her own inconsistencies marked the beginning of her self-consciousness. For a while this was acute and painful. She was always afraid of finding herself, quite unintentionally, involved in a labyrinth of untruth, and her conscience, which pa.s.sionately rejected any dishonesty that it perceived, was continually occupied in a.n.a.lyzing her emotions and impulses, her most guileless thoughts and her simplest actions.

"I am naturally a liar," she told herself solemnly. "I must watch myself all the time--because I am naturally a liar!"

But she said nothing of her self-revelation and ensuing struggles to Mrs. Caldwell. It was a thing to be overcome in shame and silence, and alone, this innate wickedness of hers.

Her shame was indeed so genuine that she met Ted, for the first time after he had shown her failing to her, with deep reluctance. He must have been thinking of her awful tendency ever since they had parted--as she had been. And he could not possibly respect her! But to her amazement, he greeted her with his usual manner of untroubled good fellowship. Clearly, she had not sunk in his estimation. She was astounded, and shocked at him as well as at herself, until it occurred to her that he might have forgotten the matter altogether. This was incredible, but more honorably incredible than that he should remember and not care. And if it were the case, she must not take advantage of his forgetfulness; she must not unfairly keep his esteem.

"Ted," she said, with an effort worthy of a more saintly confessor, "Ted, I reckon I ought to remind you about the way I acted with Lisbeth."

"What about it? Did your grandmother scold you much?"

"Why, no. Don't you understand what I mean?" It was too painful to put her sin into words.

"Has Lisbeth been after you again?" But the question was obviously not one of sympathy, for Ted's voice was sharp now. At the mention of Lisbeth he had recalled his grievance.

"No," repeated Sheila. "I meant I ought to remind you about--_me_."

And as Ted stared at her with no gleam of comprehension in his eyes, she was forced to become explicit: "I mean--the way I let Lisbeth believe what wasn't so."

Ted looked at her speculatively for a moment, wondering if he had better rebuke her again for her folly, so that she should not commit it a second time. She would be capable of doing the whole thing over, under the impression that she was benefiting Lisbeth. She was so queer!

"You were very silly," he said finally.

"I was wicked!" she exclaimed in a fervor of repentance.

Ted continued to regard her with that speculative gaze. "Well, you _are_ a queer one!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed slowly.

Sheila flushed. She had abased herself in penitence, and he only thought her queer. He _always_ thought her queer! She turned on him with a flare of temper that burned up her humility so far as he was concerned:

"How _dare_ you call me queer? How _dare_ you call me silly? I hate you, Theodore Kent! I never want to see you again as long as I live!

You're--_you're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord_!"

And with this scriptural anathema, plagiarized from the Presbyterian minister's latest sermon, she flung away from him in a fit of wrath that did much to restore her normal self-respect.

However, though she felt no further uneasiness in the presence of Ted--whom she forgave the next day with the readiness that is the virtue of a quick temper--she continued her vigil over herself until time softened her impression of her iniquity. And even then, when her self-criticism had relaxed, her consciousness of her individual temperament remained. She had discovered herself, and this self, like her shadow which she had discovered with wild excitement in her babyhood, would be her life companion. After she ceased to fear it, as a possible moral monster, she began to take a profound interest in it and its behavior.

"What will you be doing next?" she would inquire of it quaintly, "what _will_ you be doing next, Other-Sheila?"

She did in fact credit this newly realized self of hers with a very distinct and separate personality. All her caprices, her unexpected and unexplainable impulses, her mystic imaginings, she laid at its door, and in her fantastic name for it--"Other-Sheila"--she probably found the true name for something that the psychologists define far more clumsily.

But stung into sensitiveness by Ted's taunt about her queerness, she kept her discovery of Other-Sheila to herself. Not even to Mrs.

Caldwell, who was a friend as well as a grandmother; not even to Peter, who was all the while feeding her eager young mind with food both wholesome and stimulating, and becoming, in his task, a comrade who rivalled Ted in her affections, did she confide the existence of this other self. With self-consciousness came the instinct of reserve--not a lack of frankness, but a kind of modesty of the soul.

She had pa.s.sed her fifteenth birthday before Other-Sheila roused her to unrest. Until that time, the shadowy self dwelling deep within her, and every now and then flashing forth elusively just long enough to manifest its reality, had been a secret and delightful companion, one with whom she held animated conversations when alone, and from whose acquiescence to all her wishes and opinions she extracted considerable comfort.

"Other-Sheila," she would say to herself, "is the only person who always agrees with me." And then she would add, with a glint of whimsical humor in her gray eyes, "I reckon that's what an Other-Sheila is _for_!"

But after a while Other-Sheila became less acquiescent and more a.s.sertive. And for the first time in her life, Sheila felt within her the troubling spirit of discontent. She wanted something, wanted it desperately as the very young always do, but she did not know what that something was. It was a tantalizing experience, and she saw no end to it.

"If I could only find out _what_ I want, I might get it," she mused.

And then, "Don't you know what it is, Other-Sheila?" But Other-Sheila was provokingly unresponsive, though it was probably her desire that fretted the objective Sheila's mind.

Mrs. Caldwell saw the unrest in the young girl's face and recognized it for what it was--the unrest of growth. It was a look of unborn things stirring beneath the surface, stirring and quivering as flowers must stir and tremble beneath the ground before they break their way through to the sun. But though she watched eagerly from day to day, ready to do her part when the hour for it should come, Mrs. Caldwell was too wise a gardener to hasten bloom.

"Peter," said she one day, when he had paused in an indolent stroll to chat with her over her garden hedge, "Peter, it's a terrible thing to be young!"

"Is it?" he laughed. "Why?"

"So many things have to happen to you!" And out of the security of her placid years Mrs. Caldwell spoke with an earnest pity.

Peter laughed again. "Well, I'm young--at least, I suppose I would be so considered. And _nothing_ ever happens to me!"

Mrs. Caldwell surveyed him with mischievous eyes. "No, Peter," she contradicted, "you're not young--yet. You're not even alive yet.

You're too lazy to really live! But you'll have to come to it some day. We all have to be born finally."

He chuckled at her comprehension of him. Then a disturbed look fluttered across his face: "Do you actually mean that there's no escape?"

"None! It's better to yield gracefully--and have it over. And if you don't hurry a bit, Sheila will be through her growing pains while yours are still before you!"

"Little Sheila? The master's star pupil?"

"Yes," she insisted, "little Sheila. You'll be taking her to parties in a long frock before you know it. She graduates from the Seminary next year."

But Peter was nearer to meeting Sheila in a long frock than either he or Mrs. Caldwell dreamed. For at that moment Sheila was planning to wear one before she was a week older.

She and Charlotte Davis were in the latter's dainty room, and spread on the bed before them was Charlotte's new party frock. Charlotte's father was the wealthiest man in Shadyville, and both she and her frock did his wealth justice. She was now at home, for the Easter vacation, from a fashionable boarding-school in Baltimore, the Shadyville Seminary not satisfying Mr. Davis's requirements for his youngest and favorite daughter. Her absence from the little town during the greater part of the past two years had enabled her to erase its traces. She had become a typical city-bred girl and she appeared pert, smartly dressed and, for her sixteen years, amazingly mature. She had always been prettier than Sheila, though no one had ever realized it and probably no one ever would. For her prettiness was so informed with sharp intelligence that her face had a challenging and almost aggressive quality. Boys had never admired her, and men were not likely to do so either, so lacking was she in the softer and more appealing charms of her s.e.x. Even at sixteen her bright blue eyes were a trifle hard, not because of what they had seen--for she was, in experience, still the nice little ingenue--but of what they had seen _through_. The veil of credulity never dimmed her clear, bold glance.

But for Sheila she was always gentle, so strong in this shrewd, fastidious young creature was her one deep and uncritical affection.

As the two girls examined the frock on the bed--a rose chiffon over silk that fairly shrieked of expense--Sheila sighed. "Will you wear it Friday night?" she inquired wistfully.

For on Friday night Charlotte was to give a party--a real evening party to which the debutantes and even the older set were coming, as well as the school-girls and boys. It would be Sheila's first grown-up party--and she had only a white muslin and a blue sash to make herself fine with. Thus Mrs. Caldwell had dressed for parties until her marriage, and it had never occurred to her to provide any other costume for Sheila, who was not yet quite sixteen. Besides, in Mrs. Caldwell's opinion--and even in the exquisite Peter's--there was no sweeter sight than a young girl in white muslin and blue ribbons. But to Sheila, in comparison with Charlotte's splendor, the white muslin seemed unspeakably dowdy. And so, when she asked Charlotte about her toilette for the great occasion, it was with a heart of unfestive heaviness.