Sheila

“ Would not Sheila have been thrilled by this glimpse of the coming North? She would have fancied that greater mountains lay far behind these rounded slopes hidden in mist. She would have imagined that no human habitations were near those rising plains of sombre hue, where the red deer and the fox ought to dwell. And in her delight at getting away from the fancied brightness of the South, would she not have been exceptionally grateful and affectionate toward himself, and striven to please him with her tender ways? ”

“ Sheila, in an attempt to save his reputation, to save his self-respect in the eyes of the home folks and of the world in general, had uttered a direct falsehood and cut herself off from him and from those who loved her. This was too much for any decent man to stand. Was he a coward? Would he shelter himself—as he had told her—behind her skirts?
Tunis believed that Cap'n Ira and Prudence, when once the shock of the girl's revelation was past, loved her so dearly that they would forgive Sheila if they knew all the truth—if they knew the girl as he knew her. He was not so sure of Aunt Lucretia. ”

“ Sheila, standing near Girlie's elbow, felt the exhilaration which youth does feel at the impact of explosive noise and motion, the stamping of feet, the shouting, the loud laughter, the music, the bounding, prancing bodies: savagery in a good humor, childhood again, but without the painful intensity of childhood. Sheila wondered just as any débutante in a city ballroom wonders, whether she would have partners, whether she would have "a good time." ”

“ It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us that we stumble upon life's real gift to us. And thus it happened for Sheila. It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her. But beneath the apparent caprice was a fine justice—for life was at last kind to Sheila through her son.
As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as, even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen. ”

“ It was something that had made the girl what she was. It explained all Tunis had been unable heretofore to understand about Sheila Macklin. That timidity, that whispering shyness, the shrinking from observation and from any attention, were all explained. She had suffered persecution and punishment, harsh and undeserved, that made her recoil from contact with other more fortunate people. She felt herself outcast, ostracized, and was unable to defend herself from malign fortune. ”

“ Sheila's delicate, crystalline beauty pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star: her dress of white mist, her slender young arms, her long, slim, romantic throat, the finish and polish of her, every detail done lovingly as if by a master's silver-pointed pencil, her hair so artlessly simple and shining, smooth and rippled under the lights, the strangeness of her face! Girlie told herself again that it was an irregular face, that the chin was not right, that the eyes were not well-opened and lacked color, that the nose was odd, defying classification ”

“ And now it was Sheila’s turn to look a bit embarrassed and color, and appear uncertain whether to be vexed or pleased, when her husband himself broke in in his usual impetuous fashion: “I say, Ingram, don’t be a fool! Of course you must call her Sheila—unless when there are people here, and then you must please yourself. Why, the poor girl has enough of strange things and names about her already. ”

“ To put a little barbaric splendor of decoration into the little smoking-room, to have a scent of peat-smoke in the air, and to have a timid, sweet-voiced, pretty Highland girl suddenly make her appearance, with an odor of the sea about her, as it were, and a look of fresh breezes in the color of her cheeks—what mortal man could find fault with this innocent jest? Sheila’s moments of doubt were succeeded by long hours of joyous confidence, in which a happy light shone on her face. ”

“ A TOUCH of wistful warmth comes to my heart when I think of Sheila, blue-eyed, bright-haired, Irish Sheila, flushed with the adventure of foreign travel, and all unapprised of the toils that wait in Canadian kitchens to take the feet of the unwary immigrant. ”

“ That old woman had got into such a habit of talking about her approaching death that Sheila had ceased to believe her, and had grown to fancy that these morbid speculations were indulged in chiefly for the sake of shocking bystanders. But a dead man or a dead woman is suddenly invested with a great solemnity; and Sheila, with a pang of remorse, thought of the fashion in which she had suspected this old woman of a godless hypocrisy. She felt, too, that she had unjustly disliked Mrs. Lavender—that she had feared to go near her, and blamed her unfairly for many things that had happened. ”

“ He imagined Clyde Burnaby in Sheila's place, riding Beaver Boy over the brown swells, along the narrow trails and abrupt rises of the foothills, raising several hundred chickens, helping with the housework, the mending—all the daily feminine chores that fell to the lot of a rancher's womenkind. Would she be as good a friend to him as Sheila had been? And he fancied Sheila in her place—tailor-mades and evening gowns instead of riding skirts, Paris instead of pony hats, with nothing in particular to do but have a good time and spend money. Make good? ”

“ But Ingram had got a full and complete holiday on which to come up and see Sheila; and he had brought with him the wild and startling proposal that in order that she should take her first plunge into the pleasures of civilized life, her husband and herself should drive down to Richmond and dine at the Star and Garter.
“What is that?” said Sheila.
“My dear girl,” said the husband, seriously, “your ignorance is something fearful to contemplate. It is quite bewildering. How can a person who does not know what the Star and Garter is, be told what the Star and Garter is?” ”

“ But Sheila had the merry heart that travelled all the day with her,
That put the laughing on her lips and dancing in her feet.
I've met with martyrs in my time, and Faith! they make the best of it,
But 'tis the uncomplaining ones that wear a sorrow long,
'Twas Sheila had the better way and that's to make a jest of it,
To call her trouble out to dance and step it with a song.
Eh, but Sheila had the laugh the like of drink to weary ones,
(I've never heard the beat of it for all I've wandered wide.) ”

“ Sheila only sighed. “I do not wish them to be altered,” she said by and by, with her eyes growing pensive; “all I know is, that I could not live the same life. And you—you seemed to be happier up in the Highlands than you have ever been since.”
“Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild duck, I should have grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of—”
He stopped for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father. ”

“ Ingram belonged to a very good family,” said Sheila, quietly.
“That is so. But each man is responsible for his own manners; and as all the society he sees consists of a cat and some wooden pipes in a couple of dingy rooms in Sloane Street, you can’t expect him not to make an ass of himself.”
“I have never seen him make himself ridiculous; I do not think it possible,” said Sheila, with a certain precision of speech which Lavender had got to know meant much. “But that is a matter for himself. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do when I meet him at Mrs. Kavanagh’s house.” ”

“ There seems no time to talk about better things. It must be done before they leave."
"Then it must be done to-night," said Sheila, "for I feel to be in a regular nightmare, and really I can hardly bear the sight of them. Do you suppose there are many such wicked children in the world? I have been appalled at the things they say."
"We can't let them go back without telling them of the Good Shepherd," said Miss Gregson softly.
"You are an angel," said Sheila, holding out her hand affectionately to her old governess. "You are only thinking of the children, and I am only thinking of myself. ”

“ Lavender, indeed, was much cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of carelessness, “I am sorry you should vex yourself so much about Sheila. One would think you had had the ambition yourself, at some time or other, to play the part of husband to her; and doubtless then you would have made sure that all her idle fancies were gratified. As it is, I was about to relieve you from the trouble of further explanation by saying that I am quite competent to manage my own affairs, and that if Sheila has any complaint to make she must make it to me.” ”

“ There iss no day at all Sheila will not be out some time or other; and she is never so well as in the hard weather, when she will be out always in the snow and the frost, and hef plenty of exercise and amusement.”
“She is not often ailing, I suppose?” said Lavender.
“She is as strong as a young pony, that’s what Sheila is,” said her father, proudly. “And there’s no one in the island will run so fast, or walk so long without tiring, or carry things from the shore as she will—not one.” ”

“ When Sheila's attention wandered away from the talk of her companions she could not help listening for the sound of the waves; and as there was no such message coming to her from the great wooded plain without, her fancy took her away across that mighty country she had traveled through, and carried her up to the island of Loch Roag, until she almost fancied she could smell the peat-smoke in the night-air, and listen to the sea, and hear her father pacing up and down the gravel outside the house, perhaps thinking of her as she was thinking of him. ”

“ Sheila, I want to speak very frankly to you. Don’t take it for mere jealousy, though you have hardly looked at me since Mr. Vickery and the Winfield fellow struck town. I don’t Suppose you care for me any more, but I beg you not to let anybody take you off the stage. You belong. You have the God-given gifts. Your success proves where your duty to yourself lies. ”

“ Sheila did not wish to enter into any controversy about the habits of her husband, so she said: “I hope you will see him before he goes, Mrs. Lavender. He is very anxious to know how you are, and I am glad to find you looking so well. You do not look like an invalid at all.”
“Oh, I’m not going to die yet,” said the little dried old woman, with the harsh voice, the staring eyes, and the tightly twisted gray hair. ”

“ See, my Sheila, your drunken, reckless lover pulls this sweet offering from his garden and offers it to you. He has no virtues; and yet he would have been a thousand times worse, if you had not come into his life. He had in him the seeds of trouble, the sproutings of shame, for even in the first days of his love there in Dublin he would not restrain himself. He drank, he played cards, he fought and went with bad company—not women, never that; but he kept the company of those through whom he came at last to punishment for manslaughter. ”

“ Sheila said. "If you ask her to marry you, she will marry you: I am sure of that from what I have heard, and she would be very foolish if she was not proud and glad to do that. And you—what doubt can you have, after all that you have been saying of late?"
"But you don't marry a woman merely because you admire her cleverness and kindness," he said; and then he added suddenly, "Sheila, would you do me a great favor? Mrs. Lorraine and her mother are leaving for the Continent to-night. ”

“ Llyn had never known Sheila to lie or twist the truth in all her days. No one was more obedient to wise argument; and her mother had a feeling that now, perhaps, the time had come when they two must have a struggle for mastery. There was every reason why they should not go to Dublin. There Sheila might discover that Erris Boyne was her father, and might learn the story of her mother’s life. ”

“ Sheila, even though her life is a continual sacrifice of all the pleasures and luxuries most girls have, is a finer girl and a more worth-while friend than poor Angeline--and I think the next time you'll stand up for her, won't you, my dear? ”

“ Sheila wished that this fragile-looking girl would not so continually refer to her husband, but how was any one to find fault with her when she put a little air of plaintiveness into the ordinarily cold gray eyes, and looked at her small hand as much as to say, “The fingers there are very small, and even whiter than the glove that covers them. They are the fingers of a child, who ought to be petted.”
Then the men came in from the dining-room. Lavender looked around to see where Sheila was—perhaps with a trifle of disappointment that she was not the most prominent figure there. ”

“ But the moment for yielding had passed with Sheila. "I see nothing of the sort," she replied with a flare of temper. "Her having children—or not having them—has no bearing whatever on the matter."
"Oh, yes, it has! You mark my words—she hasn't had any children because she's wanted to spend all her time advancing herself—building up a tawdry little fame for herself! I tell you, Sheila, talent's a bad thing for a woman—a bad thing!"
"But, Ted—I write." ”

“ An almost inconceivable joy rewarded Sheila till the final spectator had italicized the last compliment. Then, just as Samson was caught under his own triumph, so Sheila went down suddenly under the ruination of her brief victory.
She was never to act again! She was never to act again!
When Bret came slowly to her, the last of her audience, she read in his eyes just what he felt, and he read in her eyes just what she felt. They wrung hands in mutual adoration and mutual torment. But all they said was:
“You were never so beautiful! You never acted so well!” ”