# Conflict (Prouty)/Book 3/Chapter 3

Sometimes Sheilah wished that Dr. Evarts had found something organic the trouble with her after all. Then there would be something tangible to fight. To be told by him lightly, over and over again, that there was no reason for her sensations—that she was 'perfectly sound physically' (she thought she would scream the next time he said that) filled her with shame and self-contempt. She had always scorned women who imagined themselves sick. Dr. Evarts always left her in deep despair.
He would have been surprised. He supposed assurances cheered her up. He did not make light of her condition when talking to Felix, but he was of the school which believes it is folly to take a patient into one's confidence. It was better to get Sheilah's mind off herself. Talk about something else, anything else, an anecdote, a funny story would do. Make her laugh! Dr. Evarts was under the impression that all patients like a cheerful doctor. He was always in the pink of condition himself—never tired, never depressed—a big blond man, as sunny in appearance as in manner. One of his patients had told Sheilah once that Dr. Evarts was like a shaft ​of sunlight in a sickroom. 'Perhaps,' sighed Sheilah despairingly, after one of his vivacious calls, 'but to aching eyes sunlight may sometimes be painful.'
She wished she could talk to Dr. Sheldon—quiet, grave, listening Dr. Sheldon. Never very merry. He never tried to make her smile. Dr. Sheldon was like a gently drawn curtain in a sick room when one is tired and would like to go to sleep. But it would mean a trip to Wallbridge. She could not afford unnecessary trips.
On a certain morning in late June, Sheilah woke to the realization that she must somehow muster enough strength to go in town to do some necessary shopping for the children. It had been haunting her for a week. Every necessity haunted her lately, loomed ahead of her like a menacing calamity. She postponed the dreaded shopping-tour until after lunch, and then, after the children had gone back to school, sprang up from the couch, put on her hat, and plunged out into the midday sun and heat in desperate and unintelligent determination.
Sheilah was crossing a crowded thoroughfare two hours later, when somebody spoke her name from the back of an automobile which the traffic policeman had brought to a standstill immediately in front of her. Her hands were full of packages. She usually paid and carried.
'Why, it's Sheilah, isn't it?' the voice exclaimed. ​('No, no! It isn't Sheilah!') Sheilah wanted to reply, and might have, too, in all honesty, for it really wasn't the Sheilah Cicely Morgan had known so many years ago.
It was Cicely Morgan in the back of the automobile. Cicely had spent most of her time in Europe since the war. Sheilah hadn't seen Cicely for over a dozen years. But it was the same Cicely, with the same smooth manner, and still very beautiful in spite of the bit of white hair that showed from beneath the brim of her perfect, close-fitting little hat—still a perfect, close-fitting little hat.
Sheilah's hat was anything but perfect and close-fitting—it had always been too big in the crown—and her dress, a black cotton marquisette with white polka-dots, which she had bought for fifteen dollars in a department-store basement, was anything but perfect and close-fitting too. She wished the traffic policeman would wave his hand and let her escape. But he didn't. She found herself acknowledging her identity in spite of herself.
'Yes, it's I—Sheilah. Hello, Cicely!' She smiled, and her eyes brightened. It took more than broken nerves, a body that ached, and clothes that were cheap and shabby, to rob Sheilah of her charm of manner.
'Get in. Let me take you where you're going,' said Cicely.
​'Oh, no, thank you.'
'Parsons, open the door.'
The chauffeur sprang quickly from his place behind the wheel and flung open wide the door in front of Sheilah. Sheilah felt like a mouse being scuttled into a trap. She looked helplessly to left and right. The car in front had begun to move. She heard the shrill, impatient whistle of the policeman.
'Get in, my dear,' ordered Cicely, 'You're holding up the traffic.'
'But I'm only going as far as the subway,' Sheilah objected as she sank into the cushioned seat beside Cicely.
'I'll drop you anywhere,' said Cicely.
But Cicely didn't drop Sheilah until they had reached a wooden apartment house, in such a row of wooden apartment houses as Cicely had never dropped any one before.
Too tactful to refer to the number of Sheilah's packages, or to remark upon how tired and ill she looked, Cicely had made excuse that she had long been intending to look Sheilah up, and here was the very opportunity! She had finished her shopping, was, in fact, on her way home. She had no dinner engagement. She didn't care when she reached Wallbridge.
'But the trolley-cars take me within a block of my door,' said Sheilah.
​'I shall take you within the width of the sidewalk of your door,' announced Cicely.
No use to contend! Oh, well, never mind. What did it matter? Let Cicely see where she lived if she wanted to, how she lived too. She didn't care.
With sudden abandon, Sheilah found herself saying to Cicely when the car slid to a silent standstill before her own eight-belled front door, 'Wont you come in and see the children?'
Cicely replied, 'Just for a minute, I'd like to.'
All the way up the not-too-clean front stairs, through the two long halls smelling of preparing suppers, Sheilah had a strong desire to sit down somewhere and burst into laughter—into long, relieving, racking peals of laughter.
Instead—stopping a moment before unlocking the door upon the untidiness she knew was awaiting her just inside (she had been so tired after lunch), she turned and looked at Cicely, and said quietly, 'This is what life has done to me, Cicely.'
Cicely replied with the same simple candor, placing her hand upon Sheilah's arm, 'I was afraid so, when I saw you,' and pretense fell away from between the two women like a veil, and they stood looking at each other with cleared vision.
Afterward Cicely and Sheilah sat for a long while on the couch in the dining-room. Sheilah found it easy to tell Cicely things she had never told any one ​before. She did not talk disloyally of Felix, nor despairingly of her life—simply answered Cicely's tactful questions honestly, listlessly, and found immense relief in doing so.
The children came in later, and shook hands with Cicely, then stole out again into an adjoining room to gaze through a half-closed door at the lovely lady mother had brought home, in the big automobile out in front. At a little after six Felix came in and shook hands, too, apologizing uncomfortably for the way he looked, then also stole out into an adjoining room.
Cicely was very thoughtful as she drove home that night, alone in the back of her car, underneath the stars. Her life had not been rich with close relationships. She had never married. Denied the one man she had ever wanted, she preferred no makeshifts. Denied the one close relationship that would have made the cultivation of others seem worth while to her, she had chosen to withdraw into her brain, as it were, concentrate on mental activities, make of herself a creature of thought and action, submerge feeling. She had had enough of feeling and its ravages.
Other women, disappointed as she had been, often find consolation in substituting quantity for quality, building up about themselves a fortress of many ​friends, forming many relationships of varying sorts and of varying satisfaction in place of the one perfect one. Not so with Cicely. A cold woman, people called her. Beautiful, brilliant, with a brain that had but to be touched to respond, but with feelings scarcely ever aroused.
But to-night Cicely's feelings had been aroused. Something tender and unfamiliarly maternal had stolen over her as she had sat on the couch beside Sheilah, and held her hand. Sheilah on her part had felt something tender for Cicely. A little of that nearly forgotten, young-girl infatuation for Cicely had swept over Sheilah, as Cicely had risen to say good-bye. Cicely had been aware of it, and she treasured it to-night, as she sped home underneath the stars. Home! Six servants, a German police dog and a wire-haired fox-terrier!
Cicely called up Dr. Sheldon after her solitary dinner that night. The police dog announced him at nine o'clock.
Two days later Sheilah received a letter from Cicely. Her throat ached and her eyes smarted as she read it.
It had not been until after Dr. Sheldon had left Cicely Morgan that night that she had asked for her mail. There had been only one letter—a letter, ​however, the mere address of which brought the sudden color to her face. She hadn't supposed, after all these years of self-discipline, the sight of her name in the familiar handwriting that had once been so vital to her, would still quicken her pulse.
It was a letter she had been rather expecting—rather dreading, too—ever since Roger Dallinger had surprised several doctors by recovering from a severe illness last spring. A mutual friend kept Cicely informed as to outward events in Roger Dallinger's life. Cicely had been in Paris when the mutual friend had written her that pneumonia had swooped down upon Roger Dallinger, following an operation for appendicitis, and that it wasn't expected he could possibly pull through. She mentioned the hospital where he lay sick. Cicely on a sudden impulse had cabled flowers to be sent.
She regretted it later. Surely her brain must have been asleep to allow any such irrational act to occur. Long ago she had concluded never to stir up the ashes of that buried fire in her heart again. But she had been taken unawares. Because Roger was a year younger than herself (once such a secret thorn to her), and always so well, she had never pictured him as sick or dying. Surely she couldn't let Roger die without a sign or symbol of any sort in memory of all he had once been. Not that he would care. He would be too sick to know, perhaps. But cabling ​the flowers had soothed and comforted Cicely—at least until the mutual friend wrote that Roger was recovering. Then it disturbed and filled her with vague alarm.
Cicely leaned back against the pillows of her chaise-longue now, and closed her eyes a moment, before opening Roger's letter. He would not consider the flowers more than a gracious acknowledgment, probably, of an old friendship that had long been asleep. The card that had accompanied them had borne simply her name.
It had been she, thank Heaven, not Roger, who had given that friendship its sleep-potion so many years ago. She had that to remember for her pride's sake. When once she had become convinced that Roger felt little of the compelling force that made life intolerable to her as long as he was within her reach, and yet not with her, or at least, in constant communication with her, she had put him beyond her reach.
She recalled now the evening she had told him that she was going to Europe for a year or more, and how, to his light and careless reply, 'But you'll write often, of course,' she had quietly rejoined, 'No, I think we had better not write at all, Roger.'
That had been several months after the memorable Sunday he had spent with her in Wallbridge, when he had so failed to satisfy her. She had been tremu​lously expecting something that day (which he had given her reason to expect) and he had squandered the precious moments in admiration of a little girl he saw in church. And she had shown her disappointment. She had been so impatiently hungry that day for all of Roger, that she would have been jealous of a dog, or a flower that had power to divert his attention from her. That was the way she had cared for him—the primitive, untrained, unproud, unqueenlike way she had cared for Roger Dallinger!
Well—let her not rehearse it. It always left her feeling so stripped and shorn! Anyhow, she had not acted in a primitive, untrained way. She had not pursued Roger.
At the end of her first year abroad she had met him at a dinner party in Boston, soon after her return, and he had gaily (he was always so gay), inquired if he might not run up to Wallbridge soon, and welcome her home personally.
She, looking back into his laughing eyes (if only in their brown depths she had discovered a little anxiety as to her answer), had replied as lightly as he, 'I'm rather busy, Roger. I'm starting for California in a week.'
And he hadn't urged!
Oh, why hadn't he urged?
Cicely shrugged now and sighed, as she gazed at the unopened letter in her hand. Then sitting up, ​shoving herself back against her rich soft pile of silk pillows, broke open the envelope.
The letter began just as his letters used to begin, 'Cicely,'—as if he were speaking to her—and continued just as they used to continue, in the old, half-playful, half-serious vein that always so oddly pleased and piqued her. Subtle and simple both at once. Sophisticated and naïve all on one page. Such a mixture of boy and man! She smiled fondly. 'So awfully nice of you'—a girl's expression, followed by the conventional, man-of-the-world bromidism, 'Grant me the honor of thanking you in person,' and then for playfulness, 'Haven't you punished me long enough?' And for seriousness, 'Let me come and see you in the fall when I shall be quite fit again. I want to very much.' And then abruptly—his name—just one name, 'Roger,' the R kicking out its leg straight, like a small boy marching, just the way it used to.
Well, why not? After all these years, why not let him come and see her in the fall? Hadn't she punished herself long enough, too? And perhaps learned her lesson now? Not to require too much. To expect nothing, hope for nothing. To be satisfied with what he had to give.
Roger had never married. They might still become the best of friends. Their conversation had never lacked salt. Their relationship (but for the ​bitterness of disappointment in her own heart), had been perfectly seasoned for enjoyment. Similar points of view, dissimilar personal opinions.
Cicely sat a long while before her dressing-table that night after she had let down her hair. Roger used to say he loved her hair—lightly, of course, much in the same way he said he loved sunsets, spring, and chocolate-creams. But she had deceived herself into believing he had loved it as a man loves every pleasing detail in the woman he desires.
Sometimes he used to touch her hair, gently, just the surface of it, with the palms of his hands as if it was made of cloud, and once he had said, 'It is like a soft, dark summer night.'
How she had treasured that simile (he was so full of similes) and hugged it to her heart. Her hair had been the one thing about her that Roger had admired most, and it was the one thing that had changed most. Cicely's hair was no longer like a soft, dark summer night. It had become as white and brilliant as an Arctic noon. Oh, how she hated her white hair!
The first thing Cicely did the next morning, after she had drunk her black coffee and eaten her one piece of dry toast, was to reach under her pillow for Roger's letter and read it again. The letter had sent ​her to sleep the night before with a trace of a smile on her lips. There was the same reaction in the morning. She arose with a pleasant word for her maid, and a special greeting for each of the servants. Such had always been the effect upon Cicely of a sign or signal of any sort from Roger—magic, immediate, warming and softening her through and through, bringing out her loveliest and best.
She wrote to Sheilah when she was still under the spell of Roger's letter. Before ever reading his letter she had made up her mind to help Sheilah. But it was the indefinite sense of sudden joy in her heart, occasioned by the possibility of seeing Roger Dallinger again, that lent wings to her pen, as she wrote Sheilah, offering her gift, not as one bestowing, but as one pleading, as one in sore need of a human being just such as Sheilah—bound to her by tie of blood and family—with whom to share a little of her over-amount of prosperity. Cicely suggested camps for the two older children, a farm near Wallbridge for Phillip, and for her—for Sheilah herself, eight long, quiet, uninterrupted weeks alone in a charming hotel she knew about on the side of a mountain in New Hampshire.
Roger's letter was accountable for bringing to Cicely's mind the particular charming hotel. Cicely and Dr. Sheldon had discussed various retreats for Sheilah, but it wasn't until after Cicely read Roger's ​letter in the morning that she suddenly recalled 'Avidon's on Pine Mountain.' One of Roger's undestroyed letters had been written to her from Avidon's, when he was visiting his mother who was spending a summer there recuperating from an illness.
It wasn't a sanitarium, nor health resort, but there was a doctor—a very great and wise man, who lived in a log-cabin of rather glorified proportions, within horseback distance of the hotel. This doctor, usually dressed in khaki knickerbockers and soft shirts with the collar open, was in the habit of riding over to the hotel occasionally to share a little of his greatness and wisdom with certain of the guests there, some of whom had traveled a continent for the privilege. It was just the right place for Sheilah. Expensive. Of course Sheilah would have to have clothes—proper equipment. Cicely would see to that. If only there was a vacancy!
She called up Avidon's on the long-distance telephone. There was a vacancy! Or would be in ten days. A single room and bath overlooking the valley. Cicely engaged it.