by Lilyan Brock
Sheila knew that so long as that bond remained unbroken there could be no relief from the overpowering sadness that gripped her heart and held it fast. She must definitely place a barrier between them, an insurmountable wall to keep her forever beyond the pale of Nicoli’s arms. For Sheila felt that once she had broken their vows of fidelity, she could never again return to the woman to whom she had given herself.
So the metamorphosis came about. Sheila threw off her cloak of reserve and no longer shunned the companionship of people. Nights found her beautifully gowned, surrounded by men in the salon of the luxuriously appointed liner or dancing gaily to the music of the ship’s orchestra until the early hours of the morning—laughing—talking—drinking—dancing—at a pace made possible by the wealth of nervous energy within her; scarcely stopping for rest, but driving herself on and on until when she did stop there was no time for thought: her tired body demanded sleep.
Round and round spun this world of activity into which Sheila had thrown herself with such abandon. What matter what she did, so long as all thought of Nicoli was killed? What matter whose arms embraced her, whose lips found hers, so long as they widened the fast-growing chasm between them?
Allison Graham had been attracted to Sheila almost from the first hour of the trip, watching and wondering about the strangely lovely woman who remained so aloof, rejecting all overtures of friendship from her fellow passengers. Then, like a butterfly bursting its chrysalis, he saw her cast off her reserve and emerge—brilliant, dazzling in her new gaiety.
Immediately he sought the captain.
“Captain Braide, are you doing your full duty as a host? I have never been presented to the gorgeous blonde who has been in your company almost exclusively for the past two evenings. You have the advantage of the rest of us; you can talk to any one of your passengers without introduction, but it isn’t sporting of you to indulge the privilege when I am lonesome.”
“Really, Mr. Graham, I am sorry! It had not occurred to me that you did not know the lady, since you have just come out from New York. She is Sheila Case, the actress who starred for two years in The Woman Alone. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t seen her—the most talked of play in recent years?”
“Oh-h-h.” Graham drew out the exclamation softly. “That explains the feeling I’ve had for days that she was someone I should know. Oddly enough, I missed the play, but I heard much comment on it and on Miss Case’s interpretation of the part, and I saw her photographs, of course. I really intended to see her, but I was busy during my short stay in New York this time, and I did not get about much. I rather think I made a mistake, and it’s important that I meet her now, to rectify that mistake.”
“At dinner, then,” promised the captain.
*
“Miss Case, may I present Mr. Graham? He is practically a commuter, and I think he should be able to make the trip more interesting for you,” said Captain Braide, relinquishing Sheila’s hand and bowing himself away.
“I may as well admit that I asked for this introduction, Miss Case. Captain Braide has been telling me what I missed by failing to see The Woman Alone—and I was beginning to believe that you were still living the role from habit, for you haven’t been particularly clubby, you know. Tired?”
Seizing on his last words for an excuse, Sheila replied with a sighing laugh, “Dreadfully so. Two long years of it, with no rest, almost no privacy—and when the show closed I felt that I must be alone for at least a little while. But one soon has enough of one’s exclusive society, so now I find myself ready to play again.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to play with me, I think—I seem to have kept myself free from all entangling alliances thus far.” Allison Graham’s laughing eyes challenged Sheila’s. “Shall we dance, or just talk about ourselves? I’ll answer my own question: we’ll talk. There are so many things I have been wanting to say to you. There are so many things a man must say to a beautiful woman.”
Sheila had few hours alone now. Allison Graham sought her companionship sedulously aboard ship, and wandered through the many ports of call in her company, taking delight in showing her the spots he knew of old, and poking about in search of new ones, charmed by her eager interest and her thirst for new experiences. In the weeks thus spent he had become more and more attached to Sheila, the desire to possess her becoming the dominant thought in his mind, her desirability intensified by her aloofness.
In Port Said they had spent the day driving about the city and the surrounding country, returning late in the afternoon just as the last warm rays of the tropical sun cast their crimson light across the sky. The air was close, and Sheila was fatigued from the long, hot, dusty drive.
“Allison, let’s dine in my suite; then we can be lazy and comfortable and cool. Should you like that for a change?”
“Rather! I’ll order dinner sent up, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can get out of these dusty clothes.”
A few short hours found them laughing gaily over a perfect dinner served by a colorful native waiter. Allison thought he had never seen Sheila more alluring. She had donned a dinner frock of filmy black which closely followed the lines of her lovely body, cut low at the neck to reveal the soft white skin that seemed made for caresses. Her beautiful blonde hair molded close to her head made for her cameo-like features a glittering frame as the soft lights played upon it, seeking out the gold of which it was apparently fashioned.
Sheila knew that Allison was attracted to her, fascinated even, to a point which he himself did not yet realize. Sheila liked his obvious attachment to her, his thoughtful regard for her every slight wish; too, she found him stimulating company.
He was an unusual type of man; one could never be quite sure of what he might be thinking behind his steel gray eyes—eyes that became strangely dark at times, or lighted up as if by hidden batteries when something displeased him. His moods were mercurial, leaping from the heights of hilarity to the depths of melancholy without warning, displaying his capacity for running the gamut of human emotions. He was a striking figure, this man in his early forties. His tall, well-knit body set off to advantage the immaculateness of his attire and his faultless grooming, his bronzed skin making his face oddly young despite the soft powdering of gray at his temples.
Allison Graham was a man who had really lived, who plainly had seen life in all of its many phases; from choice, certainly, because for years he had spent his time satisfying his desire for travel—not merely the soft, easy travel of the luxury-loving, but hard journeys-into the most nearly inaccessible spots of earth where there were few comforts. Sheila had gathered from his casual conversation that he had found especial satisfaction in rubbing shoulders with his Far Eastern brothers, through whose association he had formed many exotic tastes and habits. Many things he had told her wittingly; many others he had unconsciously allowed to creep into his conversation. Still there was much that he had buried deep in the recesses of a secret mind, and it was this hidden side of his personality which called to Sheila.
How like a part of a great planned scheme it was that he should have been on her boat, Sheila reflected. He had returned to New York five months before to look after financial interests, intending to stay on for perhaps a year; yet upon the completion of his business affairs he had been surprised to find himself unwilling to linger; with no definite plans in mind, he seemed anxious to be off again—so he had started on the journey that was destined to link his life with that of Sheila Case.
Sheila was vivacious throughout the dinner, but she grew pensive at its close, and sat with a far-away look in her dark eyes, holding a cigarette in her slender fingers and watching its smoke curl lazily up into the shadows. Allison lay back in his chair studying her, his eyes drawn to her hands. Almost from their first meeting, he had been fascinated by the graceful movements of those tapering hands, their sensuous beauty giving promise of a touch which could be both soothing and maddening.
He was aroused from his reverie by the almost noiseles
s entrance of the Egyptian manservant. Rising and crossing over to Sheila, he took her hands in his own and pulled her gently to her feet.
“Shall we go out on the balcony while the dinner service is being removed? You have been so lost in your thoughts that I have been afraid to speak for fear I’d” shatter a dream. But you can dream out there under the stars.”
*
“How beautiful,” breathed Sheila. “How remote and pure, and yet stirring. The starlight seems to be blue—Allison, it’s the peculiar blue light one finds on Christmas scenes of the Wise Men following the Star in search of the Christ Child! Now I see why the artists always use that especial blue—it’s realism.”
Allison was stirred by the depth of Sheila’s feeling. “Isn’t it paradoxical that the same light in the sky, the same shade of blue that calls to the sublime selflessness of the spiritual side of man appeals even more powerfully to the sensual, the physical passions? Is it any wonder that the ancient peoples who loved under these sense-enkindling stars have set for all men the traditions of perfection in love?”
Graham’s normally clear tones deepened and roughened. He ceased speaking as there came to them from the distance the plaintive strains of a native instrument, its weird melody striking against ears now sensitive to its urging, imploring them to live while they could, to drink the joy and passion which life had to offer while there yet was time. Allison without a word drew Sheila to him, kissing her long and fiercely, caressing her hair, the hands that held such fascination for him, and the soft white throat that her gown so proudly exposed.
“Sheila, sweetheart—I want you. You have set me on fire; you are in my blood! You fulfill every desire of my being,” he whispered, crushing her closer to his body. Without waiting for answer, he rushed on, imploring Sheila never to leave him, to go on with him, to stay with him to love and idolize.
Sheila lay against his breast unspeaking. When he sought her lips again, she looked long into his eyes and slowly tightened her arm across his shoulders. Allison picked her up in his arms and carried her into her room, telling her again, “I love you so—I need you—I need you, Sheila, I tell you. I’ve wanted you so long.”
Sheila gave herself to Allison Graham—but in the thundering silence of the room her heart cried out in anguish against the breaking of her vows to Nicoli; vows that to Sheila meant all of life, yet vows that she must destroy. She herself must deliberately make of them broken bits, to be buried forever in the bottom of her heart—only there they could never be anything but whole.
As the vista of life with Allison Graham stretched before her, Sheila knew that on this night she was bidding farewell to Nicoli—she must. From that hour on she would be with him. If granting him herself would give him happiness, then the future years would not be altogether futile ones.
So making others happy brings happiness, life’s only happiness? She would see. She must have someone for whom to live, someone to whom she was necessary; in making Allison happy she would at least find an excuse for her own existence, even though she herself found nothing more.
“Forget yourself; from now on lose yourself in living for the man whose arms hold you in such longing embrace. Warm arms that want to bring warmth to your own icy heart” —for a strange coldness had gripped her heart, closing it to anyone but Nicoli. Sealed within its walls their love would live on always; nothing she could do would have the power to change that. But it must be kept sealed… to herself, from herself. Sheila made her decision.
*
The real Sheila whom Nicoli had known and loved was gone; in her place was a stranger, a lovely, glittering, careless, hedonistic stranger, who lived only for the present, building nothing for the future which stretched before her as only a broad expanse of empty years.
Essentially an actress, she was able to convey to Allison the idea that she wanted to be with him. For all that she took from him, she gave of herself in return. She made a very careful point of being unvaryingly enchanting to him, of grooming herself for his own particular delight, of adapting herself to his moods, so that without talking of love, she created the illusion of love. And Graham never suspected that there was a veil beyond which he was not to see.
Sheila and Allison traveled constantly. They had made no plans, choosing rather to live a nomadic life, disregarding conventions; roaming from country to country, from continent to continent, taking the splendors of nature and the gayety of man-made cities all in their stride.
Again the thread that was Sheila had been caught up by the Weaver and was being skillfully woven into the pattern of Allison’s life—woven so stealthily that even he could not see the irreparable ravel that would result when the skeins should be broken and parted.
Weeks and months flew by, filled with days of activity and nights spent in Allison’s arms. As Sheila listened to Allison’s repeated assertions of how much she had come to mean to him and how empty his life had been before her coming, she found that she was growing to love him in a commingled fashion: feeling toward him as a mother feels toward the child she holds nestled close to her breast, whose whims and sudden changes of temperament she humors; sensing the loneliness of the heart whose unrest had kept him ceaselessly wandering; knowing that he needed her by his side, a complement to his many-faceted personality; viewing the change she had wrought in his daily scheme of living and realizing that she could never send him back to his solitude so long as he depended upon her for his happiness.
So the current of time flowed on in its relentless course carrying with it the two persons whose lives had become interwoven in so singular a fashion.
*
“Sheila, I have news for you. Just had a cable from New York that I ought to run over to straighten out a tangle in the administration of Mother’s estate. Harrison Blair, the attorney who has been handling my affairs, doesn’t want to take the responsibility in this case, and after all, he’s had all of my work to do for over a year. Feel that you would like to go back for a few months?”
“Of course, Allison. There’s no point in my staying on here and letting you take the long trip alone,” Sheila forced herself to answer casually.
“I rather think I’d like to get my teeth into a little work for a change. I’ve been disgracefully idle, but it is such a temptation to play around with you, Sheila, that I don’t suppose I’d ever break away voluntarily.” Allison talked on, not noticing Sheila’s abstraction.
Her heart had taken a sudden downward plunge at his news. How could she return to New York—the spot wherein she and her beloved Nicoli had spent such happy days? Why… to do so would seem like walking through some ancient graveyard inhabited by the ghosts of her dead dreams. The wraith-like fingers of her lost love would clutch at her heart daily; the spectre of her life with Nicoli would envelop her in its shadowy robes and walk with her hourly. There could be no escape from their phantom presence.
She was afraid—afraid to go back lest all her resolutions never to see Nicoli again he shattered. How could she bear to be in close proximity to Nicoli yet never see her? How live in New York among the people who knew of their lives together and who would certainly soon know of her life with Allison? How could she bear for Nicoli to think that she had forgotten their love? And yet she knew that was what Nicoli must be made to think, if the principles for which she had sacrificed herself were to be protected. For what else had she been building? Nicoli must be made to feel that forgetting for Sheila had not been too difficult.
*
On the homeward voyage it was doubly hard for Sheila to remain the woman into whom she had transformed herself, and even more trying to live that alien woman’s life. Try as she might, her thoughts persisted in winging back to Nicoli. She lived anew their span of time together, dwelling in dreams of their love and its fulfillment, feeling again the pain of their separation, and becoming conscious anew of the leaden weight she carried in her heart. Only the fact that Allison had found old business acquaintances on shipboard saved her; she could not ha
ve endured trying to hold up her end of conversation night and day, and she thanked Allison in fervid silence for the hours he left her to spend alone.
*
Immediately on arrival in New York Allison was caught up in a rush of business, endeavoring to tie up the loose ends of affairs neglected for months, save for an occasional letter or cable. But he was apparently tireless, for he made no complaint that their evenings were spent in a whirl of parties given by his old friends to celebrate his return to what they called “the land of the living.”
A carefree crowd they were, whose one aim seemed to be to see just how fast they could spin the wheel of gayety. Round and round with it spun Sheila, drinking and dancing most of the night and feeling nothing but contempt for herself the next day. At times she detested Allison for having set her down again among the people who were responsible for her present mode of living, responsible for the tearing down of all her ideals, for the loss of all that she loved. Not that these particular people were responsible, but they were a part of the city which had talked, and to her they represented all that she despised. She was with them only when she must be, only when Allison noticing nothing, carried her out of herself by his own vitality.
During the day she was restless. She could not sleep late, despite the late hours they kept, and she turned constantly about in her mind for something which would occupy her time to the exclusion of her own brooding thoughts. After a few months of association with the bohemian crowd that were Allison’s friends, she finally turned back to thoughts of the theater as a possible means of escape from the continual round of unwanted excitement. In that, she would have a valid excuse for absenting herself from their gatherings, leaving Allison to pursue his own pleasures. He would not mind, for he would know that when he needed her, she would be there.