MATTHEW AND ELLEN
Ellen sent to Harrisburg no notification of her coming. She was now
convinced that she had thorough control of herself, and that she
could meet Stephen safely. He might be away--the possibility brought
a painful moment of mixed misery and relief. Shifting her heavy bag
from hand to hand, she walked up the sunny street, past the jewelry
shop of Mr. Goldstein, past small hotels in whose windows idle men sat
drowsily, to Front Street. The river seemed to have no current, but
lay a burnished sheet under the low and glaring sun. In the park a few
sprawled figures occupied the benches.
She rang the bell, and when no one answered, she opened the door with
a key which she had hesitated to use, and putting down her bag walked
through the hall and passageway to the offices. It was long after
working hours, but Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane would be putting
desks and files in order and closing the day's records. She believed
that they would be glad to see her, and she longed for the refuge of
their homely femininity. She now allied herself in spirit with them and
their kind.
But neither Miss MacVane nor Miss Knowlton was at work. The office had
an unused appearance; shades had not been lifted, and even in the dim
light she could see on all the furniture a film of dust. The air was
not merely cool, it was damp, and her final impression of strangeness
deepened to a fear of calamity. The house seemed to be empty.
She returned with a quickly beating heart to the front hall. In the
library shades were irregularly drawn and here also dust covered the
polished surfaces of tables and chairs. One small article of furniture
had been moved and at it she stared while a deeper chill smote her
heart. It was Hilda's little tabourette, upon which now, as formerly,
lay matches and boxes of cigarettes. She leaned helplessly against the
door. Had Hilda come back?
When she heard steps approaching she turned slowly and in unreasonable
terror. But they were heavier and slower steps than Hilda's. Still her
step might have changed! She looked toward the stairway and beheld
Professor Mayne, large, elegant, cigarette in hand. Her heart leaped to
a more terrible conclusion--Stephen was dead!
Mayne regarded her with his bland smile. He had lived recently through
two harrowing experiences, but one was on the whole a relief, and the
other, while it shocked him, did not touch his own person or habits.
"What is it you wish?" he asked kindly.
"I'm looking for Miss MacVane."
"You mean Dr. Lanfair's secretary?"
"Yes."
"She has unfortunately been somewhat indisposed. She is absent."
"Is Miss Knowlton here?"
"She is in the hospital attending Dr. Lanfair."
"Is he ill?"
"He has had an infected hand, a severe case of septicæmia, but we have
saved him. He is improving."
Ellen forgot all her resolutions.
"Can he be seen?"
Mayne shook his head, then looked at her curiously. Was she an employee
of Stephen's, like the middle-aged women who were so concerned about
him?
"Oh, I remember you!" he said. "You are the young woman who assisted
with my niece. Are you still employed here?"
A foolish red appeared in Ellen's cheeks.
"No."
"Did you know that my niece had--had passed away?" Mayne almost said
"expired."
"No," answered Ellen. She felt that she was not expected to make any
comment and she made none. She stood awkwardly looking about. "Is there
anything I can do?"
"I believe not, thank you," answered Mayne in his booming voice. He
passed into the library and sat down in Hilda's corner of the sofa and
lifted a newspaper.
Thus dismissed, Ellen lifted her heavy bag and carried it across the
street to a bench. The air was intensely hot and she was hungry, but
she did not connect weakness or hunger with her despair. He was ill, he
had been very ill or he would not be in a hospital. And he had sent her
no word! Moreover, she had been in a sense turned out! Certainly Fate
was helping her to conquer herself!
Then, suddenly, a desperate longing came into her heart, a longing
for childhood, for innocence, for ignorance, for freedom from this
consuming passion. She wanted her father's sheltering arm, the sound
of his voice. Lacking him, she thought of those nearest her in
blood--Grandfather had loved her and so had Matthew and Amos. She
believed that they would welcome her. Twilight was at hand; it was the
hour when tired men and women hasten homeward; she too would go home.
She walked rapidly toward the railroad station. At the Square, while
she waited for a break in the line of automobiles, she saw in a group
of Salvation Army workers a tall brother shepherding the passers-by to
positions within earshot of the preacher's voice. In that figure she
could not be mistaken, it was the first feature of a familiar landscape
seen after a long journey. She did not stop to account for his presence
or his blue uniform, she went up to him quickly.
"Why, Amos!"
Amos looked down at her, growing first pale, then crimson. She had
become, he believed, merely a part of the fearful and unrighteous past;
she had vanished entirely, together with impulses to worldliness and
evil. But here she was, looking up with her dark eyes as she had looked
when she was a little girl. Her eyes seemed unhappy, and his heart
bounded. Then it sank like a stone and uneasiness succeeded his rapture.
"I'm working for the Lord, Ellen," he explained, glancing at the group
of singers who had turned to look for him. "I'm married."
"Don't you live with Grandfather?"
"No."
"Is he alone?"
"He doesn't want anybody," explained Amos quickly. "He knows he has
only to ask and I'll come." The sharp whirr of a tambourine summoned
him imperatively; it spoke, not with a religious, but with a domestic
sternness. His wife had been expecting him to bring the stranger
promptly into the circle of inquirers; she did not approve of this
lengthy conversation.
"I must go," said Amos uneasily. "She is there."
Back in the noisy group Amos neither spoke nor sang. When one of his
companions began to pray, he removed his cap and bent his beautiful
head. But he was not praying, he was thinking of the Kloster and the
past. Now that he was in the world he was not of it. He was like a
monk who had left his monastery too late. The glare of the sun was
too bright, the noise of the world too loud. In his hard day's work
he forgot himself, but his evening tasks, his public orisons, his
soliciting of strangers, were odious. There were times when he bitterly
regretted his marriage; there was no time, indeed, when he did not wish
it undone. But he believed that in seeking to win souls he was obeying
God, and in this conviction he found consolation.
In the dingy railroad station Ellen waited for her train. The station
had seemed hitherto an opening gateway; she had thought it vast and
wonderful when she had arrived with her father. Her second entrance,
when she came to make her living, had been more sober. Waiting for her
train for Ithaca, scarcely hearing Fetzer's good-byes because she was
thinking of Lanfair's, she had found it again a dazzling portal. Now,
at last, it was an entrance to prison. She believed that all happiness
lay behind her. She stepped into the train, and when she reached
Ephrata went her way on foot.
The moon shone brightly on the Kloster and on Grandfather's cottage and
on the white tombstones in the churchyard. Ellen choked back a sob; her
absence from this spot reproached her.
It was a long time before Grandfather answered her pounding.
"It's Ellen," she called, when at last she heard his hand on the latch.
"It's very late, I know."
Grandfather opened the door. He was dazed; the moonlight was not bright
enough to make her outline clear.
"May I stay here to-night?"
He neither greeted her nor answered her.
"It is Ellen, Grandfather."
"Ellen?" He repeated a word without meaning.
"May I stay here to-night?"
He seemed now to see her, but he regarded her as though she were a
jinn or spook or other baleful creature of the witching night.
"I never turned any one away," he said at last in a gentle tone.
It was clear in the morning that she was regarded not only as a
transient, but as a disturbing visitor. Grandfather followed a regular
routine which took him now to the Saal, now to Saron, now out into the
fields, as the brethren might have traveled a hundred and fifty years
ago. He believed himself to be, indeed, one of them.
In the afternoon Ellen took up her journey to Matthew's. Inexpressibly
tired, she wanted only sleep in a quiet bed.
She saw Matthew crossing from the house to the barn and called to
him. He did not come to meet her, but let her approach him, which was
exactly like Matthew. His face was set in a somber expression, his
shoulders were bent. Seeming neither glad nor sorry to see her, he took
her satchel and walked with her back to the house.
In the kitchen the old chaotic condition persisted. Esther had achieved
the object of her life and had gone away with her prize to a distant
farm, and Millie had had a succession of inefficient servants. She
languidly accepted Ellen's offered help.
"Where are your grand people?" she asked.
"Mrs Fetzer has left there."
"And the man, where's he?"
"He has been ill."
A plate slid suddenly from Ellen's hands into the iron sink. Her course
appeared incredible.
"He's ill, and I'm here!" she said to herself. "He might die and I not
see him!"
When Matthew said at supper that he would drive to the station for
her trunk, she asked whether she might go with him. She saw at once
that Millie wished to go, but she could not yield her place. From the
drug-store she would call the hospital and talk to Miss Knowlton--why
had she not thought of it this morning? She could have cried with
relief. She was sorry that Millie was disappointed, but she would make
it up to Millie twenty times over.
The drug-store was crowded with customers for ice-cream and soda water,
all of whom were trying to speak above a strident talking machine
which ground out a lively song. Only a little man of one of the plain
sects seemed anxious to hear the music at the same time that he was a
bit disturbed by his own pleasure. The proprietor and the customers
regarded Ellen curiously, but did not recognize her. When the telephone
bell rang, all looked at her and ceased speaking, believing that she
was calling a lover.
The talking machine, too, was silenced and she knew that every word
could be heard through the thin booth. Miss Knowlton could not come to
the telephone, but a message would be given her. Ellen inquired for
Lanfair and was told in the optimistic tone characteristic of hospitals
that he was entirely out of danger. She opened the door of the booth
weakly and paid the charge. Matthew was waiting outside and she climbed
into the wagon. She would have liked to tell him everything, but that
was a weakness. He had, she surmised, enough to bear.
She was conscious of an added coolness in Millie's attitude, but to her
weary mind it seemed unimportant. She laid her head upon the pillow
which had been hers in childhood, and before the tears were dry upon
her cheeks she was asleep.
But Millie's attitude was not unimportant. Her disposition was now
thoroughly established; she was worn and sour and unhappy and she found
pleasure only in believing herself ill-treated. She had never forgotten
that Matthew had taken Ellen to the Kloster two years ago without
inviting her, and the repetition of the offense was grossly insulting.
It was not he whom she blamed, but Ellen. She would have been glad to
believe that Ellen was deliberately trying to "come between" them.
The next day Ellen wrote to Stephen. She said that she had gone to
the house in Harrisburg and had heard from Professor Mayne about his
illness and that he was better. She had then come to her brother's. She
had called the hospital and had heard that he was still better. She was
sorry that he had been ill. An undefined feeling restrained her from
speaking of Hilda.
In a week she had an answer from Miss Knowlton. Dr. Lanfair was
improving and was glad that she was with her brother--that was the
best place for her to be. He would be well enough in a day or two to
leave the hospital, then he and Fickes and Miss Knowlton would go to
the shore. Even though it was Miss Knowlton who wrote, Ellen did not
visualize him as helpless. She cried at night, but by day she went
quietly about innumerable tasks. The postscript of Miss Knowlton's
letter was a "Finis" at the end of a story: "We hope that you will pay
us a call on your way back to college."
She grew slowly and miserably aware of the domestic volcano over which
she lived. Millie believed now with all her heart that she had come
to make trouble; though Ellen's help lightened her tasks by more than
half and enabled her to put on flesh she made it appear constantly,
by devices difficult to describe, but known to all who are compelled
to associate with women of her type, that she believed the help to be
unwillingly given.
For a long time Ellen did not understand the exact source of this
resentment. She laid her hand as of old on Matthew's shoulder; she
walked with him about the farm on Sunday afternoons; she pored with
him over calculations. Most foolishly of all she tried to improve the
extraordinary speech of little Matthew.
The summer was intensely warm; through July the opening of an outer
door brought heat like a leaping flame into one's face, and the nights
were often one long wish for morning. Ellen grew gradually accustomed
to the hard labor, to the rising before dawn, to the insufferable
afternoons. She shared Matthew's anxiety about the harvest; it seemed
that before the wheat crop was brought in destructive storms must break.
Sometimes in the late afternoon when vitality was at its lowest point,
she remembered the airy rooms in which she had lived last summer, the
bare floors, the furniture in chintz covers, the drifting of white
curtains in a gentle breeze. But of last summer she did not often let
herself think. She heard no word from Stephen, nor sent him any. She
remembered now half-acknowledged dreams, more vivid in retrospect
than they had been in actuality, of position and travel and great
possessions, and her heart burned, now with self-reproach, now with
resentment at life's cruel chances.
The wheat was safely harvested and no rain fell. Matthew, increasingly
anxious about the corn, searched the sky for clouds. He was irritable
even with the children. Ellen bore with him and pitied him and obeyed
the commands of Millie.
Early in August Matthew sat one evening on the doorstep. There had been
since noon a low bank of clouds in the west, but he had often been
deceived by banks of clouds. When they rose higher, he was immensely
cheered, pointing them out to Millie, who merely looked sullenly in the
opposite direction, and said nothing. He turned to Ellen and asked her
to walk with him to the woodland from which they could get a better
view. She looked at Millie's lowering face.
"Won't you go, Millie? I'll stay here."
"I wasn't asked," said Millie briefly, her very flesh tingling with
resentment.
For an instant Ellen hesitated; then she followed Matthew across the
yard and the stubble-field to the woodland.
Before their eyes the sun sank in a blaze of glory. On bright days
only could a low range of hills be seen from this point, but now they
believed they could see beyond to the gleaming river. As the sun
disappeared they sat down on the old tree-trunk. The hot wind bred
restlessness and sadness.
"I was wrong about everything," said Matthew soberly after a long time.
"What I said in the meeting-house was nonsense, as my father said it
was. I was misled."
Ellen was appalled. Matthew had arranged his whole life in accord with
that confession. But she could give him no comfort; when Levis died
she had been a child, and since that time, greatly as she had been
troubled, she had felt no need for superhuman reassurance.
"It must have been very hard to give it all up after you had believed
it."
Matthew snapped his fingers. "It went, like that! I simply didn't hold
to it, that was all."
"Did you ever try to believe again?" asked Ellen.
"No; why should I? I don't want you to think I don't believe anything.
When I come up here and the wind is blowing, it seems to me that I
get an idea about God, greater than was ever thought of down in those
little rooms. But I can't get hold of it. Perhaps some day I shall.
It's only that He is and that He's here. I can't describe it."
A long sigh stirred the leaves above them. Ellen was disturbed.
"There's surely going to be a storm, and we should go down."
As she rose there was a bright flash of lightning and the oaks began to
sing. She held out her hand.
"Let's run, Matthew!"
Matthew took the hand and lifted it. Thus they stood for a second,
their arms outstretched, and then plunged down the smooth field and
into the yard. In the doorway Matthew called Millie, but she did not
answer. He went upstairs to find her, but she was not there. Both the
children were asleep and pinned to the pin-cushion on the bureau, in
true melodramatic fashion, was a note. Matthew read it and returned to
the kitchen.
"Where is she?" asked Ellen.
"She has started home," said Matthew slowly. "She says it is to stay."
For a long moment there was only the tick of the clock and the rumble
of distant thunder. Then Ellen lifted her head.
"Would it help if I went away?"
Matthew leaned heavily against the table. His face was intensely white,
his gray eyes darkened. The hand upon which he leaned trembled.
"I have a friend at the University with whom I can stay for any length
of time. She'll be glad to have me till the term opens."
Matthew lifted his hand and examined the callous spots upon it. It had
seemed to him that peace had descended upon his house. He believed that
Ellen would stay with him if he needed her. He saw the peace continued,
the old life restored, his children brought up correctly, himself
contented. He longed intensely for Ellen's learning, for her outlook
upon life. If she stayed he might yet repair the effect of his own
madness. But like Ellen, he had been trained to follow a certain rule
of conduct and he could not go counter to that which he had been taught.
"I guess I should bring her back," he said at last thickly. Then a
quiver passed over his face. His sense of honor was of the variety
which leads, if need be, to the stake. What he said was not easy to
say. "Oh, I have many, many times wished for my father!"
In a few minutes his horse galloped down the lane. The lightning was
now almost incessant and the thunder rumbled heavily. Standing at the
door Ellen saw his white face against the side of the buggy. Then she
went upstairs, and when she had closed the windows and looked in upon
the sleeping children she began to pack her trunk.
In the morning she walked slowly down the road. Matthew had come back,
and Millie would return later in the day. The storm had made all fresh;
goldenrod was abloom along the fences. She thought with longing of Miss
Grammer and of the deep Seminar room at the library. Work!--ah, that
remained!
She wished that she did not have to go to the Lanfair house, even
though Stephen was away, but there were a few possessions in her room
which she must secure. Besides, she did not know how to explain her
failure to go. In the station she inquired about the night train to
the north. When she heard that it still left at 10.35, she smiled with
bitter amusement, having unconsciously expected that a new era had
begun, even for trains.
The open space before the station was almost deserted, only
occasionally a traveler plunged into the sunshine from the cool shadow
of the portico. But indifferent to the heat, which was almost tropical
in spite of last night's storm, Ellen made her way toward the street
of Mr. Goldstein and thence toward the river. She saw the dome of the
Capitol and stood still. Why not spend her brief hour with memories of
her father and spare herself a keener pain?
But she went on toward the shining river, her shoulders lifted so that
three elderly gentlemen sitting in the windows of a clubhouse opened
drowsy eyes and craned admiring necks. All had comfortable fortunes,
one had great possessions and one had memories of intense happiness,
but all would have exchanged that which they had for that which Ellen
had and which they would have no more.
Suddenly she crossed the street and sat down on a bench in the park.
She was breathing rapidly, she must compel herself to be composed. She
must forget her dreams, she must take account of what she still had and
thus fortify herself before she entered Stephen's house.
Work?--the reminder had consoled her this morning, why could it not
console her now? Friends?--she had made few, and Miss Grammer was old.
Books?--ah, what miserable defect in her made them seem dull? The
beauty of the world?--it, alas! merely quickened one's pain.
How often she had stolen away to the heights above the lake or to a
secluded seat from which she could watch Triphammer Fall! She thought
of it now without pleasure. How often she had marked the perpetually
changing aspect of the stream before her! As if to recall her pleasure
she looked at it with attention. Below her on the bank stood a pair
of young aspen trees whose delicate interlacing branches formed a
lattice-work through which the river showed here a pale lavender, here
a delicate gray. Toward the farther bank a mile away a rosy cloud
seemed to rest upon the water. The sight brought not pleasure but
tears. She was to see the river no more with the eye of possession;
this was not home to her, it was a place of strangers.
She rose quickly. She would get the books which Lanfair had given her,
the dress which hung in the closet which had been hers, and she would
flee.