No sooner had Ellen covenanted "Thou shalt not!" than off she went on
her first adventure,--a trifling one but bleeding. She walked one day
to the academy with Arthur McLain. He wore long trousers. Of this
fatal occurrence Ellen remarks touchingly: "I tried very hard to be
interesting, but I chose the wrong thing." It is a mistake frequently
made by grown men and women. Alas! capricious fate that governs these
things turned my sweet, unconscious Ellen to one forever on the alert
for the appearance of this long-legged quidnunc.
I will give three or four paragraphs from her journal:--
"I asked Aunt Sarah if she wanted me to get her some more yarn
when hers ran short. She answered, 'Yes, you may, though I wish,
Ellen, my dear child, that you were as eager to do your work as
you are to wait on others.' But I knew all the time that I
offered to go because I hoped that I should see him, and I
should have told my aunt that that was why I offered."
A few days later comes the touching little expression of the desire of
the eyes:--
"Last week I walked all over town to catch glimpses of him. I
went to the post-office, and he wasn't there; I went down past
the school-house and past his house, and whenever I saw a boy
coming toward me, it was hard to breathe. The whole day was
empty and I thought it would never be night."
Again:--
"To-day I saw him; he passed by me and just said, 'Hulloa,
Ellen.' When I stopped for a moment, I thought he would speak to
me. In school this morning he stopped and talked, but all my
words went away and I seemed so stupid. At night I make up
things I would like to say to him, and when he stops for a
moment,--oh, he stops so seldom,--I forget them all."
Throughout all this, not once does she use the word _love_. From that
terrible and impersonal longing, unaware of itself and unrecognized,
Ellen walked out toward the long-trousered boy. She spread before him
as much as she could of her little shy sweetnesses. She walked up and
down the silent streets waiting for him. Later she writes: "I had no
single reason in the world for liking him."
I was with Ellen at the moment of her disillusion. We were out walking
together when Arthur McLain came toward us. Ahead of us, tail wagging,
ran the beloved mongrel Faro. He stopped to sniff at Arthur. Arthur
shooed him away. He was a lad timid about dogs, it seems. Faro saw his
nervousness, and, for deviltry, barked. Arthur kicked at him with the
savageness of fear.
I can see Ellen now gathering her dog to her with one regal sweep of
the hand and walking past the boy, her head erect, her cheeks scarlet.
"I _hate_ a coward," she said to me in a low, tense voice; and later
with a flaming look, "I would have killed him with my _hands_ if he
had hurt Faro," she cried.
So humiliated was she that she says no word in her journal for her
reason for her change of heart. She could not forgive him for having
made a fool of herself about him--about one so unworthy. For of all
things in the world hard to forgive, this is the hardest.
"I would be glad if he were dead. Oh, I know I am awful, but it
is like that. Think of him walking around this town day by day,
and I will have to meet him; when I go uptown, when I go to
school, I will be avoiding him exactly the way I used to look
for him. Oh, if he would only go away."
It is not only Ellen who would like to slay the dead ghosts of
unworthy loves.
"He walks up and down, and doesn't know I have looked at him.
Oh, if he knew that, I think I should die [her journal goes on].
He walks up and down and doesn't know that I so hate the sight
of him. I don't hate him, but just the sight of him--so awfully
I hate it. Everything he does seems to me so tiresome; his loud
laugh makes me feel sick, and he doesn't know anything. I
make-believe to myself that he walked all over town after me and
got in my way and annoyed me until I said, 'I will be very glad,
Arthur, if you would cease these undesired attentions.' How
could he cease anything he had never begun, for it wasn't at all
like that it happened. I should feel so much happier if I only
could have hurt him, too."
This experience, so phantasmal and yet so poignant, led to the Zinias'
premature death. Conscience invaded Ellen now that disillusion had
done its blighting work. There came a day when she could no longer
keep to herself her deviation from the precise morals demanded by the
Zinias.
It was after a walk toward evening up the mountain, full of pregnant
silences, that she confessed:--
"You would despise me, if you really knew me. I'm not the kind of a
girl we are trying to be."
[Illustration: I HATE YOUR SOCIETY ANYWAY! I NEVER DID WANT TO BE AN
OLD MAID]
It shocked me and thrilled me at the same time.
"What have you been doing?" I asked her.
"I can't tell you," she told me. "You would despise me too much."
"Why, Ellen!" I cried. "Tell me about it."
"No! No!" she said; and she buried her face in the moss in a very
agony of shame. "I can't tell a human soul."
And she still left me with a feeling of having had an interesting
sentimental experience. Thus may we, when young, rifle sweetness from
the blossom of despair.
It was communicated to the other two Zinias that Ellen's conduct had
been unbecoming a sincere old maid, and when they turned on her,
instead of shame, she had for them: "I hate your society, anyway! I
never did want to be an old maid!"
As I look back, this adventure closes for us a certain phase of life
as definitely as though we had shut the door. We all realized, though
we were not honest enough to say it aloud, that we too didn't wish to
be old maids. And all this happened because an unlovable boy had made
Ellen like him. So much at the mercy of men are women! Just a shadow
of the Cyprian over us and we blossomed. It was the shadow of a
shadow; it had not one little objective event to give it substance,
yet the Zinias withered.