Ellen's formal renouncing of goodness helped us find our place in the
grown-up world. Her gayety had always made her overstep the bounds of
perfect decorum demanded of young women in my generation, and she set
about carrying out her resolution which she told me about. I remember
well the shocked sort of quiver with which I recognized myself, even
staid Roberta, in her question:--
"Roberta, when you're in company, don't you ever want to do foolish
things? When you see a lot of solemn people saying good-bye
downstairs, don't you want to slide down the banister into their
midst? When Edward Graham used to lecture me, again and again I've
wanted to take his hand and skip down the street singing, 'Hippity Hop
to the Barber Shop,' and see what he'd do. I've always wanted to do
all the foolish things I've thought of when I was in company, and now,
Roberta, I'm going to!"
I had had these erring impulses. Who has not? In each of us there is
a hinterland where thoughts as fantastic as anything that happens in
dreams gambol around with the irresponsibility of monkeys. Ellen
translated a certain amount of these into action--and see what
happened.
This is what makes virtue so discouraging in an imperfect world. It
was her naughtiness which advertised to the world of men, "I am a
sweet and adorable person; I can make you laugh, and I can make you
dream, and I have no fear." Ellen now acted before strangers with the
inspired foolishness which most of us keep for those best known to us.
Even for them this mad spirit is not at our beck and call, but must
wait for the time and place to bring it out. Youth, empty of such
lovely, high-spirited, and drunken moments, must be very sad.
The divine folly of such mirth is only for the partaker; one must feel
the wine of life coursing through one to understand its spiritual
significance. Joy-drunken young people seem to outsiders silly, if
they don't seem wanton; and while the things that we did would seem
mild enough if I told them, they set our little New England town by
the ears during the year that followed.
Our little coterie gradually acquired the reputation of giddiness
among the older people, while we steadily became leaders among those
of our own age, and Ellen the central flame around which we revolved.
I myself thought her too audacious, and even when carried away by her
I used to remonstrate seriously with her. This accomplished nothing,
but it eased my own conscience.
Edward Graham, who had come back to teach in the academy, also
lectured Ellen continually. He was one of those tenacious men who
desire a thing all the more when they have lost it, and I think the
full flowering of his affection for Ellen only came after he knew he
couldn't have her. I think it might never have come otherwise. His
love for her was deep and fundamental, and the sort of love men treat
like the air they breathe; but had she married him and been the docile
wife she would have been, he might never even have known himself to
what extent he cared, and still less have shown it to her. They
continued to see much of each other, because he had put to her the
plausible story that they could still be friends, and she, of course,
eagerly assented, wishing to make what little reparation she could,
and not realizing that at the back of his mind was a determination to
win her at whatever cost.
Now her growing popularity and light-mindedness caused him anguish.
Her growing popularity aroused in him a leaden jealousy. He alternated
from mad blame to pleading affection. His devotion to her was a
continual pain, and yet in her gentleness she didn't know how to
escape it, and his criticisms bred in her a certain defiance of the
world and of conventions and made her more extravagant. I suppose it
was because it came as a climax of a number of smaller follies that
the town took so much notice of the famous "Young People's Party,"
given by the gentle Mr. Sylvester. I well remember the next day. I see
myself demure in my grandmother's kitchen, demure and gingham-aproned,
my hands in dough, my hair sleek under its net. I see Ellen, a blue
ribbon around her hair, a sparkle in her eye, her little feet
crossed, with all the look of the cat which has swallowed the canary,
and is glad of it. This is what sin had brought her to, you see. Mrs.
Payne sat, sweet and helpless-looking, in one chair, and my
grandmother creaked portentously back and forth, her hands folded on
the place she called her waist-line, saying to Sarah Grant:--
"It couldn't have been _hens_, Sarah."
"It was hens," said Miss Sarah accusingly. "They went out to the
hen-yard and brought each hen into the house, and they flew around and
broke two vases." Her eyes meantime had not quitted Ellen, who at this
inopportune moment snickered with happy recollection. "Ellen," her
aunt broke off accusingly, "did _you_ think of bringing those hens
into the house?"
"We were hawking," explained Ellen. "I brought mine in on my wrist and
it flew across and perched on John Seymore's shoulder. That's how we
told off partners for 'Authors'; everybody got a hen, and on whichever
boy's shoulder it perched,--and often it wouldn't perch,--that's what
really happened." She laughed; her mother laughed; I laughed.
Whoever reads this will sympathize with Aunt Sarah, because it
doesn't seem witty for a grown company of young men and young girls to
have behaved that way in the house of their minister. It had been a
golden moment, I assure you,--a party that stood out;--and if ever the
laughter of the Greeks was heard in that staid, old New England town
it was when Ellen Payne stood aloft on the hassock, a squawking hen
trembling indignantly on her wrist; and she at that moment looked both
beautiful and absurd. Miss Sarah Grant saw nothing of all this.
"I am chagrined," she said. "Have you no respect for life?" And she
walked away heavily.
Ellen spent the afternoon gathering expiatory pond-lilies of which her
aunt was as a rule fond. She waded in the pond during the whole
afternoon, her skirts trussed up scandalously, emerging with a
stocking of black mud on either foot. She was sunburned, she was
mosquito-bitten, she was happy, she sung aloud for joy on her way
home; and when she left the offering at her aunt's door, this lady
said: "These are very pretty, Ellen, and I thank you, but I wish, my
dear, that you had made me some little gift that is a testimony of
your industry."
It was on our way home that we were stopped by some women from the
other church, who asked me:--
"Roberta, is it really true that you and Ellen started to bring in
_hens_ to the _minister's house_ at the Young People's Party?"
"Roberta never started it," said Ellen, who was easily drawn in ways
like this.
"We thought they were joking when they told us," said Mrs. Mary Snow,
who was a widow and very precise.
"Well," said Miss Amelia Barton, "I should think Mr. Sylvester would
have prevented it."
"Mr. Sylvester enjoyed it, the fowls enhanced the party," said Ellen.
I pulled her along. "Hateful gossips," she said. As we passed the
house where Edward Graham was living, this illustrious young man
joined us for the purpose of saying:--
"You remember, Ellen, I told you at the party, when I first saw you
coming in with the hen, that you had far better leave it outside. The
whole town is talking and buzzing."
"The whole town disgusts me deeply," cried Ellen, "and so does any one
who lets the buzzing reach my ears."
"You ought to want to know the reaction of the things you do,"
retorted Graham, whose belief in his moralities made him irritable
when attacked. "You are criticizing Mr. Sylvester for permitting it
and I think you went much too far."
When Edward Graham moralized on the subject Ellen replied
flippantly:--
"It is that you and everybody else criticize anything you're not used
to. What's the harm in hens; what evil does bringing a hen into the
minister's house lead to? Does it make you want to go and take the
amber beads off a baby's neck just because I brought in a hen and it
perched on John Seymore's shoulder? John Seymore didn't mind it, and
he's studying for the ministry. It is people like you, who talk about
an innocent thing like a hen, and fuss over it as if it was something
bad, who do harm," cried Ellen; and she swept me along with her. She
comments in this fashion about the episode:--
"At the party we were all very happy, and there's no rule that
says that a thing must be of a worthy sort before we may laugh
at it. That's one of the nice things about laughing, there's no
rhyme or reason to it. It was not among those things that mother
talks of that undermine our fineness of perception. But Mr.
Sylvester didn't realize how people were going to feel about it,
and now they are all talking and tongue-wagging as though
something terrible had happened. Am I wrong, or are they? I
think they are, and I hate them for it, and I feel as though
that was the worst thing I had done, because I hate poor Edward
Graham and I hate Mrs. Snow and Miss Barton because of their
smallness and injustice; and aren't they more wicked to talk
about innocent things and gossip about young people and make
those who are happy feel uncomfortable and sinful? It makes me
want to break a window when I think how virtuous they feel."
We hadn't heard the last of the talk concerning the "Hen Party."
Rumors of it reached our ears from all sides. I suppose our elders
exaggerated the talk, that we might learn decorum. Personally I could
not imagine, any more than Ellen could, just what harm the hens had
been supposed to have done us. One of the hardest things for me now to
understand is the annoyance so many people feel at the sweet, noisy
fun of young people. It seems to me the very laughter of fairyland,
but older people have a way of turning the fairy coach of mirth into a
pumpkin drawn by mice, and are proud of themselves for doing this.
It is strange that the ages of men have rolled on one after the other
without this being a basic principle laid down to all parents--you
can't disapprove a child into the paths of virtue any more than you
can scold a man into loving his wife.
There are a great many young people who are made reckless and sullen
by such disapproval, though Ellen was saved from the harm that Edward
Graham and the public opinion of which he was the voice might have
done her by the utter sympathy of her little mother. She joined in
all our little gayeties; she laughed with us. So did Mr. Sylvester. He
attended the next two or three young people's parties, explaining to
Ellen with his gentleness: "They say, my dear, that I'm not a fit
guide for youth, so I am going to try and learn to be so by being more
with you."
Of course, for their pains, these two grown-up children of God were
called overindulgent; it was prophesied that they would spoil us; yet
it was this that kept Ellen's audacities always sweet.
However, even so, Ellen's future destiny was despaired of by Edward
Graham.
"Ellen is in danger of becoming a jilt," he told me.
"She can't help it if people like her," said I; for I, myself, had
changed a great deal from that rigorous opinion that one should be
proposed to only by the man one intends to marry.
"Ellen has altered very much in the three years I have known her,"
said Edward.
"She has grown up," said I.
"She has not grown up in the way I hoped to see her."
"Then, why don't you turn away your eyes from the offensive
spectacle?" I asked him cruelly, not knowing that this--poor
fellow--was just what he couldn't do. But even I was inclined to agree
with Edward Graham.