That afternoon we were all quilting at our house and Miss Sarah was
pleased enough to give an account of her guest.
"I've had a long letter from Lucia Byington," she said to my
grandmother, "explaining that precious scapegrace of a son of hers,
but I can tell Lucia she might have spared herself the pains. The
minute I clapped my eyes on him I knew all about him, having known his
father and mother. He has all her charm and her willfulness, with the
iron will and talent of his father. I suppose, because I'm an old
maid, I can't understand why a man can't bring up a high-metaled son,
exactly like himself, without being at odds with him. But there! He
expects his son to start where he's left off, with all the sobriety
and solemnity of an aged Solomon. And why people like Lucia and David
should expect not to have trouble with their children, I don't know.
And as for David, he fights his own youth in the boy. Now the time
had come for Master Roger to stop skylarking over the earth; he was
holding out; leave town he wouldn't. They had words; he slung a
knapsack on his back and went off, and wasn't heard from for a week,
and then came back as meek as the Prodigal."
You may be sure that Ellen and I had our ears wide open to this story,
knowing as we did why it was that Roger had suddenly become the docile
son. We were so self-conscious that our eyes did not dare seek one
another's, and we sewed together the large, gay squares of patchwork
with the precision of little automatons.
My grandmother spoke up:--
"Well, Sarah, I half dislike having your stormy petrel in our little
town. I saw him this morning, and he seemed to me a restless-looking
bird. He'll be turning the silly heads of our girls next."
"Let me catch him at it, or them, for that matter!" cried Miss Sarah.
"He's here for _work_, and not to worry me with such-like goings-on!
You may be sure that his family have had trouble enough with him in
such imbroglios already."
We had tea early and did the dishes and fell to our quilting again. I
noticed Ellen becoming more and more abstracted until finally Miss
Sarah said:--
"Well, Ellen, try to bring your mind back to your work. Years haven't
taken your habit of 'wool-gathering' from you."
Ellen wrote about this:--
"When I was a little girl I was more afraid of the setting sun
than anything in the world and now I know why, for I was waiting
always for this moment to come, when the sun, red and round and
menacing, set right before my eyes and I stared hopelessly and
hopelessly into it, not able to move. I had that awful leaden
feeling of wanting to move and not being able to, as though I
had been quilting through the ages and listening to stories
about Roger, a strange and distorted Roger, who was as
infinitely far away from me as the sun, and yet that I must go
to him. I knew he was there at Oscar's Leap, and I felt as if he
called my soul out of my body and my body suffered. I tried to
tell myself that there was to-morrow. I tried to tell myself how
foolish I am to be so broken in two that I must needs go and
keep my word with this man that I've seen only twice in my life;
but though I have only seen him twice, I've known him always, as
I said before. There's no friend as dear and close as he in all
the world. Oh, beautiful day that I can never have! The things
that we would have said to each other to-night, we will say them
another time, but not in the same way. This day is lost to me
and I can never have it back again."
She tells this of the time when next she saw him:--
"It seemed to me as though he leaped at me, there was such
gladness in his face, although any one across the street would
have said he just walked. He said, 'Oh, Ellen, Ellen!' as he did
before; and then, 'I've been waiting ever since I saw you'; and
then his face turned stern, and he said, 'Ellen, why didn't you
come? Are you like other women; while I've been away did that
candid, little girl learn to hide herself and learn to be false
to her word?' I thought I should cry; tears came to my eyes; it
seemed so cruel that at the very first I should fail him this
way, and he saw how I felt and said to me, 'Oh! don't, don't,
dear.' And for a little while we walked on in silence. 'Where
were you, Ellen?' he asked me; and he stood still in the path
and said: 'Ellen, are you a coward? What chained you there?
Didn't you hear me calling to you from the mountain? Couldn't
you get up and walk out of the room? If you had gone and hadn't
come back, what would have happened?' And then he looked at me
in a way I shall never forget, and what he said I shall remember
all my days, for so I am going to live. 'Ellen,' he said, 'you
and I in our friendship are not to be tied down by rules.
Remember, courage opens all doors. Ellen, I threw away many
things to clear the road that led to you. Let us keep on that
way, Ellen; put your hand in mine and promise. We'll walk to
each other straight out of the open door, without fear, won't
we?' When I got home, I am so foolish and I am so weak and merit
his friendship so little, that I cried. I don't now understand
why it was that I stayed this afternoon."
In this brave and heady fashion Roger began his wooing of Ellen. Just
as his whole pose, forward swinging head and relaxed body, gave one
the impression of one ready to make a forward rush at any moment and
seize what it wanted, so was the action of his spirit. It was like the
wine of life to my Ellen. They saw the sunset on the mountain together
every night that they could, and he came down the pasture that led
down from the hill, through the meadow, to the brook back of the
Paynes' house. About these things I knew, for Ellen needed a
confidante. Love overflowed her, and this was no secret, little love
which she carried shyly, a secret lamp by which to light her way,
which she hid as soon as any one appeared; but this was a flaming
thing, as hard to hide as a comet. It swept her up and out and beyond
herself into that over-heaven that only the pure in heart can feel
when they are in love.
It was only a very short time when she stopped deluding herself with
any terms like "her dear friend"; for one of Roger's great strengths,
then and always,--and I think to this day,--was knowing exactly what
he wanted, and taking the shortest way to it, and to get his desire he
was splendid and ruthless, and beware to any one who stood in his way.
It was about now that she began the habit of writing what she called
"Never Sent Letters"; for could she have been with him all the hours
of the day, the day would yet not have been long enough for her, and
they saw one another what seemed to them only now and then. She writes
to him at this time:--
"What did I do with my time before I met you? The days that I've
spent before you came have no meaning now to me, and now that I
am away from you the only preparation is for you. Everything
that I see, everything that I think, all my thoughts, I save
them up and give them to you, tiny flowers from the country of
my heart. I wonder how it is that you can love me ever so
little, who have so little to give to you who have so much, and
the only bitterness that I know is that what I have to give you
is so worthless. You say that you love the joy of life in me. I
wish I could make all the joy I feel shine out like a flame. I
wish that I could distill all the love I have for you into one
cup and then give it to you that you could drink, for entirely
and utterly I am yours and have been yours always and forever,
and so shall always be until I am changed over into some one
else. When I'm with you I don't dare tell you these things for
fear that I should drown you in myself. Take my life and do what
you like with it, for without you it is a thing valueless to
me."
In this way was Ellen's touching prayer answered--that when she loved
any one she wished only to give.
For the time being everything else was blotted out for her; she had
this measureless, sky-wide joy of giving herself and all day long, and
all the time her spirit went out toward him in incense. Her days were
lost in contemplation of the wonder which had happened.
"From the moment I leave him, I walk toward him," she wrote--and in
the interim between she went on apparently with life as before, and
this woke in her a still wonder.
"It is so very strange to be doing the same things that I was
before, but all the work I do for my mother, every book I read,
every word I speak has a meaning that it hadn't. It is as though
my ear were at the heart of Life and I heard Life beat."