While Ellen was going through these hours of anguish her mother and
Mr. Sylvester sat in my grandmother's kitchen, a pair of helpless,
middle-aged children, discussing how they would break the news to Miss
Sarah Grant. They didn't need to explain why Miss Grant would
disapprove of their marriage; she would disapprove of it just as all
the town would, for it was evident that if Mr. Sylvester was going to
marry again it was his duty to himself and to his children to marry a
"capable woman," and you might as well ask a moon-ray or a soft breeze
in the trees to be capable as Ellen's little mother.
"I have suggested," said Mr. Sylvester, "that we let Miss Sarah learn
of it as we shall the rest of the town. A simple and efficacious way
has occurred to me, Mrs. Hathaway, of informing all our friends,--I
shall merely tell Mrs. Snow and Miss Nellie Lee and then nature will
do the rest." He was quite grave and simple-hearted as he said this,
but I know that Alec and I did not dare to meet one another's eyes,
for the good man had mentioned not only two of the most talkative
ladies in town, but also two who had, according to gossip, felt
themselves very capable of taking care of an incapable but godly man.
Mrs. Payne, however, insisted that Mr. Sylvester should himself tell
her sister of their engagement.
"My dear," said Mr. Sylvester, "I trust I am a soldier of the Lord,
but I confess to a feebleness in the knees when it comes to
confronting Miss Sarah, for both of us have been a serious anxiety to
her even in an unmarried state, and what shall we be now when my
housekeeper has gone?"
"And, indeed, my dear, how do you suppose," inquired my grandmother
whose spiritual attitude had been one whose hands and eyes were both
raised to Heaven,--"how do you suppose you are going to take care of
the children?"
Ellen's little mother considered a moment.
"I shall love them," she replied after an interval.
Mind you, this statement was one of sheer anarchy in an age when
discipline was the keynote with children and the superstition still
flourished that one could not properly bring up a child without the
rod.
"Yes," said my grandmother, "I suppose you will love the holes out of
their clothes and love their gingham aprons into being, won't you?"
"I can depend upon Matilda a good deal," considered Mrs. Payne; "but
we have scarcely had time, dear Mrs. Hathaway, to think of the
material side of the question, and the children adore Ellen."
"And so, all together," rejoined Mr. Sylvester, "we shall get along
very well, but our only real trouble is the pain of breaking the news
to Miss Sarah."
"Well," said my grandmother, with brisk sarcasm, "if that's all that's
troubling you, I'll tell her myself. I'll go to her and tell her that
there's going to be a family consisting of two grown people, one grown
girl, and three helpless little children, none of whom realizes that
meals have to be got or housework done."
"Or, indeed," rejoined Mr. Sylvester, "where no one is occupied in
anything but considering the lilies, how they grow."
Upon this the two smiled at each other, for they both had the wisdom
of the simple in their spirits. However, it was apparent to any one
what a helpless menage this would be with the strong hand of Mrs.
Gillig, the housekeeper, removed from it.
The news of the marriage ran through the town the way fire spreads;
from house to house it galloped, then it would seem to skip a space
and then mysteriously break forth afresh, as though by spontaneous
combustion, and their interested chatter hid Ellen from herself a
little. She wrote:--
"All day I have been receiving calls and answering questions. A
certain sort of vague envy has mingled itself with a more
definite commiseration and there has been a great deal of
affection mingled with everything. They don't know. They all
talk as though my little mother were a baby, and so she is.
She's a child of light. She has not grown up and she hasn't
made me grow up, and I hope I shall never have to, and I want to
say to all the people, 'Oh, you blind person, you blind person,'
when they speak in this half-patronizing tone of her. I want to
say: 'Don't you know how much more she has than you? My mother
is a happy person to live with; we are poor and our clothes are
patched,--and sometimes they aren't even patched,--and I suppose
she's a poor manager, but I am so glad she is because, when we
do clean, it's because we want to and not to fight it day and
night.' All through this day that's been so busy, when people
have knocked at our door on one pretext or another, I've been
waiting. All day Roger hasn't been to see me; it doesn't seem
possible that he can be angry at me or stay away from me like
this; it doesn't seem possible that he shouldn't understand me.
I'm going up to-night to Oscar's Leap. It seemed to me that all
the world had his voice to-day. Whenever I heard people talk far
off, it seemed to me that I heard Roger; every time some one
knocked on the door my heart leaped and I thought: 'He's coming
at last.' Twice I walked uptown looking for him, and once there
was a real errand,--not a make-believe one like when I was a
little girl and wanted to do something that took me up to Aunt
Sarah's; Aunt Sarah herself sent me, and how my ears were
strained for the sound of his voice, and there was no sound at
all in all the house. Then I did a thing that was very bold. I
sat down at the piano and opened it and played and began to
sing, hoping he would hear me, while I waited for the sewing for
which Aunt Sarah had sent me. Then I heard footsteps on the
stair and I knew that they weren't Roger's, but yet it seemed to
me they must be--so much I wanted to see him that the very
desire of my heart must call him to me--but no. I wonder what
has happened; I wonder if he's angry; I wonder if he's hurt. I
couldn't even ask Martha a word about him; I had to keep my
mouth closed. It is partly my fault that we have to skulk in
this way. It seems a curious thing that Martha should know if
Roger was in the house somewhere. But surely he couldn't have
been in the house or he would have come down when he heard me
sing. Why should I feel ashamed at having tried to make him
hear me? If I can go and call Alec from outside his house, why
is it more wrong for me to go and call for the one whom I shall
love all my days, and yet somehow I feel that I shouldn't. There
is some deep instinct in me that makes me know I was wrong."
I suppose it was because of Ellen's absorption in Roger that she
failed to write an aspect of these days that stand out to me as one of
the charming memories of my girlhood, for it so sums up our New
England society of that day. My grandmother had performed the kind
office of announcing the betrothal to Miss Sarah, and this good
woman's reply was characteristic.
"Well," said she, "trust Emily to get into mischief when Ellen gives
us a moment's pause, and what irritates me the most, Sophia, is that I
am not even allowed my just moment of anger. If I sulk, then there
will be talk, to be sure, so I've got to go out and countenance this
marriage of those 'babes of grace' as though it had been my fondest
hope. I, forsooth, have got to go around and smile until my jaws are
fairly dislocated to prevent the magpie chattering that there'll be;
but before my anger cools I'm going down to give Emily a piece of my
mind. When you consider her refusing a decent, advantageous marriage,
and then becoming sentimental at her time of life, it's enough to make
one's blood boil."
Miss Sarah eased her mind by making remarks like this to her sister
and then said she:--
"Sophia Hathaway and I are going to bring our sewing and spend the
afternoon, because you'll see that half the town will be here to find
out what's happened."
So there we were, my grandmother and I, Mrs. Payne, Ellen, and Aunt
Sarah--a solid phalanx.
"We'll answer," Miss Sarah announced, "no questions except those asked
us."
Deacon Archibald and his wife were the first to call. The deacon came
in cheerily, rubbing his hands.
"It was such a fine day," said Mrs. Archibald, "that we thought we'd
repay the many visits that we owe."
"Yes, we are always so remiss in that," chirped Deacon Archibald.
"Won't you be seated? Take this more comfortable chair," said little
Mrs. Payne.
"The weather's been fine lately," remarked the deacon.
"A fine summer, indeed, for the crops," agreed Miss Sarah; "the
tobacco's doing splendidly in the valley."
There came another rap on the door and Mrs. Snow was admitted.
"I thought I'd run in just a moment to see if you had that mantle
pattern," she said.
Mrs. Butler, stiff with rheumatism, came next. A knock was heard at
the back door and I heard her heavy breathing and her "Well, Ellen, I
just ran over to return your mother's hoe that Alec left at my house
when he hoed my potatoes for me, but why he can't take back the tools
himself I can't see. Has your mother got company; invited company, I
mean?--because, Land Sakes! I can _hear_ she's got _company_. I'm not
deaf."
The question that they all longed to ask lay heavy in the air. It was
good and _bona-fide_ gossip that they had heard as coming direct from
Mr. Sylvester himself, but so afraid is New England of making a
mistake and of committing itself, that two other ladies had dropped in
on an errand of one sort or another, or for calls, before Miss Sarah
took advantage of a little pause in the conversation to remark:--
"I suppose every one of you here has come to find out if my sister is
to marry Mr. Sylvester."
There was a little, fluttering chorus of dissent.
"Nonsense," said Miss Sarah, "I know what you wish to ask and what a
bushel more will come to ask before the evening is over, and that's
why I'm staying here; and tell every one that you meet that we shall
be happy to tell them ourselves that such, indeed, is the happy fact."
Miss Sarah spoke with a large and grim geniality, for she always had
the air of one who says, "Mankind, I am about to chastise you for your
weakness, but I realize that I am human as well as you."
Meantime my poor Ellen had heard in each one of these knocks on the
door Roger's knock, and so she continued to hear the next day. She
wrote:--
"He's gone away, and I have only learned about it by chance.
Just by chance I heard Aunt Sarah saying: 'As if it wasn't
excitement enough to have this happen yesterday, that young
scallawag gets up and leaves me at a moment's notice.' Two of
his friends came through, it seems, and Roger left with them. He
left without sending word or sending me any message. He says
he's gone for a day or two only. Aunt Sarah says she would not
be surprised if he never came back, but that can't happen. How
could it happen? Did he think that I had failed him so that he
doesn't want me any more, or that I lacked so in courage and in
love of him?... Another day has gone and no word from him. I
don't think I've ever felt so alone in all my life and so cut
off from all human help. I know it is wicked of me, but mother's
happiness hurts me. I want her to be happy, but oh! it hurts me
to watch it. I wish I could go off by myself somewhere, and yet
I know that there I will be worse than I am now, with a thousand
small things to do to somehow fill up the days. Something must
have happened to him. I watch myself like some other person for
fear I shall seem sad for a moment, for if I do it will look as
though I am not pleased about my mother. Oh! I hope that I won't
hurt their joy in any way. I wonder how women live who have to
wait long for news of those they love. I seem to move around in
the world, but I really do nothing but wait. Each time I see my
aunt I think that she will have news of him; I'm grateful to her
now if she only tells me he hasn't come. When I am asleep, I'm
still listening and waiting for him. Something must have
happened to him, because he must want to see me as I do him. It
seems to me that no one could hurt any one they loved as much as
this and be alive."
Here it was for the first time that Ellen tasted that bitter pain of
women, waiting. It sometimes seems to me that this is an anguish in
which we live and of which men know nothing. During the course of a
long life every woman passes so many hours of still agony when she
must fold her hands and smile and wait. We cannot go out seeking the
beloved, but must sit and wait until he comes. Like Ellen, when you
have had a misunderstanding it is not yours to run generously forward;
you can't clap your hat on your head and say, "Here, I'll make an end
to this; I'll go and find her." No, you must sit waiting for the sound
of his footsteps coming toward you; wait until your whole soul is
tense; wait until each sound is part of this hope deferred. All women
know this pain of waiting; and when our time of waiting for a
sweetheart is over, the sons we love go out into the world, and again
we can do nothing but sit still and wait for news of the travelers,
wait for the little, scant messages of love which their careless hands
pen to us in some casual moment. The long days pass and the letters
don't come, and still we wait. We sit and wait for our children to be
born, through the long months, with the black certainty of the birth
that may be death staring us in the face.
Some women get used to waiting. I think that those who do have closed
the doors of their hearts to the keener range of feeling, having
suffered so much that they say to themselves, "Here, I'll suffer no
longer." There are yet others who pass through the pain of waiting,
going by this thorny, bleeding, silent road of doubt and pain to a
higher acquiescence. It is a long way there, and the heart of us must
weep much in silence before we can attain this glorified peace. I have
known the spirits of women to snap like the overstrained strings of a
harp, as they waited with smiles upon their lips.
I am sorry sometimes for all women, and most of all for the impatient,
tender, and flaming spirits of young girls who meet this pain for the
first time.
It is because we have all suffered in this way that the most generous
among us run so eagerly to meet those whom they love. Having tasted
this pain, we wish forevermore to spare others anything like it. The
more shallow-hearted and, perhaps, wiser women, and those who are not
children of light, having tasted it, use the anguish of suspense as a
weapon in the everlasting warfare between man and woman. But there is
hardly a woman grown who could not echo the cry of Ellen when she
wrote:--
"I do not dare to go out of the house for fear I might miss some
word of him, and yet how can I stay in the house knowing my own
thoughts? I wish to fill the gray horror of these empty hours
with anything that the wayside will bring me; I want to go out
and play with the children; I want to find Alec and walk with
him. I try to remember just one thing--that some time to-day or
to-morrow, or the next day, I shall hear something. _This can't
go on forever; there has to come an end._"