I, with my eyes fastened on the romance of Mrs. Payne and Mr.
Sylvester, had noticed nothing; the explanation that Roger had gone
off for a few days with friends was enough for me; but it was Alec,
with a keener vision, who had seen something wrong.
"What ails Ellen?" he had asked me.
"Why--what should?" I asked.
"Roberta," said Alec, "is Ellen in love with Roger?"
"How should I know?" said I.
Alec looked down, kicking the dust before him with the gesture of a
little boy.
"It would be natural if they cared for each other," he continued. Then
he suddenly flung out his hand and said, "If it's so, he won't ever
make her happy."
"Why, Alec, what do you mean?" I said.
"He's only thinking about himself; he's interested only in Roger
Byington," Alec declared with vehemence.
He filled these next days as full of himself as he could; making
Ellen laugh at his fantastic goings-on as he pretended to be the
bulletin which announced how far the gossip had reached. With his
tender second sight he tried to hide Ellen from herself or whatever it
was that was troubling her.
As Ellen said, the trouble couldn't last forever, and the end came
unexpectedly. While we were sitting in the orchard I saw Ellen's hand
go to her heart and her face change color; she sat still a lovely,
quivering thing, with all the soul of her running out to meet Roger,
and he advanced through the sweet clover, swishing at it with a little
cherry wand that he had cut when walking. He had gone away a fairy
prince--his only fault had been loving Ellen too much--and he came
back a naughty little boy. Even I noticed the change in him. There was
an arrogant, willful tilt to his head which belied the lightness of
his disarming manner, and one which said: "First I'll try to coax you
into good humor, but beware of my stubbornness if you find fault with
me too far." He was the male that will not admit that he has faults.
"Be thankful that I'm back at all," was what his bearing implied; "and
we'll ignore also that I've been away, if you please."
Ellen, poor child, had no idea of blaming him, any more than she had
an instinct of hiding her emotions. Never once had she blamed Roger,
even to herself, for going away, and at the sudden end of her suspense
uncontrollable tears came to her eyes. Men have written books about
the folly of the tears of women. Who knows it better than they, poor
things? There are uncontrollable women, of course, who are as
spendthrift with tears as some men of anger. Tears like these of
Ellen's are as unexpected and uncontrollable as a sudden storm, and I,
knowing what it meant when Ellen cried, left them quickly.
Ellen wrote about it:--
"Oh, the unspeakable shame of having cried. I didn't know I was
going to; I haven't cried since he has been away; I've only
waited. He was sweet and tender with me, but he said
whimsically: 'You, too, Ellen! I've had many a tearful
home-coming with my mother. If one stays away unexpectedly from
women, no matter who they are, the first thing they do when you
turn up again is to find fault with you or else weep over you.'
Then he held me out at arm's length. 'Ellen, you're not going to
make of me the sinner that repented.' I don't know what leaden
weight I have in my heart; it seems all so different; it's like
a little, commonplace squabble. I'm always disappointing him; he
has thought me different from all other women and I would so
like to be, but I am just the same. He didn't even refer to the
cause of his going away. We talked of this and that and couldn't
find each other. He looked at me curiously two or three times
and said, 'Ellen, I thought I should never see tears in your
eyes.'"
Here, indeed, was a shifting of base; they had been playing the higher
harmonies that men and women play together; their spirits had been in
perfect unison; even the tragic parting had had its undercurrent of
understanding, and now here they were with their feet on earth; Ellen
with homesick eyes for the land of lost content and Roger with a
little sneer that she should have let him see that she had no pride
against him. Her absence of coquetry was her undoing. He knew now he
could put her down or take her up at will, and her price was a few
tears. Her spirit stood out in that moment of welcome, shining and
naked, her little shy spirit, the reflection of whose light alone had
been enough for Alec.
From the point of view of age, it is Roger for whom I am sorry, for
with all courage and charm and ability and the swift, pulsing flow of
life in him, life had tainted him already so that this ultimate gift
of herself made him think Ellen too easy of attainment. The situation
was one that had been repeated time and time again, sometimes by men
and sometimes by women. Roger had had his naughtiness and his lack of
consideration and his sudden and impatient vanishing out of a
difficult situation treated by tears and reproaches. Poor Ellen, by
her very innocence, had trodden a path of the emotion familiar to him,
since his way out of difficulties had been a sudden impatient
vanishing. If she could have only had the inspired sense to have
taken his return in a matter-of-course manner, it would have piqued
him, and again Ellen would have won; but how play sorry games like
this with the best beloved? One of the sad things of love is that it
is in absurd and trivial ways like this that it falls from its highest
state and loses its radiance.
From the account of her journal they jogged along a few days at a
slack-water; Ellen groping forever for Roger, Roger a little bored at
the too-eagerly offered heart; their positions oddly reversed; Roger
rather magnificently forgiving Ellen for having annoyed him.
Then suddenly into this doldrums of the emotions burst Miss Grant. A
flaming affection is hard to hide. It shines like a light behind a
closed door,--let two people walk ever so carefully. Now the eyes of
one follow the other and the look is a caress; now some one intercepts
an exchange of glances, and that exchange means, to any one whose
heart has beat fast for love, a promise of everlasting devotion; you
see a girl's hand steal to her fast-beating heart, or the young man
waiting for her with that aching impatience of the young.
So gossip had begun about Roger and Ellen. Some one had seen them
walking down the street so absorbed that they had seen no one else;
another had noticed Ellen walking across the bridge to the mountain
and Roger going before her. Little by little the people who had
separately observed these things had talked together until between
them they had pieced together from broken fragments the whole story,
and then, like a picture thrown unexpectedly on the screen, the gossip
of it came to Miss Grant.
I suppose she had gotten bits of it before, hints and innuendoes, of
the kind people give who are too pusillanimous to face a woman like
Miss Sarah with a point-blank question. The whole thing was focused
one afternoon when she had said lightly to Mrs. Snow that she didn't
know where on earth Roger had passed his time in such a quiet little
town.
"Well, Sarah, if you spent more time down at Emily's, perhaps you'd
know."
To Miss Sarah's hot, "What do you mean?"--
"I mean that wherever Ellen is, Roger's apt to be, and no reason
making such big eyes at me; a very nice sort of thing, I think it."
Miss Sarah merely put on her bonnet and shawl and marched majestically
down the hill. She found Ellen on the back porch, in the midst of a
foam of ruffles she was hemming for her mother's gown. She towered
above Ellen, an avenging fate, whose gray curls bobbed on each side of
her head.
"Ellen, what's this gossip I hear about you and Roger?" she demanded.
Before Ellen had time to reply, as though she read her confession in
the color that mounted to her face, "How could you do such a thing,
Ellen?" she fumed. "Don't you know that Roger Byington came here to
work and settle down; don't you know that he has a marriage already
planned? Don't you see the position you've put your family in, that of
snatching at the fortune of an old friend! A fortune that's destined
elsewhere, and that we were bound, you as well as I, to guard! You've
been deceiving the whole of us!"
Ellen rose to her feet and faced her, her sewing still in her hands,
the blue ruffles around her white frock like a wave of the sea.
"I've deceived no one, Aunt Sarah," said she, with a touch of
sternness in her voice, and just here Roger appeared.
He had heard voices, and had heard his and Ellen's names mentioned,
and he had then seen Miss Grant storming down the hill like some aged
New England Valkyrie and had followed her. He arrived in time around
the side of the house to catch her last words, and the flaming anger
that any one should scold his Ellen blew away forever the flatness
that had for a moment assailed them.
He threw his arms around Ellen as though he would protect her from
everything for all time. "Miss Grant," he said, "the reason I'm here
in this town is Ellen. I walked through here one time and I saw Ellen
and talked with her for a few minutes by the roadside, and so I came
back. No one else I've ever seen in life matters to me--nothing else
but Ellen matters. Please remember that if I amount to anything
_ever_, it will be because of Ellen, and if I fail, it will be because
I have failed Ellen. Had I had my way Ellen would not have been
here now with you; she'd be married to me."
[Illustration: SHE TOWERED ABOVE ELLEN, AN AVENGING FATE]
Ellen wrote:--
"I don't know what it did to me to have it talked about in the
open. I felt as if I belonged forever to Roger, as though some
way this outward profession of faith of his brought out and made
positive everything that he had said and that I had felt, and
that we truly belonged to one another."
The old lady measured the young people with an angry gaze.
"Young man," said she, "I consider you've abused my hospitality; you
have put me and my brother and my whole family in a false light before
your parents. You entangle yourself in sentimentalities with a married
woman, you play false with your sweetheart, and when your father
wishes you to reconstruct your life, you throw them both over and
place me in the position of having seemed to connive at a marriage
with my niece. I shall write your mother my disapproval by the next
post, and if Ellen knew as much of your past history as I do, she
wouldn't take this sudden infatuation seriously, and if she had any
dignity she would withdraw at once from this false position."
"Your letter," Roger replied with some heat, "will reach my mother
somewhat after my own. When Ellen's love for her mother overcame her
better judgment and she refused to go with me, I wrote my mother on my
return as I told her I would do; and now, permit me, Miss Grant, to
withdraw from your house which will save your pride in this matter."
It was an old-fashioned quarrel that Youth and Age indulged in, and
Ellen's journal gives more of it, full of stately words and innuendo
and recriminations cloaked in fine-sounding periods, and I think both
Roger and Miss Sarah enjoyed their own rhetoric heartily.
Mrs. Payne heard the noise of the combat, and when Miss Sarah realized
that her sister had been, as she said, "an accomplice," her
indignation knew no bounds, though she admitted:--
"I'll do you justice, Emily; you've so little common sense that I
don't suppose for a moment you thought of anything but the
sentimentality of this ill-governed young man and your Ellen. You
didn't, I suppose, for a moment consider that Ellen is not the sort of
a marriage planned for him by his father."
Mrs. Payne's wide-eyed, "Why shouldn't she be? Ellen's so sweet and
pretty," collapsed the older lady's anger like a pricked balloon, as
nothing else could have done. Ellen's picture of her is this: "Aunt
Sarah flopped down, she didn't sit, and gathered her draperies around
her like a wounded Roman matron."
* * * * *
Roger, at Mrs. Payne's words, again put his arm around Ellen and
laughed aloud. He adored their unworldliness. The bad little boy in
him vanished; so did the man of the world who cannot bear generosity
in the beloved. He spoke truly enough when he said all the best things
in him ran out ahead of him to meet Ellen. He said to Miss Sarah
gently:--
"You see, we really care for each other, Aunt Sarah, and I'm awfully
sorry about putting you in a false position, but that doesn't count
very much compared to Ellen's and my happiness, does it? Please
believe me when I tell you that your side of this never occurred to me
and so I'll take myself away to-night." The moment of high-sounding
periods was over.
"Hadn't you better stay?" asked Miss Sarah. "Think of the talk,
Roger."
"I want talk," he said,--"all the talk in the world; I would like
everybody to know how I care for Ellen--I welcome gossip."
"The way he laughed"--wrote Ellen--"made one feel the way Spring
looks; I was so proud, and wondered more than ever what I could
have done to have any one like Roger love me."
During the days when they had been at odds with life, they had taken
pains to have me with them; it was the first time that they had shown
themselves eager for my company together. I had been confidante first
for Ellen and then for Roger, and then again for Ellen, but seldom had
I seen them both at once. Now, after this explanation with Miss Grant,
they unconsciously thrust me aside with no more regard for me than if
I had been a withered flower. I was going to Ellen's to help with the
sewing. I had left her a little lack-luster, a little wistful; Roger
had been sulky and inclined to cynicism; and now they swept down on me
like a splendid young god and goddess, no longer making any effort to
keep the town in ignorance; they took it in in a magnificent gesture,
the way they looked at each other; shouted it aloud, and, as though to
carry out in very truth the words he had spoken to Miss Grant when he
said he would like to shout through the town that he loved Ellen, he
took her hand in his when he saw me and swung it to and fro; and in my
day such an action as this was one which would cause the quiet windows
to bristle with interrogatory eyes. You might be perfectly sure that
there would be quiet slippings through back doors and gossiping under
grape arbors.
That evening I met Roger coming down the street and he stopped to tell
me:--
"We've had it out with Aunt Sarah, and both Aunt Sarah and I have
written to my mother. Now we'll soon have an end to this
shilly-shallying."
"And if your parents don't like it?"
"God help them if they don't," he said. "Any parents I have will
_have_ to like it."
And there was so sinister a note in his voice that I shivered.
Sometimes when he spoke there was a weight to a light word that seemed
like a heavy wind.
It was not long before the town had more to talk about. Mrs. Byington,
in her beautiful and fashionable clothes, was as conspicuous as though
she had come riding in a palanquin. The city and country were much
more apart in those days, and home-made patterns taken from some
remote city ones were passed from hand to hand; dolls dressed in
Boston still carried the mode somewhat; and in our honest village,
loveliness was put by with youth, and lovely was the quality of Mrs.
Byington. At fifty she was tall and slender, her hair a little gray,
her neck graceful like a girl's; she walked swayingly, and age was not
a quality with which she seemed to have reckoned. With the changing
years she had a quality as compelling as youth itself, and this
without the slightest attempt at seeming less than her years.
Ellen writes:--
"Roger's mother came to see me alone, and before her, so
beautiful and soft, I felt as though I had been made yesterday.
It happened that I opened the door for her, and I knew who she
was and she knew me, for she said: 'Dear child, I know you are
Ellen; I wanted to come by myself.' She looked at me with
searching eyes that were a little sad, and all of a sudden I
felt very sorry for her, for it must be very hard, when you have
a son that you love, to learn all at once that his life belongs
to some one else. We sat down and talked a little, and my heart
beat so that I could hardly say anything, and I felt that I was
very stupid, and that if Roger could be there he wouldn't like
the way I was acting, and all of a sudden she put her arms
around me and kissed me, and said: 'Dear Ellen, you are very
lovely and very perfect, and, indeed, I knew you would be very
"something" to send my wild Roger after you at such a rate. You
love him very much, don't you?' I couldn't speak, and only
bowed my head; and she said, as though talking to herself rather
than to me, 'Poor child, it would be better for you if you loved
him less; he would be more yours.' I asked her what she meant.
She thought a moment, and then said: 'Perhaps you'll never find
out; you're so sweet, Ellen; even Roger wouldn't hurt a child.'
And for a moment I felt a little flaming anger at her for not
understanding him better. I wanted to tell her that there was
only sweetness in Roger for those who knew how to find it, but,
of course, I didn't dare. There was something in her tone that
made a cold shadow fall over me."
It seemed as though all difficulties were cleared from before them,
when Ellen found herself face to face with what really was the first
important issue of this time. After all, the things in love that count
are not all the obstacles imposed on us from without. It is strange to
me why people have always written of these rather than of those far
more important moments, as when, for instance, one first sees the
beloved face to face as he really is. Love for a moment makes us
transcend ourselves, and Roger was a brave lover, and Ellen had known
nothing of him except Roger the lover, when suddenly she caught a new
glimpse of Roger. She wrote:--
"I don't know what I'm going to do--nothing I suppose. I've seen
Roger angry with his mother. It was our last afternoon all
together and she was talking very seriously with us. She said:
'Your Ellen is very sweet, Roger. Keep her happiness, and if you
play fast and loose again, you deserve all the unhappiness the
world can bring you.' She has wanted me to see him as he is, and
has talked around the edges of this, and she said to me, 'I came
here wondering who you were, Ellen, and ever since I saw you
I've been wondering what Roger will do to you in this new life
of yours begun so sweetly.' One time she cried out, 'Oh! why do
women have to marry men?' And then she laughed at herself for
saying it. Ever since she came Roger has been watching her. He's
had a critical attitude and is ready to find fault at a
moment's notice. It was as if the impatience of the whole week
overflowed. What he said wasn't so much. Oh! he kept within
bounds before me, but the restrained anger of his manner was as
though he had struck her, as though he had hurt her, as though
the force of his anger would throw her from the room. She held
up her head a little proudly, but she only said, as though to
bring him to himself, 'Roger, Roger!' warning him, one would
think, not to lose further control of himself. She spoke as if
she were used to this wounding, terrible manner, a manner that
gets its own way in spite of everything; and I stood there
trembling inside, and I began thinking, 'Who are you, Roger, and
who am I?' Now it is all at once as if I had an answer to why
she seemed to pity me, as though she wanted to protect me from
everything. All my instinct is to run and hide in some place
where I shall hide from him forever. I know nothing of him or he
of me."