During the winter Alec came home from college every Saturday, walking
over the mountain each Saturday afternoon for fifteen miles, and going
back Monday morning by a stage that started at some unearthly hour,
and carried passengers over to the nearest town to us through which a
railroad ran in those days.
Various boys of those he had around him would straggle down the road
to meet him, so when he came into the town on cold winter nights it
was with an escort of red-nosed, red-tippeted and booted youngsters.
This was before any of the new forms of education for boys had even so
much as stirred in their sleep, and the town agreed in considering
Alec's friendship with the youngsters a waste of time on both sides:
the parents of the boys saying that they had something better to
do--in filling the wood-boxes for instance--than to tramp out and get
their toes frozen off to meet Alec. Alec's friends, on the other
hand, wondered what he wanted with a "parcel of young ones." It was
only Ellen and myself who caught a glimpse of just what it was that
Alec was accomplishing, when we also would walk out to meet him.
Besides supplying them in his own person with a hero to worship, he
drew them out and untangled their knotty minds for them; for the boy
of ten and twelve was, in my girlhood, even more misunderstood and
kicked about and generally at odds with life than he is now. Nothing
was done to make his school days happier or the path of learning
easier. Teachers, almost without exception, were the boys' natural
enemies. Almost all the communication boys had from older people in my
day, besides religious instructions, were recommendations to get to
work and to get to work quickly.
These snowy walks in the crisp air to meet Alec were the punctuation
points of our lives, and the long, pleasant Saturday evenings that we
spent together, with perhaps some of the other young people dropping
in, were our greatest pleasure. I am sure Ellen's house seemed to him
the gayest place in the world, because we concentrated into those few
hours on Saturday evening the gayety of the whole week, though Ellen
did not have much time for "mulling," as her aunt called it. Getting
ready for her mother's marriage meant not only the preparation of her
clothes, but also the preparation of the whole Scudder house for its
occupancy by Mr. Sylvester and Matilda, Flavilla, and Prudentia.
Ellen's mood was not at all consistent with that of vague
apprehension, and this warning note of her spirit she failed to listen
to most of the time; as long as Roger's letters came regularly, she
lived in a shimmering world of imagination, writing to him all the
things she dared, and then writing to him again all the things she was
too timid to tell him. All the outward details of her life were
constant and pressing enough, and very homely, most of them; while
within she lived in a shimmering world of her own, her lovely garden
inclosed of the spirit, into which she let no unkind breath blow; and
so her love for Roger blossomed throughout the long months of the
winter. Then toward Easter came her mother's wedding, which meant to
Ellen Roger's return. The Resurrection and Roger's return came all
together in Ellen's mind.
When his letter came that told her he couldn't leave his office at
this moment, she could not at first believe it, any more than she
could at first believe that he had gone away.
Alec was there, and he asked me shortly:--
"Why couldn't Roger come?"
"He's busy," I said.
Alec gave me an odd look.
"One can do what one wants to," said he.
He was one of those over whom Love passes a maturing hand. At twenty
he had lost the young-robin look of expression, just as he had lost
early the puppy aspect that a boy has before he has gotten used to
man-size hands and feet.
"It's hard," he said, "to sit back and do nothing. It's hard when you
love any one as I do Ellen not to be able to get for her any of the
things in life that she wants the most."
"What does she want," I asked, "that she hasn't?"
"Well," Alec reflected, "I can come to see her every week and Roger
can't." He might have said: "I can spend my life on her and give her
every thought of my heart and stand between her and unhappiness as
much as I can, and Roger can't."
This was one of the few times that Ellen played make-believe to
herself. I think she had to. It was only later that her straight mind
said what Alec had said, "We can do what we want to." She hid her own
disappointment from herself, and life was good to her in that it gave
her a great deal to do. Although in those days wedding journeys were
very rare, Mr. Sylvester had an old friend, a minister, near
Washington, who came up to marry them and they were to exchange
pulpits, and so directly after her disappointment Ellen was left alone
with the three Sylvester children. Matilda at this time was already
eleven and she remarked gravely to Ellen,--"Ellen, we've all decided
that you can be our mother. Of course we shall call your mother
'Mother,' too, and we shall love her like that, because we've made up
our minds that it is our _duty_,"--Matilda was very particular about
duty,--"but you'll be our real mother. I've done the best I can with
the children,"--for thus did Matilda always refer to her little
sisters,--"but our clothes are in a terrible state since Mrs. Gillig
went away." For the Sylvesters' housekeeper had gone promptly after
the announcement of her employer's engagement. She had departed to the
next town, where her relatives lived, saying that she was not going to
stay around and be any one's "kill-joy"; so with an occasional day's
work from Mrs. Butler and help from Ellen and me, they had gotten on
as best they could.
"I got their poor, little things unpacked [said Ellen] and got
them their supper and put them to bed and Flavia patted my cheek
and said, 'Ellen, you're so happy, that's why we love you,' and
Prudentia said, 'Yes, I love folks that laugh,' and it came over
me that for a while, anyway, I really am their mother--poor me,
who knows so little about doing anything. Before I went to bed
Matilda put her arm around me and said, 'Oh! Ellen, I want to
grow up and be capable and take care of father and mother and
everybody, and I've been just as capable as I know how ever
since Mrs. Gillig left. I've been so capable it makes my jaws
ache, and I want to stop and be a little girl.' And pretty soon
Aunt Sarah came in to see how badly I had done everything and to
grumble good-naturedly over my endeavors, and then Grandma
Hathaway dropped in to see if I needed anything, and they went
off together and left Alec and me alone, and the children in
bed. And Alec never once looked at me as though he cared for me;
he was only funny and told me stories, just as if he knew I
couldn't have borne affection from any one but Roger."
So it was that Ellen hid from herself and from the pain that was in
her heart. This was one of the few times she played make-believe with
herself. She was afraid of her own doubt and afraid of her own
thoughts, really afraid for the first time; for this is another of the
painful milestones which most of us have to pass in the long and
bleeding road of love--the first time that we are afraid to face our
fears.
Ellen and her mother had been buying cloth for Ellen's trousseau, and
she had put it all by for her mother to begin on when her mother
should be married. I was to help her, and so, of course, was Aunt
Sarah.
In our days, girls mostly made their own trousseaux, and the richer
among us had some seamstress engaged for a couple of months or six
weeks, but friends helped one another, and one was supposed to go to
one's husband with linen enough to last a long time in life, and with
good, substantial garments, suitable for various occasions in a
gentlewoman's life. Ellen had a poplin and a cashmere among other
things, and when I came a day or two after her mother's wedding to
encourage her to begin on her own things, I found her on her hands and
knees cutting.
"Why, Ellen Payne! What's that you're doing?" For instead of cutting
out one beautiful cashmere garment she was cutting three little
frocks. "Oh, Miss Grant!" I exclaimed, scandalized, to Miss Sarah,
"Ellen's cutting up her blue cashmere from her trousseau for the
children."
Miss Grant adjusted her glasses and peered down at the patterns on the
floor.
"Well, there," said she, "you have Ellen. We'll have Ellen Payne's
trousseau walking all over town on three pairs of legs, and rather
than patch up their old things, she begins her new life by taking the
very trousseau off her own back! Some would think you were
self-sacrificing, Ellen, but I know you."
Poor Ellen always remained the same, taking more pleasure in doing any
one's work than her own, and as she told me, "the soul of her sickened
in patching up the clothes of those poor children any more," and,
besides, said she: "Everybody else has new clothes, and there's no one
on earth quite so proud as a little girl with a new frock."
"But your own trousseau, Ellen," I objected scandalized, because I had
a proper sentiment for those things. Ellen was romantic, but seldom
sentimental at all.
"Cloth's cloth," she replied briskly, "and goodness knows when I'm to
be married and shall need it, and there's one sure thing, they need
new best dresses right straight away."
They needed new best dresses and they needed new almost everything
else, as Matilda had warned Ellen.
So here was Ellen with her hands full. In the day before the
sewing-machine, when every stitch had to be put in by hand and there
were no such things as ready-made garments, making clothes for a
family was no light undertaking. No wonder, then, that we made our
dresses of good stuff, intended to wear; and Ellen had not only to
provide for the little Sylvesters garments, but for her own trousseau
as well. The young ladies nowadays, who make themselves a few things
and order and buy ready-made everything else, do not realize what an
undertaking the preparations for a wedding used to be. It sometimes
seems to me that there was as much difference in our serious
preparation of our clothes and the way that girls prepare now, as
there is in the way that we prepared ourselves spiritually. Ellen
wrote:--
"The clothes that I am making mean my life, Roger. They are not
dresses to me any more. There is one dress I know I shall never
be able to put on without feeling my heart beat away the minutes
slowly while I waited and waited and waited for your letter.
There are some buttonholes made while it seemed as if my heart
sang like birds. What do you think I am building with the things
I dream of constantly, as I sit with the thought of you and sew
on the clothes that I shall wear when we are at last together
for always, for thinking is the way that one builds up or tears
down the things of the spirit? I think I build rather solidly,
and before I can be torn out of this house of my thoughts of
you, I shall have to be pulled out in little pieces no bigger
than your hand."
She wrote this after she had seen him, for he came for a two days'
breathless visit, just as spring was breaking. He came back the bad,
little boy, ready to sulk if he was scolded for not coming sooner.
This time Ellen had only sweetness for him, no tears; she was so
heart-brokenly glad to see him, but she wrote:--
"Where have you gone, Roger, and what's become of that lovely,
shining love that we had? The horizon has shrunken for us in a
curious way. Where it used to be wider than that of all the
world, and the heavens flung full of stars and a splendid wind
ramping over everything, our love lives now in a little world
full of small hopes and fears, a dwarfed place. I suppose all
this means that I wanted to ask you when you were here, 'What's
the matter, Roger? What has happened to your love for me?' And I
didn't dare to because I knew that you would say, 'Nothing.' I
know you would look at me as one who says, 'Am I not here with
you now? Don't be a tiresome woman.' When I said to you--and I
said it half smiling--'It's a terrible thing how a man can eat
up a woman's life as you do mine, so I am all yours,' you turned
away as though you didn't hear me. You made acknowledgment of a
word that was only half kind. I write this to you which I would
never say to you because if said to you it would be a reproach.
I write to you since I have need of my soul talking to yours,
and with no reproach in my mind, but to try and understand what
it is that has happened. Before, had I shown you my heart that
way, you would have caught me to you. Must I be careful not to
give you too much of myself, Roger; must I pour myself out to
you in small sips,--you who wished to drink of me, as though
your thirst for me would never become quenched? It seemed to me
that there were as many things to keep silent about while you
were here as before we had things to talk about. We were always
running into ghosts of the way we used to care, and yet you were
so dear to me and sweet to me."
Lovers forever have watched the affections ebb out bit by bit, and
have been as powerless to stop the ebbing as the tides of the sea.
This causeless change, this heart-breaking wintertime of the
affections, is one of the hardest things of all to bear. When people
quarrel they can "make up" again, but this slow alteration from life
to death comes as relentlessly as age and seems as little in our power
to change as age's coming. It has been the anguish of lovers from all
time.
All through the coming of spring and summer, Ellen had brooded over
this change, wondering if it was her fault, measuring Roger's
affection and cherishing every little phrase of love which he put in
his letters, every desire to see her, and magnifying them, and
stitching all the while her doubts and hopes--hopes a little frayed
and tarnished--into her wedding-clothes. There was a time when he
promised every week to come, and every week there came a letter
instead of Roger. He played fast and loose with her as it suited him,
now coming to see her a splendid young prince, now leaving her without
word for weeks.
It is an awful and bleeding thing when a woman realizes that the
beloved has changed toward her and she doesn't know the reason, and it
is still harder to have given more of one's self than has been wanted,
and this Ellen did continually. Suffering herself, she wanted to spare
Roger suffering.
So she lived along in that hope deferred that maketh the heart sick.
Then all word of Roger ceased for a time. She wrote to him as she had
always and then she wrote him a letter that she never sent, releasing
him.
"Once, when I was a little girl, I thought I was engaged
because I thought I was in love, and I spent two years of my
life in thinking that my life was dear to this man. I lived in a
torment of doubt of what to do rather than hurt him. I could not
bear to have any one live this way for me, and least of all you
who have been the heart of life to me, and so before this
happens to you let us say good-bye to each other as splendidly
and gayly as we first met each other. Love does not come at any
one's bidding, nor will it stay, and I would blame no one in
this world for ceasing to love, least of all the one whom I
love. But I could not endure from you a cowardly drifting away
from me, I could not bear to see you fear to face bravely a
moment of pain, nor could I bear the dishonorable shiftiness
with which some men loosen the bonds between themselves and the
women whom they have loved."
And under this page, which was written on good notepaper,--a true
never-sent letter,--she had written: "_Oh! if I had the courage to
send this now!_"
Then came Roger, triumphant and upstanding, his first pleaded case in
his pocket, a splendid young prince again, as prodigal with apologies
as he was with love. The miracle happened; they turned back the hands
of time for a few days.
"He held me from him, the way he does, at arm's length, and
said: 'Ellen, have you doubted me?' What could I say to him?
When I had courage enough to say, 'What's been the matter,
Roger? Where did you go so I couldn't find you?' he only laughed
and said, 'I've been in the devil's own temper.'"
This was the last time she fought against him. From this time on he
loosed his careless hand and tightened the clutch of it over her heart
until it bled, according to his mood. When she didn't write him for a
while he rushed to her, to see that his own was his own, and this was
as much as any woman ought to have asked, so he felt. She wrote:--
"There's one thing I've learned about you, Roger, when first I
saw the other Roger, and that was if any one denied you
anything, you loved to beg for it. As long as a thing denies
itself to you, you must strive for it, and knowing this of you,
it is a weapon that I can never use. If I played you as if you
were a trout in the stream, played you until I reeled you in to
me, tired and gasping, I might have held you in my hand always.
Whatever I shall do for you in life, I shall never do anything
that shows my love for you more, in that I won't traffic with
your love, and keep it for myself by playing a game with you. I
make you this present, a real gift, as my aunt once said, and
one that you won't know about ever."
So she wrote in the deep bitterness of her heart.
* * * * *
The wedding had been fixed for October and all the time there was one
little song that sung itself to her: "When we're married, then I can
show him how I really care; when I'm with him, nothing will be hard
for me, for it is suspense that kills." For she trusted him as women
must, in the face of disloyalty and carelessness.
In the early fall, after a season of silence, when she was too sick
at heart even to write, he came. He had a deprecatory air. He came as
one asking the favor of something which he ought not to have, and it
was characteristic of him, with his intolerance of the disagreeable,
that he should break the edge of telling Ellen, so to speak, by
telling me first.
He had come to defer the wedding, and his reason for wishing to do so
we found out later. I remember how he sat in my kitchen, his heavy,
handsome profile silhouetted against the flaming, evening sky, his
head swung forward. He lifted his face toward me with a sharp,
impatient gesture, looked at me, and asked a question, to me
inconceivable.
"Do you think she is going to make an awful fuss?"