Ellen, during his absence, had kept closer and closer to her high
mood. She knew that certain sorts of happiness were not for her with
Roger, and that certain things he did and his moments of neglect and
forgetfulness no longer wounded her to death. A month before her
marriage she went to Boston again to buy her best things. Mrs.
Sylvester had had a small legacy left her, and insisted that it must
go to Ellen's trousseau. I accompanied Mrs. Sylvester and Ellen. Roger
was frankly relieved in his mind to have Ellen in Boston and the day
of his wedding at last in sight.
"There was never a man," he told me, "looked forward to his wedding
with greater eagerness. I'm through with philandering, Roberta. No one
knows more than I what Ellen has stood for my sake."
I knew he was referring to a mild flirtation gossip concerning him
which had come to Ellen and to me.
It seemed as if now nothing could come in their way and as if all was
clear before them. Almost every detail was provided for when Ellen's
prayer that she had prayed day by day and day by day--"Give me
understanding and insight"--received its supreme answer.
It was Roger's temperament, and Ellen understood this, to fill the
vacant places in his life with small love-affairs. At first she had
suffered a certain jealousy and afterwards humiliation, and then
dismissed it all as negligible, never thinking of it, as was natural,
from the other woman's point of view. This last vague affair had been
with a young girl visiting from the South, who hadn't known Roger was
engaged, as he supposed she had. I noticed in the different places
where we went a little, frail figure with a pretty, strained face,
with eyes continually and irritatingly on Roger. His mother had said
of him, "He's not one who kisses and tells, but one who kisses and
runs"; and he was avoiding her with his instinctive avoidance of the
disagreeable. She was a foolish, suffering girl, like Ellen without
pride, and even lacking the guard of Ellen's reserve, haunting what
she had thought had been her love for the balm of a single word which,
though she had lost him, would make his memory sweet to her.
We were at a great party given by one of Roger's relatives, in Ellen's
honor, two dazzled, little country Cinderellas, and for a moment had
drawn ourselves apart to a recess of the big hall, and we saw Roger
looking for us. The young girl hurrying across ran almost into his
arms, and as they stood she cried out, in a little flowing voice,
"Roger." His face went white with anger and set itself into the lines
that since then have been known as "his sentencing face." He didn't
speak, but looked at her with quiet, cruel, and scornful eyes. There
was silence between them, and she tortured the long white gloves that
she held in her nervous hands, looking so frail that a breath might
have blown her away.
"I've been trying to speak to you."
"I think we said all that was necessary before," he told her with the
same cold, white scorn. He had been stopped in his search for what he
wanted, and here was being made a scene that he had tried to avoid.
"I've been trying not to speak to you," he said very quietly, "because
I had nothing to say to you that could please you."
Then tormented out of herself, she cried out:
"Roger, was there no reality of any friendship between us? Were you
engaged all the time that I've known you?"
"There's been nothing between us. What should there be? Just a
moonshine of words," he answered her. "I've been engaged three years.
Do you wish anything else?"
She didn't answer, but went away, a lonely, little, fragile figure,
shivering as though struck with a great cold. He had had no moment of
compassion; his instinct had been to crush her with as little pity as
he would an annoying fly. In his ruthlessness he took even the past
from her, not even leaving her the shadow of her romance for comfort.
Ellen and I had both seen her wilt before him and the light in her
eyes go out, and I felt Ellen's hand shaking in mine as the girl had
shivered, and she whispered in my ear:--
"There, but for the grace of God, goes Ellen Payne."
Here was her prayer granted and understanding was given her. The final
tragedy is not to be unloved, but to find out that one has loved
nothing;--that within the shell of the body there is nothing to which
we can give ourselves;--to have been cursed with the love of the
shallow-hearted; and there is a deep torment, beyond the loss of
death, which goes with the unknitting of two souls knit close
together, strand by strand. Ellen could stand any cruelty that he gave
to her and condone it, but she shivered back from this relentlessness
that she had seen in Roger. As he came to her she said to him:--
"I heard you, Roger."
His face was still set in anger.
"I gave her no cause," he exclaimed angrily, "nothing but a little
moonshine talk. When we're married I shan't be subjected to things
like that."
"We're not going to be married," said Ellen.