When Alec came back in the early summer, he told me he was to stay for
the year. The academy had offered him a place in it, and so had
another school and he had chosen the academy.
"Isn't the other place better?" I asked him.
He nodded.
"A little better; the experience is as good here."
We did not need to discuss why it was he had stayed. I was a good
enough friend of his to be able to ask:--
"Is it fair to Elizabeth?"
"Roberta," he said, "I'm going to give my whole life to Elizabeth as
long as it is of use to her, but I have a right to give a year of it
partly to Ellen when she needs me." For his insight into Ellen had
told him that she needed a hand out to her; during the moments of
doubt and moments of return to the dead center in which she had lived
so long.
"Seeing Ellen, and seeing her free, won't you care more for her than
you ought?" I objected.
"I'll have to get over it if I do. I've thought it out, Roberta.
Nothing that I give Ellen takes away from what I give Elizabeth. I
care for her just as much as I always did, and I've always cared for
Ellen the same."
"Oh, Alec!" I cried, "why does the world have to be so at
cross-purposes? Why aren't you free, and why can't you make Ellen care
for you? Are you sure that Elizabeth cares for you?"
"It's not for me to think things like that at all, Roberta," he
answered. "It would be a poor sort of love I'd bring to Ellen,
wouldn't it? I can't take kindness from Elizabeth and wrap myself in
the cloak of her sympathy when I need it and throw it away when the
sun comes out, even had the unimaginable happened, and Ellen cared for
me,--which she won't. Some faiths one has to keep with one's self."
As for Ellen, she accepted Alec's companionship as a matter of course.
She had no doubts at all about Alec's devotion to Elizabeth, for
Elizabeth was one who compelled sweetness when one spoke of her. She
was a little person, appealing and soft, and the sort of woman who
attends to the physical wants of the man she loves so kindly that this
devotion is almost spiritual. It never occurred to Ellen that she
still held any place in Alec's heart or that his early affection for
her had been anything more than a boyish devotion he had outgrown for
a real love. I think through the autumn and long winter, they both
lived in the radiance of their affection for one another; they two
were in the light together and the past and future were shut out.
Perhaps they were better friends that they were not lovers. They both
lived like children in the present, neither one looking into the
future, when Alec should no longer be hers, but another woman's.
"It's good [she wrote] to have something that lasts in one's
life. Never for a moment, in all that I've lived through, has my
affection faltered for Alec, nor his for me. We have each of us
had more absorbing loves than each other, but this steady little
flame remains unquenched."
I think in their mutual satisfaction and the consciousness of their
own virtue, they did not realize, as high-minded people often do, how
this flowering friendship might affect a smaller nature. Elizabeth
grew restless under it, and Miss Sarah found out from gossiping people
that Elizabeth had not scrupled to do what was little short of spying
on Alec.
"I hope," she said to Ellen, "that you're worldly wise enough not to
make trouble. Of course, we know that Alec might as well be your
brother, but a young woman in love can't be expected to realize it."
Alec was supremely unaware of any discontent on Elizabeth's part; he
went over to see her as regularly as he had come home while he was in
college, and whatever she felt she kept to herself. I fancy that Alec,
whimsical and humorous, large-hearted and kind, would have been hard
to approach with a small jealousy. Once in the light of his smile it
would have withered up.
It was after more and more of this talk had come to Ellen that I find,
for the first time, in her journal a note of emotion about Alec.
"When I hear them tell all the little things she does against
you, Alec, my heart weeps, for if she's like that, I must watch
you start out on a road of long disillusionment. It's so hard to
sit aside and watch sadness and even disgust grow in your eyes,
that my heart is heavy, and with unshed tears. What will happen
to you whose goodness has come out to meet the goodness in me
all your life? Either your own goodness will burn up the you
that loves her, or the you that loves her will eat and corrode
the you I love. I hope for you the high unhappiness and the sad
and hard-gained peace rather than the contented compromise with
the little, mean virtues that act as anodynes. Whatever happens
to the outward aspect of your life, I wish for you that your
spirit may walk free; but oh! I shan't be there to help you in
the hard places, I shan't be able to hold out my hand to you as
yours has been held out to me."
It was only when she realized that Alec was going out into a life
fraught with difficulties for him, since he loved a woman who had it
in her power to hurt him so, that Ellen looked at the future, empty
of her friend. From this time her journal is full of Elizabeth. From a
woman to be taken for granted, some one sweet whom Alec loved, she
became a sinister menace. In her little soft person she carried the
unhappiness of what had been sweetest in Ellen's life.