There came a beautiful spring month where she put the thought of the
future from her, for Elizabeth was away on a visit and Ellen could
forget her. Alec might have gone to his very wedding-day without Ellen
knowing her very own mind and realizing that the dear and long-tested
affection had changed its name; and only after he left her would she
have wept at the grief of her heart, and, indeed, to me, a close
observer, it did not seem to change its complexion at all, and not
until the day of Alec's accident was I, a constant third in their
party, conscious of any change in them.
You know how disaster fills the air of a little town as a spiritual
thunderclap. I remember to this day the sinister feeling I had that
something was wrong when I saw two women meet two others in front of
my house and stop, talking and gesticulating. I remember the flash
that went over me was, "I wonder what's happened"; and then a patter
of bare feet and a little flying figure of a lad dashed past, and
they would have stopped him, but he made a wild circle around them,
crying as he went:--
"Alec Yorke's dead!"
Then I went out and became one of the gesticulating women. Then came
the doctor driving from the school; he was waylaid up the street, and
we scurried along, young and old, to hear what had happened. It seemed
there had been some sort of a boy's prank with some gunpowder, and
Alec, pulling away a boy, had been hurt. No, he wasn't dead, but there
was a question of his eyesight; one couldn't tell how badly injured he
was until the next day. That was all there was to tell. He was resting
quietly. Then there was the rattle of wheels, and I saw Ellen driving
down the street. She came straight toward us, but she was so drowned
in the dolorous contemplation of what had happened that I am sure she
did not see us, though at the sight of her face we all turned silent
and stared at her; and the doctor dropped an illuminating word:--
"She's going to get Alec's young lady. Coming to he was rambling on
about her, and"--he hesitated--"if the worst should happen it would
be a comfort to have her there."
But I, who knew Ellen so well, knew at the sight of her face what it
was that had happened to her, and an impulse so deep in me that the
words sprang to my lips involuntarily made me cry out, "Ellen, stop.
I'm going with you."
She obeyed me mechanically, but she seemed almost unconscious of me as
I got in beside her. It was one of those days in spring when the world
seems sodden with tears; when every tree drips all the day long. I
remember to this day how I felt as I sat there by Ellen's side,
fighting back tears until I was sick, for the hopeless tragic tangle
of life had overwhelmed me. I wanted to cry with the oblivion of grief
that unhappily one seldom knows this side of childhood. It seemed to
me that some hidden well of sorrow had been opened from which the
tears must gush forth unquenchable. And yet I must not cry, since
Ellen sat there like something turned into stone. It was an irony too
cruel to be borne that she should drive over this road to bring this
alien Elizabeth to Alec.
I knew, as though she had herself told me so, that all life could
give her no such sweetness as the right to comfort Alec in his moment
of trial, and that life had never given her anything harder than to go
seeking another woman to fill the place that she would have been glad
to fill herself. And with the same clearness of vision I knew that it
was Ellen for whom Alec had called. At the moment of his disaster the
old comfortable myth of friendship had ceased, and then Ellen had
known that for her Alec was the very foundation of life, woven into
its fabric, and that he had always been there. And this knowledge had
come so flooding, so overwhelming that it drowned her and with it came
the necessity of seeking a stranger for him.
The interminable wet and weeping road over the mountain swarmed with
memories of Alec; with the ghosts of the Alec and ourselves of bygone
days. It was up this road that we had walked to meet him through that
long and difficult winter, and the really glad spots of life were his
home-coming. What did "over the mountain" mean, anyway, but Alec? And
yet here we were going upon this errand; nor could I have opened my
lips to say a word against it, even though I was innerly certain it
was Ellen, and not Elizabeth, Alec wanted, for I was bound down by the
fierce and narrow-minded code which decreed that, while a woman might
refuse a marriage with a man, a man must go through to the bitter end.
I had permitted myself one protest and repented of it. As we go on we
will throw away all the false loyalties that have crucified so many of
us.
Both Ellen and myself faced this as though it was as inevitable as
death itself. I do not know how fully she realized what she was doing;
I do not know, but I cannot believe that deep down in her heart she
thought that Alec didn't care for her. But she had played the game of
friendship with Alec too long and too well to think that he gave her
anything else but friendship. So we drove, silent, over our beloved
road and down the other side of the mountain into the village street
whose elms dripped unceasingly, and up to Elizabeth's white,
commonplace little house.
There was an added irony to it all in the way she received us in her
parlor. She was the type of girl who preserves under all
circumstances the little punctilios of life. She didn't permit
herself the indiscretion of one surprised look at the sight of our
strained faces and our arrival in the midst of a slow-falling,
implacable spring rain. It was impossible not to avoid the polite
overtures of an ordinary call. If we had come on an important errand
it was plain that we should have to make the opening for the telling
of that errand ourselves. She was very polite to us, but her
politeness hid a mild resentment, for we had represented in life all
of Alec that she had never been able to possess; while to us
Elizabeth, so pretty in her commonplace way, so decorous, represented
the menace of Alec's happiness.
For a moment we bandied polite phrases, or rather Elizabeth and I did,
while Ellen sat inert and aloof as she had on the drive over, until
all of a sudden she seemed to awaken in a gush of pity for Alec and
for Elizabeth. She swept all the little politenesses out of the way
with one gesture.
"Elizabeth," said she, "you must put on your things and come with us.
Alec's been hurt. His eyesight is perhaps in danger."
There was something deeply sweet in the way she spoke and deeply
sweet in the look she gave Elizabeth, and at her complete sincerity
and goodness Elizabeth also dropped the politenesses that she was
using as a shield against us. The tears that were so easy for her
started to her eyes.
"Oh, Ellen!" she cried; "oh, poor Alec!"
"We'd better go, I think, Elizabeth," said Ellen gently.
"I can't go," Elizabeth answered; "I can't go with you, Ellen."
And to the amazed question of our looks: "I can't go because I care
for some one else," she told us. "I'd have written to him before," she
went on, "but I thought I'd let him wait. He'd let me wait long
enough." There was neither spite nor bitterness in her tone as she
said this. I think the very best of her came forward to meet us in
this moment. At the root of her narrow little nature was a certain
childlike candor. "I cared for him too long without having him ever
care. I tried to be real patient, but I got tired after a while,
Ellen, and it seems good to me to have the whole heart of a man." And
then a light whiff of anger flamed up in her. "Why did you come for me
anyhow, Ellen Payne," she cried, "when he might need you? You knew all
the time it was you he cared for; you knew all the time it was you he
wants! Now hurry, hurry back."
The conventionalities had fallen from her, and for the first and last
time we saw the Elizabeth for whom Alec had cared.
With this godspeed we started on our long drive back, I full of
disquieting fears, full of anguish concerning Alec; Ellen still and
withdrawn. After a while the strain of silence told on me and the
words forced themselves from my lips: "Oh, I can't bear to think of
its happening. I can't bear to think of having his life hurt this
way."
As if recalled from a very far distance, Ellen turned her head to me.
"It can't happen, Roberta," said she slowly.
I looked at her curiously. There was just enough light for me to see
the outline of her face, and I felt as if she had pulled herself back
by some great effort to answer me and that her spirit had been
somewhere with Alec, free for the first time. And I felt for the rest
of the ride as if in some obscure way he were near us; that Ellen
could call to him through the dark.
His mother opened the door for us.
"I'm glad you've come," she said with her profound simplicity. "He's
wanted you all his life, Ellen Payne."
So we three women sat ourselves down for the night watch to learn what
the morning would bring. Alec's mother sat there, her hands folded,
solid as a rock, impassive as fate. She had borne a great deal in her
life and had grown strong with it, and whatever happened she would be
there to help him. All through my life I shall remember Ellen's face
as it was through that long night, for it was the face of one who
defies death and disaster; and what I mean only those who have brooded
guardingly over the lives of those whom they love will understand. For
there comes a moment in the lives of most women and some men when they
seem to put their spirits, a tangible thing, between death and
disaster and the beloved.
And one more thing I shall remember forever was Alec's voice, as he
cried out in his sleep, "Ellen," and again, "Ellen," as though, sunk
fathoms deep in pain, he still called for her and his unconscious body
groped for her in the darkness. So we sat and waited through the
night, until the blessed word came to us at last that all was well
with him.
There was only one more entry in the journal and then blank leaves,
for I suppose she began another book that belonged to herself and Alec
alone. It told of the accident and went on:--
"I felt as if I had been waiting for this one moment all my
life; as if all I had ever been and could hope to be
concentrated itself in those long hours; as though the arms of
my spirit folded themselves around him as I prayed, and as I
prayed I knew that my prayer had been answered. I was as certain
that it was well with him as if I could penetrate into the
future. And that night I knew the meaning of my long life, and
that I had only been learning to love enough, so that when he
called to me, 'Ellen, Ellen,' I should have learned how to love
and how to give."
THE END
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Transcriber's Note
A table of contents has been added by the transcriber for the
convenience of the reader.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Heart's Country, by Mary Heaton Vorse