We had been at Cohen’s less than a month, when Wallace wrote he could
wait no longer.
He had not sold his play, but he had a very good position now as
associate editor of a big magazine, and he said he was making ample
money to support a wife. So he was coming for his little Ellen at once.
We were terribly excited, particularly as Wallace followed up the letter
with a telegram to expect him next day, and sure enough the next day he
arrived.
He did not want any “fussy” wedding. Only papa and I were to be present.
Wallace did not even want us, but Ellen insisted. She looked sweet in
her little dress (I had made it), and although I knew Wallace was good
and a genius and adored my sister, I felt broken-hearted at the thought
of losing her, and it was all I could do to keep from crying at the
ceremony.
As the train pulled out, I felt so utterly desolate that I stretched out
my arms to it and cried out aloud:
“Ellen, Ellen, please don’t go. Take me, too.”
I never realized till then how much I loved my sister. Dear little
Ellen, with her love of all that was best in life, her sense of humor,
her large, generous heart, and her absolute purity. If only she had
stayed by my side I am sure her influence would have kept me from all
the mistakes and troubles that followed in my life, if only by her
disgust and contempt of all that was dishonorable and unclean. But
Wallace had taken our Ellen, and I had lost my best friend, my sister
and my chum.
That night I cried myself to sleep. I thought of all the days Ellen and
I played together. Even as little girls mama had given us our special
house tasks together. We would peel potatoes and shell peas or sew
together, and as we worked we would tell each other stories, which we
invented as we went along. Our stories were long and continuous, and
full of the most extravagant and unheard of adventures and impossible
riches, heavenly beauty and bravery that was wildly reckless.
There was one story Ellen continued for weeks. She called it: “The
Princess who used Diamonds as Pebbles and made bonfires out of
one-hundred-dollar bills.” I made up one called: “The Queen who Tamed
Lions and Tigers with a Smile,” and more of that kind.
Mama would send Ellen and me upon messages sometimes quite a distance
from our house, for we had English friends living at the other side of
the town. The French quarter was cheaper to live in and that was why we
lived in Hochelaga. Ellen and I used to walk sometimes three miles each
way to Mrs. McAlpin’s house on Sherbrooke Street. To vary the long walk
we would hop along in turn, holding one another’s legs by the foot, or
we would walk backward, counting the cracks in the sidewalks that we
stepped over. One day a young man stood still in the street to watch us
curiously. Ellen was holding one of my feet and I was hopping along on
the other. He came up to us and said:
“Say, sissy, did you hurt your foot?”
“No,” I returned, “we’re just playing Lame Duck.”
It was strange now, as I lay awake, crying over the going of my sister,
that all the queer little funny incidents of our childhood together came
thronging to my mind. I vividly remembered a day when mama was sick and
the doctor said she could have chicken broth. Well, there was no one
home to kill the chicken, for that was the time papa went to England.
Ellen and I volunteered to kill one, for Sung Sung, our old servant,
believed it would be unlucky to kill one with the master away--one of
his everlasting superstitions. Ellen and I caught the chicken. Then I
held it down on the block of wood, while Ellen was to chop the head
off. Ellen raised the hatchet, but when it descended she lowered it very
gently, and began to cut the head off slowly. Terrified, I let go. Ellen
was trembling, and the chicken ran from us with its head bleeding and
half off.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est? Qu’est-ce que c’est? De little girl, she is
afraid. See me, I am not scared of nutting.”
It was the French grocer boy. He took that unfortunate chicken, and
placing its bleeding head between the door and jamb, he slammed the door
quickly, and the head was broken. I never did like that boy, now I hated
him. Ellen looked very serious and white. When we were plucking the
feathers off later, she said:
“Marion, do you know we are as guilty as Emile and if it were a human
being, we could be held as accomplices.”
“No, no, Ellen,” I insisted. “I did not kill it. I am not guilty. I
wouldn’t be a murderer like Emile for anything in the world.”
“You’re just as bad,” said Ellen severely, “perhaps worse, because
to-night you’ll probably eat part of your victim.”