CHAPTER X

“When Roberta and I don’t say anything it is because we have too much to say, but when Janie acts as if she knew how God made the world, it is a sure sign she has nothing to tell.”

Poor Janie Acres! Through all this long stretch of years I can see her perpetually heart-hungry, wishing for experiences her very eagerness denied her; longing for sympathy, companionship, and love, and when such things came her way, killing them. She had a curious jealousy which was kept from its full bloom by her confidence in herself. When Janie hadn’t sufficient sentimental experiences she would invent them. And it was because of her inventions that my little experience which I was taking so seriously was turned to ashes before me.

This trait of Janie’s was an incredible one to me. I, who so diligently hid all trace of any sentiment in my life, could never comprehend a temperament that would not only share all its secrets with its friends, but who also invented them; and it was only when Janie had repeatedly emphasized George Landry’s attentions to her at moments when I had been reading poetry with him that I realized this. I listened with the gravest feeling of superiority to Janie’s artless prattle. If George Landry walked up the street with her, it was an event. I think if she had refused to have him accompany her to a Sunday-School picnic she would have recounted it to us as the refusal of a proposal of marriage.

In some obscure way Janie’s interest in George Landry quickened my own feeling and gave me emotions of vast superiority which were very bad for me. All this is brought vividly back to me by this page of Ellen’s journal which recounts the final dénouement:—

“We have been having an awful time this afternoon, and I don’t think that any of uswill feel the same ever again. Roberta has been crying in my arms and says she feels soiled, but she has acted so nobly that it will be a comfort to her, because being noble is always a comfort to Roberta—and to almost anybody else. George Landry has been a friend of Roberta’s for some time, and when the other girls have joked her about it she has been very stern, and I’ve believed everything Roberta has said because I think it is horrid to do anything else. But Janie has been talking about George, too, in the way she goes on about anybody that notices her, only who could tell that Janie would talk about those who don’t notice her in the least? This afternoon we were all talking together, and she began: ‘Last night George Landry came past my house and I pretended not to notice him, and he stopped and said, “Can I come in?” And I said, “No, it was too late.”’ ‘What time was it?’ asked Mildred Dilloway. ‘Oh, it was about eight o’clock, and he stayed and talked and talked and leaned clear over the gate, and I kept backing away, and if mother hadn’t called me from the house,—’ Here Mildred broke in and said: ‘Janie Acres!I don’t see how you can tell things like that! George Landry was at my house all yesterday evening.’ ‘Well, it was the evening before that,’ said Janie. ‘Well, it wasn’t the evening before that,’ said Mildred, ‘because he was at my house all the evening before, too.’ ‘I thought your mother was so particular,’ began Janie; but Mildred wouldn’t let her change the subject the way Janie knows how to do, and she said: ‘The way you have gone on about George Landry has almost made trouble between George and myself. It has made me feel quite suspicious at times. But now I have caught you at it.’ Janie blushed very hard and said: ‘You are very spiteful, Mildred, about it. George Landry does like me and I haven’t told you anything that wasn’t so. Perhaps it wasn’t so late when he leaned over my gate.’ ‘He wasn’t anywhere near your old gate,’ said Mildred, ‘and I might just as well tell you—’ And here Mildred, who is very soft when she loses her temper, and begins to cry, did all these and made us all very much embarrassed. ‘And I might as well tell you—and you can see how much you havehurt me—he kissed me good-night. So you can see whether it’s nice of you to pretend that George Landry is interested in you or not.’ We were all perfectly quiet for a minute, and then it was that Roberta made her great sacrifice. Mildred was still crying from excitement and Janie was at a loss for something to say for once, and looking very frowning-browed and jealous. ‘Girls,’ Roberta said, ‘I have something to tell you. And you, Mildred,—whether George has been attentive to Janie I don’t know, but—’ ‘He walked home with me yesterday afternoon,’ said Janie. ‘He did not,’ replied Roberta firmly; ‘he did not. He was at my house all yesterday afternoon, and we were reading poetry and he held my hand.’ If Roberta had been the least like Mildred, she would have cried, too, but she stood there straight and held her head up as beautiful as an avenging fate. What she said stopped Mildred’s tears, and she sprang to her feet and stamped her foot, and said: ‘Well, if he did that and then came to my house and did what he did in the evening, he’s a pig!’ And she stamped her foot again. ‘I said the truthanyway’; and she glared at Janie who now said, ‘I was just trying to tease both of you.’ But Mildred snapped, ‘You were trying to lie to both of us.’ And Janie stuck her head on one side in the most provoking way and said, ‘I don’t want your horrid beau anyway.’ It was all very painful, especially to Roberta. She said: ‘We must never any of us speak to him again. He is unworthy of our notice. Except to spare you more pain, Mildred, I would not have told you about this at all, and I am very much ashamed of myself, and it serves me right. I shall never let any one hold my hand again as long as I live.’ None of us knew that any boy could be so double-faced, and we all have agreed, and Janie Acres, too, that we shall act as though he did not exist at all, which will save our dignity and we hope will teach him something.”

When other people write our lives, they tell the dates of our births, marriages, and deaths; they note the year we went to college and when we left, and all the other irrelevant things; no one says that it was at such and such a momentthat his soul was born, or that the baptism of fire that turned away the selfishness of this woman came at such a time. We keep these great and obscure birthdays and many minor ones to ourselves, and this droll little episode was the definite ending for us of little-girlhood. In our town we dawdled along in what the Germans call the “back fish” age until some such thing has happened, for we had no custom of girls coming out all of a sudden full-blown young ladies; we had to win our spurs in a way.

We thought of ourselves as grown up, to be sure. Mildred Dilloway had had a very melodramatic love-affair with one of the lads in the seminary who had gotten into some sort of a scrape and was expelled from school. He had urged Mildred to fly with him. Alas! that women should be so practical. Even young as she was, she asked, “Where?” and when he had no special place to propose beyond his parents’ house, to which he was then repairing, she had laughed at him, but in spite of all our experiments in sentiment we had remained immature in spirit. Now, suddenly, through the actions of this soft youth, George Landry, we foundourselves in an absurd position. The grown woman in us came to life; we wanted to vindicate ourselves in our own eyes; and it was during the next few months that we found ourselves suddenly grown up and the world’s attitude toward us suddenly changed. From being the little girls who accepted the casual kindnesses of older men in a panic of gratitude, suddenly our position was of those who are sought out.

Ellen’s formal renouncing of goodness helped us find our place in the grown-up world. Her gayety had always made her overstep the bounds of perfect decorum demanded of young women in my generation, and she set about carrying out her resolution which she told me about. I remember well the shocked sort of quiver with which I recognized myself, even staid Roberta, in her question:—

“Roberta, when you’re in company, don’t you ever want to do foolish things? When you see a lot of solemn people saying good-bye downstairs, don’t you want to slide down the banister into their midst? When Edward Graham used to lecture me, again and again I’ve wanted to take his hand and skip down the street singing, ‘Hippity Hop to the Barber Shop,’ and see what he’d do. I’ve always wanted to do all the foolish things I’ve thought of when I was in company, and now, Roberta, I’m going to!”

I had had these erring impulses. Who has not? In each of us there is a hinterland where thoughts as fantastic as anything that happens in dreams gambol around with the irresponsibility of monkeys. Ellen translated a certain amount of these into action—and see what happened.

This is what makes virtue so discouraging in an imperfect world. It was her naughtiness which advertised to the world of men, “I am a sweet and adorable person; I can make you laugh, and I can make you dream, and I have no fear.” Ellen now acted before strangers with the inspired foolishness which most of us keep for those best known to us. Even for them this mad spirit is not at our beck and call, but must wait for the time and place to bring it out. Youth, empty of such lovely, high-spirited, and drunken moments, must be very sad.

The divine folly of such mirth is only for the partaker; one must feel the wine of life coursing through one to understand its spiritual significance. Joy-drunken young people seem to outsiders silly, if they don’t seem wanton; and while the things that we did would seem mildenough if I told them, they set our little New England town by the ears during the year that followed.

Our little coterie gradually acquired the reputation of giddiness among the older people, while we steadily became leaders among those of our own age, and Ellen the central flame around which we revolved. I myself thought her too audacious, and even when carried away by her I used to remonstrate seriously with her. This accomplished nothing, but it eased my own conscience.

Edward Graham, who had come back to teach in the academy, also lectured Ellen continually. He was one of those tenacious men who desire a thing all the more when they have lost it, and I think the full flowering of his affection for Ellen only came after he knew he couldn’t have her. I think it might never have come otherwise. His love for her was deep and fundamental, and the sort of love men treat like the air they breathe; but had she married him and been the docile wife she would have been, he might never even have known himself to what extent he cared, and still less haveshown it to her. They continued to see much of each other, because he had put to her the plausible story that they could still be friends, and she, of course, eagerly assented, wishing to make what little reparation she could, and not realizing that at the back of his mind was a determination to win her at whatever cost.

Now her growing popularity and light-mindedness caused him anguish. Her growing popularity aroused in him a leaden jealousy. He alternated from mad blame to pleading affection. His devotion to her was a continual pain, and yet in her gentleness she didn’t know how to escape it, and his criticisms bred in her a certain defiance of the world and of conventions and made her more extravagant. I suppose it was because it came as a climax of a number of smaller follies that the town took so much notice of the famous “Young People’s Party,” given by the gentle Mr. Sylvester. I well remember the next day. I see myself demure in my grandmother’s kitchen, demure and gingham-aproned, my hands in dough, my hair sleek under its net. I see Ellen, a blue ribbon around her hair, a sparkle in hereye, her little feet crossed, with all the look of the cat which has swallowed the canary, and is glad of it. This is what sin had brought her to, you see. Mrs. Payne sat, sweet and helpless-looking, in one chair, and my grandmother creaked portentously back and forth, her hands folded on the place she called her waist-line, saying to Sarah Grant:—

“It couldn’t have beenhens, Sarah.”

“It was hens,” said Miss Sarah accusingly. “They went out to the hen-yard and brought each hen into the house, and they flew around and broke two vases.” Her eyes meantime had not quitted Ellen, who at this inopportune moment snickered with happy recollection. “Ellen,” her aunt broke off accusingly, “didyouthink of bringing those hens into the house?”

“We were hawking,” explained Ellen. “I brought mine in on my wrist and it flew across and perched on John Seymore’s shoulder. That’s how we told off partners for ‘Authors’; everybody got a hen, and on whichever boy’s shoulder it perched,—and often it wouldn’t perch,—that’s what really happened.” She laughed; her mother laughed; I laughed.

Whoever reads this will sympathize with Aunt Sarah, because it doesn’t seem witty for a grown company of young men and young girls to have behaved that way in the house of their minister. It had been a golden moment, I assure you,—a party that stood out;—and if ever the laughter of the Greeks was heard in that staid, old New England town it was when Ellen Payne stood aloft on the hassock, a squawking hen trembling indignantly on her wrist; and she at that moment looked both beautiful and absurd. Miss Sarah Grant saw nothing of all this.

“I am chagrined,” she said. “Have you no respect for life?” And she walked away heavily.

Ellen spent the afternoon gathering expiatory pond-lilies of which her aunt was as a rule fond. She waded in the pond during the whole afternoon, her skirts trussed up scandalously, emerging with a stocking of black mud on either foot. She was sunburned, she was mosquito-bitten, she was happy, she sung aloud for joy on her way home; and when she left the offering at her aunt’s door, this ladysaid: “These are very pretty, Ellen, and I thank you, but I wish, my dear, that you had made me some little gift that is a testimony of your industry.”

It was on our way home that we were stopped by some women from the other church, who asked me:—

“Roberta, is it really true that you and Ellen started to bring inhensto theminister’s houseat the Young People’s Party?”

“Roberta never started it,” said Ellen, who was easily drawn in ways like this.

“We thought they were joking when they told us,” said Mrs. Mary Snow, who was a widow and very precise.

“Well,” said Miss Amelia Barton, “I should think Mr. Sylvester would have prevented it.”

“Mr. Sylvester enjoyed it, the fowls enhanced the party,” said Ellen. I pulled her along. “Hateful gossips,” she said. As we passed the house where Edward Graham was living, this illustrious young man joined us for the purpose of saying:—

“You remember, Ellen, I told you at theparty, when I first saw you coming in with the hen, that you had far better leave it outside. The whole town is talking and buzzing.”

“The whole town disgusts me deeply,” cried Ellen, “and so does any one who lets the buzzing reach my ears.”

“You ought to want to know the reaction of the things you do,” retorted Graham, whose belief in his moralities made him irritable when attacked. “You are criticizing Mr. Sylvester for permitting it and I think you went much too far.”

When Edward Graham moralized on the subject Ellen replied flippantly:—

“It is that you and everybody else criticize anything you’re not used to. What’s the harm in hens; what evil does bringing a hen into the minister’s house lead to? Does it make you want to go and take the amber beads off a baby’s neck just because I brought in a hen and it perched on John Seymore’s shoulder? John Seymore didn’t mind it, and he’s studying for the ministry. It is people like you, who talk about an innocent thing like a hen, and fuss over it as if it was something bad, who doharm,” cried Ellen; and she swept me along with her. She comments in this fashion about the episode:—

“At the party we were all very happy, and there’s no rule that says that a thing must be of a worthy sort before we may laugh at it. That’s one of the nice things about laughing, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It was not among those things that mother talks of that undermine our fineness of perception. But Mr. Sylvester didn’t realize how people were going to feel about it, and now they are all talking and tongue-wagging as though something terrible had happened. Am I wrong, or are they? I think they are, and I hate them for it, and I feel as though that was the worst thing I had done, because I hate poor Edward Graham and I hate Mrs. Snow and Miss Barton because of their smallness and injustice; and aren’t they more wicked to talk about innocent things and gossip about young people and make those who are happy feel uncomfortable and sinful? It makes me want to break a window when I think how virtuous they feel.”

We hadn’t heard the last of the talk concerning the “Hen Party.” Rumors of it reached our ears from all sides. I suppose our elders exaggerated the talk, that we might learn decorum. Personally I could not imagine, any more than Ellen could, just what harm the hens had been supposed to have done us. One of the hardest things for me now to understand is the annoyance so many people feel at the sweet, noisy fun of young people. It seems to me the very laughter of fairyland, but older people have a way of turning the fairy coach of mirth into a pumpkin drawn by mice, and are proud of themselves for doing this.

It is strange that the ages of men have rolled on one after the other without this being a basic principle laid down to all parents—you can’t disapprove a child into the paths of virtue any more than you can scold a man into loving his wife.

There are a great many young people who are made reckless and sullen by such disapproval, though Ellen was saved from the harm that Edward Graham and the public opinion of which he was the voice might have done herby the utter sympathy of her little mother. She joined in all our little gayeties; she laughed with us. So did Mr. Sylvester. He attended the next two or three young people’s parties, explaining to Ellen with his gentleness: “They say, my dear, that I’m not a fit guide for youth, so I am going to try and learn to be so by being more with you.”

Of course, for their pains, these two grown-up children of God were called overindulgent; it was prophesied that they would spoil us; yet it was this that kept Ellen’s audacities always sweet.

However, even so, Ellen’s future destiny was despaired of by Edward Graham.

“Ellen is in danger of becoming a jilt,” he told me.

“She can’t help it if people like her,” said I; for I, myself, had changed a great deal from that rigorous opinion that one should be proposed to only by the man one intends to marry.

“Ellen has altered very much in the three years I have known her,” said Edward.

“She has grown up,” said I.

“She has not grown up in the way I hoped to see her.”

“Then, why don’t you turn away your eyes from the offensive spectacle?” I asked him cruelly, not knowing that this—poor fellow—was just what he couldn’t do. But even I was inclined to agree with Edward Graham.

The old Scudder place in those days was full of laughter and young people. We were happier there than any place else, and I have never known any parties gayer than those, where the only refreshments were weak lemonade and occasionally a batch of cookies. I remember once or twice on great occasions Miss Sarah Grant provided “refreshments.”

There came a time when I agreed with Edward Graham that Ellen was going too far. This night I remember we were playing hide-and-seek all through the house—and you may be sure it was only in little Mrs. Payne’s house that such a thing would be allowed; for, oh! how sacred the guest-room in my day and how solemn and suggestive of a funeral the parlors in all the rigor of their horsehair. The Scudder house was a magnificent place for hide-and-seek,—the ell connected with the front of the house by what was known in my day as a “scoot hole,”—sort of a half-sized door,—andmore doors opened from downstairs to the outside air than any house I have ever seen. I was hiding in one of the rooms when I heard the sound of running, and Ellen dashed in, John Seymore in hot pursuit, Ellen’s laughter trailing out gay-hearted, careless, and irresistible.

“Now, I’ve got you,” cried John Seymore’s voice; and to my horror and scandal, he kissed her and Ellen merely laughed, laughed as she might have had she been ten instead of twenty, having run away breathless from a kiss that she expected to get in the end, and over which she was only making a mock panic. It was a romping sort of a performance, because Ellen had slipped away from him without any sentiment, but I was shocked and pained—and, besides, I liked John Seymore and he liked me, and I didn’t think such levity was becoming in one who was to become a minister. I sought Ellen out.

“I saw you,” said I.

“I heard you under the bed,” said Ellen.

“That’s why you went out?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” said she, grinning a naughty little-girl grin at me.

“You ought to be ashamed,” I admonished.

“Do I look it?” asked Ellen.

Suddenly there rushed over me most poignantly the memory of all our immature aspirations for the uplifting of those we knew. In a great wave of sadness I felt that we were wasting our lives—and the boy that liked me most of all had kissed Ellen in a romp. Twelve o’clock had struck for me. I was little Cinderella.

I suppose I must have shown Ellen all I felt, for she had seen the new look in my eyes and all her impishness vanished, and she cried out: “Oh, Roberta dear!”—when we both heard voices shouting:—

“It’s Alec! It’s Alec Yorke!” And in strolled a grown-up youth with wide shoulders, and a fine, open-air, swinging way with him, and on top of it was perched the head of Alec Yorke, only Alec made over with that incredible change that comes between fifteen and eighteen years. He was a man grown, but from this face, so masculine in its youthful quality, looked the touching young eyes of Alec, blue and sweet, and fearless, angry blue. He wasseized with a dumb shyness and shook Ellen’s hand over and over again, while his eyes rested on her as if the sight of her fed the soul of him. After a while they drifted off together. Ellen wrote about this meeting:—

“I can’t tell how strange this meeting with Alec has been. It was as though my dearest friend had been changed over and I had to findmyAlec in this new grown-up boy, who was the same and so different; even his voice was different. And then all at once he began to tell me how much he cared for me, and I feel so ashamed. I feel ashamed just because he says that the memory of what I am like has kept him from doing things that he shouldn’t; he said I’ve always seemed to him like a white light burning in his life. I seemed to myself so very silly. I have never had any one talk to me as he did. Every one else who has cared for me has wanted something for themselves and he wanted nothing. I know now that I’ve never cared for any one in my life, for the way I care means nothing compared to the way he cares for me. What little bit of love I had for Edwardwas nothing. I feel ashamed because I know so little beside this boy who is so sweet and knows so much. He doesn’t even expect I shall care for him. He only wants to make me proud that he should have ever cared for me, and to be something just for that. The things he said were all very young and very quixotic, perhaps, but how much more beautiful than the things that older spirits think of saying, and if I ever care for any one, I pray to God that I shall only think of what I can give. We sat there for a long time, and he held my hand in his and told me again and again about myself, and it was as if I had seen a reflection of the me that I might be and that I ought to be in the dear things he said; and when I said: ‘Oh, Alec, you don’t know me; you have forgotten me,’ he said, ‘I look at you, Ellen; you’re sweeter than you were, sweeter than even I remember you.’ But everything he said he said in just a few words that were hard for him to say, but each little, difficult sentence had his true self in it, as though he had distilled his soul for me, and I am so light-minded and have been so careless and I have tried so little, but if any one can feel about me as Alec does, Ican try, even though I can’t care for him, to be a little bit more the person he thinks I am. I have found the only reason I’ve ever yet found for acting the way people want you to act, and that is to please the ones you love. Some of the foolish things you do may hurt some one you really care for. Roberta was shocked because John Seymore kissed me; but I know we were just romping, and at most, perhaps, I was a little bold. It is funny that just a little boy should open my heart so. Mother and Mr. Sylvester love the me I am, or rather a younger me—the naughty little girl whose naughtiness they know don’t make much difference; but somehow he has seen the sweetest person I ever am. I feel I have been a long way off from her, just being trivial and playing the same game over again and not going on. I haven’t felt before for very long that Life was a glorious battle, and that every day, and all one’s days, one must fight an obscure and ever-encroaching enemy. I’ve got to go back to the mountain. I have been seeing things close to and putting the emphasis on little things. I wish I could write a letter to everyone I am fond of. I think it would go like this:‘Dear People: I am going to make you a present of all the small things I do that you don’t like. It will be the things I do, not the way I feel, but when I feel so happy that I want to run down Main Street, I won’t run any more. I don’t think these little things matter, but as I haven’t many things to give, I give you my foolish impulses.’”

I can’t say that I remember any marked change of action in Ellen because of her change of heart, and I still had that rather breathless feeling when I perceived that she was what she called “happy in her feet,” by which she meant that then it was she was so happy that she must go romping through our staid, little town, a graceful harlequin.

It was just now, however, that she learned something about Miss Sarah Grant that touched her and made her wish to put her newborn feelings toward life into immediate action. Miss Grant, who had always lectured us severely, it now seemed had defended Ellen against all comments.

“I enjoy the child’s high spirits,” we found her to have said. “This town should notexpect conventional actions from the Grants in inessentials.”

Finding this out, Ellen said to me:—

“She wants a sign of my industry; I’m going tobuyher something beautiful.”

“What with?” I asked, because actual money was scarce in the Payne household, and their tiny income was eked out by trading eggs and other things at the store; for in a day when most people raised everything themselves it was desperately hard for two ladies to make actual money.

“Well,” considered Ellen, “Mrs. Salesby has gone away.”

Mrs. Salesby was a gentlewoman who copied Mr. Sylvester’s sermons, his handwriting being quite illegible. The sum paid for this work was trifling, the work demanded, long and laborious, and Ellen’s handwriting I might call temperamental. Mr. Sylvester was at this time having a book of his sermons, which he called “Thoughts on Life,” copied. So for long hours Ellen shut herself in Mr. Sylvester’s dust-covered study and copied the inspired wanderings of his spirit which was what his sermons really were.

Living in such intimacy with his thoughts had a further effect on her mind. They were the musings of a mystic who was not too acquainted with the infantile tongue which mysticism must perforce employ since it forever and ever has tried to impress the emotions for which the spoken language has not yet coined exact phrases. Something of his inner meaning came to Ellen. She worked on with a serene joy.

At this time also Edward Graham ceased to be a disturbing presence in her life; for feeling the need of showing Alec the sort of a girl she was she told him her whole little story and he had applied to it the youth’s rule-of-thumb logic and saw the thing as it really was. He gave Ellen the first sensible talk she had ever had on her relations with men.

As for Ellen’s calm acceptance of Alec’s devotion, she used the sophistries with which women from all time have accepted the sweet, undimmed love of those whom they consider boys. “He would, of course,”—writes the candid Ellen,—“have cared for some one anyway at this time, and it is better that he should care for me because I place real value on his affectionand try myself to be good so that I shall never hurt them.”

Through months of toil she had at last acquired the few dollars necessary to buy the present, and something “boughten” at that moment had a tremendous value. Gifts were much fewer, and such gifts as there were were of course made at home.

The first afternoon after her long task was over, Ellen went up the mountain to reflect. Our mountain and our river were two things which moulded the souls of us. The austere mountain drew my eyes toward God, and how often I lost my personal grievances as I mingled my bemused little spirit in the swirling river, which, after one looked at it long enough and steadily enough, seemed at last to absorb one in itself and float one down seaward. I knew that Ellen was on the mountain and Alec and I walked up to meet her. She was on what we call “Oscar’s Leap,” a place where the mountain seemed cleft away above the river, as though with some giant’s knife, and just above there was a clear platform, surrounded by trees and bushes. Our tradition had it that Oscar, one ofthe chiefs, leaped his horse into the river below to escape from his enemies.

This night the river was turned to a mighty sheet of burnished crimson, as the sun set just beyond the black bulk of the mountain. Our peaceful town took on an apocalyptical aspect. One felt that among the serene silence of departing day, the end of the world had come, and in some way the very silence of its coming made it more awesome, for its color demanded cataclysmal sounds. Ellen said once: “It tears one through like the noise of trumpets.”

Presently Ellen came down the road toward us, the last slanting rays of the sun outlining her in the light. She didn’t see us as she came toward us, as we stood in the shadow. As I look back at that time it seems to me that she forever moved in a pool of light that came from the radiance of her own spirit. There was a little hush over both Alec and myself.

He said: “She is very lovely.”

And I answered: “She has been on the mountain.”

I felt, indeed, as if Ellen had gone there to commune with God.

“When I came from the mountain to-day,” she writes, “the world had a new look, as if I had never seen it before. I wish the river had a face so I could kiss it. I had to hold my hands tight so that I shouldn’t fling them around the necks of Alec and Roberta; I took it for a good omen that the two that I love most should be waiting there for me. I have made a wonderful friend. Though I have never seen him before, yet I have known him always. I was sitting above Oscar’s Leap, thinking hard, meditating on the beautiful things in life, which if you think hard enough about, Mr. Sylvester says, you will become like, but to do this you must feel like a little child, very small and humble and believing. I think I was nearer feeling this than I have since I was really little, when I looked up and saw him standing there. I had been thinking so hard I hadn’t heard him come even; he was just there as if I had thought him into life, and I was no more afraid of him than as though I had always known him, although a stranger frightens me as a rule, unless I’m feeling foolish. He said: ‘I have been watching you a long time; I’ve been watching you think’; and I just smiledat him and he sat down there beside me, and then it was as if all the things I had never been able to say to any one came to me, crowding to my lips. I don’t know if I said them or not, because I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. We made friends the way children make friends. I felt that if I knew him a little more only, he would know me more as I am than any one in the world, because the me, that my own people know, is so mixed up with that gone-forever person that used to be myself. I wish I could remember more what we said to each other, but the meaning of them is like Mr. Sylvester’s sermons—we haven’t got words for them yet; but I remember one thing that seems to me like the truth of truths. He said to me, ‘Ellen, I am coming back to find you; it was more than chance that led me here this afternoon.’”

Alec and Roberta watch as Ellen walks by

SHE IS VERY LOVELY

In all that she writes about him during the next two weeks, where he crosses and recrosses the pages of her journal continually,—for she wrote an almost day-to-day account, Time at that moment held its breath and gave her spaceto look at the treasure that had fallen into her hands,—she never once mentions the word “love.” She merely waited for the coming of her friend. During this time little bits of their conversation creep out. They had told each other exactly nothing about their lives, drowned as they had been in the poignancy of their encounter.

I thought in my innocence that the white radiance of her, that was so apparent to me who loved her so, was the blossoming of religion in her spirit. One afternoon we had been notified that Ellen’s gift had come for her aunt. It had been sent direct from the city, very beautiful toilet and cologne bottles, I remember it was, of the massive kind with which ladies’ dressers were then always supplied. We had it all planned that we were to sit there while Miss Sarah undid her parcel, and finally, after she had wondered who could have sent her this gift, with a gesture Ellen was to tell her, but while Miss Sarah was about to open the parcel, the wide door of the stately drawing-room opened. A young man was framed in it. He stood there looking at Ellen, who was sitting on a lowhassock; she looked at him. It seemed to me that a breathless silence elapsed before Miss Sarah looked up, while these two talked mutely. I have only one other time in my life seen a look on any human face that was like hers. It was that of one who in another minute must hide her face in her hands to screen her eyes from the sight of the glory of the Lord.

Thus they stood through an eternity of understanding, which in the actual flight of time was only the moment that it took for Miss Sarah to turn around, but it seemed to me that her glad little cry of surprise: “Why, it must be Roger!” was echoed deep in Ellen’s heart; and turning to Ellen she said:—

“This is Mr. Roger Byington. You remember, Ellen dear, I told you he was going to stay with us.—But what a surprise—we didn’t expect you until this afternoon.”

“I started a day earlier so that I could walk over the mountain. I walked the last stage.” He looked at Ellen, whose eyes had never once left him and who had the look of having seen a miracle. So poignant seemed her look to me, so much did it tell me, that I remember I had the wish to stand between her and this strange young man, so that her heart shouldn’t be revealed to him, and between her and her Aunt Sarah, so that she would notice nothing; butI might have spared myself the pains. In a moment Aunt Sarah was leading him away to seek for Mr. Ephraim Grant.

I knew without Ellen telling me that this must be her friend of the mountain. She had told me about him in all naïveté. It had seemed to me sort of an Ellenesque thing to have happened, charming and delightful, though I had paid no attention to her belief that he was coming back.

“Did you know Mr. Byington was the one, Ellen?” I asked.

She shook her head. “How could I guess?”

We had been told that old friends of Miss Sarah’s had written asking for a boarding-place for their son, who was reading law after his return from abroad and wished a quiet place where he might study, and that Miss Sarah had invited him to stay at her house, but naturally I had not connected him with Ellen’s stranger.

Once in a long time things turn out the way that we dream that they will. Once, perhaps, in a lifetime all the dreamed-of and expected things focus themselves into one full moment.At such times the doors of our spirits open and we find the hidden roads to the spirits of others, and this was what happened to Ellen. Instead of Roger’s arrival dimming her present, everything came about as she had planned and it all worked in together into one marvelous day. For once Age understood Youth, for when Miss Sarah learned how this money had been laboriously come by, she said:—

“Ellen, you have the heart of a child, for only a child would have treasured up my word that I meant and didn’t mean, and I think, my dear, I’ve often scolded you for this very reason. You are a darling child, Ellen, but a trying one, and I hope you’ll never grow up.”

When Roger came back with Mr. Grant, “Look, young man,” she said. “Do you know what this is? This is one of the rarest things in the world; it’s a true gift. You have probably never made one in your whole life; you and your family go in and plank down your money and buy something pretty and go away. Now, whenever I look at this, Ellen, I shall think of your patience and self-denial,—yes, and your industry, and oh, dear, dear! I shallnever be able to scold you again, which, as I know, you will often deserve.”

We sat there for a half-hour and I felt as though I were in the midst of a story, with my Ellen for the heroine.

Roger won us all that afternoon. In conversation he was the most delightful person in the world. There was about him a certain, subdued arrogance when he wasn’t talking, which changed when he smiled into the most delightful sunny winsomeness. He listened to those much older and those much younger than himself with an absorbed interest that gave the speaker the sensation of saying something of deep interest. Later we learned that this young prince and a trying bad little boy were the same person, but that day we only saw the young prince. I know that I myself had the impression of having had the window of Life suddenly thrown open wide, for with unconsciousness of what he was doing, he took us sweeping up and down the world. He had traveled a great deal in a day when traveling was much more of an adventure, and he had had adventures and real ones, as one of histemperament would be bound to have. He made one feel that one was living with a higher vitality, as Ellen did, and the way Ellen affected me then and later was as though she were a beautiful jewel that I had seen in the sun for the first time. On this first day she sat there shining with soft radiance and saying almost nothing, becoming, it seemed to me, transfigured before my eyes.

After a while Ellen rose to go, and Roger accompanied us, and I had to stay with them, having no pretext for leaving, as my house was beyond Ellen’s down the street; but it seemed to me that, without meaning to, they subtly shut me out by the very way that they included me in their laborious conversation, for as soon as we three were walking down the sidewalk, under the great double row of elms which bordered our street, their touching courtesy made a stranger of me as nothing else could have done. Ellen wrote:—

“The first thing he said to me when we were alone was, ‘Ellen, I thought you were a little girl and you’re grown up. When you meetstrange men on the mountains and they say to you politely, “May I ask your name?” do you answer, “Why, I am Ellen”?’ I had forgotten that I had said that. I suppose I did look young, with my hair down and my brown dress that’s so much too short for me. ‘I came back to find a wonderful little girl; where is she?’ I answered,—and my heart was beating at my boldness,—‘She grew up while you were away.’ ‘Oh, Ellen, Ellen!’ he said to me, ‘those were the longest weeks in all the life I’ve lived, and it’s strange it should have been your aunt’s house that I should have come to. It is as if I had been led by the hand, first, to you on the mountain, and now, to you here.’ And then he looked at me and said, ‘Ellen, you focused all my life for me that day on the mountain. I’ve spent two weeks clearing from my life worthless trash, all the débris that a man accumulates living as many years in the world as I have.’ And he has really lived in the world, ever since boys here are nothing but boys. He told me, ‘When I went by I stopped at our place on the mountain. Have you been back?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, and I looked down. ‘Look atme,’ he said, and it seemed to me he drew my eyes to his. ‘Have you been there often?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How often, Ellen?’ and I shook my head. I felt as though I was dying of shame, for I had been there every day at sunset. What if he knew how I had worked to get everything done so I could fly up there at sunset? I felt as if his eyes were burning down into my heart and he said, as though he could read my thoughts, ‘Every sunset I remembered the way I saw you there. I ought to have seen you there again, Ellen; I wanted to take you and fly up there, and I am going to get a good mark in heaven for having been so nice to your aunt and uncle, and even to your nice little friend, for being so terribly in my way.’ And all of a sudden he looked like a naughty, bad, little boy, which made me laugh at him, and made me feel on earth again;—and now I’m going to see him at sunset. I feel as if I had never been alive before. I went in and kissed mother and she said: ‘Was your aunt pleased with the present, dear?’ I had forgotten all about my aunt and all about the present. It was as though I had returned from a very far-off country.”

That afternoon we were all quilting at our house and Miss Sarah was pleased enough to give an account of her guest.

“I’ve had a long letter from Lucia Byington,” she said to my grandmother, “explaining that precious scapegrace of a son of hers, but I can tell Lucia she might have spared herself the pains. The minute I clapped my eyes on him I knew all about him, having known his father and mother. He has all her charm and her willfulness, with the iron will and talent of his father. I suppose, because I’m an old maid, I can’t understand why a man can’t bring up a high-metaled son, exactly like himself, without being at odds with him. But there! He expects his son to start where he’s left off, with all the sobriety and solemnity of an aged Solomon. And why people like Lucia and David should expect not to have trouble with their children, I don’t know. And as for David, he fights his own youth inthe boy. Now the time had come for Master Roger to stop skylarking over the earth; he was holding out; leave town he wouldn’t. They had words; he slung a knapsack on his back and went off, and wasn’t heard from for a week, and then came back as meek as the Prodigal.”

You may be sure that Ellen and I had our ears wide open to this story, knowing as we did why it was that Roger had suddenly become the docile son. We were so self-conscious that our eyes did not dare seek one another’s, and we sewed together the large, gay squares of patchwork with the precision of little automatons.

My grandmother spoke up:—

“Well, Sarah, I half dislike having your stormy petrel in our little town. I saw him this morning, and he seemed to me a restless-looking bird. He’ll be turning the silly heads of our girls next.”

“Let me catch him at it, or them, for that matter!” cried Miss Sarah. “He’s here forwork, and not to worry me with such-like goings-on! You may be sure that his familyhave had trouble enough with him in such imbroglios already.”

We had tea early and did the dishes and fell to our quilting again. I noticed Ellen becoming more and more abstracted until finally Miss Sarah said:—

“Well, Ellen, try to bring your mind back to your work. Years haven’t taken your habit of ‘wool-gathering’ from you.”

Ellen wrote about this:—

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