“Now you are gone [she wrote] I wouldcall you back if I could, and I have to remember and say to myself that there is no one to call back. There is nothing in you that would hear the things that I wish to say to you, and yet you go on living and yet I must love you; and yet, forever and ever in the night, my heart goes out to you; and yet, when I walk along, I feel the touch of your hand, as though it were placed in mine. But the you that meant life to me never was, or died, perhaps, with your boyhood. He was there a little while and smiled at me, and all the time the real you was growing large and strong and killing that other whom I loved. But I have bound my life up in you, so what can I do, and where will I find comfort? I can have scarcely the comfort of a memory, for I have loved only a ghost in you. I envy those sad and haggard girls who have been deserted by their lovers. I envy wives who have been left with little children to care for, for they, at least, have had reality; they have been able to give all of themselves, and what they have known has been real. I wonder if I shall always have to bleed for you, drop by drop, and that while I bleed, my strength alsogoes? Everything talks to me of you. My hand stretches out for a pen and I must write to you, though you aren’t, and yet you are dearer to me than all the world besides. Where did the sweet soul of you go that I loved so well, and how can I live in a world where such things happen? I go out upon the street and hear people walking past and children playing and think with surprise, ‘Why, there are happy people in the world!’”
“Now you are gone [she wrote] I wouldcall you back if I could, and I have to remember and say to myself that there is no one to call back. There is nothing in you that would hear the things that I wish to say to you, and yet you go on living and yet I must love you; and yet, forever and ever in the night, my heart goes out to you; and yet, when I walk along, I feel the touch of your hand, as though it were placed in mine. But the you that meant life to me never was, or died, perhaps, with your boyhood. He was there a little while and smiled at me, and all the time the real you was growing large and strong and killing that other whom I loved. But I have bound my life up in you, so what can I do, and where will I find comfort? I can have scarcely the comfort of a memory, for I have loved only a ghost in you. I envy those sad and haggard girls who have been deserted by their lovers. I envy wives who have been left with little children to care for, for they, at least, have had reality; they have been able to give all of themselves, and what they have known has been real. I wonder if I shall always have to bleed for you, drop by drop, and that while I bleed, my strength alsogoes? Everything talks to me of you. My hand stretches out for a pen and I must write to you, though you aren’t, and yet you are dearer to me than all the world besides. Where did the sweet soul of you go that I loved so well, and how can I live in a world where such things happen? I go out upon the street and hear people walking past and children playing and think with surprise, ‘Why, there are happy people in the world!’”
If the world has little pity for a jilted girl, how shall it have much understanding for any one who suffers after having voluntarily sent her lover away, especially when it was her obvious duty to her family to marry? So her world was not very kind to Ellen at a moment when she most needed their kindness. We do not often understand the sicknesses of the spirit; now we mete out to them the criminal indulgence that a foolish woman does to a wayward child, and now we treat them with bruising harshness.
During the summer matters were not so bad, because every one rather expected that Ellen would come to herself. My grandmother used to question me seriously if I were encouraging Ellen.
Even Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester, most unworldly people,—more unworldly, I think, than any one I have ever known,—had seen the children “enjoying advantages” throughEllen, for Ellen and Roger had planned a thousand things.
Matilda had wept openly when Ellen had returned, and said:—
“Oh, Ellen, Ellen! Now that you’re not going to be married, I suppose I shall never visit you and study music in Boston, and, Ellen, I had so make-believed it in my heart.”
During the summer there was little written in her journal except letters to Roger, which stopped abruptly with her determination to get over the aching want which she had for him. With the coming of winter there settled down over Ellen a limitless depression. She was very gentle, but she seemed lost in a mist of sadness. I cannot describe to what extent her spirit was dimmed. It seemed as though a strange, withering age had crept over her before her time. People noticed it, and word went abroad that Ellen Payne was “in a decline,” which was a word for almost everything that ailed one in those days, short of a broken leg. I remember her walking around at that time with poses of a very tired child, for all the hollow under her eyes and the troubledlines in her forehead. She would let her arms swing before her like a little girl that had outgrown her strength, and throw herself down into chairs as though she had held herself on her feet to the utmost limits of her endurance.
I ventured to ask her at last: “What’s the matter, Ellen?” For we had avoided, by common consent, talking of anything that might be wounding, and had put the past out of sight.
She looked at me with eyes that had the hurt look of a little girl.
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” she told me in answer. “I know well enough what’s the matter. There’s no meaning to life any more at all. The world goes on over there”—she waved her hand ever so slightly—“and I’m here on the outside, and what they do doesn’t mean anything at all, Roberta. If life goes on like this, maybe I’ll be lucky enough to die, and the worst of it is that the hope of dying is keeping me alive. I am afraid, Roberta, that when one has anything to live for, even if it’s dying, that one keeps on living. What it really means,” she added, “is that I’ve lost God, for I can’t pray any more.”
Since then I’ve known a great many women in mortal pain, and I truly believe that it is the nearness of death that keeps many a suffering soul alive. They are forever heartening themselves by looking through the black, mysterious door, where there is an end to pain and where one need not stay famished any more at life’s feast. Death walks consolingly so close; death is so easy and calls compassionately to these forsaken ones, saying, “Out here is rest—so near; if it gets much worse, you can come to me.” Wherever one looks there is the consoling possibility of death, and since death is so near and so easy, people, who have forgotten for a while the reason for living, go on just the same. For who, in the winter of the spirit, can again believe in spring?
At this time even the children seemed to turn away from Ellen and give her nothing. She had always meant laughter and gayety and the heightening of the lives of all of us around her, and Alec and I were the only two who remained faithful to her in this moment of desolation, because the others did not see Ellen in this docile, lifeless soul, who went aroundstill called by the name of Ellen Payne; and this withdrawal of human sympathy was as unconscious as it was wounding. My sweet old grandmother, who had loved Ellen so, combined with old Mrs. Butler, whose hair Ellen had done for years,—since Alec had grown up,—would nod their heads together and say that Ellen Payne ought to stop those mopish ways and use more backbone.
That winter Ellen’s mother was ailing and coughed badly also, and for the first time in her life was a little querulous and complaining. I ignored as much as I could Ellen’s ill feelings, as she wished me to do, but I remember this tragic winter well. There were a very few entries in her journal, but not in this or in any other crisis of her life had she failed to clarify her mind by the written word. I find this:—
“I try as hard as I can to attach myself to the duties that crowd around me. Sometimes it just seems to me that I am going to succeed in being interested and then I am not. I think it must be like this in those strange northerncountries, where the glow of dawn comes on the horizon, and, starved for light, one says, ‘Here is the dawn’; and even as one speaks the light pales and the dreadful twilight thickens around one.”
“I try as hard as I can to attach myself to the duties that crowd around me. Sometimes it just seems to me that I am going to succeed in being interested and then I am not. I think it must be like this in those strange northerncountries, where the glow of dawn comes on the horizon, and, starved for light, one says, ‘Here is the dawn’; and even as one speaks the light pales and the dreadful twilight thickens around one.”
Towards spring—one of those soppy, wet springs, when it seems as though the green would never come—I could stand the silence no longer, and some word or look of hers that betrayed to me the desolate abasement of her spirit made me cry out:—
“Ellen, isn’t there anything on earth that you want?”
“I think I would like to see Alec,” she answered.
It seemed to me a foolish wish, for Alec was in his first school and far away, and his visits to us had been spasmodic and brief, and shared, of course, with Elizabeth Greenough, though during the summer he had been home and spent a good deal of time with Ellen, and she had accepted his kindness as she always had, very much as the air one breathes, or as she accepted my friendship—as one of thecertain things among the deep uncertainties of life.
I wrote to Alec what Ellen had said, without a hope in the world that he could come. It seemed the sort of thing that only love accomplishes, and he had seemed to me perfectly contented with his engagement, making his visits to the home of his young lady with the regularity of a lover, or of a clock. But almost sooner than seemed possible he came. When Ellen saw him tears came to her eyes. For it is just at these moments, when one is thirsting for help and sympathy, that we seem to lose the way to the hearts of others, and this is natural enough, for there is a terrible egotism in certain phases of grief. The eyes of the spirit are turned inward and we cease to give, and after a while, as with Ellen, grief becomes a habit and we slip along smoothly enough in the deepening and dolorous grooves of sorrow. It is easier to do this where the outside life is monotonous, and to us, in our little town, our own point of view and our own spirits furnished whatever diversity there was. One day went along after another and one never met a newface on the street, and it was with a true instinct for help that Ellen cried out:—
“I envy men who can go out in the world and forget. It must be easier to forget among those who have never seen your face or ever heard what has happened to you, and here everything brings me back to the thoughts that I try in so futile a fashion to put out of my mind.”
Alec’s unexpected arrival had been the only thing that had happened through the long winter and spring. I waited with anxiety for the end of their interview.
“Well,” I asked Alec, “how did you find her?”
And he answered:—
“She just wants to know how one manages to live when the meaning of life is dead and I told her that that wasn’t what she needed, but that she needed to go and search for the meaning of life, and you know, Roberta, a person who really seeks for that can always find it. I’ve a plan that I’m going to try. Ellen has promised to do everything I tell her, and keep her to it, even if it seems childish to you.”
A day or two after Alec left, there knockedat the Sylvesters’ back door a sturdy boy of twelve; a shock of wild black hair blew across his forehead, and funny, humorous blue eyes gleamed under straight black brows. For the rest, he was freckled past belief. As Ellen opened the door for him, he choked in a spasm of embarrassment, then the words came, with a rush. He had a deep voice for his age.
“I’ve come to git Ellen Payne,” he boomed.
When Ellen, who had opened the door for him, said:—
“Why, I’m Ellen Payne and what do you want?” he flushed furiously and muttered:—
“He said you was a girl.”
“Well,” responded Ellen, with more briskness than she had shown for some time, “I’m a girl.”
“No,” replied the boy, “you’re a grown-up woman, tall ’s ever you’ll be.”
“Did you say you had come to get me?” suggested Ellen.
“He said you was to come with me.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Ellen.
“Git mayflowers in a place you don’t know,” said the boy.
“There’s no such place,” said Ellen. “I know every cranny of this place in my sleep.”
“Well, I know it as if I’dmade it,” retorted the boy.
By the time Ellen came back ready to walk, a wave of shyness engulfed the boy; he was as uncommunicative as the Pyramids. He was deeply embarrassed by his companion, but he forgot now and then enough to go ahead, shouting his joy at the return of spring, and then his gayety would fall as a flag at half-mast when he saw Ellen after him. She came home wet and very tired, to listen to the prophecy of her Aunt Sarah that “no good would come of this weltering around in the wet, and that it was just like one of Alec’s unpractical thoughts.”
While Miss Sarah loved Alec, his character annoyed her, winding as it did around a devious road and springing upon you new view-points, as a supposedly quiet road might discover unexpected and romantic vistas of country. Especially his attitude toward the boys was annoying to those who found difficulty in having wood-piles replenished and the “chores” done.
“You’d think boys were something,” my grandmother used to explain with some heat, “besides trying, rascally, little scallywags; but the older you grow, Roberta, the more you’ll find truth in what I say, and that is, that boys were put in this world by the Lord for women to exercise their patience over.”
Tyke Bascom didn’t come again for two days. This time Ellen penetrated through the shyness enough to find that he was a boy who lived over the mountain-road in a little clearing, called Foster’s Corners, which had a sawmill and four houses.
“That’s a long ways,” said Ellen.
“Not so long when you’re used to it,” he replied. “It might be long for a woman.”
In his walks over the mountain, Alec had always stopped at the house and, being fatal to small boys, Tyke had enrolled in the company of Alec’s friends. All that Tyke knew, it turned out, he had been taught by Alec, as he sat there resting on his way home.
For the next two weeks Tyke Bascom came for Ellen, but irregularly. Sometimes he would come each day, for two or three days, and oncethree days went past, three days when Ellen watched for him. It had been a long time since she had been out in the open air; it had been a long time since she had gone back to the places she had known as a little girl, when she was in that deep and almost mystic communion with all life and growth around her, and when the mountain and the river, and the small mountain streams were like personalities to her. Only the very pure in heart and children have this intimate sense of oneness with the world, and Ellen and Alec had lain for hours, under cover, and watched to see a fox sneak past. They knew a marsh where the blue heron lived, and when she was little, Ellen had talked about the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks as intimately as though they were people.
Now all this forgotten lore came back to her from out-of-the-way places in her mind. When I was a girl, it was only too easy for people to forget such things, for in my day, no sooner did one grow up than the customs of young ladyhood demanded that one should spend most of one’s time in the house. Even skating was denied women, and Ellen’s love of the outdoorsmet with a steady stream of disapproval from every one, including Roger. The only people who had not frowned on her were her mother and Mr. Sylvester, who held the heretical theory that it was good even for a woman to know the works of the Lord, even though a close and intimate knowledge was bad for smoothness of hair and neatness of frock.
More than that, there was a desire awakened in Ellen’s mind, of conquering this wild and morose child, who had given his heart so unreservedly to Alec.
She asked him,—
“Do you like going out with me, Tyke?”
“No ’m,” he said, “not especially.”
“But”—she told him—“you don’t need to come if you don’t want to.”
He flushed all over and said, “I didn’t mean that. Don’t you see, Alec told me to, so I don’t mind at all, ’cause it’s for him.”
“Now I realize,” she wrote, “that whenever I’ve sat down anywhere children have always come around me. Until the last year or two I’ve known all the little boys; there’s never been a time when some of Alec’s youngsters haven’tbeen perched in our yard, and now comes along this boy who takes me out with him as he would carry a package for Alec.”
There was nothing for it, she must make him her own. I think it was the first desire she had had in a year’s time, except the desire for the ultimate peace. She wooed him first out of his shyness, and as I would see them talking together I would see all the mannerisms of the Ellen I had known, of whom Aunt Sarah said, “She seemed about to burst into flame.” All her forgotten shy guiles that had led her before into the inaccessible hearts of boys woke up one by one. I don’t know how far she went back on the road to childhood, in these rambles, or how much she remembered of the golden time when Alec and she played truant together by the hills and brooks.
One day Tyke appeared with this command:
“You got to come up to my house, he says; ma needs help, she’s sick. He sent you this.”
He gave her a note from Alec which read:—
“Dear Ellen: It was always easier for you to do housework out of your house than in.”
That was all.
“Ma’s sick; she’s got a new baby.”
So every day Ellen trudged over the mountain-road and back. No sooner was Mrs. Bascom beginning to be up and around again, and Ellen still going to see her and the baby, than Mrs. Sylvester hurt her foot a little and was kept in her chair, so more than ever fell to Ellen. She wrote:—
“It is as though I had been walking down a long corridor and suddenly had opened a door into the light; when I came in sight of our house to-night and thought of all the people who can be happier because of me, tears of happiness came to my eyes, and I should have been glad if I could have gone down on my knees there and thanked God that I was of use in the world to those whom I love. All the selfish winter of my heart melted and my mind went out to my friend who helped me to find myself and to bring me home again. I suppose this is the road people have to travel to learn the meaning of life. You hear a bird sing by the road and you stop to listen, and by and by your heart starts beating again.”
“It is as though I had been walking down a long corridor and suddenly had opened a door into the light; when I came in sight of our house to-night and thought of all the people who can be happier because of me, tears of happiness came to my eyes, and I should have been glad if I could have gone down on my knees there and thanked God that I was of use in the world to those whom I love. All the selfish winter of my heart melted and my mind went out to my friend who helped me to find myself and to bring me home again. I suppose this is the road people have to travel to learn the meaning of life. You hear a bird sing by the road and you stop to listen, and by and by your heart starts beating again.”
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 sweetnesswhen 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.”
“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.”
“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 atthe 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.
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 anda 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”—hehesitated—“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 circumstancesthe 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 heartof 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 forthe 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 hissleep, “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.”
“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
The Riverside PressCAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTSU . S . A
OTHERWISE PHYLLISBy Meredith Nicholson“The most delightful novel-heroine you’ve met in a long time. You like it all, but you love Phyllis.”—Chicago Inter-Ocean.“A true-blue, genuine American girl of the 20th century.”—Boston Globe.“Phyllis is a fine creature.... ‘Otherwise Phyllis’ is a ‘comfortable, folksy, neighborly tale’ which is genuinely and unaffectedly American in its atmosphere and point of view.”—Hamilton Wright Mabie, in the Outlook.“‘Phil’ Kirkwood—‘Otherwise Phyllis’—is a creature to welcome to our hearth, not to our shelf, for she does not belong among the things that are doomed to become musty.”—Boston Herald.“Phyllis is a healthy, hearty, vivacious young woman of prankish disposition and inquiring mind.... About the best example between book covers of the American girl whose general attitude toward mankind is one of friendliness.”—Boston Advertiser.With frontispiece by Gibson. Square crown 8vo.$1.35net. Postage extraHOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORKTHE SPARE ROOMBy Mrs. Romilly Fedden“A bride and groom, a villa in Capri, a spare room and seven guests (assorted varieties) are the ingredients which go to make this thoroughly amusing book.”—Chicago Evening Post.“Bubbling over with laughter ... distinctly a book to read and chuckle over.”—Yorkshire Observer.“Mrs. Fedden has succeeded in arranging for her readers a constant fund of natural yet wildly amusing complications.”—Springfield Republican.“A clever bit of comedy that goes with spirit and sparkle, Mrs. Fedden’s little story shows her to be a genuine humorist.... She deserves to be welcomed cordially to the ranks of those who can make us laugh.”—New York Times.“Brimful of rich humor.”—Grand Rapids Herald.Illustrated by Haydon Jones. 12mo.$1.00net. Postage extraHOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORKThe Story of Waitstill BaxterBy KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN“It cannot fail to prove a delight of delights to ‘Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’ enthusiasts.”—Chicago Inter-Ocean.“All admirers of Jane Austen will enjoy Waitstill Baxter.... The solution the reader must find out for himself. It is a triumph of ingenuity. The characters are happy in their background of Puritan village life. The drudgery, the flowers, the strictness in morals and the narrowness of outlook all combine to form a harmonious picture.”—The London Times.“Always generously giving of her best, and delightful as that best always is, Mrs. Wiggin has provided us with something even better in ‘Waitstill Baxter.’”—Montreal Star.“In the strength of its sympathy, in the vivid reality of the lives it portrays, this story will be accepted as the very best of all the popular books that Mrs. Wiggin has written for an admiring constituency.”—Wilmington Every Evening.Illustrated in color. Square crown 8vo.$1.30net. Postage extraHOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORKVALENTINEBy Grant Richards“A far better novel than its predecessor, ‘Caviare.’”—London Athenæum.“Cheeriness, youth, high spirits and the joy of life—these are the principal ingredients of this novel.”—London Telegraph.“In ‘Valentine’ the action is laid almost wholly in London, with occasional week ends at Paris.... ‘Valentine’ is a good story about enjoyably human people, told with the rich personal charm of the accomplished raconteur.”—Boston Transcript.“Its details and all the actions of all connected with its details are worked out with a realistic thoroughness that makes the story seem a piece of recorded history.... Distinctly light reading, clever, engaging, skillfully wrought.”—Churchman.12mo. $1.35net. Postage extraHOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORK
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS
By Meredith Nicholson
“The most delightful novel-heroine you’ve met in a long time. You like it all, but you love Phyllis.”—Chicago Inter-Ocean.
“A true-blue, genuine American girl of the 20th century.”—Boston Globe.
“Phyllis is a fine creature.... ‘Otherwise Phyllis’ is a ‘comfortable, folksy, neighborly tale’ which is genuinely and unaffectedly American in its atmosphere and point of view.”—Hamilton Wright Mabie, in the Outlook.
“‘Phil’ Kirkwood—‘Otherwise Phyllis’—is a creature to welcome to our hearth, not to our shelf, for she does not belong among the things that are doomed to become musty.”—Boston Herald.
“Phyllis is a healthy, hearty, vivacious young woman of prankish disposition and inquiring mind.... About the best example between book covers of the American girl whose general attitude toward mankind is one of friendliness.”—Boston Advertiser.
With frontispiece by Gibson. Square crown 8vo.$1.35net. Postage extra
HOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORK
THE SPARE ROOM
By Mrs. Romilly Fedden
“A bride and groom, a villa in Capri, a spare room and seven guests (assorted varieties) are the ingredients which go to make this thoroughly amusing book.”—Chicago Evening Post.
“Bubbling over with laughter ... distinctly a book to read and chuckle over.”—Yorkshire Observer.
“Mrs. Fedden has succeeded in arranging for her readers a constant fund of natural yet wildly amusing complications.”—Springfield Republican.
“A clever bit of comedy that goes with spirit and sparkle, Mrs. Fedden’s little story shows her to be a genuine humorist.... She deserves to be welcomed cordially to the ranks of those who can make us laugh.”—New York Times.
“Brimful of rich humor.”—Grand Rapids Herald.
Illustrated by Haydon Jones. 12mo.$1.00net. Postage extra
HOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORK
The Story of Waitstill Baxter
By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
“It cannot fail to prove a delight of delights to ‘Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’ enthusiasts.”—Chicago Inter-Ocean.
“All admirers of Jane Austen will enjoy Waitstill Baxter.... The solution the reader must find out for himself. It is a triumph of ingenuity. The characters are happy in their background of Puritan village life. The drudgery, the flowers, the strictness in morals and the narrowness of outlook all combine to form a harmonious picture.”—The London Times.
“Always generously giving of her best, and delightful as that best always is, Mrs. Wiggin has provided us with something even better in ‘Waitstill Baxter.’”—Montreal Star.
“In the strength of its sympathy, in the vivid reality of the lives it portrays, this story will be accepted as the very best of all the popular books that Mrs. Wiggin has written for an admiring constituency.”—Wilmington Every Evening.
Illustrated in color. Square crown 8vo.$1.30net. Postage extra
HOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANYPublisher's logoBOSTONANDNEW YORK
VALENTINE
By Grant Richards
“A far better novel than its predecessor, ‘Caviare.’”—London Athenæum.
“Cheeriness, youth, high spirits and the joy of life—these are the principal ingredients of this novel.”—London Telegraph.
“In ‘Valentine’ the action is laid almost wholly in London, with occasional week ends at Paris.... ‘Valentine’ is a good story about enjoyably human people, told with the rich personal charm of the accomplished raconteur.”—Boston Transcript.
“Its details and all the actions of all connected with its details are worked out with a realistic thoroughness that makes the story seem a piece of recorded history.... Distinctly light reading, clever, engaging, skillfully wrought.”—Churchman.
12mo. $1.35net. Postage extra
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Transcriber's NoteA table of contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.
Transcriber's Note
A table of contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.