Chapter XI

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,--and more 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 was seized 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 find _my_ Alec 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 Edward was 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, I can
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 not expect conventional actions from the Grants in inessentials."

Finding this out, Ellen said to me:--

"She wants a sign of my industry; I'm going to _buy_ her 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 affection and 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 of the 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 smiled at 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.'"

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 space to 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 low hassock; 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.