Chapter VII

Look back and see if you can remember when it was you drifted from that part of the river of life that is little girlhood to that time when you recognized that you were grown up, and the eyes of men rested on you speculatively, interestedly, and your parents foreshadowed these things by an irritating watchfulness that you did not understand. The picture of Ellen that comes to me oftenest is one of her progress through the streets, her hair in an anguished neatness, from her desire to escape Miss Sarah's critical censure, her skirts longer now, and behind her perpetually screeled the three motherless babes of our not long widowed minister. He was a middle-aged man, ineffectual except for some occasional Gottbetrunkener moments. From my present vantage-point I now recognize him to be one of the brothers of St. Francis by temperament. He had a true poetic sense, and Ellen would go to his house for the purpose of washing dishes and helping about, performing her labors with the precision which she had only for the work of other people, her own room, to my anguish, being a whited sepulcher of disorder, outwardly fair to the glance of her Aunt Sarah, while dust lay thick in every unobservable spot. It was I who kept her bureau drawers in order.

She writes:--

"I just can't waste a minute indoors. I don't know why grown
people have so many things to do. When I get married I am going
to live in a tent and have just one cupboard where I keep
everything, with doors that can't be seen through. Roberta
wrings her hands, but she would wring them more if she knew that
I have from earliest childhood learned to sleep quietly in my
bed as it takes less time to make it when I get up. And mother
doesn't care one bit more than I. I am so glad. She so
frequently says: 'Ellen, this is too sweet a day to cook'; and
we eat bread and milk all day, and don't even light the stove,
though there have been moments when I have been glad that there
is a big kitchen in which they are always cooking, up at my Aunt
Sarah's. We would get things done much better if it were not for
reading aloud, but so frequently mother finds things she wants
to read, and then we go on, but not on and on like Mr. Sylvester
and I. We began reading poetry the other day--how shall I tell
it? And he read and I read, and he read and I read, until we
understood everything we were reading, the very heart. We felt
as if we had made the poetry--just knowing it for ourselves, and
it was us. By pretending I am Mr. Sylvester's second wife sent
by the Lord to take care of his motherless children, I find I
can do housework very well, for me, though I feel rather guilty
when I look at him, for I know that even he might be exasperated
at the thought of me as his second wife. But one has to do
something."

Some weeks later this occurs:--

"Now I have learned to work so beautifully and have done so
well, besides taking care of the children and then baking, I
feel it isn't fair not to do it at home. Oh, how hard it is to
do work for one's self. I know I should think I am doing it for
my mother, and when I was very little I used to pretend that I
was a poor child who supported her mother; but the little silly
pretenses of childhood are now impossible for me since I am so
much over fifteen."

It was at this time that we began to be allowed to go to the young people's parties, because with us there was no fixed and rigid time when girls come out. They went when their legs were long enough and when they had learned to fold their hands properly in their laps and sit with decorum, which with Ellen and myself occurred somewhere toward sixteen. Ellen writes of one of these parties:--

"I am sitting waiting to go. I have a new pale-blue dress with
little ruffles--little, tiny ruffles. Aunt Sarah is disgusted
that mother put so much work into my dress because it isn't
practical, when we need so many things, for her to waste her
eyes. And it is true, but oh, how much more fun it is to work on
ornaments than useful things, and parties are like ornaments. I
think they are like jewels, and a great, big, enormous party,
with lights and flowers, like one reads about in books, must be
like having strings of pearls. All I hope is that I will act
politely, and not show how pleased I am, because if I did I
should shout and sing. My Aunt Sarah said: 'Ellen, please, my
child, don't make me feel as if you were going to burst into
flame or perhaps slide down the banisters.' And, indeed, I often
look in the glass and wonder that I can look so quiet and
unshining."

It was in this high mood that Ellen met Edward Graham. I know now that he must have been an honest lad, square-cornered, solid, with an awkward, bearish, honest walk, nice, kind eyes, and a short mop of wiry, glinting curls as his only beauty, which fitted his head like a close-clinging cap, stopping abruptly instead of straggling down unkemptwise, as hair is apt to do, on the back of his neck and temples. It was Ellen who noticed this and wrote about it. He must have been not over one-and-twenty, but he was instructor at the academy in chemistry and mathematics.

Well do I remember hearing this conversation at the other side of a vine-trellis at this party. In her low, pensive voice Ellen was saying: "I lived by the sea; it was in my veins. The noise of its beating is in my heart. One cannot live inland when one has been a lighthouse-keeper's daughter."

Rage and anger surged in me, for Ellen had made but three visits to the sea in all her days, and one of which occurred when she was too small to remember it. As you may gather from this, her father had not been a lighthouse-keeper. I stamped my foot; a little-girl _mad_ feeling came over me. I took my saucer of goodies and my cake firmly in my hand and went to confront her then and there. She had talked so beautifully about truth and life that very afternoon.

I couldn't do it. The little sarcastic remark that anger had invented for me died still-born. She was too lovely; something almost mystically beautiful radiated from her whole little personality. "I am so happy," she seemed to say. "Let me stay happy one moment more." There was always about her this heart-rending quality. It was not until I could draw her by herself that I spoke to her, and then my remonstrance was gentle.

"You must tell him the truth," I insisted kindly.

And Ellen wrung her hands and said:--

"Oh, Roberta! you make my heart feel like a shriveled-up little leaf; you make me feel like a bad dream, like when you find yourself in company without your clothes."

But I repeated inexorably:--

"You _must_ tell him."

I can see her now drooping up to him and the appealing glance of her large eyes. Presently I saw him take both her hands in his, and then she came toward me, her feet dancing, a glad, naughty look in her eyes. She answered my glance of inquiry with:--

"He asked me why I told him what I did, and, since I was telling the whole truth, I answered, 'I wanted awfully to have you like me.'"

That, you see, is what I got for interfering with my friend and torturing her.