"Well, not exactly. But," she faltered, "he would have if I had stayed there."
"How do you know?" asked Ellen coldly.
Thus it was she pricked the bubble of sentiment. We were all rather horrified, immensely interested and rather envious. We now perceived our sentimentality. We ourselves were shocked a little by some of our temerities, for in the wide conspiracy of silence around us we imagined we were the only adventurous ones in the world.
Characteristically, it was I who suggested that momentous association, the "Zinias," or "Old Maid Club."
Ellen wrote:--
"We made up our minds that we were always to be true friends of men and lift their minds up as women should. We are going to think only of our studies, our homes, and of religion. Roberta says we may as well begin now, for we are getting older every minute, and one of us is already fourteen. And before we know it we will be thinking of nothing but boys. We have only to look around us to see what such things lead to. Patty Newcomb and Elizabeth Taylor and all those big girls are both forward and bold. When I said, 'Roberta, isn't noticing everything they do and talking about it just the same as talking about boys?' she said at once, 'It is not the same at all,' in the tone that I know she doesn't want me to say anything more. And when I said, 'Oh, Roberta, aren't we rather young yet to think about being old maids?' she replied sternly, 'It is never too young to begin.'"
I feel rather sorry now for the stern, little Roberta. I feel sorry, too, for Janie Acres and her kiss that never was. She would have been so proud of it; it would have been her proof that she was a young lady.
CHAPTER V
No sooner had Ellen covenanted "Thou shalt not!" than off she went on her first adventure,--a trifling one but bleeding. She walked one day to the academy with Arthur McLain. He wore long trousers. Of this fatal occurrence Ellen remarks touchingly: "I tried very hard to be interesting, but I chose the wrong thing." It is a mistake frequently made by grown men and women. Alas! capricious fate that governs these things turned my sweet, unconscious Ellen to one forever on the alert for the appearance of this long-legged quidnunc.
I will give three or four paragraphs from her journal:--
"I asked Aunt Sarah if she wanted me to get her some more yarn when hers ran short. She answered, 'Yes, you may, though I wish, Ellen, my dear child, that you were as eager to do your work as you are to wait on others.' But I knew all the time that I offered to go because I hoped that I should see him, and I should have told my aunt that that was why I offered."
A few days later comes the touching little expression of the desire of the eyes:--
"Last week I walked all over town to catch glimpses of him. I went to the post-office, and he wasn't there; I went down past the school-house and past his house, and whenever I saw a boy coming toward me, it was hard to breathe. The whole day was empty and I thought it would never be night."
Again:--
"To-day I saw him; he passed by me and just said, 'Hulloa, Ellen.' When I stopped for a moment, I thought he would speak to me. In school this morning he stopped and talked, but all my words went away and I seemed so stupid. At night I make up things I would like to say to him, and when he stops for a moment,--oh, he stops so seldom,--I forget them all."
Throughout all this, not once does she use the word _love_. From that terrible and impersonal longing, unaware of itself and unrecognized, Ellen walked out toward the long-trousered boy. She spread before him as much as she could of her little shy sweetnesses. She walked up and down the silent streets waiting for him. Later she writes: "I had no single reason in the world for liking him."
I was with Ellen at the moment of her disillusion. We were out walking together when Arthur McLain came toward us. Ahead of us, tail wagging, ran the beloved mongrel Faro. He stopped to sniff at Arthur. Arthur shooed him away. He was a lad timid about dogs, it seems. Faro saw his nervousness, and, for deviltry, barked. Arthur kicked at him with the savageness of fear.
I can see Ellen now gathering her dog to her with one regal sweep of the hand and walking past the boy, her head erect, her cheeks scarlet.
"I _hate_ a coward," she said to me in a low, tense voice; and later with a flaming look, "I would have killed him with my _hands_ if he had hurt Faro," she cried.
So humiliated was she that she says no word in her journal for her reason for her change of heart. She could not forgive him for having made a fool of herself about him--about one so unworthy. For of all things in the world hard to forgive, this is the hardest.
"I would be glad if he were dead. Oh, I know I am awful, but it is like that. Think of him walking around this town day by day, and I will have to meet him; when I go uptown, when I go to school, I will be avoiding him exactly the way I used to look for him. Oh, if he would only go away."
It is not only Ellen who would like to slay the dead ghosts of unworthy loves.
"He walks up and down, and doesn't know I have looked at him.
Oh, if he knew that, I think I should die [her journal goes on].
He walks up and down and doesn't know that I so hate the sight of him. I don't hate him, but just the sight of him--so awfully I hate it. Everything he does seems to me so tiresome; his loud laugh makes me feel sick, and he doesn't know anything. I make-believe to myself that he walked all over town after me and got in my way and annoyed me until I said, 'I will be very glad, Arthur, if you would cease these undesired attentions.' How could he cease anything he had never begun, for it wasn't at all like that it happened. I should feel so much happier if I only could have hurt him, too."
This experience, so phantasmal and yet so poignant, led to the Zinias'
premature death. Conscience invaded Ellen now that disillusion had done its blighting work. There came a day when she could no longer keep to herself her deviation from the precise morals demanded by the Zinias.
It was after a walk toward evening up the mountain, full of pregnant silences, that she confessed:--
"You would despise me, if you really knew me. I'm not the kind of a girl we are trying to be."
[Illustration: I HATE YOUR SOCIETY ANYWAY! I NEVER DID WANT TO BE AN OLD MAID]
It shocked me and thrilled me at the same time.
"What have you been doing?" I asked her.
"I can't tell you," she told me. "You would despise me too much."
"Why, Ellen!" I cried. "Tell me about it."
"No! No!" she said; and she buried her face in the moss in a very agony of shame. "I can't tell a human soul."
And she still left me with a feeling of having had an interesting sentimental experience. Thus may we, when young, rifle sweetness from the blossom of despair.
It was communicated to the other two Zinias that Ellen's conduct had been unbecoming a sincere old maid, and when they turned on her, instead of shame, she had for them: "I hate your society, anyway! I never did want to be an old maid!"
As I look back, this adventure closes for us a certain phase of life as definitely as though we had shut the door. We all realized, though we were not honest enough to say it aloud, that we too didn't wish to be old maids. And all this happened because an unlovable boy had made Ellen like him. So much at the mercy of men are women! Just a shadow of the Cyprian over us and we blossomed. It was the shadow of a shadow; it had not one little objective event to give it substance, yet the Zinias withered.
CHAPTER VI
With a deep revulsion of feeling, Ellen gave up girls, sewing, and Zinias, and made a dash into childhood with Alec Yorke. Alec at this time was a strong lad of thirteen, a head shorter than Ellen. I remember even then he seemed more a person than the other boys, though at the monkey-shining age.
They egged one another on until the ordinary obstacles that stand in people's way did not exist. They became together drunken with the joy of life. In this mood, they disappeared together one day, to the scandal of Miss Sarah. She was particularly annoyed because Mrs. Payne refused to be disturbed by the event.
"While he and Ellen are off together, they are somewhere having a good time. Why should I worry?" said she. They had come together to find out if Ellen was at my house.
"If I had known Ellen was gone with Alec, Sarah, I should never have gone to look for her. I wasn't worried about her, anyway; I only wanted company," said she, with more asperity than usual.
The two returned at sunset, the glamour of a glorious day about them.
They merely told vaguely: "They had been off on the mountain."
It leaked out that they had been as far as the village, ten miles away, and that the peddler had given them a lift back. This last was a scandal.
An Irish peddler lived on the outskirts of our village, and this was before the day when foreigners were plenty. He lived contrary to our American customs,--the pig roamed at will, in friendly fashion, through his cabin. He sang in Gaelic as he drove his cart with its moth-eaten, calico horse,--songs that were now wildly sad, now wildly gay. He was alien, so we disapproved of him.
I remonstrated with Ellen on this.
"I like him," was her only answer.