CHAPTER XXXIII
ELLEN UNDERTAKES TO CONQUER HERSELF
The first sting of disappointment past, Ellen believed that she was glad that her Christmas journey had been made impossible. She might have betrayed herself, and the only light in her darkness was the hope of keeping Stephen's good-will. Her experience of human passion was limited; she believed that the simple fact that Hilda lived would keep his heart from wandering. Pure hearts, she believed, did not wander, nor did they seek those which were bound. To feel his eyes upon her in amazement, disapproval, or scorn—there was the one contingency intolerable and shameful.
Not once, during her self-examination, did she surmise that she was regarded in any other light than that of a beneficiary. Stephen was grateful to her father for some remembered kindness, he sympathized with her ambitions, and he had given her what must seem to him—however large it was to her—a little from his store. Fetzer's opinion that she had lifted her eyes to a distant and unattainable star was her own opinion exactly; indeed, to Fetzer he was not nearly so exalted a person as he was to Ellen.
She felt, alas! now that she understood herself, another humiliating emotion, jealousy of all who had anything to do with him, of Miss Knowlton who obeyed his commands, of Miss MacVane who kept his house, of Fetzer who might some day return to her post, of Professor Mayne who went about with him, even of the patients who saw him daily. One could become, it seemed, wholly ludicrous.
Another woman might have tried to conquer this passion because it could result only in misery and humiliation for herself, but Ellen tried to conquer it because it was wrong. It had not been wrong to love him; she had fallen blindly into that error—upon that she proudly insisted; but it would be sinful to continue. From the narrow theology of Grandfather and from the character of her father she had unconsciously constructed a code of behavior as rigid as Grandfather's precepts and as her father's probity. Her nature was developing rapidly, but in this respect it retained all its natural simplicity and innocence.
She determined, therefore, poor Ellen, that she would banish Stephen from the heart which he unlawfully occupied, and with this end in view she laid down specific rules for herself. In the first place she would think of him no more. In this determination she was not as childlike as she seemed for she planned for herself deliberate distractions. She would study still harder; she would respond to some of the friendly overtures which were continually made; and, above all, she would dream no more. She laid away the tiny watch which Stephen had sent her at Christmas—it was absurd to try not to think of him and then deliberately to recall him whenever she needed to know the hour! She went to a few dances, she received a few student callers, she even went walking four times with a graduate student who confided to her the history of his past and his hopes for the future. She decided drearily in March that she was conquering herself.
She would go to Harrisburg in June only for a day on her way to Ephrata. Her self-examination led her farther than her relations with Stephen, and she believed that in her preoccupation with herself she had been undutiful to her grandfather and to Matthew. When Miss Grammer, who had taken a cottage on the lake, invited her wistfully to go with her, she burst into tears.
"I wish I could. But I've written to my brother that I'm coming home."