“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.”