“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.