Through months of toil she had at last acquired the few dollars necessary to buy the present, and something “boughten” at that moment had a tremendous value. Gifts were much fewer, and such gifts as there were were of course made at home.
The first afternoon after her long task was over, Ellen went up the mountain to reflect. Our mountain and our river were two things which moulded the souls of us. The austere mountain drew my eyes toward God, and how often I lost my personal grievances as I mingled my bemused little spirit in the swirling river, which, after one looked at it long enough and steadily enough, seemed at last to absorb one in itself and float one down seaward. I knew that Ellen was on the mountain and Alec and I walked up to meet her. She was on what we call “Oscar’s Leap,” a place where the mountain seemed cleft away above the river, as though with some giant’s knife, and just above there was a clear platform, surrounded by trees and bushes. Our tradition had it that Oscar, one of the chiefs, leaped his horse into the river below to escape from his enemies.
This night the river was turned to a mighty sheet of burnished crimson, as the sun set just beyond the black bulk of the mountain. Our peaceful town took on an apocalyptical aspect. One felt that among the serene silence of departing day, the end of the world had come, and in some way the very silence of its coming made it more awesome, for its color demanded cataclysmal sounds. Ellen said once: “It tears one through like the noise of trumpets.”
Presently Ellen came down the road toward us, the last slanting rays of the sun outlining her in the light. She didn’t see us as she came toward us, as we stood in the shadow. As I look back at that time it seems to me that she forever moved in a pool of light that came from the radiance of her own spirit. There was a little hush over both Alec and myself.
He said: “She is very lovely.”
And I answered: “She has been on the mountain.”
I felt, indeed, as if Ellen had gone there to commune with God.
“When I came from the mountain to-day,” she writes, “the world had a new look, as if I had never seen it before. I wish the river had a face so I could kiss it. I had to hold my hands tight so that I shouldn’t fling them around the necks of Alec and Roberta; I took it for a good omen that the two that I love most should be waiting there for me. I have made a wonderful friend. Though I have never seen him before, yet I have known him always. I was sitting above Oscar’s Leap, thinking hard, meditating on the beautiful things in life, which if you think hard enough about, Mr. Sylvester says, you will become like, but to do this you must feel like a little child, very small and humble and believing. I think I was nearer feeling this than I have since I was really little, when I looked up and saw him standing there. I had been thinking so hard I hadn’t heard him come even; he was just there as if I had thought him into life, and I was no more afraid of him than as though I had always known him, although a stranger frightens me as a rule, unless I’m feeling foolish. He said: ‘I have been watching you a long time; I’ve been watching you think’; and I just smiled at him and he sat down there beside me, and then it was as if all the things I had never been able to say to any one came to me, crowding to my lips. I don’t know if I said them or not, because I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. We made friends the way children make friends. I felt that if I knew him a little more only, he would know me more as I am than any one in the world, because the me, that my own people know, is so mixed up with that gone-forever person that used to be myself. I wish I could remember more what we said to each other, but the meaning of them is like Mr. Sylvester’s sermons—we haven’t got words for them yet; but I remember one thing that seems to me like the truth of truths. He said to me, ‘Ellen, I am coming back to find you; it was more than chance that led me here this afternoon.’”
