In such a way were Ellen and I enabled to piece out Roger’s life, and it apparently did not occur to her to make any comparison between herself and Roger; for in very truth the desire he had for her had swept from him all his former life until it seemed so paltry and meaningless that it was no desire of concealment that had led him to speak so lightly of both of these women. They had walked across his conversation with Ellen. Ellen had heard Roger’s side of these stories.
“This married woman of whom they speak,” she explained to me, “was a good friend of his and very much older than himself, but people are so evil-minded in this world. As for Emmeline Glover, he called her a sweet, little, silver-gray cloud, and another time, a graceful shadow.”
We realized, however, that some time should elapse before Roger should tell his parents of his new love, or they would think it a weak passing interest and fail to treat it seriously.
When his interest in a person flagged, he lacked the coxcombry that makes a man afraid that his lack of interest has broken a woman’s heart. Quite the contrary, he was apt to despise them for having shown affection for so light a cause. In the world of the affections he related nothing that had happened to him before to anything which was happening; each experience was fresh to him, a rising tide that had no memory of any other tide before.
They might have gone on with their indiscreet friendship indefinitely, but they counted without themselves. They were caught up, both of them, in the fierce moving stream that sweeps and swings people out of the orbit that they have planned. It was impossible to both their natures, under the stress of what they were feeling, to wish to be guarded. The clandestine element in their friendship, slight though it was,—for Ellen’s little mother was taken into the secret, how could she leave her out; she needed to spill some of her happiness over on every one who came near her,—became very irksome.
Roger told me that he longed to go down Main Street shouting: “I love Ellen and am going to marry her; I love Ellen.” And he would say with his naughty, little-boy look: “Whenever I hear Aunt Sarah”—for with what Miss Sarah called his usual impudence, Roger called her “Aunt Sarah” from the beginning—“talking about what a good boy I am and ‘high time, too’”—and here he mimicked Miss Sarah’s manner—“I want to say to her: ‘Don’t you know, you blind old fossil, that I’m here because of Ellen—Ellen—Ellen—Ellen, the gentle, that you presume to correct; Ellen, the joyful; Ellen, the glad of heart?’ One of the strangest things in life to me is the impudence of Age, that dares to presume to touch so lovely a thing as Youth, and especially the youth of my Ellen. I can’t stand it much longer, Roberta. Think of my knowing and submitting to my father’s standing between Ellen and me. He’s a wise old man, but he’s forgotten things more useful than any that he knows, and I know them!”
And, indeed, he seemed the incarnation of the splendid and arrogant Knowledge of Youth, and my heart beat that so splendid a youth should be Ellen’s; they seemed then God-appointed for each other.
Roger’s direct mind found a way out of the difficulty. They were at their favorite meeting-place, up above Oscar’s Leap, and looking out at the river which had turned to flame in the sunset light. Ellen tells about it:—
“‘Oh, Ellen!’ he said, ‘why can’t you put your hand in mine and walk out into the sunset with me? I often wonder why, when people love each other as we do, why they let anything stand in their way.’ And then he said: ‘Ellen, why shouldn’t we—why shouldn’t we walk out together, just you and me to-night?’ And I said, ‘Very well.’ ‘Come, then,’ said he; and he held out his hand, and if I had put my hand in his he would have come with me, but I thought then he was joking. He said, ‘Ellen, I’m not joking; I mean it. Would I joke of such a thing? Why should we waste one moment of what is so beautiful? You belong to me, Ellen, don’t you?’ And then he put his arms around me and kissed me so that I could hardly breathe, and said, ‘Ellen, do you belong to me?’ I could only hide my head on his shoulder and whisper to him, ‘Yes’; and he said to me, ‘Will you come with me, then, bad girl?’ And I said, ‘How can I?’ ‘Think about it, Ellen,’ he said; ‘think about it. I’ll give you this week to think of it in, and at the end of the week it’s one thing or the other. You come with me and be married or I’ll tell them all. Am I one to tiptoe around through life, hiding because a cross-grained old man who happens to be my father will oppose at first something he will in the end be glad of?’ He was such a bad little boy as he said this that I laughed, though he shouldn’t speak of his father this way, I am sure, even though it is his father’s fault. It is a terrible thing when any one as sweet and as full of the desire to love people as Roger shouldn’t have been understood by his parents at home. His mother is very sweet, but she has never known how to get at him. All the mutinous things in Roger, and all the times when he wasn’t adjusted to life, should have been loved away and understood away. He said to me: ‘I’ve been good only since I have known you, Ellen, because no one has loved me before.’ People have loved me all my life, and Roger, who is so much fuller and better than I, has not had my chance.”
Here we have the tragedy that all mothers must face. Their sons, that they have brought up so tenderly and whom they have anguished over, bring all their mistakes to the beloved to be wept over. If you have worn a callous place in his spirit, the soft hand of his sweetheart will find it and she will grieve over it.