“God help them if they don’t,” he said. “Any parents I have will have to like it.”
And there was so sinister a note in his voice that I shivered. Sometimes when he spoke there was a weight to a light word that seemed like a heavy wind.
It was not long before the town had more to talk about. Mrs. Byington, in her beautiful and fashionable clothes, was as conspicuous as though she had come riding in a palanquin. The city and country were much more apart in those days, and home-made patterns taken from some remote city ones were passed from hand to hand; dolls dressed in Boston still carried the mode somewhat; and in our honest village, loveliness was put by with youth, and lovely was the quality of Mrs. Byington. At fifty she was tall and slender, her hair a little gray, her neck graceful like a girl’s; she walked swayingly, and age was not a quality with which she seemed to have reckoned. With the changing years she had a quality as compelling as youth itself, and this without the slightest attempt at seeming less than her years.
Ellen writes:—
“Roger’s mother came to see me alone, and before her, so beautiful and soft, I felt as though I had been made yesterday. It happened that I opened the door for her, and I knew who she was and she knew me, for she said: ‘Dear child, I know you are Ellen; I wanted to come by myself.’ She looked at me with searching eyes that were a little sad, and all of a sudden I felt very sorry for her, for it must be very hard, when you have a son that you love, to learn all at once that his life belongs to some one else. We sat down and talked a little, and my heart beat so that I could hardly say anything, and I felt that I was very stupid, and that if Roger could be there he wouldn’t like the way I was acting, and all of a sudden she put her arms around me and kissed me, and said: ‘Dear Ellen, you are very lovely and very perfect, and, indeed, I knew you would be very “something” to send my wild Roger after you at such a rate. You love him very much, don’t you?’ I couldn’t speak, and only bowed my head; and she said, as though talking to herself rather than to me, ‘Poor child, it would be better for you if you loved him less; he would be more yours.’ I asked her what she meant. She thought a moment, and then said: ‘Perhaps you’ll never find out; you’re so sweet, Ellen; even Roger wouldn’t hurt a child.’ And for a moment I felt a little flaming anger at her for not understanding him better. I wanted to tell her that there was only sweetness in Roger for those who knew how to find it, but, of course, I didn’t dare. There was something in her tone that made a cold shadow fall over me.”
It seemed as though all difficulties were cleared from before them, when Ellen found herself face to face with what really was the first important issue of this time. After all, the things in love that count are not all the obstacles imposed on us from without. It is strange to me why people have always written of these rather than of those far more important moments, as when, for instance, one first sees the beloved face to face as he really is. Love for a moment makes us transcend ourselves, and Roger was a brave lover, and Ellen had known nothing of him except Roger the lover, when suddenly she caught a new glimpse of Roger. She wrote:—
“I don’t know what I’m going to do—nothing I suppose. I’ve seen Roger angry with his mother. It was our last afternoon all together and she was talking very seriously with us. She said: ‘Your Ellen is very sweet, Roger. Keep her happiness, and if you play fast and loose again, you deserve all the unhappiness the world can bring you.’ She has wanted me to see him as he is, and has talked around the edges of this, and she said to me, ‘I came here wondering who you were, Ellen, and ever since I saw you I’ve been wondering what Roger will do to you in this new life of yours begun so sweetly.’ One time she cried out, ‘Oh! why do women have to marry men?’ And then she laughed at herself for saying it. Ever since she came Roger has been watching her. He’s had a critical attitude and is ready to find fault at a moment’s notice. It was as if the impatience of the whole week overflowed. What he said wasn’t so much. Oh! he kept within bounds before me, but the restrained anger of his manner was as though he had struck her, as though he had hurt her, as though the force of his anger would throw her from the room. She held up her head a little proudly, but she only said, as though to bring him to himself, ‘Roger, Roger!’ warning him, one would think, not to lose further control of himself. She spoke as if she were used to this wounding, terrible manner, a manner that gets its own way in spite of everything; and I stood there trembling inside, and I began thinking, ‘Who are you, Roger, and who am I?’ Now it is all at once as if I had an answer to why she seemed to pity me, as though she wanted to protect me from everything. All my instinct is to run and hide in some place where I shall hide from him forever. I know nothing of him or he of me.”
CHAPTER XVIII
There comes a moment in the life of almost every one when, bewildered, for the first time they meet an everyday and faulty person in place of the beloved. Sometimes this is the beginning of a long disillusion; it is then that many find out that one has not been in love at all, but only in love with being in love. With young lovers one often calls this first glimpse the first quarrel. After marriage this slow torment of becoming accustomed to another personality in the body of the beloved is called the “time of adjustment.”