With Ellen this moment was a severe spiritual crisis. As she had seen concentrated in the last weeks only the lovable things in Roger, so in this one moment she had a vision of all in him that was inimical to happiness and peace. It was as if that blind, voiceless judge that sits deep within all of us and bids us love, hate, or fear, had been aroused to its depth, and its final judgment of Roger had been that here was danger. Had there been any place to run to, she would have fled, but there was nothing to do but sit still. She dreamed at night that she saw his face savage in anger, heartless in its desire, and relentless in its will to get what it wanted from life; and since she could not leave home to run away from him, she ran from him spiritually.
When he came to see her next, he could hardly find Ellen in the inert and docile person who presented herself to his gaze. It was as though the glance he had given his mother and the tone in which he had spoken had been to her a prophecy of life to come. She saw him with that terrible clairvoyance that love gives; she saw clearly what her life in the hands of this other Roger would mean; and it seemed as if the very inner spirit of her struggled to free herself from his power.
I, personally, fear the shocks of the spirit as some fear physical pain, and instinctively I withdrew from the perversities of men, and I now look shudderingly back on two marriages which I might have made but for this warning bell which rang over the reefs of the spirit.
Her first movement had been one of flaming indignation; that burned out, leaving behind it the ashes of a dull, apathetic fear. When he asked her what was the matter and why, she told him she was afraid of him. He called himself a brute, he apologized to his mother, but she remained inert and docile, as aloof as a person who has been stunned by the spectacle of a great disaster, and, indeed, the flood of her emotions had ebbed back violently.
In despair Roger came to me.
“I’ve lost Ellen,” he told me. “We’ve awfully bad tempers in our family, and my mother didn’t understand that since I’ve known Ellen there are a whole lot of things in my life that I want to forget. The me Ellen knows is a different me from the one mother knows.”
He had never been as sweet to Ellen as he was now. She had seen before a brave lover who rushed everything before him and when he was refused anything would turn into a naughty little boy. Now he was a tender suppliant asking for mercy, confessing his sins and inventing sweet and touching things to do for Ellen. I think the men of my day were crueler as men and warmer as lovers. A man like Roger possessed himself more of a woman’s mind and life than the men of to-day that I see around me seem able to do with their sweethearts. There was no little corner of her spirit that he did not wish to occupy, and to gain admission to her frightened little heart he made himself small and humble and appealing. Of the sincerity of his wretchedness and his repentance there was no doubt.
“If she were only angry with me,” he said to me, “but she’s afraid, Roberta. It’s a terrible thing to see her shrink from me. She doesn’t mean to be unkind. She told me in all seriousness, as if she meant it, that she thought it would be better for all of us if I left her now. Why, she’s my life, Roberta!”
I was profoundly touched, as who would not have been? Nor did I fail to repeat this to Ellen. I had told Alec what the matter was, for seeing Ellen listless and remote he had jumped to the conclusion that Roger had hurt her in some way, and in Roger’s defense I told him the truth and he put himself stolidly on the side of Ellen’s instinct. Through one long day she and Alec went off together as they had when they were children, while Roger raged up and down. Ellen wrote:—
“We played, as we did when I was little, ‘Two Years Ago,’ and for one, beautiful afternoon I forgot how life can hurt. Just toward the end Alec cried out to me, ‘Oh, Ellen, why can’t I be older! Why couldn’t it have been I? I’d never have hurt you, I’d never have made you afraid of me.’ And I know that’s true, and I know, too, that poor Alec could never find a key to the place in me that could be hurt. There’s something wrong with women, for when once one has felt one’s pulse beat fast, one can never again be content with a sweet and kind affection. One must wish forevermore to drown one’s self forever and to let the waters of life sweep over one’s head, however bitter they may be.”