They went on; I heard their laughter down the street. That was all the thanks they gave me.
CHAPTER XIX
Ellen wiped the memory of their misunderstanding completely from her mind. If she had cared for Roger before, now she burned her bridges behind her; she swamped herself in her devotion to him. He stayed in our town until late fall, and during these months he seemed to want no other thing than the companionship of Ellen. The hours that he spent in work every day were their tragedy. In her journal Ellen prattled of a time “when they should be married and she could be with him even when he was working.”
“The world is full now,” she complained, “of closed doors and good-nights and good-byes.”
All the diverse and many-sided problems of marriage resolved themselves, in her simple mind, into one single meaning, and that was the continual presence of Roger. She passed the hours away from him drowned in the thought of him. Though at that time she wrote very little in her journal,—she was happy,—she did write a series of little, good-night letters that were like so many kisses, fond and extravagant, the happy babblings of a perfectly happy heart. Meantime Roger was studying. It was the first time he had applied himself to work and found the power of his mind. In the quiet of this town he got into a tremendous stride of work and ate up books before him as fire licks up brushwood. They spent a great deal of their time together, planning his future and talking how great a man he was going to be. He had a gift of natural eloquence and loved an audience at any time. In that New England fall, when the crisp air is like wine and the hills are a miracle of color, Roger brooded over the picture of his own future, sketching outlines which he afterwards filled out. By letter he made friends again with his father.
Their engagement had been announced and Ellen was given the consideration which a good marriage brings one in a little village, a consideration which she didn’t even notice. Mildred Dilloway, in the mean time, had been—in the homely New England phrase—“keeping company” with Edward Graham, and no one was surprised when it became known that they were to be married. Ellen writes in connection with this:—
“When I think of what a little fool I was at that time, I could beat my head against the door. If I could have but looked ahead a little, I would have had a little more sense. I needn’t have listened at all to Edward’s blitherings and been saved two years of discomfort. Edward himself told me about it. ‘Do not think, Ellen,’ he said, ‘that I’m unfaithful to the thought of you.’ ‘You couldn’t be,’ said I. ‘You’ll always be poetry to me, remember that,’ he told me. ‘I shall try to forget it,’ said I. I have never before wished to throw something at any one as I did then. It was easy to see that he was a little disappointed in himself that he could care for any one else after having made so great a fuss and mourned around so. I wish he would go away, because I hate to be forever reminded of the me that used to be. What if one should turn back into the person that one was once? I wonder who the person is that I’m going to be. It will be a happy person or else I shan’t be alive; because if I have Roger I shall be happy, and if anything happens to him it will happen to me, too.”
At that moment in her life she could not imagine any other separation from him than that caused by some disaster. She hadn’t even faced the necessity of his leaving her when winter came. She knew he was going away, but she didn’t realize it. They drifted along, making more of a drama all the time of the inevitable good-nights and the inevitable separations. As Ellen wrote: “People who are in love should be endowed; there isn’t time for anything else.”
During this little perfect time life held its breath until Roger went away. The end came quite suddenly, with a peremptory letter from his father, who had a chance for him to enter a very well-known law office, under advantageous circumstances. While the shadow of separation was over them, it was like a cloud that passes near by and only bade the sunshine in which they stood more bright. She knew Roger was going, but she didn’t really believe it. She wrote:—