  No sooner had Ellen covenanted “Thou shalt not!” than off she went on her first adventure,—a trifling one but bleeding. She walked one day to the academy with Arthur McLain. He wore long trousers. Of this fatal occurrence Ellen remarks touchingly: “I tried very hard to be interesting, but I chose the wrong thing.” It is a mistake frequently made by grown men and women. Alas! capricious fate that governs these things turned my sweet, unconscious Ellen to one forever on the alert for the appearance of this long-legged quidnunc. I will give three or four paragraphs from her journal:— “I asked Aunt Sarah if she wanted me to get her some more yarn when hers ran short. She answered, ‘Yes, you may, though I wish, Ellen, my dear child, that you were as eager to do your work as you are to wait on others.’ A few days later comes the touching little expression of the desire of the eyes:— “Last week I walked all over town to catch glimpses of him. I went to the post-office, and he wasn’t there; I went down past the school-house and past his house, and whenever I saw a boy coming toward me, it was hard to breathe. The whole day was empty and I thought it would never be night.” Again:— “To-day I saw him; he passed by me and just said, ‘Hulloa, Ellen.’ When I stopped for a moment, I thought he would speak to me. In school this morning he stopped and talked, but all my words went away and I seemed so stupid. At night I make up things I would like to say to him, and when he stops for a Throughout all this, not once does she use the word love. From that terrible and impersonal longing, unaware of itself and unrecognized, Ellen walked out toward the long-trousered boy. She spread before him as much as she could of her little shy sweetnesses. She walked up and down the silent streets waiting for him. Later she writes: “I had no single reason in the world for liking him.” I was with Ellen at the moment of her disillusion. We were out walking together when Arthur McLain came toward us. Ahead of us, tail wagging, ran the beloved mongrel Faro. He stopped to sniff at Arthur. Arthur shooed him away. He was a lad timid about dogs, it seems. Faro saw his nervousness, and, for deviltry, barked. Arthur kicked at him with the savageness of fear. I can see Ellen now gathering her dog to her with one regal sweep of the hand and walking past the boy, her head erect, her cheeks scarlet. “I hate a coward,” she said to me in a low, So humiliated was she that she says no word in her journal for her reason for her change of heart. She could not forgive him for having made a fool of herself about him—about one so unworthy. For of all things in the world hard to forgive, this is the hardest. “I would be glad if he were dead. Oh, I know I am awful, but it is like that. Think of him walking around this town day by day, and I will have to meet him; when I go uptown, when I go to school, I will be avoiding him exactly the way I used to look for him. Oh, if he would only go away.” It is not only Ellen who would like to slay the dead ghosts of unworthy loves. “He walks up and down, and doesn’t know I have looked at him. Oh, if he knew that, I think I should die [her journal goes on]. He walks up and down and doesn’t know that I This experience, so phantasmal and yet so poignant, led to the Zinias’ premature death. Conscience invaded Ellen now that disillusion had done its blighting work. There came a day when she could no longer keep to herself her deviation from the precise morals demanded by the Zinias. It was after a walk toward evening up the mountain, full of pregnant silences, that she confessed:— “You would despise me, if you really knew I HATE YOUR SOCIETY ANYWAY! I NEVER DID WANT TO BE AN OLD MAID It shocked me and thrilled me at the same time. “What have you been doing?” I asked her. “I can’t tell you,” she told me. “You would despise me too much.” “Why, Ellen!” I cried. “Tell me about it.” “No! No!” she said; and she buried her face in the moss in a very agony of shame. “I can’t tell a human soul.” And she still left me with a feeling of having had an interesting sentimental experience. Thus may we, when young, rifle sweetness from the blossom of despair. It was communicated to the other two Zinias that Ellen’s conduct had been unbecoming a sincere old maid, and when they turned on her, instead of shame, she had for them: “I hate your society, anyway! I never did want to be an old maid!” As I look back, this adventure closes for us a certain phase of life as definitely as though we had shut the door. We all realized, though we were not honest enough to say it aloud, that |
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