Chapter 22

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_ Chapter XXII

When Mrs. Zelotes was made acquainted with the plan for sending Ellen to Vassar she astonished Fanny. Fanny ran over the next morning, after Andrew had gone to work, to tell her mother-in-law. She sat a few minutes in the sitting-room, where the old lady was knitting, before she unfolded the burden of her errand.

"Cynthia Lennox came to our house last night with Robert Lloyd," she said, finally.

"Did they?" remarked Mrs. Zelotes, who had known perfectly well that they had come, having recognized the Lennox carriage in the moonlight, and having been ever since devoured with curiosity, which she would have died rather than betray.

"Yes, they did," said Fanny. Then she added, after a pause which gave wonderful impressiveness to the news, "Cynthia Lennox wants to send Ellen to college--to Vassar College."

Then she jumped, for the old woman seemed to spring at her like released wire.

"Send her to college!" said she. "What does she want to send her to college for? What right has Cynthia Lennox got to send Ellen Brewster anywhere?"

Fanny stared at her dazedly.

"What right has she got interfering?" demanded Mrs. Zelotes again.

"Why," replied Fanny, stammering, "she thought Ellen was so smart. She heard her valedictory, and the school-teacher had talked about her, what a good scholar she was, and she thought it would be nice for her to go to college, and she should be very much obliged herself, and feel that we were granting her a great pleasure and privilege if we allowed her to send Ellen to Vassar."

All unconsciously Fanny imitated to the life Cynthia's soft elegance of speech and language.

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Zelotes; but still she said it not so much angrily as doubtfully. "It's the first time I ever heard of Cynthia Lennox doing such a thing as that," said she. "I never knew she was given to sending girls to college. I never heard of her giving anything to anybody."

Fanny looked mysteriously at her mother-in-law with sudden confidence. "Look here," she said.

"What?"

The two women looked at each other, and neither said a word, but the meaning of one flashed to the other like telegraphy.

"Do you s'pose that's it?" said Mrs. Zelotes, her old face relaxing into half-shamed, half-pleased smiles.

"Yes, I do," said Fanny, emphatically.

"You do?"

"Yes, I 'ain't a doubt of it."

"He did act as if he couldn't take his eyes off her at the exhibition," agreed Mrs. Zelotes, reflectively; "mebbe you're right."

"I know I'm right just as well as if I'd seen it."

"Well, mebbe you are. What does Andrew say?"

"Oh, he wishes he was the one to do it."

"Of course he does--he's a Brewster," said his mother.

"But he's got sense enough to be pleased that Ellen has got the chance."

"He ain't any more pleased than I be at anything that's a good chance for Ellen," said the grandmother; but all the same, after Fanny had gone, her joy had a sharp sting for her. She was not one who could take a gift to heart without feeling its sharp edge.

Had Ellen's sentiment been analyzed, she felt in something the same way that her grandmother did. However, she had begun to dream definitely about Robert, and the reflection had come, too, that this might make her more his equal, as nearly his equal as Maud Hemingway.

Maud Hemingway went to college, and so would she. Of the minor accessories of wealth she thought not so much. She looked at her hands, which were very small and as delicately white as flowers, and reflected with a sense of comfort, of which she was ashamed, that she would not need ever to stain them with leather now. She looked at the homeward stream of dingy girls from the shops, and thought with a sense of escape that she would never have to join them; but she was conscious of loving Abby better, and Maria, who had also entered Lloyd's. Abby, when she heard the news about Vassar, had looked at her with a sort of fierce exultation.

"Thank the Lord, you're out of it, anyhow!" she cried, fervently, as a soul might in the midst of flames.

Maria had smiled at her with the greatest sweetness and a certain wistfulness. Maria was growing delicate, and seemed to inherit her father's consumptive tendencies.

"I am so glad, Ellen," she said. Then she added, "I suppose we sha'n't see so much of you."

"Of course we sha'n't, Maria Atkins," interposed Abby, "and it won't be fitting we should. It won't be best for Ellen to associate with shop-girls when she's going to Vassar College."

But Ellen had cast an impetuous arm around a neck of each.

"If ever I do such a thing as that!" said she. "If ever I turn a cold shoulder to either of you for such a reason as that! What's Vassar College to hearts? That's at the bottom of everything in this world, anyhow. I guess you'll see it won't make any difference unless you keep on thinking such things. If you do--if you think I can do anything like that--I won't love you so much."

Ellen faced them both with gathering indignation. Suddenly this ignoble conception of herself in the minds of her friends stung her to resentment. But Abby seized her in two wiry little arms.

"I never did, I never did!" she cried. "Don't I know what you are made of, Ellen Brewster? Don't you think I know? But after all, it might be better for you if you were worse. That was all I meant."

Ellen, one afternoon, set out in her pretty challis, a white ground with long sprays of blue flowers running over it, and a blue ribbon at her neck and waist, and her leghorn hat with white ribbons, and a knot of forget-me-nots under the brim. She wore her one pair of nice gloves, too, but those she did not put on until she reached the corner of the street where Cynthia lived. Then she rubbed them on carefully, holding up her challis skirts under one arm.

Cynthia was at home, seated on the back veranda, in a rattan chair, with a book which she was not reading. Ellen stood before her, in her cheap attire, which she wore with an air which seemed to make it precious, such faith she had in it. Ellen regarded her coarse blue-flowered challis with an innocent admiration which seemed almost able to glorify it into silk. Cynthia took in at a glance the exceeding commonness of it all; she saw the hat, the like of which could be seen in the milliners' windows at fabulously low prices; the foam of spurious lace and the spray of wretched blue flowers made her shudder. "The poor child, she must have something better than that," she thought, and insensibly she also thought that the girl must lose her evident faith in the splendor of such attire; must change her standard of taste. She rose and greeted Ellen sweetly, though somewhat reservedly. When the two were seated opposite each other, Cynthia tried to talk pleasantly, but all the time with a sub-consciousness as one will have of some deformity which must be ignored. The girl looked so common to her in this array that she began to have a hopeless feeling of disgust about it all. Was it not manifestly unwise to try to elevate a girl who took such evident satisfaction in a gown like that, in a hat like that? Ellen wore her watch and chain ostentatiously. The watch was too large for a chatelaine, but she had looped the heavy chain across her bosom, and pinned it with the brooch which Abby Atkins had given her, so it hung suspended. Cynthia riveted her eyes helplessly upon that as she talked.

"I hope you are having a pleasant vacation," said she, as she looked at the watch, and all at once Ellen knew.

Ellen replied that she was having a very pleasant vacation, then she plunged at once into the subject of her call, though with inward trembling.

"Miss Lennox," said she--and she followed the lines of a little speech which she had been rehearsing to herself all the way there--"I am very grateful to you for what you propose doing for me. It will make a difference to me during my whole life. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am."

"I am very grateful to be allowed to do it," replied Cynthia, with her unfailing refrain of gentle politeness, but a kindly glance was in her eyes. Something in the girl's tone touched her. It was exceedingly earnest, with the simple earnestness of childhood. Moreover, Ellen was regarding her with great, steadfast, serious eyes, like a baby's who shrinks and yet will have her will of information.

"I wanted to say," Ellen continued--and her voice became insensibly hushed, and she cast a glance around at the house and the leafy grounds, as if to be sure that no one was within hearing--"that I should never under any circumstances have said anything regarding what happened so long ago. That I never have and never should have, that I never thought of doing such a thing."

Then the elder woman's face flushed a burning red, and she knew at once what the girl had suspected. "You might proclaim it on the house-tops if it would please you," she cried out, vehemently. "If you think--if you think--"

"Oh, I do not!" cried Ellen, in an agony of pleading. "Indeed, I do not. It was only that--I--feared lest you might think I would be mean enough to tell."

"I would have told, myself, long ago if there had been only myself to consider," said Cynthia, still red with anger, and her voice strained. All at once she seemed to Ellen more like the woman of her childhood. "Yes, I would," said she, hotly--"I will now."

"Oh, I beg you not!" cried Ellen.

"I will go with you this minute and tell your mother," Cynthia said, rising.

Ellen sprang up and moved towards her as if to push her back in her chair. "Oh, please don't!" she cried. "Please don't. You don't know mother; and it would do no good. It was only because I wondered if you could have thought I would tell, if I would be so mean."

"And you thought, perhaps, I was bribing you not to tell, with Vassar College," Cynthia said, suddenly. "Well, you have suspected me of something which was undeserved."

"I am very sorry," Ellen said. "I did not suspect, really, but I do not know why you do this for me." She said the last with her steady eyes of interrogation on Cynthia's face.

"You know the reasons I have given."

"I do not think they were the only ones," Ellen replied, stoutly. "I do not think my valedictory was so good as to warrant so much, and I do not think I am so smart as to warrant so much, either."

Cynthia laughed. She sat down again. "Well," she said, "you are not one to swallow praise greedily." Then her tone changed. "I owe it to you to tell you why I wish to do this," she said, "and I will. You are an honest girl, with yourself as well as with other people--too honest, perhaps, and you deserve that I should be honest with you. I am not doing this for you in the least, my dear."

Ellen stared at her.

"No, I am not," repeated Cynthia. "You are a very clever, smart girl, I am sure, and it will be a nice thing for you to have a better education, and be able to take a higher place in the world, but I am not doing it for you. When you were a little child I would have done everything, given my life almost, for you, but I never care so much for children when they grow up. I am not doing this for you, but for your mother."

"My mother?" said Ellen.

"Yes, your mother. I know what agony your mother must have been in, that time when I kept you, and I want to atone in some way. I think this is a good way. I don't think you need to hesitate about letting me do it. You also owe a little atonement to your mother. It was not right for you to run away, in the first place."

"Yes, I was very naughty to run away," Ellen said, starting. She rose, and held out her hand. "I hope you will forgive me," she said. "I am very grateful, and it will make my father and mother happier than anything else could, but indeed I don't think--it is so long ago--that there was any need--"

"I do, for the sake of my own distress over it," Cynthia said, shortly. "Suppose, now, we drop the subject, my dear. There is a taint in the New England blood, and you have it, and you must fight it. It is a suspicion of the motives of a good deed which will often poison all the good effect from it. I don't know where the taint came from. Perhaps the Pilgrim Fathers', being necessarily always on the watch for the savage behind his gifts, have affected their descendants. Anyway, it is there. I suppose I have it."

"I am very sorry," said Ellen.

"I also am sorry," said Cynthia. "I did you a wrong, and your mother a wrong, years ago. I wonder at myself now, but you don't know the temptation. You will never know how you looked to me that night."

Cynthia's voice took on a tone of ineffable tenderness and yearning. Ellen saw again the old expression in her face; suddenly she looked as before, young and beautiful, and full of a boundless attraction. The girl's heart fairly leaped towards her with an impulse of affection. She could in that minute have fallen at her feet, have followed her to the end of the world. A great love and admiration which had gotten its full growth in a second under the magic of a look and a tone shook her from head to foot. She went close to Cynthia, and leaned over her, putting her round, young face down to the elder woman's. "Oh, I love you, I love you," whispered Ellen, with a fervor which was strange to her.

But Cynthia only kissed her lightly on her cheek, and pushed her away softly. "Thank you, my dear," she said. "I am glad you came and spoke to me frankly, and I am glad we have come to an understanding."

Ellen, after she had taken her leave, was more in love than she had ever been in her life, and with another woman. She thought of Cynthia with adoration; she dreamed about her; the feeling of receiving a benefit from her hand became immeasurably sweet. _

Read next: Chapter 23

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