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diff --git a/35337-h/35337-h.htm b/35337-h/35337-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc7ce08 --- /dev/null +++ b/35337-h/35337-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4353 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Miss Theodora, by Helen Leah Reed. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + + p.bold {text-align: center; font-weight: bold;} + p.bold2 {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 150%;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + h1 span, h2 span { display: block; text-align: center; } + #id1 { font-size: smaller } + + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .mynote { background-color: #DDE; color: black; padding: .5em; margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; } /* colored box for notes at beginning of file */ + + hr.smler { width: 5%; } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0px; + } /* page numbers */ + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smaller {font-size: smaller;} + + .tbrk {margin-bottom: 2em;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem div {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Theodora, by Helen Leah Reed + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Miss Theodora + A West End Story + +Author: Helen Leah Reed + +Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35337] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS THEODORA *** + + + + +Produced by Heather Clark, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class = "mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br /> +A Table of Contents has been added.</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<h1><span>Miss Theodora<br /><span class="smaller">A West End Story</span></span> <span id="id1">BY</span> <span>Helen Leah Reed</span></h1> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='149' height='180' alt="logo" /></div> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p class="bold">BOSTON<br />RICHARD G. BADGER & CO.<br />1898</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center">Copyright, 1898, by<br />Richard G. Badger & Co.</p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p class="center"><i>All Rights Reserved</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width='383' height='582' alt="Frontispiece" /></div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center">The frontispiece and chapter headings are from drawings by Florence +Pearl England, the latter being after photographs.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold2">CONTENTS.</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#Page_1">CHAPTER I.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_7">CHAPTER II.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_18">CHAPTER III.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_27">CHAPTER IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_34">CHAPTER V.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_44">CHAPTER VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_61">CHAPTER VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_69">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_80">CHAPTER IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_88">CHAPTER X.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_97">CHAPTER XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_106">CHAPTER XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_115">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_125">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_134">CHAPTER XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_141">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_151">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_159">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_171">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_178">CHAPTER XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_190">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_200">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_213">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_223">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_234">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br /> +<a href="#Page_244">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap01.jpg" width='300' height='275' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>I.</span></h2> + +<p>The tourist, with his day or two at a down town hotel, calls Boston a +city of narrow streets and ancient graveyards; the dweller in one of the +newer avenues is enthusiastic about the modern architecture and regular +streets of the Back Bay region. Yet neither of these knows the real +Boston, the old West End, with its quaint tree-lined streets sloping +from the top of Beacon Hill toward the river.</p> + +<p>Near the close of any bright afternoon, walk from the State House down +the hill,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> pause half-way, and, glancing back, note the perfect Gothic +arch formed by the trees that line both sides of Mount Vernon Street. +Admire those old houses which have taken on the rich, deep tones that +age so kindly imparts to brick. Then look across the river to the sun +just setting behind the Brookline hills,—and admit that even in a +crowded city we may catch glimpses of the picturesque.</p> + +<p>Half-way down one of the quiet, hilly West End streets is the house of +Miss Theodora—no, I will not tell you her true name. If I should, you +would recognize it at once as that of a great New England jurist. This +jurist was descended from a long line of scholars, whose devotion to +letters had not prevented their accumulating a fair amount of wealth. +Much of this wealth had fallen to the jurist, Miss Theodora's father, +with whom at first everything went well, and then everything badly.</p> + +<p>It was not entirely the great man's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>extravagance that wrought the +mischief, although many stories were long told of his too liberal +hospitality and lavish expenditure. He came, however, of a generous +race; it was a cousin of his who divided a small fortune between Harvard +College and the Provident Association, and for more than a century back +the family name might be found on every list of contributions to a good cause.</p> + +<p>Yet it was not extravagance, but blind faith in the financial wisdom of +others, as well as an undue readiness to lend money to every man who +wished to borrow from him, which brought to Miss Theodora's father the +trouble that probably hastened him to his grave. When he died, it was +found that he had lost all but a fraction of a former fortune. His widow +survived him only a few years, and before her death the family had to +leave their roomy mansion on the hill, with its pleasant garden, for a +smaller house farther down the street.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>Here Miss Theodora tried to make a pleasant home for John, her brother. +He had just begun to practise law, and, with his talents, would +undoubtedly do well, especially if he married as he should. Thus, with a +woman's worldliness in things matrimonial, reasoned Miss Theodora, +sometimes even going so far as to commend to John this girl or that +among the family connections. But one day John put an end to all her +innocent scheming by announcing his betrothal to the orphan daughter of +a Plymouth minister, "a girl barely pretty, and certainly poor." It was +only a half consolation to reflect that Dorothy had a pedigree going +back to John Alden and Priscilla.</p> + +<p>Ernest, John's boy, was just a month old when Sumter surrendered; yet +John would go to the war, leaving Dorothy and the baby to the care of +his sister. Eagerly the two women followed his regiment through each +campaign, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>thankful for the bright and cheerful letters he sent them. +They bore bravely that awful silence after Antietam, until at length +they knew that John would never come home again.</p> + +<p>It was simply of a broken heart that Dorothy died, said every one, for +little Ernest was scarcely three years old when he was left with no one +to care for him but Miss Theodora. How she saved and scrimped to give +him what he needed, I will not say; but gradually her attire took on a +quaintness that would have been thought impossible for her even to favor +in the days of her girlhood, when she had been a critic of dress. She +never bought a new gown now; every cent beyond what was required for +living expenses must be saved for Ernest.</p> + +<p>Before the boy knew his letters, Miss Theodora was planning for his +career at Harvard. He should be graduated at the head of his class. With +such a father, with such a grandfather, Ernest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> certainly must be a +great man. The family glory would be renewed in him.</p> + +<p>Little by little Miss Theodora withdrew from the world. She had not +cared for gayety in her younger days; she hardly missed it now; yet she +was not neglected by her relatives and old friends—even the most +fashionable called on her once a year. These distant cousins and formal +acquaintances had little personal interest in Miss Theodora. Their cards +were left from respect to the memory of the distinguished jurist rather +than from any desire to brighten the life of his daughter.</p> + +<p>If Miss Theodora's invitations grew fewer and fewer, she herself was to +blame, for she seldom accepted an invitation, even to luncheon, nor +confided to any one that pride forbade her to accept hospitalities which +circumstances prevented her returning.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap02.jpg" width='300' height='397' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>II.</span></h2> + +<p>Although Miss Theodora disliked visiting, every summer she and Ernest +spent a month at Nahant with her cousin, Sarah Somerset. She herself +would have preferred the quiet independence of a New Hampshire country +farm, but she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> thought it her duty to give Ernest this yearly +opportunity of seeing his relatives in the intimacy possible only at +their summer homes. This was before the days of Beverly's popularity, +when almost every one at Nahant was cousin to every one else. Even the +people at the boarding houses belonged to the little group held to have +an almost inherent right to the rocky peninsula.</p> + +<p>Both the little boy, therefore, and Miss Theodora were made much of by +their kinsfolk; and the child thought these summer days the happiest of the year.</p> + +<p>In other ways Miss Theodora was occasionally remembered by her +relatives. Once she was asked to spend a whole year in Europe as +chaperone to two or three girls, her distant cousins. Even if she could +have made up her mind to leave Ernest, I doubt whether she would have +accepted the invitation. She had almost determined never to go abroad +again, preferring to hold sacred the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>journey that she and her parents +and John had made two or three years before their troubles began.</p> + +<p>For the most part, then, Miss Theodora repelled all attempts at intimacy +made by her relatives. Unreasonable though she knew herself to be, she +believed that she could never care so much for her cousins since they +had all in such curious fashion—like swallows in winter—begun to +migrate southward to the Back Bay. At first she felt as bitter as was +possible for a person of her amiable disposition, when she saw people +whom no necessity impelled leaving their spacious dwellings on the Hill +for the more contracted houses on the flat land beyond the Public Garden.</p> + +<p>Yet if Miss Theodora pitied her degenerate kin, how much more did they +pity her! "Poor Theodora," some of them would say. "I don't see how she +manages to get along at all. If she sold that house, with the interest +of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> money she and Ernest could board comfortably somewhere. Even as +it is, she might let a room or two; but no—I suppose that would hardly +do. Well, she must be dreadfully pinched."</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding these well meant fears, Miss Theodora got along very +well. The greatest sacrifice of pride that she had to make came when she +found that she must send Ernest to a public school. Yet even this +hardship might have been worse. "It isn't as if he were a girl, you +know," she said half apologetically to Sarah Somerset. "Although he may +make a few undesirable acquaintances, he will have nothing to do with +them when he goes to Harvard." For Miss Theodora's plans for Ernest +reached far into the future, even beyond his college days, and she must +save all that was possible out of her meagre income.</p> + +<p>Public or private school was all the same to Ernest; or perhaps his +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>preference, if he had been asked to express it, would have been +decidedly for the big brick schoolhouse, with its hosts of boys. What +matter if many of these boys were rough and unkempt. Among them all he +could always find some suitable companions. His refined nature chose the +best; and if the best in this case did not mean rich boys or those of +well-known names, it meant boys of a refinement not so very unlike that +possessed by Ernest himself.</p> + +<p>One day he came home from school later than usual, with his eye black +and blue, and one of the pockets of his little jacket hanging ripped and torn.</p> + +<p>"Why, what is the matter, Ernest?" cried his aunt; "have you been fighting?"</p> + +<p>"Well, not exactly fighting, but kind of fighting," he replied, and +"kind of fighting" became one of the joking phrases between aunt and +nephew whenever the latter professed uncertainty as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> to his attitude on +any particular question.</p> + +<p>"You see, it was this way," and he began to explain the black eye and +the torn pocket.</p> + +<p>"There were two big mickies—Irish you know—bothering two little +niggers—oh, excuse me! black boys—at the corner of our school; so I +just pitched in and gave it to them right and left. But they were bigger +than me, and maybe I'd have got whipped if it hadn't been for Ben Bruce. +He just ran down the school steps like a streak of lightning, and you +should have seen those bullies slink away. They muttered something about +doing Ben up some other day; but I guess they'll never dare touch him."</p> + +<p>Now, Ben Bruce, two or three classes ahead of Ernest in school, was a +hero in the eyes of the younger boy. Ben was famous as an athlete, and +Ernest, in schoolboy fashion, could never have hoped for an intimacy +with one so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> greatly his superior in years and strength had not this +chance encounter thrown them together. Ben appreciated the younger boy's +manliness, and the two walked together down the hill, as a rearguard to +the little negroes. The latter, too much amazed at the whole encounter +even to speak, soon ran down a side street to their homes, and Ben and +Ernest, if they did not say a great deal to each other at that time, +felt that a real friendship had begun between them.</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora heard Ernest's account of the affair with mixed feelings. +She was glad that her boy had shown himself true to the principles of an +Abolition family; yet she wished that circumstances had made a contact +with rough boys impossible for him. She was not altogether certain that +she approved the intimacy with Ben, whose family belonged to an outside +circle of West Enders with which she had hardly come into contact herself.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>An expression of her misgivings drew forth a remonstrance from Miss +Chatterwits: "Why, you know Ben Bruce's father's grandfather was on +General Washington's staff; they've got his sword and a painting in +their front parlor." As Miss Chatterwits was an authority as to the +biography of the meanest as well as the most important resident on the +Hill, her approbation of the Bruces may have inclined Miss Theodora +toward Ben. Yet, had he had no other recommendation, the boy's own good +manners would have gone far to impress Miss Theodora in his favor.</p> + +<p>Ernest never knew just how meagre his aunt's income was. He thought it +chiefly lack of taste that led her to wear those queer, scant gowns. +Year after year she drew upon an apparently inexhaustible store of +changeable silks and queer plaided stuffs. Then she wore little tippets +and small, flat hats, and in summer long black lace mitts, "like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>nobody +else wears," sighed poor little Ernest one day, as he asked his aunt why +she never bought anything new.</p> + +<p>Yet even Miss Theodora's limited purse might occasionally have afforded +her a new gown, had she not been well content with what she already had. +She could not wish more, she reasoned, than to have her old-fashioned +garments remodeled from year to year by good Miss Chatterwits.</p> + +<p>Miss Chatterwits, who had sewed in the family from the days of Miss +Theodora's childhood, lived in one of those curious short lanes off +Revere street. It was a great comfort to Miss Theodora to have her come +for a day's sewing with her queer green workbag dangling from her arm, +with her funny little corkscrew curls bobbing at every motion of her +funny little head. While she sewed, Miss Chatterwits kept her nimble +tongue at work, lamenting the changes that had come to the old West End. +She knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the region well, and understood the difference between the old +residents and those newer people who were crowding in.</p> + +<p>"It's shameful that the Somersets should think so little of themselves +as to move from Chestnut to Beacon Street; and their new house isn't +even opposite the Public Garden, but away up there beyond Berkeley +Street. How aping the names of those Back Bay streets are,—Berkeley and +Clarendon and Dartmouth,—as though American names wouldn't have done +better than those English imitations! Well, Miss Theodora, we have +Pinckney and Revere named after good American men, and Spruce and Cedar +for good American trees. I wouldn't live on one of those new-fangled +streets, not if they'd give it to me."</p> + +<p>Then Miss Theodora, almost driven to apologize for her misguided +relatives, little as she sympathized with them herself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> would reply in +words that she must have seen in some of the newspapers: "Well, I +suppose the growth of the city's population makes it necessary for—"</p> + +<p>"Fudge!" Miss Chatterwits would interrupt, "the West End seems to have +room enough for lodging and boarding house keepers; and I guess it's big +enough for true Boston folks. It just makes me furious to see "Rooms to +Let," "Table Board, $3.50 per week," stuck up in every window on some +streets. Goodness knows, I hope the Somersets like their neighbors out +there on the Back Bay. I hear anybody with money enough can buy a house +there." And a tear seemed ready to fall from her eyes.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap03.jpg" width='300' height='247' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>III.</span></h2> + +<p>Ernest, himself, grew up without any social prejudices. His aunt often +wondered at this, yet, like many sensible people, she did not try to +impress him with her own views. As one by one the dwelling houses on +Charles Street were changed into shops, he only rejoiced that Miss +Theodora wouldn't have to send so far for her groceries and provisions. +But Miss Theodora drew the line here. She had always been able to go to +the market every day, and no thrifty housewife needs a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>provision shop +under her very nose, she said.</p> + +<p>Her one exception in favor of neighborhood shopping was made for the +little thread and needle shop on the corner below her house. Even a +person who doesn't have many new gowns occasionally needs tapes and +needles, and may find it convenient to buy them near at hand.</p> + +<p>This shop was a delight to Ernest, and in the days when his chin hardly +reached the level of the counter, he loved to stand and gaze at the rows +of jars filled with variegated sticks of candy, jaw-breakers and pickled +limes; for the two maiden ladies who kept the shop sold many things +besides needles and thread. In the little glass show-case, in addition +to mittens and scissors and an occasional beautiful fan, and heaps of +gay marbles, was a pile of highly-colored story books, "The Tale of +Goody Two Shoes" and others of that ilk, and mysterious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>looking sheets +of paper, which needed only the manipulation of skilful scissors to +change them into life-like paper dolls with elaborate wardrobes. Ernest, +of course, took little interest in the paper dolls,—he bought chiefly +marbles; but his cousin, Kate Digby, whenever she was permitted to spend +a day at the West End, was a devoted patron of the little shop, and +saved all her pennies to increase her household of dolls. Indeed, she +confided to Ernest that when she grew up she was going to have a shop +just like the one kept by the Misses Bascom. If Mrs. Stuart Digby had +heard her say this, she would have wondered where in the world her +daughter had acquired a taste for anything so ordinary as trade.</p> + +<p>A block or two away from the thread and needle shop was a shop that Miss +Theodora abhorred. Within they sold every kind of thing calculated to +draw the stray pennies from the pockets of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> school children who +passed it daily. Its windows, with their display of gaudy and vulgar +illustrated papers, gave her positive pain. A generation ago ladies had +not acquired the habit of rushing into print with every matter of +reform; otherwise Miss Theodora might have sent a letter to the +newspaper, signed "Prudentia," or something of that kind, deploring the +fact that a shop like this should be allowed to exist near a school, +drawing pennies from the pockets of the school children, at the same +time that it vitiated their artistic sense.</p> + +<p>Ernest, as I have said, grew up without marked local or social +prejudices. Many of his spare pennies went into the money drawer of the +corner shop, and much of his spare time he spent with the workmen at the +cabinet-makers' near by. For little workshops were beginning to appear +in the neighborhood of lower Charles Street, and some of their +proprietors had cut away the front of an old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> house, in order to build a +window to display their wares.</p> + +<p>Ernest loved to gaze in at the shining faucets in the plumber's window, +and horrified his aunt by announcing one day that when he was a man he +meant to be either a plumber or a cabinet-maker. Among them all he +preferred the cabinet-maker's. Everything going on there interested him, +and the workmen, glad to answer his questions, showed him ways of doing +things which he put into practice at home.</p> + +<p>For Miss Theodora had given Ernest a basement room to work in, +stipulating only that he should not bring more than three boys at a time +into the house to share his labors. His joy was unbounded one Christmas +when his cousin, Richard Somerset, sent him a turning lathe. Almost the +first use to which he put it was to make a footstool, with delicately +tapering legs, for his aunt's birthday. He tied it up in brown paper +himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> and wound a great string about it with many knots.</p> + +<p>"Law!" said Diantha, who stood by as Miss Theodora slowly untied the +bulky package, "what's them boys been up to now? I believe it's some mischief."</p> + +<p>"Now, old Di, you're mean," cried Ernest, dancing around in excitement +in the narrow hall-way outside the bedroom door.</p> + +<p>But Miss Theodora, as she bent over the package, tugging at the strings, +caught sight of some sprawling letters that resolved themselves into "A +birthday Present from your LOVEING nephew;" so, shaking her head at +Diantha, she responded, loudly enough for Ernest to hear, and with no +comment on the bad spelling, "Oh, no, it's a beautiful present from +Ernest." And then Ernest ran in and undid the rest of the knots, and, +setting the footstool triumphantly on its four legs on the floor, said: +"Now, you'll always use it, won't you, Aunt Teddy?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><p>Of course Miss Theodora, as she kissed him, promised to use, and kept +her promise, in spite of the fact that the little footstool—less +comfortable than her well-worn carpet hassock—wasn't exactly steady on +its feet. But although she so thoroughly appreciated Ernest's +thoughtfulness, Miss Theodora did not regard the footstool with absolute +pleasure. She was by no means sure that she approved of Ernest's skill +in handicrafts. She wondered sometimes whether she ought to permit a +probable lawyer to spend so much energy in work which could hardly go +toward helping him in his profession. Yet, after all, she hadn't the +heart to interfere with Ernest's mechanical tastes, when she saw that +gratifying them gave him so much pleasure. She never forgot her fright +one day on the Nahant boat, when Ernest, barely seven years old, was +missing, and she found him only after a long search at the door of the engine room.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>"You'd ought to be an engineer when you're grown up," she heard a gruff +voice say, while Ernest meekly replied: "Well, I'd like to, but I've got +to be a lawyer."</p> + +<p>She did not scold Ernest as she took his hand to lead him up stairs, and +she even lingered while he tried to put her in possession of all his own knowledge.</p> + +<p>"This gentleman," he said apologetically, "has been explaining his +engine to me," and the "gentleman," rubbing a light streak across his +sooty face, turned to her with a sincere, "That there boy of yours has a +big head, ma'am, for machinery, and, begging your pardon, if I was you +I'd put him out to a machinist when he's a little bigger."</p> + +<p>The plainness of Miss Theodora's dress may have placed her in this man's +eye on the plane of those people who regularly sent their children to +learn trades. Although in her mind she resented the suggestion, she +listened <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>attentively to Ernest as he tried, with glowing cheek and +rapid tongue, to explain the various parts of the engine. If Miss +Theodora never perhaps had more than a vague idea of the functions of +piston and valve and the wonders of the governor, over which Ernest grew +so eloquent, she was at least a sympathetic listener in this as in all +other things that he cared for.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap04.jpg" width='300' height='326' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>IV.</span></h2> + +<p>When it came to machinery, Ernest found his aunt much more sympathetic +than his usual confidante, Kate Digby. As years went on, the childish +companionship between the children deepened into friendship. They began +to confide to each other their dreams for the future. Kate modelled +herself somewhat on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> accounts handed down of a certain ancestress of +hers whose portrait hung in the stairway of her father's house.</p> + +<p>The portrait was a copy of one thinly painted and flat looking, done by +an obscure seventeenth century artist. It showed a very young girl +dressed in gray, with a white kerchief folded around her slim neck, and +with her thin little wrists meekly crossed in front. Whether her hair +was abundant or not no one could tell, for an old-womanish cap with +narrow ruffle so covered her head that only a faint blonde aureole could +be seen beneath it. Colorless though this portrait seemed at first +sight, longer study brought out a depth in the clear gray eye, a +firmness in the small pink mouth, which consorted well with the stories +told of this little Puritan's bravery.</p> + +<p>One of the youngest of the children entering Massachusetts Bay on +Winthrop's fleet, the little Mercy had been the pet of a Puritan +household. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>Marrying early, she had gone from her father's comfortable +house in Boston to live in the country forty miles away, a region remote +and almost on the borders of civilization in those days. Not mere rumor +but veritable records have told the story of the fierce attack of the +savages on that secluded dwelling, of the murder of husband and man +servant, of the flight of the wife and little children, and of their +final rescue at the very moment when the Indians had overtaken them,—a +rescue, however, not accomplished until one of the children had been +killed by an arrow, while the mother pierced through the arm, was forced +to drop the gun with which she held off her assailants.</p> + +<p>"Just think of her being so brave and shooting like that!" Kate would +say to Ernest. "I admire her more than any of my +great-great-great-grandmothers—whichever of the 'greats' she was. And +then she brought up all her children so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> beautifully, with almost +nothing to live on, so that every one of them became somebody. I'm +always delighted when people tell me I look like her."</p> + +<p>"Well, you don't look like her," said Ernest, truthfully. "If you looked +as flat and fady as that you wouldn't look like much. Besides, I don't +like a woman's shooting and picking off the red-skins the way she did. +Of course," in response to Kate's look of surprise, "it was all right; +she had to save herself and the children; but some way it don't seem the +kind of thing for a woman to do! Now, I like her because she wouldn't +let her oldest son go back to England and have a title. You see, her +husband's father had cast him off for being a Puritan."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I know," responded Kate. "But I wish she had let him take the +title. I'd like to be related to a lord."</p> + +<p>Kate and Ernest were no longer little children when this particular +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>conversation took place; but its substance had come up between them +many a time before. Yet Ernest always held to the more democratic +position; and as years went by his acquaintance with Ben Bruce +intensified his democratic feeling. No one recognized more clearly than +Miss Theodora this tendency of Ernest's, and she questioned long whether +she was doing what John would have approved in sending him to a school +where he must mingle with his social inferiors. In John's day public +schools had been different.</p> + +<p>An unguarded expression of these feelings of hers one evening at the +Digbys' led to an offer from Stuart Digby to share his son's tutor with +Ernest, that the two boys might prepare for Harvard together. Now, the +idea of a tutor was almost as unpleasant to Miss Theodora as the thought +of the undesirable acquaintances that Ernest might make at a public +school. In the choice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> between unrepublican aristocracy and simple +democracy she almost inclined to the latter; but Stuart Digby, her +second cousin, had been John's bosom friend, and she could not bring +herself to refuse the well-meant offer. It was Ernest who rebelled.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to go to college at all. I hate Latin; I won't waste time +on Greek. I detest that namby-pamby Ralph. All he cares for is to walk +down Beacon Street with the girls. He don't know a force pump from a steam engine!"</p> + +<p>But Miss Theodora, though tearful—for she hated to oppose him—was +firm; and for three years the boy went down the Hill and across the +Garden to recite his lessons with Ralph. Out of school he saw as little +as he could of Ralph. His time was spent chiefly with Ben Bruce. Ben's +father kept a small retail shop somewhere down near Court Street, and +his family lived in a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> house at the top of the hill,—a little +house that never had been meant for any but people of limited means.</p> + +<p>Yet from the roof of the house there was a view such as no one at the +Back Bay ever dreamed of; for past the sloping streets near by one could +gaze on the river bounded like a lake by marshy low lands and the high +sea walls, which, with the distant hills, the nearer factory chimneys, +even the gray walls of the neighboring County Jail, on a dark day or +bright day, formed a beautiful scene.</p> + +<p>There in that little room of Ben's Ernest often opened his heart to his +friend more freely than to his aunt. Ben, considerably Ernest's senior, +had entered the Institute of Technology—in boys' language, "Tech"—soon +after Ernest himself had begun to study with Ralph's tutor, and Ernest +frankly envied his friend's opportunity for studying science.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap05.jpg" width='300' height='410' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>V.</span></h2> + +<p>In his boyish way Ernest enjoyed life. The Somersets, the Digbys and the +rest made much of him, and at the Friday evening dancing class he was a +favorite. Had he been a few years older the mothers might have objected +to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> popularity. A penniless boy attending the Friday evening dancing +class is not old enough to be regarded as a dangerous detrimental, and +he may receive the adoration, expressive though silent, of half a dozen +little maids in white frocks and pink sashes, without encountering +rebuffs from their mammas when he steps up to ask them to dance. In this +respect fifteen has a great advantage over twenty, emphasized, too, by +the fact that fifteen has not yet learned his own deficiency, while +twenty is apt to be all too conscious of it.</p> + +<p>Children's parties had been within Ernest's reach even before the doors +of Papanti's opened to him. They were a friendly people on the Hill and +no birthday party was counted a success without the presence of Ernest. +Simple enough these affairs were, the entertainment, round games like +"Hunt the Button," and "Going to Jerusalem," and "London's Burning," the +refreshment, a light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> supper of bread and butter and home-made cakes, +with raspberry vinegar and lemonade as an extra treat.</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora herself did not take part in the social festivities of the +neighborhood, although her silver spoons and even pieces of her best +china were occasionally lent to add to the splendor of some one's tea +table. Mrs. Fetchum was always anxious to make a good impression on the +neighbors whom she sometimes asked to tea. Especially desirous was she +to have her table glitter with silver and glass when Miss Chatterwits +was one of her guests. Since Miss Chatterwits knew only too well Mrs. +Fetchum's humble origin as the daughter of a petty West End shoe-seller, +the latter could never, like the little seamstress, talk of bygone +better days and loss of position. She could only aspire to get even with +her by offering her occasionally a plethoric hospitality, in which a +superabundance of food and a dazzling array of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>silver and china were +the chief elements. Miss Chatterwits had long suspected that much of +this silver was borrowed; but she had never dared hint her suspicions to +Mrs. Fetchum, and the latter held up her head with a pride that could +not have been surpassed had she been dowered with a modern bride's stock +of wedding presents. A day or two after a tea party at which she had +been unusually condescending to Miss Chatterwits, she ran across the +street to return the borrowed spoons to Miss Theodora. It was dusk as +she entered the little doorway, and she hastily thrust the package into +the hands of some one standing in the narrow hall, Miss Theodora as she +thought, whispering loudly as she did so: "Don't tell Miss Chatterwits I +borrowed the spoons." For she knew that the seamstress had been sewing +for Miss Theodora that day, and she wasn't quite sure that the latter +realized that the borrowing must be kept secret.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p><p>"It gave me quite a turn," she said as she told Mr. Fetchum about it. +"It gave me quite a turn when I found that it was Miss Chatterwits; but +I never let on I knew it was her, and I turned about as quick as I +could. Only the next time I set foot out of this house I'll be sure I +have my glasses."</p> + +<p>It was hard to tell which of the two had the best of this chance +encounter. Mrs. Fetchum consoled herself for the carelessness by +reflecting on the presence of mind that had kept her from acknowledging +her humiliation; and Miss Chatterwits gloated over the fact that she had +caught Mrs. Fetchum in a peccadillo she had long suspected—borrowing +Miss Theodora's silver.</p> + +<p>In his early years Ernest had been a neighborly little fellow, and, +alone or with his aunt, would lift his hat to a woman, old or young, +easily winning for himself the name of "little gentleman." He wore out +his shoes in astonishingly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> quick time playing hopscotch on the hilly +sidewalks with the boys and girls who lived near, while Kate, to whom +this sport was forbidden, sitting on the doorsteps, looked enviously on. +Willingly would she have exchanged her soft kid shoes for the coarse +copper-toed boots of Tommy Fetchum, had it only been permitted her to +hop across on one foot and kick the stone from one big square to another +chalked out so invitingly on the uneven bricks.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Stuart Digby, although willing enough to let Kate visit Miss +Theodora, made it a rule—and no one dared break a rule of hers—that +Kate was never to play on the street with the children of the +neighborhood. Yet as she sat sadly in her corner, Kate, often referred +to for her opinion on disputed points, at last came to have a forlorn +pride in her position as umpire.</p> + +<p>At length there came a time when Ernest's interests in the street games<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> +waned. His former playmates saw little of him. He neglected the boys and +girls with whom he had once played tag and hopscotch, and some of the +neighbors, especially Mrs. Fetchum, said that he was growing "stuck up." +Miss Theodora hardly knew her neighbors by sight; for it was one of the +evidences of the decadence of the region that the houses changed tenants +frequently, and furniture vans were often standing in front of some of +the houses near Miss Theodora's.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Fetchum was a permanent neighbor. She had lived in the street +longer even than Miss Theodora. She always called on new comers, and +never failed to impress on them a sense of the greatness of the jurist's +daughter, with the result that Miss Theodora's comings and goings were +always a matter of general neighborhood interest. Sometimes Miss +Theodora invited the children hanging about her doorstep to come inside +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> house, where she regaled them with gingerbread, or let them look +through the folio of engravings in the library.</p> + +<p>In spite of the lady's kindness they all stood in awe of her, as the +daughter of a Great Man, whose orations were printed in their school +readers beside those of Webster and Clay. Miss Theodora, with her quiet +manner and high forehead, in a day when all other women wore more +elaborate coiffures, seemed to the children like a person in a book, and +their answers to her questions were always the merest monosyllables.</p> + +<p>It was not worldliness altogether which took Ernest away from his former +playmates. After his mornings with Ralph and their tutor, he had to +study pretty hard in the afternoon. His evenings were generally devoted +to Miss Theodora; either he read aloud while she sewed, or they played +chess with that curious set of carved chessmen given her father by a +grateful Salem client years before.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>In little ways, Miss Theodora, though not a sharp observer, sometimes +thought that she detected a growing worldliness in Ernest.</p> + +<p>"Why don't we get some new carpets?" he asked one day. It was the very +spring before he entered college. "I never could tell, Aunt Teddy, what +those flowers were meant to be. When I was a little chap, I used to +wonder whether they were bunches of roses or dahlias; but now you'd +hardly know they were meant to be flowers at all."</p> + +<p>This was true enough, for the carpet, with its huge pattern, designed +for the drawing room of their old house, had been trodden upon by so +many feet that now hardly the faint outline of its former roses +remained. The furniture, too, was growing shabby; the heavy green rep of +the easy chairs had faded in spots, the gilded picture frames were +tarnished, and the window draperies, with their imposing lambrequins, +were sadly out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> fashion. Yet from Miss Theodora's evasive reply the +boy did not realize that poverty prevented her refurnishing the rooms in +modern fashion. He had everything he needed; but the circle of relatives +all continued to say, "It's wonderful that Theodora manages as well as she does."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap06.jpg" width='300' height='253' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>VI.</span></h2> + +<p>"Come along! Hurry up!" called Ernest to Ben, one winter's day, kicking +his heels into the little hillocks of frozen snow on the sidewalk; and +even as he spoke Ben, with a "Here I am," rushed from the house with his +skates slung over his shoulder. Ernest carried in a green bag, on which +his aunt had worked his initials in shaded brown, a pair of the famous +"Climax" club skates, a present from his cousin, Richard Somerset. +Reaching the Common, after a brisk run, they began to put on their skates.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p><p>The cold day had apparently kept many of the younger boys and girls +away, and although there was room enough for all the skaters, not a few +of them were objectionably rough and boisterous. Near the spot where +Ernest and Ben were, among a small group of well-dressed lads, swinging +stick or playing hockey, Ernest was sorry to recognize Ralph Digby.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't have come if I'd known Ralph would be here," he said +regretfully to Ben.</p> + +<p>"No matter, we needn't have anything to do with him," said Ben +cheerfully. It was no secret to Ben that Ralph and Ernest, out of school +hours, had little to do with each other.</p> + +<p>"Well, I hate to go near Ralph," responded Ernest. "He always tries to +make me feel small," and for the moment Ernest became uncomfortably +conscious that the sleeves of his overcoat were a trifle too short, and +that it had, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> the whole, an outgrown look, for this was the second +winter he had worn it.</p> + +<p>"Don't take any notice of him, except to speak to him as you pass," said Ben.</p> + +<p>"I know that's all I need do, but Ralph always seems to me to be saying +to himself, 'Oh, you're nothing but a poor relation.'"</p> + +<p>"Well, any way, he's a poorer skater," laughed Ben, and the two boys +glided off, passing Ralph in his fur-trimmed coat, surrounded by half a +dozen lads of his own kind.</p> + +<p>It was this very superiority of Ernest's in skating, in his studies, in +manners, that bred the ill-feeling in Ralph's heart towards him. Ralph +was indolent in his studies and heavy on his feet. He looked on +enviously as Ernest wheeled past him time and time again, and said to +his friends that he didn't care to skate any longer. "There was too much +riffraff on the pond." He was irritated, not only by Ernest's skill and +grace in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>skating, but by the fact that his poorer cousin wore the +famous "Climax" club skates. For a long time Ralph himself had been the +only boy in his little set who possessed skates of this kind. They were +a novelty and expensive, and the average boy wore the old-fashioned +strap skates. No one knew that he begrudged Ernest his glistening +skates. Regardless of the sneering words wafted to them as they skated +past Ralph and his friends, Ernest and Ben, with glowing cheeks and +tingling blood, wheeled and curvetted until they were well-nigh +breathless. At last, as the reddening western sky marked the end of the +brief afternoon, Ernest, unfastening his skates, laid them on the stony +margin of the pond, as he hastened to one of the Garden paths to help a +little girl who had fallen down.</p> + +<p>"Where are my skates?" he shouted to Ben, who was still curvetting about.</p> + +<p>"I haven't seen them. Where did you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> leave them?" he called back, and in +a moment was at Ernest's side. The green bag hung limp on Ernest's arm; +he could hardly believe that the skates were not there.</p> + +<p>"Well, at any rate we can ask about them," said Ben, and the two boys, +Ernest somewhat forlornly, went about among the few skaters still left +on the pond, asking if any one could help them find the skates. A few of +the boys answered pleasantly that they knew nothing about them, the +majority—and these the rougher—professed to be insulted at the +question, adding, "I'll knock you down if you think I took your skates," +and even Ralph was disagreeable in his reply.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps some of your friends could tell you something about them; you +always are chumming with such queer fellows—you never can expect much +from canaille." Ralph always had a French word ready. As he spoke he +looked at Ben in a way that made Ernest cry:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>"For shame, Ralph!"</p> + +<p>Ben's eye flashed. He lifted his arm, seized Ralph by the coat collar, +shook him with some violence, and then turned on his heel without a word.</p> + +<p>"That was right," said Ernest, approvingly. "I often wonder how you +stand so much from Ralph. He tries to make himself so disagreeable."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't have to try very hard," answered Ben; "he's disagreeable +enough without trying," for Ralph never neglected to show that he +thought Ben infinitely beneath him. A curt nod when they happened to +meet was almost more irritating than a direct cut. Sorrowfully enough +Ernest went homewards. His skating for the season, he knew, was over +unless he should recover the skates. Generally, he did not look on the +dark side of things, but this day he was disconsolate. In spite of Ben's +assurance that the lost skates would be found, he was confident that +they were gone forever.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>Two days later Ben came to him with more excitement in his manner than +was his wont.</p> + +<p>"Would your aunt let you go over to the school with me this afternoon? I +think we've spotted them."</p> + +<p>Ernest rushed for his cap and mittens.</p> + +<p>"Of course she would! She's out now, but I can go without asking." No +explanation was needed to tell him that the "them" meant his missing skates.</p> + +<p>"You see, I had my suspicions from the first moment," said Ben, "but I +didn't dare say anything till I was sure. You know, there's one thing we +never agree about, but I won't say anything until you hear for yourself."</p> + +<p>Ernest was soon following Ben up the broad wooden stairs to the +Principal's room. The master himself looked up with some interest as the +boys came in.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, I'll send for him at once," he said, after he had briefly +welcomed them, "or, no, I'll take you to the room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> where he is," and +before he realized where he was going Ernest found himself following Ben +and the Principal into the large schoolroom, where fifty pairs of +curious eyes were turned toward them.</p> + +<p>"Brown, come here," called the master. An undersized boy, freckled, with +small eyes near together, shuffled forward.</p> + +<p>"Did you tell Jim Grey that you had found a pair of skates the day +before yesterday?—answer—'yes' or 'no.'"</p> + +<p>Not a word came from the boy, who held his head down sulkily.</p> + +<p>"Answer—quickly—or home you go at once. Did you or did you not find a +pair of skates?"</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't," at last came from the reluctant lips.</p> + +<p>"That's enough, sir!" thundered the Principal. "Now, Bruce, tell your story."</p> + +<p>Then Ben, leaving the room for a moment, came back, accompanied by a man +who carried a package under his arm.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>"Yes, sir, that's the boy, sir," said the man with the package, +pointing to Brown. "He came to my shop yesterday with these skates, +sir," and he held up before the astonished eyes of Ernest his beloved +skates. "He said as how they'd been given to him, and as he didn't have +no time for skating, would I buy them, which I did, sir, for a dollar."</p> + +<p>"A dollar," said Ernest to himself, pitying the boy who knew so little +the value of a good thing as to let it go for next to nothing.</p> + +<p>"What have you to say to this, Brown?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, they were given to me," said the boy, doggedly.</p> + +<p>"Who gave them to you?"</p> + +<p>"A chap in a fur coat, I dunno his name. I was standing by the pond, and +says I, 'Wot beauties,' when I see them laying there, and says he, 'Take +them quick, they're mine, but I don't want to skate no more,' and he +poked them over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> to me with his stick, and says he, 'Hurry off, or I may +change my mind,' and they wouldn't fit me, sir, and so I sold them."</p> + +<p>"A likely story," said the Principal. But two or three boys were found +to corroborate this statement of Brown, one of whom was above suspicion +as regarded truthfulness—the other two were somewhat doubtful.</p> + +<p>"Are these your skates?" asked the Principal of Ernest, who, stepping +up, showed his name engraved on the sides.</p> + +<p>"Go to my room, Brown," said the Principal. "I will settle with you—and +you, young gentleman," handing Ernest his property, "take better care of +your possessions in the future." Then turning to Ben, "Thank you, Bruce, +for looking into this matter. Brown has given me a great deal of trouble +in many ways, and now I guess the best thing is to suspend him." For, +although at the head of a Boston school, the Principal still clung to +the colloquial "guess."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>Ben and Ernest withdrew from the room under the fire of as many +approving as disapproving eyes. There were, of course, not a few boys +who sympathized with Brown, some from a class feeling, and others +because they felt themselves to be kindred spirits of the culprit.</p> + +<p>"How did you manage to find out about it at all, Ben? You're awfully +clever," said Ernest, and then the elder boy explained that he had +remembered seeing Brown just before Ernest left the ice talking +earnestly with Ralph, and that when he came across the skates in a shop +he made inquiries, which resulted in his suspecting collusion between +the two. Though Ernest did not speak to him about it, Ralph felt that +his cousin despised his meanness, and Ernest knew that Ralph disliked +him all the more for his knowledge.</p> + +<p>While his regard for Ralph constantly diminished, Ernest's fondness for +Kate as constantly increased.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>"She doesn't seem a bit like Ralph's sister," he would say +confidentially to Ben; and Ben would echo a hearty "Indeed she doesn't."</p> + +<p>Kate was never happier than when she had permission to spend the day +with Miss Theodora. Paying little attention to the charges of Marie, her +French maid, to "Walk quietly like a little lady," she would hop and +skip along the Garden mall and up the hill to Miss Theodora's house. +What joy, when Marie had been dismissed and sent home, to sit beside +Miss Theodora and learn some fancy stitch in crochet, or perhaps go to +the kitchen to help Diantha make cookies.</p> + +<p>"Our cook won't even let me go down the back stairs, and I've only been +in our kitchen once in my life; and I just love Diantha for giving me +that dear little rolling-pin, and showing me how to make cookies."</p> + +<p>Kate was almost as fond of Miss <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Chatterwits as of Diantha. One of her +chief childish delights was the privilege sometimes accorded her of +spending an afternoon in the little suite of rooms occupied by the +seamstress and her sisters. Besides the old claw-foot bureau and +high-back chairs in her bedroom, the heavy fur tippet and faded cashmere +shawl—either of which she donned (according to the season) on +especially great occasions—Miss Chatterwits had a few treasures, relics +of a more opulent past. These she always showed to Kate and Ernest when +they visited her, as a reward for previous good behavior.</p> + +<p>Ernest was usually less interested in these treasures than Kate. He +liked better to talk to the green parrot that blinked and swung in its +narrow cage in the room where lay the little seamstress's bedridden +sister. But for Kate, the top drawer of Miss Chatterwits' bureau +contained infinite wealth. The curious Scotch pebble pin, the silver +bracelets,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> the long, thin gold chain, the old hair brooches, and, best +of all, that curious spherical watch, without hands, without works, +seemed to Kate more beautiful and valuable than all the jewelry in the +velvet-lined receptacles of her mother's jewel casket. More attractive +still was a shelf in the closet off Miss Chatterwits' bedroom. On this +shelf was a row of pasteboard boxes, uniform in size, wherein were +stored scraps of velvet, silk and ribbon, gingham, cloth and +muslins—fragments, indeed, of all the dresses worn by Miss Chatterwits +since her sixteenth year. As materials had not been bought by Miss +Chatterwits since her father's death had left her penniless, a good +thirty years before Kate knew her, the pieces in the boxes were genuine curiosities.</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you ever get married, Miss Chatterwits?" asked Ernest one +day when he and Kate were paying her a visit.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I don't know;" and the old lady simpered with the same +self-consciousness that prompts the girl of eighteen to blush when +pointed questions are put to her; and when Ernest, who always wanted a +definite answer to every question, persisted, she added with a sigh, +"Well, I suppose I was hard to suit." Then, as if in amplification of +this reply, she began to sing to herself the words of an old-fashioned +song, which the children had heard her sing before:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>When I was a girl of eighteen years old,</div> +<div>I was as handsome as handsome could be;</div> +<div>I was taught to expect wit, wisdom and gold,</div> +<div>And nothing else would do for me—for me.</div> +<div>And nothing else would do for me.</div> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<div>The first was a youth any girl might adore,</div> +<div>And as ardent as lovers should be;</div> +<div>But mamma having heard the young man was quite poor,</div> +<div>Why, he wouldn't do for me—for me,</div> +<div>Why, he wouldn't do for me.</div> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p><p>None of the many verses describing the various lovers of the scornful +young lady made so deep an impression on the children as the opening +lines, in which she was said to be "as handsome as handsome could be;" +and Ernest, who was a literal little fellow, said to Kate, when they +were out of Miss Chatterwits' hearing:</p> + +<p>"Now, do you think that homely people were ever handsome once upon a time?"</p> + +<p>Now, Kate could never be made to call Miss Chatterwits homely. Indeed, +one day, in a burst of gratitude, when the latter had lent the child her +watch to wear for an hour or two, the little girl exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Chatterwits, you are very handsome!"</p> + +<p>"Nobody ever told me that before, Kate," said the old woman.</p> + +<p>Then, with the frankness that in later years often caused her to nullify +the good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> impression made by some pretty speech, the child added:</p> + +<p>"I mean very handsome all but your face."</p> + +<p>What could be a clearer case of "handsome is what handsome does."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap07.jpg" width='300' height='412' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>VII.</span></h2> + +<p>Mrs. Stuart Digby scarcely approved Kate's fondness for Miss Theodora +and her friends. Stuart Digby had married two or three years before +John, and was living in Paris when the Civil War broke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> out. His own +impulse was to return at once and fight; but as his wife would not +consent to this, they remained abroad until Ralph was ten years old and +Kate four years younger. Both children at this time spoke French better +than English, and Ralph for a long time disliked everything +American—like his mother, who, not Boston born, professed little +interest in things Bostonian. But in Kate Stuart Digby saw the +enthusiasm which had marked his own youth, and he encouraged her in +having ideals, only wishing that he had been true to his own.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps if I hadn't married so early," he would think—then, with a +sigh, would wonder if, left to himself, he might possibly have amounted +to something. For Stuart Digby was not nearly as self-satisfied as the +chance observer supposed.</p> + +<p>When he and John were at school he had intended to study medicine, for +his scientific tastes were as decided as John's bent for the law. But he +had yielded all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> too weakly to his love for the prettiest girl in his +set, and an heiress, too. By the death of his father and mother he had +already come into possession of his own large fortune. When these two +independent and rich young people were married, therefore, a month after +he was graduated from Harvard, it was hardly strange that Stuart put +aside his medical course until he should have made the tour of Europe. +Then, when once domiciled in their own hotel in Paris, what wonder that +they let all thoughts of Boston disappear in the background? Just before +the war what could the United States offer pleasure-seekers comparable +with the delights of Paris under the Second Empire? They stayed in +Europe until the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war, and managed to +leave Paris just before the siege.</p> + +<p>Not only the upsetting of things in France, but a crisis in Stuart +Digby's business affairs, hastened him home at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> last. Besides, he felt a +little remorse about his children. He did not wish them to grow up +thorough Parisians; already, young as they were, they began to show +symptoms of regarding France as their country rather than America. +Disregarding, therefore, his wife's remonstrances, he broke up their +Paris establishment, despatched his foreign furniture and bric-a-brac to +Boston, and, following soon afterward with his family, bought a house in +the new part of Beacon Street, a region which, when he went to Europe, +had been submerged in water.</p> + +<p>Though some people fancied that Stuart Digby could afford whatever he +wished, he himself thought otherwise. After his return to Boston he +found that there had been a shrinkage both in his own and his wife's +income. There was little danger that they or their children should ever +want, and yet the fact that they had a few thousands a year less than +they had expected bred in them an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>unwonted spirit of economy. This +spirit of economy showed itself chiefly in their dealings with other +people. Stuart, for example, had always intended to settle a sum of +money on Miss Theodora and Ernest, but now he decided to wait. He would +help the boy somewhat in his education, and he would remember him in his will.</p> + +<p>Faultless though he was in his address, elegant though he was in his +personal appearance, Stuart Digby was by no means satisfied with the +reflection that his mirror showed him. He had never expected at +forty-five to find himself so portly, so rubicund. Idleness, easy +living, and a steady, if moderate, indulgence in ruddy drinks will +increase the girth and deepen the complexion of any man, no matter +toward how lofty a goal the thoughts of his youth may have tended. In +youth he had professed scorn for his own prospective wealth. He, as well +as John, should carve out a career for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> himself. His money he would use +in certain philanthropic schemes. But falling in love had been fatal to +this single-mindedness,—and now, at forty-five, what wonder that he was +dissatisfied.</p> + +<p>To saunter down Beacon Street to the club, to play a game of whist with +a trio as idle as himself, to drive, never in those days to ride, to sit +near uncongenial people at a tedious, if fashionable, dinner, to dance +attendance on his wife or some other woman in the brilliant crushes +imposed on all who would be thought on intimate terms with +society—this, he knew, was not the life he had once planned. To be +sure, his footsteps sometimes carried him beyond the club to a little +downtown office where he was supposed to have business—business so +slight that it only irritated him to pretend to follow it. To sign +papers, to approve plans which his lawyer and his agent had already +carefully thought out, this, he reasoned, was almost beneath his notice; +and so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> after a time he gave up even going to the office, and papers +were sent to his house instead for his signature.</p> + +<p>He might, of course, have rid himself, at least partially, of his ennui, +by engaging in some definite philanthropic schemes; but philanthropy as +a profession by itself wasn't the vogue among rich men in Boston two +decades ago. Even had it been the fashion, Stuart Digby could with +difficulty have adjusted himself to the condition which this work +imposed. His long residence abroad made it impossible for him to regard +impartially his American fellow-citizens, whether looked at as an object +of political or philanthropic interest.</p> + +<p>Yet if Stuart Digby fell far short of his own ideal, there was at least +one person in the world who believed him to be perfect; not his wife, +not his son, but his daughter Kate, who was never so happy as when, +clinging to his hand, she could coax him to take a long walk with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> +over the Mill-dam toward the Brookline boundary.</p> + +<p>Moreover, it may be said without sarcasm that his many years' residence +in Europe had made Stuart Digby of much more value to his friends in +general than he himself perhaps realized. He had what might be called a +refined and thorough geographical taste; this is to say, he was a +connoisseur of places. He could tell intending travellers just what +climate, what cuisine, even what company they would be likely to find at +Nice, at Gastein, at Torquay, at certain seasons. He had many a +picturesque and hitherto unheard of nook to recommend, and when the +great capitals, especially Paris, were under discussion, he could +pronounce discriminatingly upon the hotels and shops most worthy the +patronage of a man of culture.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap08.jpg" width='300' height='213' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>VIII.</span></h2> + +<p>"Yes, it was a pleasant funeral," said Miss Chatterwits, as she sat +sewing one morning at Miss Theodora's. Kate, who was present, laughed at +the speech, although she understood Miss Chatterwits' idiosyncracies in +the matter of funerals. To the latter, funerals were sources of real +delight, and few at the West End were ungraced by her presence. In her +best gown of shining black silk, with its rows and rows of bias ruffles, +she seemed as necessary to the proper conduct of the ceremony as the +undertaker himself. With her wide acquaintance among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> people of the +neighborhood, she could decide exactly the proper place for each +mourner; she knew just who belonged in the back and who in the front +parlor, and the grave demeanor with which she assigned each one his seat +hardly hid her air of bustling satisfaction.</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora and Kate were therefore not shocked when she repeated, +"Yes, it was a pleasant funeral," continuing: "I declare, I don't think +there was a soul there I didn't know. I was able to be real useful +showing them where to sit. You should have seen the flowers. It took us +the best part of a day to fix them. The family, of course, felt too bad +to take much notice of the flowers, but I guess they enjoyed the choir +singing. Mary Timpkins herself would have been pleased to see how well +everything went off, for she always was so fussy about things."</p> + +<p>Then, as no one interrupted her, she continued: "It's just a shame, +Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> Theodora, that you did not go yourself. Mr. Blunt made the most +edifying remarks you ever heard. Why, I almost cried, though you know +I've had a great deal of experience in such occasions; and if you'd +heard him I'm sure you'd have been miserable for the rest of the day."</p> + +<p>Kate smiled at the thought of the pleasure her cousin had missed in +escaping this misery, but Miss Theodora, not noticing Miss Chatterwits' +humor, responded merely:</p> + +<p>"Ah! the death of so young a person is always sad."</p> + +<p>"Especially under such painful circumstances," added Miss Chatterwits.</p> + +<p>"What circumstances?" asked Kate, now interested.</p> + +<p>"Love!" answered Miss Chatterwits, solemnly. "She died of love."</p> + +<p>"Love!" echoed Kate. "Shakespeare says nobody ever died of love." Then, +with an afterthought: "Perhaps he was thinking only of men. But why do +you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> think Miss Timpkins died of love? She didn't look as foolish as +that."</p> + +<p>"Well,"—and Miss Chatterwits shook her head in joyful significance, for +it always pleased her to have news of this kind to tell,—"I guess if +Hiram Bradstreet hadn't gone and left her she'd be alive to-day."</p> + +<p>"What nonsense!" said Kate.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you can smile, but I've sewed at her house by the week running, and +he'd come sometimes two afternoons together to ask her to go to walk +somewhere; and even if she was in the middle of trying on she'd drop +everything and run, looking as pleased as could be."</p> + +<p>"Any one would look pleased to escape a trying on."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you can make light of it. But once when I said I guessed I'd be +fitting a wedding dress soon, she colored right up, and said she, 'Oh, +we're only friends.'"</p> + +<p>"That's nothing."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p><p>"Perhaps it was nothing when Mary Timpkins began to fade the very +minute she heard Hiram Bradstreet was engaged to a girl he met on the +steamer last summer. Why did he go to Europe anyway?"</p> + +<p>"Probably because Mary Timpkins wouldn't marry him; for truly, Miss +Chatterwits, I'm going to agree with Dr. Jones that she died of typhoid fever."</p> + +<p>"Maybe,—after she'd run herself down worrying about Hiram Bradstreet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. Hiram Bradstreet, worrying about her, fled to Europe in +despair, and let his heart be caught in the rebound by that girl on the steamer."</p> + +<p>This sensible conclusion, though at the time uttered half in fun, was +characteristic of Kate. She was loath to believe that a well balanced +girl could die of love. Love in the abstract troubled her as little as +love in the concrete. She seldom indulged in sentimental thoughts, much +less in sentimental conversation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>In their distaste for sentimentality, Ernest and Kate met on common +ground; and even Mrs. Digby, though at one time disposed to +discountenance their intimacy, at length decided there was no danger of +her somewhat self-willed daughter's falling in love with her penniless +cousin. In time, however, as Ernest boy-like, found his pleasure more +and more in things outside the house, Miss Theodora and Kate drew nearer together.</p> + +<p>The elder woman had always had a certain pleasure in acting as friend +and helper to a little circle of poor people, of whom there were so many +on the narrow streets descending toward the north. These were not the +poor whites to whom Miss Theodora's mother had been a Lady Bountiful, +but "darkies," as Diantha called them, of mysterious origin and of still +more mysterious habits. They were crowded together in queer-smelling +houses, in narrow lanes and alleys, or in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> the upper stories over shops +in the squalid main thoroughfares of the district which some people +still call "Nigger Hill."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't seem a bit like Boston," Kate would say, clinging to Miss +Theodora's arm while they went in and out of the rickety dwellings, +where stout black women, with heads swathed in bandannas, or shoeless +children in ragged clothes saluted them respectfully. Although Miss +Theodora knew nothing of modern scientific charities, she tried to make +reform and reward go hand in hand.</p> + +<p>"I feel," she said occasionally, "as if I oughtn't to help Beverly +Brown's family when I know the man is drinking; but I can't bear to see +those children without shoes, or let Araminta suffer for food with that +baby to care for."</p> + +<p>"Of course you can't," Kate would answer, emphatically: "and Moses and +Aaron Brown are the very cunningest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> twins any one could imagine, even +if they are bow-legged." And then Kate, opening her little silk bag, +would display within a collection of oranges, sticks of candy, and even +painted wooden toys which she had bought on her way through Charles +Street. "Come, Cousin Theodora," she would cry, "put on your hat and +coat, and let us go down and see the twins, and let me carry this basket."</p> + +<p>Or again: "There isn't any harm in my just getting some of this bright +calico for aprons for Araminta, and you don't care if I buy mittens for +the twins," she would say entreatingly; for Miss Theodora, always +careful of money herself, often had to restrain her young cousin's +expenditures, at least in the matter of clothes. As regarded food, it was different.</p> + +<p>When Kate, stopping in front of one of the little provision shops, with +their fly-specked windows, through which was dimly seen an array of +wilted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>vegetables and doubtful-looking meats, decided to order a dinner +for this one or that of her proteges, Miss Theodora had not the heart to +hinder. But I will do her the credit to say that she never encouraged +the giving of dinners to those whose need was caused by vice. In the +future of the dark-skinned boys and girls Miss Theodora took a great +interest. She realized that in the public schools they had their +opportunity; and she saw with regret that not all who were educated made +the best use of their education. Restless, unwilling to take the kind of +work which alone was likely to fall to their lot, some of the young +girls, educated or uneducated, drifted into ways which the older women +of their race spoke of with the strongest disapprobation.</p> + +<p>"They's a wuthless lot, the hull of them, and I wouldn't try to do +nothing for them if I was you," Diantha often exclaimed, when Miss +Theodora <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>admitted how sorely the problem of these dusky people pressed +upon her. Yet Diantha herself was almost certain to call her mistress' +attention to the next case of need on which she herself stumbled in her +wanderings among her people. Or, as likely as not, when Miss Theodora +was sought out by some poor creature in real or pretended misery, the +present emergency would overthrow all theories.</p> + +<p>In one of the hill streets there was a home for colored old women, +holding not a large number of inmates, but still holding, as Kate +expressed it, "a very contented crowd"—much more contented, indeed, +than many of the dwellers in the "Old Ladies' Home," the refuge for +white women who had seen better days.</p> + +<p>"I went to see old Mrs. Smith," said Kate one day, speaking of an inmate +of the latter institution. "She was sitting with her blind drawn, +looking as glum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> as could be. 'Why don't you raise the curtain?' I +asked. 'You have such a beautiful view of the river.' 'Oh, yes,' she +said, 'beautiful for anybody who likes rivers.' Do you know she'd rather +sit moping in a corner all day than try to get some pleasure out of the +lovely view across the river from her window! She enjoys being miserable +now, just because she has seen 'better days.'"</p> + +<p>"There are a great many people like her in the world," smiled Miss Theodora.</p> + +<p>"Well, I prefer old Auntie Jane up in the colored women's home. She says +that she never was as well off as she has been since she came to the +home. She has a little window box with a small geranium and some white +elysium in blossom; and she says that it reminds her of the old +plantation where she grew up. She can see nothing from her window but +houses across the narrow street; but she is a great deal happier than +Mrs. Smith with all her view."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap09.jpg" width='300' height='267' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>IX.</span></h2> + +<p>When Kate accompanied her on her round of visits, Miss Theodora did not +penetrate far into the little lanes that zigzagged off from Phillips +Street. She kept more to the main road, and seldom took the young girl +upstairs, or down into the dingy basements. For in her mind's eye a +large place was occupied by Mrs. Stuart Digby, who at any time might end +Kate's visiting among the poor. Kate, therefore, had to content herself +with restricted vistas of fascinating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> alleys with wooden houses sloping +toward each other at a curious angle, with little balconies of strangely +southern appearance; and she sighed that she could not wander within +them. She looked longingly, too, at the little church whenever they +passed it; for Ben, who, rather for entertainment than edification, went +there occasionally to the evening prayer meetings, had repeated many +amusing speeches made by the colored brothers.</p> + +<p>Still, if she could not do all that she wished to, she made the most of +what came in her way. She loved to notice the difference between the +kinds of things sold in Phillips Street shops and in those of the more +pretentious thoroughfare to the north, through which the horse-cars ran +to Cambridge. In the former case, eatables of all kinds were +conspicuous,—not only meat and vegetables, and especially sausages, but +corn for popping and molasses candy and spruce gum, all heterogeneously +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>displayed in the small window of one little shop. On Cambridge Street, +oyster saloons and bar-rooms and pawn-shops, before which hung a great +variety of old garments on hooks, jostled against each other, strangely +contrasting with numerous cake-shops, which offered to the passer-by a +great variety of unwholesome comestibles. From the little windows of the +dwelling rooms above the shops, frowsy and unkempt women looked down on +the street below, and Miss Theodora usually drew Kate quickly along, as +occasionally they traversed it for a short distance on their way to the hospital.</p> + +<p>In the same neighborhood was a short street of unsavory reputation, +partly on account of a murder committed within its limits many years +before, and partly because it held the city morgue. Hardly realizing +where she was, Miss Theodora one day was picking her way along the +slippery sidewalk, with Kate closely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>following, when something dark +crossed their path. They stopped to make way for it. It was a grim, +indefinite something, which two men had lifted from a wagon to carry +into a neighboring building—a something whose resemblance to a human +body was not concealed by the dark green cloth covering it. Then they +knew that they were near the morgue; and while the elder woman was +regretting that she had brought Kate with her, she heard a voice speak +her name, and, turning, saw Ben Bruce but a few steps behind.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it late for you ladies to be in this part of the city?" he +exclaimed as he overtook them, and they realized that it was almost dusk.</p> + +<p>"We are not timid," smiled Miss Theodora; "but we shall be glad of your +company, Ben. We stayed longer than we meant to stay at the hospital, +and I know that I ought not to have kept Kate so late."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p><p>"I wasn't thinking so much of the time as the place," said Ben. "Some +way I do not like to have you and Miss Kate wandering about in these +dirty streets—at least alone."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you think that we would be better off with any slip of a boy. +But truly we do not need a protector, although we shall be very glad of +your company home."</p> + +<p>"I do not mean safety exactly," answered Ben; "but it does not seem to +me—well, appropriate for you and Miss Kate to go around into all kinds +of dirty houses," and he glanced at Kate's pretty gown and fur-trimmed +coat.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it does not hurt my clothes at all," Kate answered, as he glanced +at her dress. "I have only my oldest clothes on to-day, and I've been in +a very clean place, too. I'm sure nothing could be cleaner than the hospital."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can turn it into fun, but you know what I mean," said Ben. +For<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> like many another young man, he felt that tenderly bred women +should be kept ignorant of the unsightly parts of a city. Thus as they +went up the hill Ben and Kate kept up their merry banter, until they +reached Miss Theodora's door.</p> + +<p>"Come in to tea with us. Ernest will be glad to see you," said the elder +woman. But Ben shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Thank you very much, but they expect me home."</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, he went inside for a little while, and sat before the open +fire in the little sitting-room,—Miss Theodora allowed herself this one +extravagance,—and heard Kate humorously relate the adventures of the afternoon.</p> + +<p>"I have brought," she said, "a bottle of old Mrs. Slawson's bitters. I +feel guilty in not having any of the many diseases they are warranted to +cure, but I shall give the bottle to our cook, who is always +complaining, and keeps a dozen bottles sitting on the kitchen +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>mantelpiece. You know about Mrs. Slawson, don't you, Ben?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she's the old person who made so much money out of a patent medicine."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and then married a 'light-skinned darky,' as she called him, who +ran away with it all. It is great fun to hear her tell of the large +number of people she has cured. Why, the greatest ladies in Boston, she +says, used to drive up in their carriages to patronize her."</p> + +<p>"Why doesn't she keep up her business now?"</p> + +<p>"Well, she is too old to continue it herself, and she does not wish any +one else to have her formulas. She has just enough money to live on, and +once in a while she has a few bottles put up to give away to her +friends. My visits to her are purely social, not charitable, and this is +my reward"—and Kate displayed a clumsy package in yellow wrappings.</p> + +<p>Then Ernest came in—now a tall lad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> looking younger than Kate, though a +year older—and welcomed Ben, and begged him to spend the evening. But +Ben, resolute, though reluctant to leave the pleasant group clustered +around Miss Theodora's fire, hurried off just as the clock struck six.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap10.jpg" width='300' height='291' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>X.</span></h2> + +<p>His father opened the door for him when he reached home,—his father in +his shirt sleeves, encircled with an odor of tobacco. With an eye keener +than usual, the boy noted particularly, as if seen for the first time, +things to which he had been accustomed all his life—the well-worn +oil-cloth on the hall, the kerosene lamp flaring dismally in its +bracket. How different it all was from the refinement of Miss Theodora's +home,—for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>although Miss Theodora's carpets were worn and even +threadbare, and, except in the hall, she was as sparing of gas as Mr. +Bruce himself, the odor of cooking never escaped from Diantha's domain. +The indefinable between comfort and discomfort made the Bruce's economy +very unlike that practised by Miss Theodora.</p> + +<p>"You are late," said Mrs. Bruce querulously as Ben entered the dining-room.</p> + +<p>"Am I? I met Miss Theodora and walked home with them."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and went into the house with them, I dare say!" interrupted Mr. Bruce.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" asked Ben.</p> + +<p>"You always seem taken up with those people. I don't see how you can be, +all so patronizing as they are."</p> + +<p>"Patronizing!" repeated Ben to himself. "Miss Theodora patronizing!" How +far from the truth this seemed!</p> + +<p>"You do not mean Miss Theodora?"</p> + +<p>"Why not Miss Theodora? She walks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> along the street, never looking to +the right or left, as if she were quite too good to speak to ordinary people."</p> + +<p>"But she is terribly near-sighted. She does not see people unless they +are right in front of her."</p> + +<p>"I guess she could see well enough if she tried. I've noticed her cross +the street almost on a run to speak to some little black boy. She's +ready enough to take up with people like that; and she's able to see +you. Ben,—but—"</p> + +<p>Ben flushed a little. He did not like being put on a level with Miss +Theodora's black proteges. Nor was this all. Mr. Bruce, taking up his +wife's words, continued:</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's just as your mother says; all those people think themselves a +great way above the rest of us that are just as good as they are. I +don't blame Miss Theodora so much, for her father really was a great +man. But those Digbys! Who are they? Why, Mrs. Stuart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Digby's +grandfather, they say, was a tailor in New York when my grandfather was +one of General Washington's staff officers. We didn't have to buy that +sword in our parlor second-hand in a Cornhill shop, where some people +get their family relics."</p> + +<p>"Not the Digbys or Miss Theodora."</p> + +<p>"About the Digbys I'm not so sure. Miss Theodora ought to have some good +things, if they didn't sell off everything when they went into that +little house." As a matter of fact, the kin of Mr. Bruce were so few +that Ben could not understand how he could generalize about them. Yet, +"my family" could not have figured more largely in his conversation, had +he been chieftain of a Scottish clan.</p> + +<p>So rapid was Mr. Bruce's flow of language, that Ben and his mother +usually kept quiet when he was well launched on any subject. Often, +indeed, Ben let his thoughts wander far away until recalled to himself +by some direct question.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p><p>It was Kate, Kate alone, whom his father's words touched. For the +moment he felt that he might be perfectly happy could he see with the +bodily eye as small a gulf between the Digby family and his own as his +father presented to his mental vision. Seated before Miss Theodora's +hospitable fire, watching the color deepen on Kate's sensitive cheeks as +the light flickered across them, he forgot everything but her. In +Ralph's presence, however, he realized that his world and the Digbys' +were very far apart, and that his own awkwardness and roughness must be +felt all too strongly by Kate. Then for weeks he would avoid Miss +Theodora's house when Kate was there, or would run in for only a moment +with Ernest to inspect some wonderful invention by the latter then in +process of development in the basement workroom. Mr. and Mrs. Stuart +Digby he seldom thought of. But how to bridge the gulf between himself and Kate!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p><p>The story of his own good ancestry began to have new interest for him. +He looked more closely at his little sisters. They had the delicacy of +feature which their mother still retained. They had the wax-like color +which she had long ago lost. He glanced around the shabby room and felt +rebellious. Should they be restricted to the same narrow life as their +mother's? Was poverty to keep them down as it kept down so many of their +neighbors? No, no! he would devote himself to building up a fortune, and +then—even here Kate began to be curiously mixed up with his musings, +and then he was called back to earth by his mother's voice.</p> + +<p>The claim of his ancestors had never made a very strong impression on +Ben. He had classed them with certain other harmless pretences of his +mother's, like making a rug in the parlor cover an unmendable hole in +the carpet, or putting lace curtains in the front windows of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> upper +room which in other respects was meagerly furnished. But now his point +of view had begun to change, and he could even imagine himself in time +bowing to the fetich of family.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter, Polly?" he said one afternoon to his youngest +sister, whom he found sitting on the doorstep by herself with the traces +of tears on her face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ada Green says that my new winter dress is only an old one because +it's made out of an old one of mother's; and," incoherently, "she had +ice-cream for dinner—and why can't we?"</p> + +<p>"Who, mother?" laughed Ben.</p> + +<p>"No, you know who I mean, Ada—they have ice-cream every Saturday, and +she always comes out and tells me, and asks me what day we have +ice-cream, and I have to say 'Never.'"</p> + +<p>Ben, though he saw the ludicrous side of the little girl's grief, kissed +her as he had many a time before when she had been disturbed by similar things.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p><p>"Cheer up," he said; "it won't be so very long before I can give you +ice-cream every day, and new dresses not made out of mother's old ones. +Then you can walk up and down the sidewalk and tell Ada Green; or you +can offer her some of your ice-cream,—heap coals of ice on her head."</p> + +<p>He added more of this nonsense until the child's face brightened as she +entered the house, clinging to his arm, and mounted the attic stairs to +sit near him while he studied.</p> + +<p>Ben's plans for the future were definite, and his hopes were not the +mere self-confidence of youth. Fortunate in securing one of the state +scholarships at the Institute, he had been told by his teachers that a +high place in his profession, that of civil engineer, might be his +ultimately. But "ultimately" meant a long time yet, and his sister was +perhaps right in sighing that before he could give her ice-cream and +similar delights,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> she would be too "grown up" to enjoy them.</p> + +<p>When, therefore, he looked at his little sisters and thought of the +probable narrowness of their lives unless he should interpose, he put +aside any idle balancing of merits of his family as compared with that of Stuart Digby.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap11.jpg" width='300' height='234' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XI.</span></h2> + +<p>Ernest stood leaning against the mantelpiece in his aunt's bedroom. +Never enthusiastic about college, he was growing even less so under the +shadow of the impending examinations, now but a month away. His +preliminaries had given him a hint that only by hard work could he enter +college without conditions. Greek was the great stumbling-block, and he +dreaded the final test more than he cared to admit.</p> + +<p>"Do change your mind, Aunt Teddy," he began imploringly.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>His aunt, in a low, straight-backed chair, looked up from her sewing.</p> + +<p>"Change my mind about what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you know—going to Harvard. Why must I go?"</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora sighed. Had she waited and saved, pleased by the hope of a +distinguished college career for Ernest, only to find college with him a +question not of "will" but of "must"? Ernest caught her look of disappointment.</p> + +<p>"Of course I am perfectly willing to go to Harvard to please you, but—I +wish I could study the things Ben studies."</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora's voice had an unwonted note of sternness in it.</p> + +<p>"You are going to Harvard, Ernest, not because I wish it, but because +your father wished it; because your father, your grandfather, your +great-grandfather, five generations, all were graduates. You will be the +sixth of our family in direct line to graduate with honor."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it won't be with honor in my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> case, Aunt Teddy. Remember my +Greek."</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora smiled. "I have tried to forget it." Then as Ernest leaned +down to kiss her, "No, no. I can't be coaxed into saying what I don't +think. Of course you will go to Harvard and be an honor to your family."</p> + +<p>He loved his aunt; he wished to please her; but, oh, if he could only +beg off from college! If he could only follow Ben to his scientific +school! Ben, no one could deny it, would be a great man, and Ben had not +gone to Harvard. Ben and Ralph in contrast presented themselves to +Ernest's mind as his aunt spoke of the "honor of the family." Changing +his lounging position, he stood in an attitude of direct interrogation +before Miss Theodora.</p> + +<p>"Now, Aunt Teddy, which is going to be a great man, Ben or Ralph?"</p> + +<p>"I am no prophet, Ernest."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, you know what I mean.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Would you rather have me grow up like +Ben or like Ralph?"</p> + +<p>"I am fond of Ben."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and you don't like Ralph a bit better than I do. He can write +Greek exercises that are nearly perfect,—and Ben don't know Alpha from Omega."</p> + +<p>"You seem to believe that Ben's good qualities result from his ignorance +of Greek, and Ralph's from his knowledge of the classics."</p> + +<p>"I am not so silly as that, Aunt Teddy. But Ralph won't be a great honor +to the family even if he should go through Harvard twenty times, and I +wouldn't be a disgrace to you even if I didn't know Greek, or law, or +any of those things."</p> + +<p>As Ernest seldom spoke so bitterly on this subject, Miss Theodora wisely +avoided further discussion by turning to her writing-table.</p> + +<p>"I have a letter to finish now, Ernest; why do you not go down to your +workroom? Kate is anxious for the table you promised her."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>Ernest went off to his work, while Miss Theodora, still sitting before +the fire thinking lovingly of the boy, pictured him in the not remote +future a worthy wearer of the legal honor of the family. When Miss +Theodora said "family," she thought most often of a long line of +Massachusetts ancestors of dignified demeanor and studious expression, +all resembling in general features the portrait of her grandfather +hanging on the library wall. This portrait her own father had had +enlarged from a poorly executed miniature. Perhaps it was the painter's +fault that the nose had an air of intellectuality—even more exaggerated +than that of the high forehead. Ernest as a little boy was so frightened +by this portrait that he did not like to be left alone in the room with it.</p> + +<p>As he grew older, it over-awed him like the rows of sheepskin-covered +volumes in the bookcases under the painting. Miss Theodora, loving the +books as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> she loved the portrait, occasionally would unlock the glass +door with its faded red silk curtains to show Ernest the volumes that +his grandfather and his great-great-grandfather had studied. As he grew +older, she solemnly intrusted the key to his care, hoping that he would +find the books as pleasant reading as she had found them in her +girlhood. But the clumsy type and the old-fashioned style were so +forbidding to the boy, that his aunt saw with sorrow that he made no +effort to acquire a love for eighteenth-century literature. He managed, +to be sure, to read the few "Spectator" and "Tatler" essays which she +selected, and he discovered for himself the amusing qualities of +Addison's "Rosamond." His "Robinson Crusoe" in modern dress counted of +course as a book of to-day rather than as a work of the Age of Anne. Had +it been among its sheepskin covered contemporaries, more than half its +charm would have vanished. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> Coke, the Blackstone, the Kent, which +had been part of his grandfather's professional library, the boy +regarded with even less interest than the other books. Miss Theodora had +told Ernest that many would be as useful to him as they had been to his +grandfather, not realizing that the mere thought of mastering their +musty contents increased his distaste for the law.</p> + +<p>Strangely enough, too, Ernest found little glamour in the name +"Harvard." As a child he had been curious about the meaning of Class +Day, when he heard caterers' carts rumbling through Charles Street on +their way to Cambridge, or saw gayly dressed girls with deferential +escorts walking toward the horse-cars or driving over the bridge. When +he grew older the name of Harvard was associated with boat races and +ball games, and it pleased him to think that he might some time count +himself among the wearers of the victorious crimson. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> the dreaded +examinations and a truer knowledge of what the study of law meant had at +last made the name of Harvard a bugbear.</p> + +<p>While Miss Theodora, therefore, mused before the fire, Ernest in his +basement workshop let his thoughts wander far afield from Harvard and +the musty law. He wondered if he could make a dynamo according to the +directions laid down in a new book of physics he had lately read. He +wondered if he should ever have a chance to go West to the silver +mines—for this was about the time when all eyes were turned toward the +splendors of Leadville. He wondered if he should ever invent anything +like that marvellous telephone of which the world was beginning to talk +so much. He knew a fellow whose uncle had been present at a private +exhibition of the new invention, and the uncle had been sure that in a +short time people a mile apart would be able to exchange actual words +over the wire.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>As to the dynamo, Ernest felt pretty sure that he would make one; as to +the mines of the West he was equally confident that he would see them +some day; hadn't he always promised when he was a man to take his aunt +on a long journey? But as to rivalling the inventor of the telephone, +ah, no! what chance would he have to invent anything, when four years, +four long years, must be spent at college, and at least two years more +in preparing for the bar?</p> + +<p>"Alas, Harvard!" sighed Ernest in the basement, while "fair Harvard" +formed the burden of Miss Theodora's thoughts as she sat by the fire upstairs.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap12.jpg" width='300' height='405' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XII.</span></h2> + +<p>After all, Ernest entered Harvard creditably. To work off two or three +conditions would be a very small matter,—so he thought optimistically +at the beginning of the year. On the whole,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> college had an unexpected +charm for him, and he showed a temper in November quite different from +that of the spring. Perhaps the summer's tour in Europe, which he had +made with Ralph and Ralph's tutor, had changed his point of view. Miss +Theodora could not feel grateful enough to Stuart Digby for sending +Ernest to Europe. Though she had herself set aside a little sum for this +purpose, she was only too glad to accept her cousin's offer.</p> + +<p>When the boys came home, their friends noted a change in Ernest. Mrs. +Fetchum thought that it was largely in the matter of clothes.</p> + +<p>"You couldn't expect but what such stylish clothes would make a +difference, at least in appearance; not but what Ernest himself is just +the same as he used to be."</p> + +<p>Justice drove Mrs. Fetchum to this admission; for when Ernest, walking +up the hill a few days after his home <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>coming, caught sight of her as +she stood within her half-open door, not only had he stopped to speak to +her, but he had run up the steps to shake hands; this, too—for it was +Sunday—in sight of several neighbors who were passing, and under the +very eyes of certain inquisitive faces looking from windows near by,—a +most gratifying remembrance to Mrs. Fetchum.</p> + +<p>"Ernest looks some different," said Mrs. Fetchum, describing the +interview to Mr. Fetchum, "but his heart's in the right place. He said +he ain't seen a place he liked better than Boston in all the course of his travels."</p> + +<p>Miss Chatterwits, who never agreed with any opinion of her neighbors, +declared that Ernest was changed.</p> + +<p>"But it isn't his clothes. If I do make dresses, I don't think that +clothes is everything. It's his manners. You can see it, Miss +Theodora,—just a little more polish. It's perfectly natural, you know,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> +since he's come in contact, so to speak, with foreign courts. Didn't he +say that he saw the royal family riding in a procession in London, and +didn't he and Ralph go to dinner at the American minister's at The +Hague? Those things of course count."</p> + +<p>Miss Chatterwits, like many others who take pride in their +republicanism, dearly loved to hear about royalty. Ernest, therefore, +when he found that she was somewhat disappointed that he could not tell +her more about kings and queens, gave her elaborate accounts of the +palaces he had visited. Thus did he half solace her for the fact that he +had had no personal interviews with princes and other potentates.</p> + +<p>Yet, although Miss Chatterwits would not ascribe any change in Ernest to +his clothes, she by no means overlooked the extent and variety of the +wardrobe which he had brought back with him from the other side. In this +respect Stuart Digby<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> had been as generous as in everything else +connected with Ernest's foreign journey. His orders that Ernest should +have an outfit of London clothes in no way inferior to Ralph's had been +literally carried out. The result was startling, not only in the matter +of coats, waistcoats and other necessities, but in the matter of walking +sticks, umbrellas, and similar luxuries.</p> + +<p>For almost a week Ernest kept the neighborhood astir counting his +various new suits. Boy-like, he mischievously wore them one by one on +successive days for the mere sake of giving Mrs. Fetchum and the others +something to talk about. To Miss Chatterwits he gladly lent his cloth +travelling cap, when she expressed her wish to take a pattern of it, and +he let her carefully inspect a certain overcoat.</p> + +<p>"It's quite at your service, Miss Chatterwits, although I more than half +believe you are going to cut one just like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> it for little Tommie +Grigsby. Just think of it, the latest London fashions for a six-year old."</p> + +<p>Nor did Miss Chatterwits deny the implication. For in those days, when +you could not buy ready-made clothes in every shop, the costume of many +a little West End boy was cut over from his father's garments by the +hands of the old seamstress.</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora did not find Ernest changed. "Improved, perhaps, but not +changed by his summer abroad," she said to herself, seeing in this no +real contradiction. He was still the same Ernest—respectful, kind, +yielding to her will, even in the many details connected with the +furnishing of his rooms at Cambridge—the same Ernest who years ago had +clung to her hand dark evenings as they walked home from Stuart Digby's. +All the interested relatives—"all," yet few—wondered that Miss +Theodora could afford to fit up Ernest's college rooms so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> handsomely. +But was it not for this that she had saved ever since John's death?</p> + +<p>So Ernest, in Hollis, had the counterpart of John's old room; and his +aunt, looking from the broad window-seat across the leafy quadrangle, +unchanged in aspect through a quarter of a century, felt herself carried +back to those early days. Until John's death she had not realized that +all her hopes were centred in him. Now she knew only too well that life +without Ernest would mean little enough to her.</p> + +<p>Ernest, appreciating his aunt's devotion, tried to repay it by thorough +work—tried, yet failed. For, after all, study is not the only absorbing +interest at Cambridge. Sports in the field, practice on the river, these +stir the blood and take a young man's time. A good-looking lad with a +well-known name, connected with various families of reputed wealth and +high position, has every chance for popularity at Harvard. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> a +popular man with limited means has to pay a price for popularity. Ernest +spent his fairly liberal allowance to the last cent. He had to +entertain, had to do things that were, though he knew it not, a great +strain on his aunt's purse. Though he had entered college without the +social advantages of a preparation at one of the private schools, he +soon had many friends. Miss Theodora was pleased with her nephew's +success. John had been popular, and it would have been strange indeed +had the son not followed in the father's footsteps. She could not +conceal from herself, however, a definite uneasiness that Ernest, unlike +his father, showed little interest in his studies. He grumbled not a +little at the course laid out for him, complained that he would have +hardly a wider choice of studies in his sophomore year, and ascribed all +his shortcomings in examinations to the fact that he was rigorously held +down to uncongenial work. Nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> was he altogether wrong, for many a +Harvard student in those days longed for freedom from the fetters of prescribed studies.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap13.jpg" width='300' height='271' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XIII.</span></h2> + +<p>One Sunday afternoon in the early May of his freshman year, after the +service at Trinity, Ernest took his way toward the Digbys' house. Since +midwinter many things had tended to make him regard life less hopefully +than before. Just as his own shortcomings at college were growing so +evident that he could not conceal them either from himself or his aunt, +the death of Stuart Digby cast a cloud over him which made other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> +shadows dwindle. For he had been very fond of his cousin, and he +sympathized to the full with Kate in her grief.</p> + +<p>"Cut off in his prime!" said all the friends of Stuart Digby. "So much +to live for!" "His life hardly half finished!" But, after all, death is +as inscrutable a mystery as life itself. Stuart Digby had had his +chance. He knew long before he died that his life, even if rounded out +to the full three score and ten, could never be full and complete. He +knew, as nobody else could, how far short he fell of the standard which +he had once set for himself. He knew, with a knowledge that cut him to +the quick, that, poor slave of habit that he had become, no length of +life would place him again in the ranks of those whose faces ever look +upward. He had had his chance. Why had he let it slip away from him? His +life, so far as life means progress, was finished long before. He had +not even accomplished the few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>definite tasks which he had set for +himself. Among these was the making of some provision for Ernest. He had +meant to give the boy a few thousands to smooth his path after +graduating, or to leave him something by will. But death came so +suddenly that this, like many other good intentions, was unfulfilled. +Ernest, knowing nothing of these unfulfilled intentions, felt only a +deep sense of personal loss in the death of his cousin.</p> + +<p>A decorator had lately done over in the latest French style the room +where Kate received Ernest. The high white wainscoting, the satiny sheen +of the large-patterned yellow paper, the slender-legged gilded chairs, +with here and there a lounging chair covered in pale green brocade, +harmonized well with the sunshine that streamed in. Kate, in her black +gown, seated at the old-fashioned inlaid desk in the bay window, but for +her fair hair and glowing color, would have been the one discordant note +in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> room. The solemn man-servant had hardly announced Ernest when +Kate rushed forward to meet him.</p> + +<p>"Why, Ernest, I am delighted to see you. We were speaking of you to-day. +Mamma was saying that it seemed a long time since you had been here. She +is out now, and will be sorry to miss you."</p> + +<p>"Well, it is longer than I meant to be; but you know that I've really +been very busy, especially since the mid-year. I've been trying to +decide several difficult questions."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I know. How times have changed, Ernest, since you used to play +hop-scotch with the Fetchum children, while I sat, a mournful umpire, at +Cousin Theodora's door! You used to say that I was the best possible +judge; and I thought that you were always going to let me help you +decide difficult questions."</p> + +<p>"It's just the same now, Kate. I'd be only too glad to have you help me +out of a good many things, if——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p><p>"If what?"</p> + +<p>Now, however, Ernest dropped his serious tone. "If we were younger. Tell +me, Kate, can you remember how you felt when you first realized that you +weren't a child any more? I was thinking about myself the other day, and +wondering why I feel so much older now than I did a year or two ago."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's going into college that is chiefly to answer for it. But I do +think it's strange sometimes all in an instant we realize that we are +older or different from what we were before. I really can't account for it."</p> + +<p>"Yes,—I understand what you mean. You know those stone buildings that +we pass on our way to the Nahant boat. Well, they used to seem to me +mountain high, not only when I looked up at them, but when I thought +about them. But one summer, years ago, I looked up and saw that they +were not very high, nor very imposing. They were small <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>buildings, +compared with a good many up town; and then I felt that I must have changed."</p> + +<p>Kate smiled. "Yes, I've been through just such things myself." And the +conversation of the two cousins drifted on for a time, with +reminiscences of the past.</p> + +<p>"Ernest," at length said Kate somewhat abruptly to the young man, "after +all you are more or less of a disappointment to me."</p> + +<p>So far as appearances went, it was hard to see wherein Ernest fell short +of the ideal of even so rigid a critic as Kate. Yet this well-formed, +muscular youth, with his clear gray eye, seemed at this particular +moment a little restless and uneasy as he fingered an ivory paper-knife.</p> + +<p>"How do I disappoint you, Kate?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, in many ways. I used to think that you would be an inventor, +or—something. But now—"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>"I am nothing but a Harvard freshman," he broke in laughing.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that is just it. You don't seem to be ambitious; you aren't trying +to work off your entrance conditions; and you didn't do well at the +mid-years. You spend very little time with Cousin Theodora. I'm sure I +ought to feel complimented that you've come here to-day." As Ernest did +not reply, she continued: "Your aunt has always made such sacrifices for +you that you ought to try to do your best. Cousin Richard says—"</p> + +<p>There she stopped.</p> + +<p>"Well, what does Cousin Richard say?" asked Ernest impatiently. But +Kate, remembering that Richard Somerset might object to being quoted, was silent.</p> + +<p>"Go to him yourself," she said at length. "He will tell you." Then their +conversation passed to less personal things, until it was time for +Ernest to go.</p> + +<p>Ernest, taking what Kate had said in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> good part, pondered over it as he +walked homeward. The afternoon was drawing to a close. Long afterward he +recalled that walk among the flower-beds, glowing with tulips and +hyacinths, with the last rays of the sun reflected from the little +fountain, while the chimes from the church on the corner above rang out +"Old Hundred." As he left the Garden and entered Charles Street all this +cheerfulness was at an end. The houses cast shadows so heavy in the +narrow street that he felt as if in another world. Somewhat depressed, +he went up the hill to his aunt's house. From the parlor came the +unwonted sound of music. Some one was playing on the old piano. There +sat Miss Theodora. He saw her through a half-opened door, playing with a +fervor that he could not have believed possible had he not seen it for +himself. For a moment he watched her, and although he was not a learned +young man, he thought at once of St. Cecilia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> There was, indeed, more +than a mere suggestion of saintliness in Miss Theodora, with her pale +face, with her black hair smoothly brushed away and gathered in a coil +behind, and her patient expression.</p> + +<p>"Why, Aunt Teddy," at length exclaimed Ernest, entering the room, "I +didn't know that you were such a performer. I knew you could play, but I +didn't know you could play like that."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Ernest," replied his aunt. "I don't play well now, but when +your grandfather was living I had the very best instruction; but my +style is so old-fashioned that I never play to any one now."</p> + +<p>In truth, Miss Theodora had played well in her day, and it was one of +the sorrows of her later life that she could not profit by the fine +teachers and the concerts of music-loving Boston. Diantha, whose thirty +years' devotion to the family gave her privileges, would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> sometimes come +to her as she sat alone by the front window, in the twilight, and say:</p> + +<p>"Why don't you never play no music now, Miss Theodora? I ain't forgot +how you used to practice all the time; and Mr. John and Mr. William +would come into the parlor in the evenings and listen to you, and you +used to look so pretty sitting at that very piano that you won't never touch now."</p> + +<p>Yet Ernest, although he had often heard Diantha thus remonstrate with +his aunt, now first realized perhaps that there was undue self-denial in +his aunt's life. What Kate had said about "sacrifices" became +significant to him. With as little delay as possible he would talk with Richard Somerset.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap14.jpg" width='300' height='225' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XIV.</span></h2> + +<p>"Now, Ernest, I don't know what Theodora would do if she knew that I had +told you, but since you insist I will say that your father left you +nothing, absolutely nothing. He invested his small share of your +grandfather's property badly, and when we came to settle things there +wasn't a cent for you." So said Richard Somerset in the interview which +Ernest soon sought.</p> + +<p>"So all that I have is just that much less for Aunt Teddy?"</p> + +<p>"Yes,—if you put it that way. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> she has told me many a time that +whatever she has is yours. Just you do your best at college, and become +a clever lawyer like your father and your grandfather, and she'll be +satisfied. You see, you are all she has in the world. Of course, if she +had married,—" but here the good man grew silent, and Ernest never +heard from him the story of Miss Theodora's one love affair.</p> + +<p>It was just as well that he stopped where he did, for, with an +indiscretion worthy a younger man, he had already gone far beyond Miss +Theodora's instructions. He knew that it was her one desire that Ernest +should not learn that he had no money of his own. When Ernest had heard +the truth, much that previously he had not quite understood in his +aunt's management of affairs was explained.</p> + +<p>"It's all very well to talk about being a lawyer," he cried. "It's all +very well to talk; but I have found out that I cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> possibly be one. +It's been worrying me lately. Of course, I might go through college in a +sort of way; but after what you tell me I can't see the sense in wasting +time or money."</p> + +<p>Richard Somerset looked aghast. Was this the effect of his words? What +would Miss Theodora say?</p> + +<p>"Why—why, you wouldn't disappoint your aunt like that, would you? What +in the world would you do if you left college?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know exactly, but I'm pretty sure that I'd take a course +like Ben Bruce has had at the Technology. Then I'd go West and make some +money. One thing I've found out since I went to College,—and that is +that I don't want to be poor the rest of my life."</p> + +<p>"Everybody who goes West doesn't make money."</p> + +<p>"Maybe not, but I met a man crossing on the Altruria this summer, who +told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> me that mining engineers have the best possible chance now. He's a +large stockholder in the 'Wampum and Etna,' and he said if only my +profession were something in his line he could do a lot for me."</p> + +<p>"Rather presuming for a stranger," said Richard Somerset, with the true +Boston manner.</p> + +<p>"He didn't seem like a stranger. He used to know my father, I believe. +But he said it wasn't worth while to mention him to Aunt Theodora, as +she probably wouldn't remember him."</p> + +<p>"What was his name?"</p> + +<p>"Easton—William Easton. I have his card and address somewhere. He used +to be an army officer, captain of engineers, then he resigned and went +into mining. He worked like everything until he made a lucky find. He +was his own engineer for a time, but now he's given up active work. He +and his wife go abroad every summer."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>"No, it wasn't worth while to mention him to your aunt," said Richard +Somerset, as Ernest left him. The older man gazed abstractedly after the +boy, while his heart went out in sympathy with Miss Theodora.</p> + +<p>Between Miss Theodora and William Easton there had once been an +engagement, known only to their most intimate friends. John's classmate +and comrade in the war, he had never concealed his admiration for John's +sister. It was just after Dorothy's death, when Ernest demanded all Miss +Theodora's time, that William Easton was ordered to the western +frontier. With the reorganization of the army he had gone into the +Engineers, and now there was no chance, had he wished, to evade the duty +to which he was assigned. He might stay at his new post four or five +years, he said, and Theodora must marry him and go too. Always +imperative, he tried hard enough to carry his point. But for Ernest's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +claims Miss Theodora would have yielded.</p> + +<p>"Ernest will come, too, of course," he said,—and failed, obstinately +perhaps, to see the weight of Miss Theodora's objections. The locality +to which he was bound was notoriously unhealthy. The surroundings would +be in other respects unfavorable to the little boy,—and what chance +would he have for an education in that remote and half-civilized region? +Nor would Miss Theodora leave the child behind, even had there been any +one with whom she could leave him. Surely she and William could wait. +But William Easton, always impatient, went off to his distant post angry +that Theodora should prefer a little child to him. Both were heart-sore +at first, but time works wonders, and years after this parting, when +Miss Theodora heard that he had married the daughter of a Colorado +rancher, she hoped, yes, she really hoped, that he was happy.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>Ernest did not recognize as William Easton, his steamboat acquaintance, +the young officer who stood beside his father in the little faded +photograph on his aunt's dressing table. "What queer, loose-fitting +uniforms they had! We'd smile if men wore their hair so long as that +now." This was all the boy had thought, as he looked at the picture. But +for Miss Theodora these two faded figures symbolized her heart's whole history.</p> + +<p>To keep Ernest from thinking much about money matters, Miss Theodora had +discouraged intimacies with her richer distant relatives—excepting only +the Digbys. This one exception in the case of the Digbys needed no +justification in her mind. Had not Stuart been John's best friend? Thus +Ernest, growing up in the simple West End neighborhood, had little +opportunity to make uncomfortable contrasts between his aunt's way of +living and that of richer people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> Had Ralph and Ernest been more +congenial, Ernest might have been drawn into Ralph's set, made up of the +boys of his own age with the largest claims on the so-called society of +Boston. As it had been, Ralph and his friends formed a little world +apart from Ernest and his interests. With Ben as full confidant and +adviser, Ernest was naturally well content with his own lot. For Ben, +with so much less than Ernest had of the things that money gives, was +always happy—apparently happy and absorbed in his studies. Ernest knew +of course that he himself must be economical,—his aunt had often said +so; but sometimes he thought that this economy was only one of her +fancies,—she was so unlike other people in many ways. Especially +probable did this seem when she gave him a liberal allowance for +Harvard. He did not know, until Richard Somerset told him, that a bank +failure a few years before had taken five thousand dollars of Miss +Theodora's small capital, and that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> a mortgage of almost the same amount +had been put on the house to enable her to carry out her plans for Ernest.</p> + +<p>But Ernest's happy ignorance was now at an end. If his summer in Europe, +his year in college, had done nothing else for him, these things had +given him a desire for a larger life than he had had. Unless they take +form in action desires of this kind may end in mere discontent, to eat +into the heart of their possessor. Rightly directed, they will carry him +along a path at the end of which, even if unsuccessful, he will at least +have pleasure in remembering that he tried to reach a definite goal.</p> + +<p>Thus Ernest, disturbed by the fact that his college course was less +satisfactory to him than he had expected it to be, confronted by the +knowledge that money, or lack of money, plays a large part in every-day +affairs, overwhelmed by his discovery of the meagreness of his aunt's +possessions, still hesitated a little as to his own duty.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap15.jpg" width='300' height='284' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XV.</span></h2> + +<p>Ernest's final decision was closely interwoven with a ride from +Cambridge in an open horse-car one warm spring evening. Though his mind +during this ride was constantly going over the subject that now lay near +his heart, it afterward seemed to him as if he could recall every step +of the way, so curiously sometimes does the external world weave itself +into our mental processes. Long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> afterward he remembered that at first +in the dim light he had noticed people, young and old, children or girls +in light dresses, sitting on the piazzas or moving about the wide lawns +of the houses near the Square. Next he saw the business blocks with +their shops, in front of which groups of young men were lounging. +Over-dressed girls and other young men promenaded the sidewalks in front +of the shops, and he caught the occasional note of a loud laugh or a +flippant remark. Farther on, rows of unpretentious dwellings, ending at +last in unmistakable tenement houses, stamped themselves on his mind, +with half-tidy women, men in their shirt sleeves, and little children +crowding the doorways. Across the muddy flats and the broad river they +might see, as he saw, the pretty hilly country beyond. Were they +gossiping and scolding, much as they would gossip and scold in their +narrow room? Perhaps for the time, like Ernest himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> they knew the +peaceful influence of the perfect evening.</p> + +<p>The indescribable May softness had, he felt sure, more than a little to +do with his own exultation. His way opened perfectly clear before him. +The arguments that he should use with his aunt stood out plainly +defined. Go on longer as he had been doing!—he shivered at the thought.</p> + +<p>Finding Miss Theodora alone in the twilight, he realized as never before +the pathos of her lonely life. In saying what he was going to say he +knew that he must shatter one of her cherished idols.</p> + +<p>"In time, of course, she'll know that I have been right," he said to +himself. Yet it required more than a little courage to speak, to argue +with her against things that he knew she held so dear.</p> + +<p>Though he hardly knew how it came about, the discussion ended, to +Ernest's own surprise, with the advantage on his side. His skilful +fashion of handling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> statistics told strongly in his favor, perhaps; for +he proved to his aunt's satisfaction that it would be many, many years +before he could probably support himself on a lawyer's income. He had +figures and facts to show what he was certain to earn as soon as he +began to practise engineering.</p> + +<p>"But, Ernest," said Miss Theodora, "if you do not want to be a lawyer +after you are graduated, there are many other things you might do +without sacrificing your position in life." For although Miss Theodora +knew well enough that mining engineers were not the same as the +engineers whom she had seen on locomotives and steamboats, yet she felt +that engineers in general, by reason of grimy hands and faces, were +forever cut off from good society.</p> + +<p>"What else can I find to do?" he insisted, "that would be as interesting +and pay as well?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I think that you could get into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> the treasurer's office of the +Nashawapag Mills. Richard Somerset has great influence there."</p> + +<p>"Now, Aunt Teddy, you wouldn't want me to be a book-keeper the rest of +my life,—for that is all I'd be; and as for salary, unless I stayed +there thirty or forty years, until those at the top died, I suppose that +I could make a little more than a bare living, but it wouldn't be much more."</p> + +<p>Then Miss Theodora, who could think of very few occupations outside of +the learned professions in which a young man of good family might +properly engage, at last surrendered to Ernest's arguments.</p> + +<p>"We have so very little money," said Ernest, after he had let her know +that Richard Somerset had told him how slight their resources were; "we +are so poor, that in a few years I know that I would have to beg or +borrow, and I'm sure you would not wish me to do one any more than the other."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"No, indeed," exclaimed his aunt.</p> + +<p>"You see," he went on, "I am acquiring very extravagant tastes at +Cambridge. There's no place like it for making you want money, if you +once begin to contrast yourself with fellows who have plenty."</p> + +<p>"But I thought you were independent," sighed poor Miss Theodora.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I should be if I were really interested in my work," replied +Ernest; "but, you see, I can't throw myself into my studies as I ought to."</p> + +<p>It is to be feared that Ernest was worse than a little artful in thus +painting himself as black as he could. He did not tell his aunt, what +really was the truth, that it was harder for him to give up Harvard now +than it would have been six months before. He had begun to have his own +group of special friends; he had begun to enjoy many phases of college +life. Despite certain distasteful studies, he might have gone through +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>college without special discredit. He might have taken his degree, as +many of his classmates would, with considerable culture and very little +practical knowledge clinging to him. He trembled when he saw that he +could take so kindly to dawdling ways. But his Puritan conscience +interposed. When he knew how really poor they were, his love for his +aunt and his pride all imparted to him a firmness at which he himself marvelled.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap16.jpg" width='300' height='196' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XVI.</span></h2> + +<p>Miss Theodora gave in, partly because she herself had begun to see that +she might wrong Ernest by insisting on his carrying out her ideas. His +poor rank in the classics showed a mind unlike that of his father or his +grandfather. When she saw his brow darken at mention of the work he must +do to get off his condition in Greek, she remembered how cheerful he had +once been whistling over his work in his basement room. She longed to +see him again engaged in congenial work or studies. Therefore, without +vigorous defence, the castle in Spain which she had founded on Ernest's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +professional career fell under Ernest's direct assault. But she was +disappointed, and although she did not go out of her way to look for +sympathy, she accepted all that Miss Chatterwits and Diantha offered +her. The former really believed that Harvard was the only institution in +the United States in which a young man could get the higher education.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said, "as I ever heard of a great man—that is, a +scholar, for I don't forget some of the Presidents—that hadn't +graduated at Harvard. Not but what a man might be great, I suppose, that +wasn't what you would call a scholar; but I did think that Ernest would +follow right after his grandfather, not to speak of his father. And all +the books you've saved for him, too, Miss Theodora!—it does seem too bad."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I still expect Ernest to be a great man," said Miss Theodora, a +trifle dubiously. "I am sure that he has shown considerable talent +already for inventing things."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>"Ye-es," was Miss Chatterwits' doubtful response. "Ye-es,—but it seems +as if most of the things has been invented that's at all likely to give +a man a great reputation,—the telegraphs and steamboats and steam +engines, not to mention sewing machines, which I must say has made a +great difference in my work."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, sometimes men benefit the world by inventing some little +thing, or making an improvement—well, in steam engines or something of +that kind."</p> + +<p>"I dare say,—I haven't any doubt but Ernest'll be smarter than any boy +in the school where he's going. But it always did seem to me that +studies of that kind were well enough for Ben Bruce—and such; but +Ernest,—he seems to belong out at Harvard."</p> + +<p>This was unkind—for Miss Chatterwits really liked Ben Bruce very much. +But lately she had had one or two rather wordy encounters with Mrs. +Bruce when they had met by chance at a neighbor's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> house. The little +dressmaker was fond of "drawing the line," as she said, and relegating +people, in conversation, at least, to their proper places. Mrs. Bruce +had similar proclivities; but with less accurate data on which to base +her classification of her neighbors, she sometimes made mistakes on +which Miss Chatterwits was bound to frown.</p> + +<p>"If I went about sewing from house to house," said Mrs. Bruce, "I +suppose I might know more about people than I do; but being in private +life, it isn't to be supposed I know much but what has been handed down +to me in my own family."</p> + +<p>"Well, if you went about sewing from house to house," said Miss +Chatterwits, "you'd be more use to your family than you are now." With +which last word Miss Chatterwits had flounced away, and for a time spoke +somewhat depreciatingly of the Bruces, although in her heart she envied +them their Revolutionary ancestor.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>Miss Theodora had no petty pride. She liked Ben; she knew that he was a +good friend for Ernest, and the one thing that reconciled her to the +change in Ernest's career was the fact that, for a year at least, he +would be able to have much help and advice from Ben. After the latter +should get his scientific degree, he would probably leave Boston; but +for the present she knew that his friendship would mean much to Ernest.</p> + +<p>Ernest spent six weeks of the summer after his decision about college at +a quiet seashore village with Ben. Ben tutored Ernest in various +branches in which he was deficient, and proved an even better friend to +him than Miss Theodora had hoped. Sometimes, as they sat in a little +cove at the edge of the water, letting their books fall from their +hands, gazing at the crescent-shaped Plymouth shore, they would talk of +many things outside of their work. Ben was an enthusiast about the early +history of New England.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> He loved to theorize over the country's +possibilities, and to trace its present greatness from the principles +planted by the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies. Once as they sat +there talking, Ernest exclaimed: "Those men were workers, Ben! Sometimes +I think that we are all wrong today,—we attach so much importance to +books. Now, I believe that I should have been much better off now and +happier if I could have gone at once to work two or three years ago, +instead of undertaking—"</p> + +<p>But Ben interrupted him. "Oh, no! you are wrong. You do not realize your +privileges. Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that I envied you your +chance of going to Harvard. It would have been my choice to go there if +I could. But the Institute was more practical, and I dare say was the +best for me. Only—don't make too little account of your advantages, Ernest."</p> + +<p>What Ben said was true enough. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> own mind was essentially that of the +scholar. He could have gone on forever acquiring knowledge. He had no +desire to put it at once to the practical use to which necessity +compelled him. Yet, understanding Ernest's temperament, he had not +discouraged him from leaving college, and he stood ready to help him to +the utmost in his scientific work.</p> + +<p>Many a time, however, with no envious mind, he had wished that it had +been his to change places with Ernest. What delightful hours, he +thought, he could have passed within the gray walls of the college +library! He would have been no more inclined than Ernest, perhaps, to +follow Miss Theodora's plans for a lawyer's career. No; he would have +aimed rather to be a Harvard professor. Had fortune favored him, he +would have spent a long time in post-graduate study, not only at +Cambridge, but at some foreign university. "What folly!" he would then +suddenly cry; "life is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>practical." But while doing the duty that lay +nearest, he knew well enough that Harvard would have meant infinitely +more to him than his chosen course.</p> + +<p>During two years only of Ernest's Technology course were he and Ben +together. When the latter was graduated he went West at once to begin +his contest for the honors and the wealth which were to work that +wonderful change in the affairs of his family. But Ernest had started +well, and even without his friend's guidance he kept on in the path he +had marked out. To give an account of the four years of his work would +be to tell a rather monotonous story. This was not because he allowed +his life to be a mere routine—far from this. While he worked +energetically during the winter, he managed to find time for recreation. +Society, so-called, did not interest him. But he had a group of friends, +of fixed purpose like his own, who were still sufficiently boyish to +enjoy life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> With them he took long walks in search of geological +specimens, inviting them home on winter evenings to share Miss +Theodora's simple tea.</p> + +<p>From some of these Western friends of Ernest's, with a point of view so +unlike her own, Miss Theodora gained an entirely different outlook on +life. Ernest had impressed on her the fact that the West was to be his +home, at least, until he had made a lot of money. She began, therefore, +to take an interest, not only in these Westerners, with their broad +pronunciation, but in the Western country itself. She re-read "The +Oregon Trail"; she read one or two other books of Western travel. She +studied the topography of Colorado and Nevada in her old atlas, and she +always noted in the newspapers chance scraps of information about that distant region.</p> + +<p>Nahant knew Ernest no more in summer. His long vacation was always spent +elsewhere in practical field work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> He almost dropped out of the lives +of those who had known him so well as a little boy. At the same time, he +had enough social diversion. In the new set of which he now formed one +there was always more or less going on. The sisters of some of his +friends invited him to their dances. He seemed so heartily to enjoy his +new popularity that Kate realized, with a certain pain, that he was +drawing away from her; that he was departing far from that pleasant old +West End life. There was an irony of fate in remembering that by using +her influence in the direction of the new work which Ernest had +undertaken, she had helped to send him farther away.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap17.jpg" width='300' height='251' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XVII.</span></h2> + +<p>When the die was finally cast, Miss Theodora wisely kept to herself her +disappointment at Ernest's change of plan. Her life thus far had +accustomed her to disappointments. What a pang she had felt, for +example, some years after leaving it, when she heard that the old family +house on the hill had become a boarding house! How disturbed she had +been, walking up Beacon Street one day, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> see workmen tearing down one +of the most dignified of the old purple-windowed houses, once the home +of intimate friends of hers, to make way for an uglier if more ornate +structure! What an intrusion she felt the car tracks to be which run +through Charles Street across Beacon Street, connecting the South and +the West Ends of the city! Miss Theodora's Boston was not so large but +that it could be traversed by any healthy person on foot; and she agreed +with Miss Chatterwits when she exclaimed, "What in the world has the +West End to do with Roxbury Neck?"</p> + +<p>Real trials, like Ernest's change of plan, Miss Theodora was able to +bear with surprising equanimity. She had not even quailed when she made +that discovery, hardest of all even for a sensible woman, that she was +growing old. The first rude shock had come one day in a horse-car, when +she heard an over-dressed young mother say to her little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> son in a loud +whisper: "Give the old lady a seat." Before this Miss Theodora had +certainly not thought of herself as old; but looking in the glass on her +return home, she saw that the youth had vanished from her face. For +though the over-dressed young mother might have said "oldish" more truly +than "old," yet Miss Theodora realized that the change had come.</p> + +<p>What it was she could scarcely define, save that there were now long +lines on her cheek where once there had been curves, that her eyes were +perhaps less bright, that gray hairs had begun to appear, and that +certainly she had less color than formerly. All these changes had not +come in a day, and yet in a day, in an hour, Miss Theodora realized +them. As she looked in the mirror and saw that her gray hairs were still +few enough to count, she glanced below the glass to the little faded +photograph on the table. John had passed into the land of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>perpetual +youth, and William, that other, had he begun to show the marks of age?</p> + +<p>Thus she wondered as she gazed at the young man with the longish, thick +hair, at which Ernest had sometimes laughed. But she seldom let her mind +wander in this direction, and she turned it now toward other friends of +her girlhood, of whom some occasionally flitted across her vision. The +most of those who had been her contemporaries the winter she came out +were now married. Of these, she could not recall one who had not +"married well," as the phrase is. Were they growing old more gracefully +than she? Would she change places with any one of those portly matrons, +absorbed now in family or social interests? The sphere of the unmarried +few was unattractive to her. The causes, whether literary or +philanthropic, into which the majority threw themselves had certainly no +charm for her. She could not have worked for the Indians after the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> +manner of her cousin Sarah Somerset. To her the Indian race seemed too +cruel for the enthusiasm lavished on it by a certain group of Boston women.</p> + +<p>When her father had verged toward Transcendentalism she had lagged +behind, and more modern "isms" were even farther out of her reach. She +listened dubiously to rhapsodies by one of her cousins on the immense +spiritual value of the Vedas. Woman suffrage! Well, she had only one +friend who waxed eloquent over this, and Miss Theodora, although on the +whole liberal-minded, was repelled from a study of the question by the +peculiarities of dress and manner affected by some of its devotees. Even +Culture itself, with a capital letter, and all that this implies could +never have been a fad of hers. The books people talked about now were so +different from those that she had been accustomed to; she knew nothing +about modern French literature, and her friends cared nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> for Miss +Ferrier or Crabbe. After all, Miss Theodora would not have changed +places with one of these friends of her youth, married or unmarried, +with their tablets covered with social engagements or note-books crammed +with appointments for meetings or lectures. She found her own life sufficiently full.</p> + +<p>That she was growing old brought her little worry, coming as it did at +the same time with the change in Ernest's plans. Although she would have +been very slow to admit it, Kate's thorough approval of Ernest's new +career modified Miss Theodora's own view of it. Unconsciously she had +begun to dream of a united fortune for Kate and Ernest; for in her eyes +the two were perfectly adapted to each other.</p> + +<p>"There's a prospect of your amounting to something now," she heard Kate +say to Ernest one day. "You haven't been at all like yourself this +winter, and I just believe that college would have ruined you," she continued frankly.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>It was Kate who pointed out to Miss Theodora the perils that surrounded +a young man who was not very much interested in his work at Cambridge.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course you ought to know, for you have a brother in college."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear me, Ernest and Ralph aren't a bit alike. Ernest would always +be different from Ralph, I should hope." For Kate and Ralph, since their +childhood, had gone on very different paths.</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not afraid of Ernest's growing like Ralph; but I know that +Ernest is more easily influenced than you think, and it's a good thing +that he's going to have studies that will interest him." All of which +seemed to Miss Theodora to augur well for the plans which she had formed +for these two young people.</p> + +<p>To Ernest Kate spoke even more frankly than to his aunt. "I knew that +you'd do it," she said, "and I feel almost sure that you'll make a great +man, and really you will be able to help your aunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> much sooner than if +you began to study law. As soon as possible I want Cousin Theodora to +have lots of money. She won't accept anything from me, and you have no +idea how many things there are that she needs money for."</p> + +<p>So Ernest, encouraged by the good opinion of the young woman he cared +most for, made less than he might have made of the older woman's +disappointment. He made less of it, perhaps, because, with the +confidence of youth, he believed the time near when she would admit that +he had done the very best thing for them both.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap18.jpg" width='300' height='247' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XVIII.</span></h2> + +<p>Mrs. Fetchum pressed her face close to the window pane to watch Miss +Theodora enter her door.</p> + +<p>"It seems to me Miss Theodora ain't quite as firm on her feet as she +used to be. Don't you think she stoops some?" she said to her husband.</p> + +<p>"Miss Theodora's getting along," was the answer. "She's not as young as she was."</p> + +<p>"She isn't older than Mrs. Stuart Digby, but she's had a sight more +care. Well, speaking of angels, there she is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> now,"—and the good +woman's voice trembled with excitement as Mrs. Digby's victoria drew up +before Miss Theodora's door.</p> + +<p>From time to time Mrs. Digby's horses scornfully pawed the pavement in +front of Miss Theodora's house, while the owner waited for her cousin to +get ready for the drive. Miss Theodora never greatly enjoyed these +drives, for a certain condescension in Mrs. Digby's manner always +disturbed her. She knew, too, that she was seldom invited unless the +latter had some object of her own to serve. On the present occasion they +were hardly seated in the carriage before the special purpose of this +drive was revealed.</p> + +<p>"Kate is a great trial to me, Theodora. Would you believe, I can't get +her to take the least interest in society? Why, I couldn't make her go +to the cotillions this winter. With her bright manner she would be very +popular; and it's too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> provoking to think, after all the advantages +she's had, she fairly throws herself away on old ladies and colored +children,—and I do wish that you'd help me."</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora trembled as if guilty herself of some misdeed. "What can I +do?" she asked faintly, knowing well enough that it was she who had +interested Kate in the Old Ladies' Home and the colored children.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Digby seemed to read her thoughts. "Of course, I don't want her to +give up her reading to the old ladies altogether. But I do wish you +could make her realize her obligations to society. I can't myself. Why, +she refuses all invitations, and hardly ever goes even to her sewing +circle. The next thing she'll be taking vows at St. Margaret's or doing +something equally absurd."</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora, though aware of the hopelessness of so doing, promised to +use her influence with Kate.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Digby herself was born for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>society, and it was a trial even +greater than she had represented to Miss Theodora that her daughter +should be so indifferent to the great world.</p> + +<p>"Kate has style," she said to her cousin, "and manner, and if she only +would exert herself to please my friends to the extent that she exerts +herself to please nobodies, I should have little to complain of. Poor +Stuart's death was very unfortunate, happening just the winter Kate was +ready to come out. It put an end, of course, to all the plans I had made +for her among the younger set. She didn't mind missing balls and parties +herself, for she never cared for that kind of thing; but I do think, now +that she is out of mourning, that she might take a little interest in +society, and at least accept some of the dinner invitations she has."</p> + +<p>"But she does go out a good deal, doesn't she?" began Miss Theodora, +remembering some of Kate's humorous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> accounts of amusing episodes +connected with various little dinner parties she had attended.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; I often insist on her going with me; and once in a while there +is some invitation she really wishes to accept. But it is the duty of a +girl of her age to be seen more in society; and I do wish that she could +be made to understand that she owes something to her position and to her family."</p> + +<p>"Well, I will speak to her," said Miss Theodora, "but I doubt if I can +influence her to any great extent."</p> + +<p>"Indeed you can," responded Mrs. Digby. "You know how I feel, I am sure. +I don't want Kate to be an old maid, and she's older now than I was when +I married. Thus far, she has not had the slightest interest in any young +man, although she has plenty of admirers. Perhaps I ought to be thankful +for this, for it would be just in line with her general perversity for +her to fall in love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> with some thoroughly unsuitable person."</p> + +<p>Possibly Miss Theodora, with Ernest ever in mind, was unusually +sensitive in detecting undue emphasis in Mrs. Digby's pronunciation of +"any" when she said that Kate had not the "slightest interest in any +young man." Or perhaps Mrs. Digby, too, had Ernest in mind when she made +this sweeping statement.</p> + +<p>Two people could hardly be more unlike than Kate and her mother. Mrs. +Digby was of dark complexion, of commanding figure, though not over +tall, and she lived for society. Kate was blond, with a half-timid, +though straightforward air, and she was as anxious to keep far from the +whirl of things as her mother was to be active in her little set. Mrs. +Digby had worn heavy mourning for her husband the exact length of time +demanded by strict propriety. But just as soon as she could,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> she laid +aside her veil and, indeed, crepe in every form, and gave outer shape to +her grief by clothing herself in becoming black relieved by abundant +trimmings of dull jet.</p> + +<p>"I could wish Mrs. Digby no worse punishment," said one of her intimate +enemies, "than to be condemned to attend a round of dinners in a +high-necked gown." From which it might truly be inferred that Mrs. Digby +herself was thought to have no mean opinion of Mrs. Digby arrayed in +conventional dinner attire. Yet her most becoming low-necked gown Mrs. +Digby could have given up almost more readily than the dinners which she +had to sacrifice in her year of mourning. She had been fond of her +husband, no one could deny that. But, after all, she missed him less +than the outside world thought she missed him. He and she had led +decidedly separate lives for many years before his death, and, indeed, +in the early years the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> stress of feeling had been more on his side than +on hers. She was not long, therefore, in returning to a round of gayety, +somewhat subdued, to be sure, but still "something to take me away from +myself and my grief," she occasionally said half-apologetically to those +who, like Miss Theodora, she knew must be surprised at her return to the +world. On this particular occasion, after making her request for Miss +Theodora's influence with Kate, she continued:</p> + +<p>"If it were not for Ralph I do not know what I should do. He goes +everywhere with me, and is perfectly devoted to society. Now, in his +case, I almost hope he won't marry. I should hate to give him up to any +one else. But he is so fastidious that I know it will be some time +before he settles upon any one,—although I must say that he is a great +favorite."</p> + +<p>This was the early autumn after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> Ralph's graduation. He had gone through +Harvard very creditably, and had even had honorable mention in history +and modern languages. Mrs. Digby, however, with all her pride in her +son, felt that the large income which he drew went for other than +legitimate college expenses. As a woman of the world, she said that +Ralph could not be so very unlike the men who were his associates, and +she knew that certain rumors about them and their doings could not be +wholly false. Nevertheless, she seldom reproved her son, and she even +took pride in his self-possessed and ultra-worldly manner. Surely that +kind of thing was infinitely better form than Kate's self-consciousness +and Puritan frankness.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Digby graced a victoria even more truly than she graced a +low-necked gown. Indeed, to the many who, never having had the good +fortune to see her in a drawing-room, knew her only by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> name and sight +as she rolled through the streets, she and the victoria seemed +inseparable, a kind of modernized centaur. It was impossible for such +people to think of her in any other attitude than that of haughty +semi-erectness on the ample cushions of her carriage.</p> + +<p>On this particular day, as Mrs. Digby drove down Beacon Street, and +thence by the river over the Milldam, she met many friends and bowed to them.</p> + +<p>"Who in the world has Mrs. Digby got with her today?" some of them would +ask their companions, in the easy colloquialism of every-day life.</p> + +<p>"I haven't the faintest idea, but she's a rather out-of-date-looking old +person," was the usual reply, although occasionally some one would +identify Miss Theodora, usually adding: "I knew her when she was a girl, +but she's certainly very much changed. Well, that's what comes of living +out of the world."</p> + +<p>These drives with Mrs. Digby always made Miss Theodora feel her own +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>loneliness. In this city—this Boston—which had always been her own +home and the home of her family, she had few friends. She could hardly +have known fewer people if living in a foreign city. It was therefore +with a start of relief that she heard Mrs. Digby exclaim:</p> + +<p>"Why, there's Ernest, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora glanced ahead. Nearsighted though she was, she had no +trouble in recognizing her nephew's broad shoulders and swinging gait. +But the young man was not alone. He was walking rather slowly, and +bending toward a girl in a close-fitting tailor-made suit. It was the +end of October, too early for furs, yet the girl was anticipating the +winter fashions. One end of a long fuzzy boa flaunted itself over her +shoulder, stirred, like the heavy ostrich plumes in her hat, by the afternoon breeze.</p> + +<p>"It isn't Kate, is it?" said Miss Theodora, dubiously, as the carriage +drew near the pair.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p><p>"No, indeed, not Kate," quickly answered Mrs. Digby.</p> + +<p>"I wonder who it can be," continued Miss Theodora, for she could not +help observing Ernest's tender air toward the girl.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm sure I can't say, Theodora. It's certainly no one I know; but +Kate—or perhaps it was Ralph—has been saying something about a +flirtation of Ernest's with some girl he met somewhere last year." Then +seeing that Miss Theodora looked downcast: "Oh, it isn't likely it's +anything serious, Theodora; it's only what you must expect at his age, +and of course his interests are all so different now from what you had +expected, that it isn't surprising to find him flirting or falling in +love with girls whom you and I know nothing about."</p> + +<p>By this time the carriage had passed the two young people, and Ernest +was so absorbed in his companion that he did not even see it rolling by.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap19.jpg" width='300' height='246' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XIX.</span></h2> + +<p>Poor Miss Theodora! One walk on a public thoroughfare with a girl +heretofore unknown to one's relatives need not imply the surrender of a +young man's affections; but Ernest, so his aunt thought, was not like +other young men. He would be sincere in a matter of this kind. If his +interest in any girl had been so marked as to be a subject of comment +for Ralph and Kate, it must be known to many other people. Yet why had +Kate not spoken to her, as well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> as to her mother; or why had not Ernest +himself suggested the direction in which his fancy was wandering? Many +questions like these crowded Miss Theodora's mind, for which she had no +satisfactory answer. Strangest of all,—and she could hardly account for +her own reticence,—she said not a word to Kate nor to Ernest of all +this that lay so near her heart. If Ben had been at home, she might have +talked freely to him. He could have told whether or not Mrs. Digby's +surmises were correct. But Ben had been in the West for a year and a +half. If he had been at home, she thought, perhaps this would never have +happened. Yet, after all, what was the "this" which so disturbed Miss +Theodora's usually calm mind? What were the signs by which she +recognized that Ernest had secrets which he did not confide to her?</p> + +<p>The signs, though few, to her were positive. Ernest had begun to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> +more interest in society. While studying diligently, he also found time +for more or less gayety. In the left-hand corner of his top bureau +drawer there was a heap of dance programmes and progressive euchre +tally-cards. Kate had seen them one day when helping Miss Theodora put +Ernest's room in order. She had given a scornful "No" when the former +asked her if she had been at a dance whose date was indicated on a certain programme.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I know you seldom go to dances, but still I thought perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Cousin Theodora, I haven't been at a dance this winter; and as to +these parties that Ernest has been going to—there was a set of them, +wasn't there? I really don't recognize the names of any of the managers."</p> + +<p>Now this reply was not reassuring to Miss Theodora, who had a vague hope +that Kate and Ernest met occasionally in society. Then Kate continued:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>"Ernest is really growing very giddy. Just look at that heap of +neckties. I should say some of them had not been worn twice, and then he +has flung them down as if he didn't intend to wear them again."</p> + +<p>Now in the midst of her railing, Kate stopped. In the back of the +drawer, behind the neckties, she had caught sight of a photograph,—it +was the face of a girl she had seen before,—and she closed the drawer +with a snap that made Miss Theodora look up quickly from her task of +dusting the books on Ernest's study table. Just then Diantha passed the door.</p> + +<p>"I've been telling Miss Theodora," she cried, with the familiarity of an +old servant, "I've been telling Miss Theodora that I believe Mast' +Ernest's in love. He don't spend much time with us now, and I reckon +'tain't study that takes him out every evening. I shouldn't wonder if +you knows more about it than we do,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>—and Diantha rolled her large eyes +significantly at Kate.</p> + +<p>But Kate was silent, and Miss Theodora was silent, and Diantha, with a +toss of the head and arms akimbo, passed on to her little attic room. +Nor when she was gone did the two ladies speak to each other of the +thing which lay so near their hearts.</p> + +<p>Now, Miss Theodora, until driven thereto by Mrs. Digby, had never +contemplated the possibility of Ernest's taking a tender interest in any +one not approved by her. She had never resented Sarah Fetchum's +addressing him by his first name, even after he had entered college and +Sarah herself was almost through the Normal School. She could invite +Sarah and her intimate friend, Estelle Tibbits, to take tea with her +without any fear that Ernest would fall in love with either of them.</p> + +<p>Unaware, apparently, of his aunt's solicitude, Ernest continued to mix a +little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> play with the hard work of his last year of study. Miss +Theodora, at least, had no reason to complain of neglect from him. He +went with her to the Old West Church on Sunday morning as willingly as +ever he had gone in the days of his childhood. Indeed, as a little boy +she had often had to urge him unduly to go with her, and sometimes he +would try to beg off with the well-worn plea that he "hated sermons." +Later, as they sat in the high-backed pew which they shared with the +Somersets, Miss Theodora would notice the boy's fair head moving +restlessly from side to side.</p> + +<p>As years passed on Ernest grew as fond as his aunt of the old church, +with its plain white ceiling and gallery, supported by simple columns, +and its tablets in honor of men of a bygone age. If sometimes on Sunday +afternoons he went to Trinity Church, contented to stand for an hour in +the crowded aisle to hear the uplifting words of the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> preacher, he +never made this later service an excuse for neglecting his aunt's +church. In this, as in almost all other matters in which she had marked +preferences, Ernest gave Miss Theodora little ground for complaint.</p> + +<p>Toward the end of his Technology course Ernest made all his other +interests bend to study. No longer had he any evening engagements to +worry his aunt. He read late into the night. His thesis occupied most of +his day, for it involved an immense amount of practical work in a +factory out of town. As Miss Theodora observed his zeal, as she heard +reports of his good standing in his class, she could but contrast this +state of affairs with his unsatisfactory year at Harvard.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap20.jpg" width='300' height='342' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XX.</span></h2> + +<p>"Isn't it perfectly splendid?" cried Kate, who, in spite of a general +precision of speech, was not above using an occasional superlative. Miss +Theodora had been less than human had she contradicted her young cousin, +whose words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> referred to Ernest's thesis. For, although it bristled with +scientific terms which they understood hardly as well as the majority of +his auditors, Miss Theodora and Kate listened eagerly to every word. "Of +course, you're proud of him; now you can't say you're not;"—and the +young girl gave her cousin's hand a squeeze which the elder woman +returned with interest. That his relatives were not partial was proved +by the newspapers the next morning, for they made especial mention of +Ernest, and said that he seemed likely to add new honors to the +distinguished name he bore. Though Miss Theodora would have preferred to +see Ernest in flowing gown on the Sanders Theatre platform, with the +Governor and his staff and distinguished professors and noted alumni in +the background, she did not express her regrets to Kate. A Harvard +Commencement is unlike any other, and Kate, who realized this as +strongly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>almost as Miss Theodora did, whispered, "Please don't think +you're sorry that it isn't a Harvard A. B."</p> + +<p>How could any one who loved him be otherwise than happy to see Ernest in +so cheerful a mood, smiling at his aunt and Kate, bowing to Miss +Chatterwits, who had a good seat near the front? If only he had not +rushed up in one of the intermissions to speak to that piquant-looking +girl in the large white hat, whom Kate from a distance regarded with an +air of interest mixed with disdain.</p> + +<p>After the excitement of this last day, Ernest, contrary to his usual +habit, was moody and restless. Miss Theodora watched him narrowly. She +had hoped when the pressure of work was removed that he would settle +down into calm ways, and put off as long as possible the inevitable +decision about his future career. Must he, she wondered, must he really +go to that great indefinite West, which years before had seemed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> +grave of a large share of her happiness?</p> + +<p>Ernest himself soon put an end to her wondering.</p> + +<p>"Come, Aunt Teddy," he said one morning, drawing her beside him on the +massive sofa that faced the bookcase, with its rows of neglected law +books; "let us talk over my future. How soon can I go? I am lounging +about here too long."</p> + +<p>"Go?" she queried. "Go where?"—though in her heart she knew very well.</p> + +<p>"Now don't equivocate; it isn't natural for you, Aunt Theodora; you are +generally so straightforward. Don't you remember that I told you that I +might have a good offer to go to Colorado? Well, it has come."</p> + +<p>Whereupon Ernest proceeded to read a letter offering him a definite +position and a stated salary with a certain mining company, and the +letter was signed "William Easton."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it fine to have such a chance?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> said the young man, looking up, +and noting a surprising change in his aunt's face. She had grown +extremely pale, and he saw that she was trembling.</p> + +<p>"William Easton," she said, without answering his question; "how strange!"</p> + +<p>Then there flashed across Ernest's mind his cousin Richard's warning +against mentioning Mr. Easton to his aunt. Of course, the time for +silence on this point had now passed,—and he continued:</p> + +<p>"Yes; perhaps I may not have mentioned Mr. Easton's name before; but I +didn't know that you would recall it. You've heard me speak of him, of +course, the president of the Wampum and Etna, whom I met on the +Altruria. He's as good as his word, and though I haven't heard from him +for two years, here's this letter offering me the very chance he said he +would give me—all on account of my father, I suppose. They must have +been greater friends than I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> thought,"—looking questioningly toward +Miss Theodora.</p> + +<p>"Yes, they were great friends," answered she, "and I knew him very well +too, but I would almost rather not have you accept his offer."</p> + +<p>"Just because I shall have to go so far away, I suppose. Now, what else +would you have me do?"</p> + +<p>"Surely there are other chances in Boston. You can find something to do here."</p> + +<p>"If I could, I wouldn't," replied the young man. "Now, what would be the +sense in staying here? Of course, I could get something to do, there's +no doubt of that; but it would be wicked to refuse an offer like this."</p> + +<p>"Why not begin here and gradually work up? We don't need so very much +money, Ernest—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Aunt Teddy, I do. What would you say if I told you I thought of +getting married?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p><p>"You—you—get married!" and Miss Theodora actually blushed. Then +recollecting herself, "I am delighted," she said. "Kate is a dear girl. +Not a bit like her mother."</p> + +<p>"Kate! It isn't Kate," stammered the young man; and Miss Theodora, with +a sudden revulsion of feeling, recalled many things that she had almost +forgotten. Much that she had not understood was now explained. There was +somebody, after all, whom Ernest cared for—and it wasn't Kate.</p> + +<p>"Who is the young lady?" she asked with some dignity.</p> + +<p>"Why, Eugenie. Haven't you heard me speak of Eugenie Kurtz?"</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said, "it isn't an engagement, or I would have told you +all about it or asked your advice, but it's all so uncertain. Her father—"</p> + +<p>"Who is her father?" asked Miss Theodora. "The name sounds familiar."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p><p>"Of course—you've seen it on his wagons, and I daresay you've been in +his shop, too. He's really the chief man in the firm, for, although his +partner's name stands first, Mr. Kurtz has really bought Brown out, all +but a small share."</p> + +<p>Then Miss Theodora remembered one of the best known retail shops in the +city, whose growth from small beginnings was often quoted as a striking +example of American energy. She remembered, too, that one +partner—perhaps both—had been referred to as of humble origin. This +remembrance came to her in a flash, and she took up Ernest's last words:</p> + +<p>"Her father—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, her father," repeated the young man, "won't consent to an +engagement at present. I've got to show what I can do in the world, and +so I must go West, where I can have room enough to move around." And +then Ernest digressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> into praise of Eugenie, her charms of person and +manner, her taste in dress, her ability in housekeeping, in which she +had had much experience since her mother's death. "You will call on her, +won't you?" he pleaded.</p> + +<p>But Miss Theodora would say neither yes nor no, as he named the street +where Eugenie lived. She knew this street very well. She had passed +through it several times in the evenings with Ernest. She had never +liked it, this long, new street, with its blocks of handsome +bay-windowed houses. How seldom were the curtains in these bay-windows +drawn close! She could not think well of people who left their rooms +thus immodestly exposed to the gaze of passers-by. Brought up as she had +been to regard lamp-light as a signal for the closing of blinds and +curtains, she always turned her head away from the windows revealing +beyond the daintily shaded lamp a glimpse of rooms furnished much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> more +gorgeously than any to which she was accustomed. These unshaded windows +had always seemed to her typical of the lives, of the minds, of the +dwellers in the bay-windowed houses—no retirement, no privacy, all show.</p> + +<p>To think that Ernest's interests should have begun to mingle with those +of people whom she could never, never care to know! Miss Theodora +sighed. Perhaps it was the best thing after all for Ernest to go West. +Absence might make him forget Eugenie. "At his age," thought Miss +Theodora, "it is ridiculous for him to imagine himself in love."</p> + +<p>Yet Ernest, though Miss Theodora knew it not, had been deeply in love +more than once before. There was that beautiful creature with the +reddish-brown hair—several years older than he, to be sure—whom he had +met on his passage back from Europe. What a joy it had been to walk the +deck with her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> while she confided all her past and present sorrows to +him! He did not tell her his feelings then—she might have laughed at +him. Later, how his heart had palpitated as he crossed the little +square, past the diminutive statues of Columbus and Aristides, to call +on her at the home of the sisterhood where she thought of taking vows! +How well she looked in the severe garb of the order! so saintly, indeed, +did she appear as she swept into the bare room, that he made only a +short call, recrossing the square more in love than ever, though in a sombre mood.</p> + +<p>A few months after, when he heard of the would-be devotee's marriage to +old Abram Tinker, that crabbed millionaire, he was surprised to find +himself so little disturbed. His happy disposition gave cynicism no +place even for a foothold, and soon he barely remembered this little +episode in his life. Eugenie, indeed, seemed to him the only woman he +had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> ever cared for. He longed to talk about her to Kate, but something +prevented his opening his heart to the latter. Nor was his aunt ready to +listen to him. He was amazed to find her so unsympathetic. Her +opposition to his going to the West had, however, disappeared. She even +hastened his preparations, and bade him good-bye at the last with unexpected cheerfulness.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap21.jpg" width='300' height='324' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XXI.</span></h2> + +<p>Ernest, travelling West, had plenty of time to wonder if, after all, the +present satisfied him. His answer on the whole was "yes." He had little +to regret in the past; he was hopeful, he was positive about the future. +A classmate travelled with him as far as Chicago, and this part of the +journey, broken by a few hours' stay at Niagara, seemed short enough. +Chicago itself, with its general air of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> business bustle and activity, +opened a new world to him. At the head office of the Wampum and Etna, +where letters awaited him from Mr. Easton, he found himself at once a +man of consequence—no longer the student, little more than schoolboy, +that he had been so lately in the eyes of most persons. Here the clerks +in the office bowed deferentially; the agent consulted him; evidently +Mr. Easton intended to give him much responsibility.</p> + +<p>In his day or two in the great city he drove or walked in the parks, +through the boulevards, and along the lake front. He grasped, as well as +he could in so short a time, the city's vastness, measured not alone by +extent of territory, by height of buildings, but by resources, the +amount of which he gathered from the fragments of talk that came to him +in his hurried interviews with various business men. Boston, looked at +with their eyes, through the large end of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> telescope, was almost +lost in a dwindling perspective. The West End,—how trivial all its +interests! Miss Theodora, Kate, Miss Chatterwits, Diantha,—well, these +loomed up a little larger than the city itself; and Eugenie—ah! she +filled the field of the telescope, until Ernest could see little else.</p> + +<p>After he had crossed the fertile fields of Illinois, and had watched the +green farms of Nebraska fade away into the dull brown, uncultivated +plains, he grew lonely, realizing how far he was from all that was +dearest to him. Would not Miss Theodora's heart have ached with a pain +deeper than that caused by this separation, could she have known that +all her years of devotion were obscured by the glamor of that one bright +year in which Ernest had felt sure of Eugenie's love.</p> + +<p>As he looked from the car window across the wide stretch of open +country, where the only objects between his eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> and the distant horizon +were a canvas-covered wagon or a solitary horseman, Ernest had more than +enough time for reflection. Would Eugenie be true to him? Of course; +surely that was not a doubt tugging at his heart-strings. Would her +father be more reasonable? His brow darkened a little as he thought of +his last interview with Mr. Kurtz.</p> + +<p>"No," the latter had said decidedly; "it is not worth while to talk of +an engagement. Time enough for that when you have shown what you can do. +As I understand it, you have no special prospects at present. At least, +it's to be proved whether you'll succeed in the West. I've known a good +many people to fail out there. I can't have Eugenie bound by an +indefinite engagement. I've worked hard for her, and she's used to +everything. What could you give her? If Eugenie married tomorrow, she'd +want just as much as she has to-day. She isn't the kind of a girl to +live<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> on nothing but love. I've talked with her, and know how she +feels."</p> + +<p>This last sentence had made Ernest shiver, and now, as it recurred to +him, he again wondered if, after all, Eugenie was less in earnest than he.</p> + +<p>He recalled the dignity with which Mr. Kurtz had drawn himself up as he said:</p> + +<p>"Besides, I'm not going to have Eugenie go into a family likely to look +down on her." Then, paying no attention to Ernest's protests, "Oh, yes, +I know what I'm talking about. I haven't done business in Boston for +nothing these forty years without knowing what they call the difference +between people. It isn't much more than skin deep, but they feel it, all +your people. I'm a self-made man, and I'm not ashamed of it. I don't ask +any favors of any one, and I don't want any—and I'm not anxious to have +my daughter go among people who will look down on her."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p><p>"But my people are so few," poor Ernest had said. "My aunt—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, your aunt—yes—people respect her, and she's very good to the +poor; but she was born in Boston, and she don't believe in marrying out +of her set any more than if she was a Hindoo—unless she's made +different from most Boston men and women. I know that I'm made of the +same flesh and blood as the rest of them. But then I wasn't born in +Boston, and perhaps my eyesight is clearer on that account. At any rate, +I'm going to do my duty by Eugenie."</p> + +<p>Then Ernest, reflecting on this conversation, from which he had gleaned +so little comfort, fell asleep, and when he awoke in the morning they +were not so very far from Denver. Far, far ahead, across the great +plateau, an irregular dark line showed clear against the morning sky. +"The Rockies," some one cried, and then he felt half like crying, half +like turning back. His new life had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> almost begun, and he was hardly +ready for it.</p> + +<p>Could Ernest have known Mr. Kurtz's true state of mind, he would have +had less reason for downheartedness. Eugenie's father saw in the young +man more promise than he cared to express. He liked Ernest's frankness +in speaking of his prospects; and he knew that he was no fortune hunter.</p> + +<p>By her friends Eugenie was called the most "stylish" girl of her set. +Always sure to be the leader's partner at the numerous Germans which +were then so in vogue, she was certainly popular. With no wish +ungratified by her father, she might have been more selfish than she +was. It is true that she always had her own way, but then, as she said, +when her father complained of this, "My own way is just as apt to +benefit other people as myself." Without planning any beneficences, she +did many little kindnesses to her friends. She had to have a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>companion +when she went to Europe, and so, although a chaperone had been already +provided, Mr. Kurtz cheerfully paid the expenses of a girl friend of +hers, who otherwise would have been unable to go; and many other similar +things added to her popularity.</p> + +<p>After a year at a finishing school in New York, she had returned home, +to find out that popularity in a small set is not everything. Some +persons said that a desire to climb had led her to single out Ernest for +especial favor. His name would be an open sesame to a great many Boston doors.</p> + +<p>The little circles of rich, self-made men, self-satisfied women in which +she moved did not touch that one in which she knew Ernest rightfully +belonged. When, innocently enough, Ernest would speak of some invitation +he had received, or would mention familiarly some one whose name for her +had a kind of sacredness, all this was like a drop from Tantalus' cup for poor Eugenie.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p><p>But Ernest, measuring himself by his lack rather than by his +possessions, never associated worldliness with Eugenie. He was +captivated by her beauty, by her vivacity, by her brilliancy in +repartee—Miss Theodora would have called the last "pertness." She spoke +to him of his aunt, whom she knew by sight, wished that she might know +her, and asked more about Kate Digby, who, Ernest said, was just like a sister to him.</p> + +<p>"I should like to meet her," said Eugenie; and Ernest, before he left +the city, had asked Kate to call on her.</p> + +<p>A curious expression, which he could not quite read, came over Kate's +face as she replied, "Really, I don't believe I can, Ernest; I haven't +time enough now to call on half the girls I know. There are a dozen +sewing circle calls that I've owed for a year, and it wouldn't be worth +while to begin with any new people."</p> + +<p>Nor, with all his attempts at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>persuasion, could Ernest get Miss +Theodora to take the least interest in Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"You know what I think about the whole matter," she said. "I won't dwell +on my disappointment, but it will be time enough for me to know her when +you are really engaged."</p> + +<p>What wonder that Ernest, nearing Denver, felt disheartened, oppressed by +his aunt's opposition, and the indefiniteness of his relations with Eugenie.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap22.jpg" width='300' height='210' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XXII.</span></h2> + +<p>Miss Theodora watered the morning-glories in the little yard behind the +house with sighs, if not with tears. It was a poor little garden, this +spot of greenery in the desert of back yards on which her windows +looked. The flowers which she cultivated were neither many nor rare. +Nasturtiums, sweet peas and morning-glories were dexterously trained to +hide the ugliness of the bare brown fence. She had a number of hardy +geraniums and a few low-growing things between the geraniums and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the +border of mignonette which edged the long, narrow garden bed. In one +corner of the yard there was the dead trunk of a pear tree, whose +crookedness Miss Theodora had tried to hide by trying to make a +quick-growing vine climb over it. Curiously enough, all these attempts +had been unsuccessful, and Ernest, commenting thereon, had said, laughingly:</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, Aunt Theodora, that stump is so ugly that not even the kitten +will climb over it."</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, there had been a time when the tree was full of leaves, +and Miss Theodora, glancing at it now, a month after her nephew's +departure, sighed, as she recalled how Ernest and Kate had loved to sit +in its shade. Sometimes they had played shop there, when Ernest was +always the clerk and Kate the buyer; but more often they had sat quietly +on warm spring afternoons, while Ernest read and Kate cut out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> paper +dolls from the fashion plates of an old magazine. Indeed, there were few +things in the house or out of it that did not remind Miss Theodora of +these two young people. How could she bear it, then, that their paths +were to lie entirely apart?</p> + +<p>Did Kate feel aggrieved at Ernest's attachment to "that girl," as Miss +Theodora always characterized Eugenie? She wondered if she herself had +been too stern in her attitude toward Ernest's love affair. She had not +been severe with Ernest,—she deserved credit for that, she said to +herself,—yet she recalled with a pang his expression of dismay when she +had said, "Really, Ernest, you cannot expect me to call on Miss—Miss +Kurtz; at least, not at present."</p> + +<p>She had excused herself by reflecting that he was not old enough to +decide in a matter of this kind. It was very different from letting him +choose his own profession,—though she was beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> to think that even +in this matter she had made a mistake. If he had stayed at Cambridge he +might never have met Eugenie Kurtz.</p> + +<p>She had yielded to Ernest in the former case largely from a belief, +founded on many years' observation, that half the unhappiness of middle +life comes from the wrong choice of a career. She had seen men of the +student temperament ground down to business, and regretting the early +days when they might have started on a different path. She had noticed +lawyers and clergymen who were better fitted to sell goods over a +counter, and she had begun to think that medicine was the only +profession which put the right man in the right place. This had +influenced her in letting Ernest choose his own career.</p> + +<p>But now, surely the time had come for her to be firm. Marriage—other +mistakes might be rectified, but you could never undo the mischief +caused by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> an ill-considered marriage. Oh, how happy she might have +been, if only Ernest and Kate were to be married. Well, it was not too +late yet, and it seemed more than probable that her own stern attitude +might help to bring about the desired result—a breaking off of his +attachment to "that girl."</p> + +<p>The more she thought about Ernest and Kate the more confused grew poor +Miss Theodora. She trained up some wandering tendrils of morning-glory, +and with relief heard Diantha saying, respectfully:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Somerset's in the house, ma'am. He's been waiting some time."</p> + +<p>She set her watering-pot down hastily on the ground beside her. Here was +some one whose advice she could safely ask. She had not seen Richard +Somerset since Ernest went away in June,—not, indeed, since he had made +the important announcement.</p> + +<p>"I think myself," said her cousin, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>after they had talked for some time +about Ernest's professional prospects, and had begun to touch on the +other matter, "I think myself that you make a mistake in not calling on +the girl—no matter how the affair turns out. It would please Ernest, +and it couldn't do much harm. I've come to think that the more you fall +in with a young man's ideas at such a time, the more likely he is to +come around in the end to your way of thinking. For all Ernest is so +gentle, he's pretty determined—just like John. You know he never could +be made to give up a thing when once he'd set his mind on it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," responded Miss Theodora mildly.</p> + +<p>"Well," continued her cousin, "I'm not sure but that you are making a +mistake in this case. Now, really, I don't believe that the girl or her +people are half bad. It's surprising occasionally to find some of these +people one don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> know not so very different from those we have been +brought up with. I remember when I was on one of those committees for +saving the Old South, a man on the committee who lived up there at the +South End invited us to meet at his house. Now, he gave us a supper that +couldn't have been surpassed anywhere. The silver and china were of the +best, and everything in the house was in perfectly good form,—fine +library, good pictures, and all,—and positively the most of us had +never heard of the fellow until we met him on that committee. Well, I +dare say it's a good deal the same way with this Kurtz."</p> + +<p>Almost unconsciously Miss Theodora raised her hand in deprecation.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he went on, "naturally you don't want to think about it at +present; but he's made a lot of money, and the East India trade that set +up some of our grandfathers wasn't so very different<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> from his business. +Besides, Mr. Kurtz has some standing. I see he's treasurer for the Home +for Elderly and Indigent Invalids,—and that means something. Think it +over, Theodora, and don't let any girl come between you and Ernest."</p> + +<p>Much more to the same purpose said Richard Somerset, thereby astonishing +his cousin. To her he had always seemed conservatism embodied. But he +had not lived in the midst of a rapidly growing city without feeling the +pulse of the time. While his own life was not likely to be affected by +the new ideas which he had begun to absorb, he was not afraid to give +occasional expression to them. Richard Somerset was several years older +than Miss Theodora. In early life he had had the prospect of inheriting +great wealth. With no desire for a profession, he let his taste turn in +the direction of literary work. He had large intentions, which he was in +no haste to carry out. With letters to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>several eminent men in England, +France and Germany, he, as soon as he was graduated, started on a +European tour. He studied in a desultory way at one or two great +universities, enjoyed foreign social life of the quiet and professional +kind, and acquired colloquial ease in two or three modern languages. +Then his tour, which had lasted nearly three years, was cut short by his +father's death. For several years afterward, with large business +interests to look after, he had scant time for literary work. He +managed, however, to bring out one historical monograph—a study of +certain phases of Puritan life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. +Thereafter, no other book came from his pen, though he contributed +occasional brief articles to a well-known historical magazine, and over +the signature of "Idem" sent many communications of local interest to a +certain evening paper of exclusive circulation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>Finally Richard Somerset found himself so immersed in business that he +ceased even to aspire to literary renown. But he continued to read +voraciously, and at length, when the great fire swept away the two large +buildings which he and his sister owned, he was less disturbed than he +ought to have been.</p> + +<p>His sister, however, took this loss to heart. She had married when not +very young a man with no money, and had found herself not so very long +afterwards a widow with two daughters to educate according to the +station—as she said—in which Providence had placed them.</p> + +<p>To make up, to an extent at least, for her loss, her brother surrendered +a good share of the income remaining to him. He did this with a secret +satisfaction not entirely due to the fact that he was helping his +sister. He felt that he was paying a kind of premium for the freedom +from care which the burning up of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> property had brought him. He paid +the premium cheerfully, betook himself to a sunny room in a house not +far from the Athenaeum, and thereafter devoted himself to his books. His +day was regularly divided; a certain amount of time to eating, sleeping, +exercise, and to society, including the Club, for he was no hater of his +fellow men and women—and a certain amount of time to the Athenaeum. At +first he had intended to resume his historical research. But the +periodical room of the Athenaeum at length claimed the most of his time. +He read English newspapers, French reviews and American magazines, and +this in itself was an occupation. Yet sometimes as he sat near one of +the windowed alcoves, and looked out over the old graveyard, his +conscience smote him.</p> + +<p>When he saw the sunshine filtering through the overhanging boughs of the +old trees upon the gray gravestones, his thoughts were often carried +back to that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> historic past, in which he had once had so much interest. +Then, as he glanced past the pyramidal Franklin monument, noting the +busy rush of life in the great thoroughfare on the other side of the +high iron fence, he would ponder a little over the contrasts between the +Boston of today and the Boston of the past. His reflections if put on +paper would have been valuable.</p> + +<p>As it was, he did no more than give occasional expression to his views +when among his intimate friends. He realized, nevertheless, that from +them he received but scant sympathy. Like most persons with original +ideas, he was thought to be just a little peculiar.</p> + +<p>"Queer, you know; never sees things just as we do; but still awfully +sensible," some of the club men would say, without observing the +contradiction implied in this speech.</p> + +<p>Yet in spite of an occasional criticism of this kind Richard Somerset +was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>admittedly a popular man, constantly consulted in matters where +real judgment was the chief requisite. In emergencies, when special +committees were formed to attend to things philanthropic or literary, he +was always the first man thought of as a suitable member.</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora often wondered what she should have done without him; but +reflecting long over this his latest advice about her attitude toward +Eugenie, she felt not wholly satisfied.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap23.jpg" width='300' height='352' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XXIII.</span></h2> + +<p>Ben was again in Boston. A position on the staff of a great railroad had +been offered him, and Boston for some time would be his headquarters. He +was not sorry to be at home. His mother and father seemed to him to be +growing less capable. His sisters needed him, and his salary was large +enough to enable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> him to do for them the many little things that add so +much to young girls' pleasure.</p> + +<p>To Miss Theodora his return was almost as great a boon as to his own +family. At least once a day he called to see what he could do for her, +and usually he went within the house to have a little chat with her. It +was not strange that they talked chiefly of Ernest. Ben's nature was +strongly sympathetic, and he knew what subject lay nearest Miss +Theodora's heart. Yet he disturbed her by telling her plainly that he +really thought that she ought to take some notice of Eugenie.</p> + +<p>"But they're not engaged," apologized Miss Theodora, who discerned in +Ben a feeling that she was unjust to Ernest.</p> + +<p>"I know they're not," he replied; "but it's much the same thing as if +they were. Ernest won't change, and her father will soon give his consent."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p><p>Yet Miss Theodora could not get herself into a relenting mood, though +Ben, like Richard Somerset, added to her confusion.</p> + +<p>Sometimes when Ben called at Miss Theodora's he found Kate there. In her +presence little was said about Ernest, and nothing about Eugenie.</p> + +<p>He had thought himself almost disloyal to Kate when he had asked Miss +Theodora to recognize Eugenie. His only defence was his friendship for +Ernest, and he was pleased enough that Ernest had never sought his +advice in this love affair of his. How could he have counselled Ernest +to be more appreciative of Kate without disclosing his view of her +feelings, and how could he have encouraged Ernest in his love for +Eugenie without being disloyal to Kate?</p> + +<p>But what was Ernest made of, he queried, to pass Kate by for a girl like +Eugenie, well enough in her way, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>perhaps, but oh! so different from +Kate? Then, as he glanced at the latter, he could but wonder if certain +changes which he noticed in her—a quietness of expression, an unwonted +slowness of response, so unlike her former habit of repartee—were +induced by regret at this new turn in Ernest's affairs. It was a matter +about which he himself could say nothing. His own feeling for her was +now too strong. He wondered if any one would even suspect how much he +had cared for Kate. Kate of course must never know. He would not run the +risk of destroying their friendship by rash expressions of a regard +warmer than she had dreamed of. Surely he was not presumptuous in +believing that Kate valued this friendship. Certainly there was no one +else to whom he could open his own heart as freely as to her; and he +flattered himself that she confided not a little in him. This autumn she +had come to town in advance of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> mother, and was spending a month +with Miss Theodora. He saw her often, therefore, sometimes when he +called at Miss Theodora's, sometimes in one of the neighboring side +streets, on her way, as he usually thought, to visit some of her colored beneficiaries.</p> + +<p>Ben knew that Kate, since she had come of age, had spent no small share +of her income in furthering schemes for the improvement of various poor +people. Some of these schemes he fully approved; others seemed to him of +doubtful value. Yet his disapproval, though he might not have admitted +it to himself, was based on no firmer ground than his wish that Kate, as +far as possible, should be spared the sight and knowledge of +disagreeable things.</p> + +<p>Meeting her one day, "It seems to me that you are always running away +from Miss Theodora's," he had said in a tone of mock reproof.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, only when I go to my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> cooking class. You see, it's such +fascinating work, and the new teacher doesn't get on with those children +half as well as I do. She's a good teacher, but it's the human nature, +the black human nature, that she does not exactly understand. When +things are running smoothly I don't expect to see her more than once or +twice a week."</p> + +<p>"Once or twice a week," echoed Ben, "about twice as often as you ought +to inhale the odors of Phillips Street."</p> + +<p>"Oh, nonsense, you should see our room, as clean and bright as fresh +paint and paper can make it, with its perfectly ideal arrangements in +the shape of stove and dishes."</p> + +<p>Ben smiled, though not exactly in approval. Yet more and more he +realized her power in the neighborhood.</p> + +<p>"See that new machine," said Miss Chatterwits, when he called on her one +day, and she pointed proudly to a new combination of polished wood and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>shining metal. "Well, Kate bought me that. She gives me a good deal of +fine sewing to do, and thought this machine would be handier than my old +one, which I'd had—well, I won't say how long, but almost ever since +they were first made. It had grown kind of rickety, and hadn't any +modern improvements."</p> + +<p>"This one looks as if it could do almost everything," said Ben, glancing +at it a second time.</p> + +<p>"Well, I do get a sight of comfort with it. Kate, or p'r'aps I ought to +say Miss Digby, allows me so much a week, and expects to have all my +time. She has me do white stitching for her,—which I always do by +hand,—and make garments of various kinds for her poor people, which I +do on the machine." Miss Chatterwits said "poor people" in a very +dignified tone. She was never quite sure that she enjoyed sewing for these dependents.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>"You must be kept pretty busy, then," responded Ben.</p> + +<p>"Well, not so busy as I might be," she answered. "Some weeks there's +very little for me to do. But I get my money just the same," she added +quickly. "To tell you the truth, I guess Kate wanted to keep me out of +the Old Ladies' Home, where I certainly should be living this very +minute if she hadn't planned things out for me. Of course you wouldn't +mention this to any one else;"—and she looked at Ben earnestly, for she +suddenly remembered that the outside world did not know of this little arrangement.</p> + +<p>"Of course I won't mention it," said the young man; "but it's just like +Kate, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is; you see, she found out just how I was situated after my +sisters died. There wasn't a cent of our savings left, and people began +to get so dressy that they thought they had to have their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> things made +out of the house, or employ young women. Not that I couldn't have done +as well as anybody, with the help of paper patterns, but people didn't +think so, and I was at my wits' end. What to do I didn't know—"</p> + +<p>"There was Miss Theodora," began Ben.</p> + +<p>"Yes, she was ready enough, and she kept me along with the little work +she had. But Kate herself kind of interfered with that. She said Miss +Theodora had worn old clothes long enough, and she some way persuaded +her to get that dress for Ernest's graduating exercises made down town. +Well, it seems a pity, when Miss Theodora's got almost a whole trunk of +things to be cut over, that she shouldn't use them up. However, just +when I was at my wits' end, Kate came along, and says she: 'How much +ought you to earn every week to live comfortably? I'll add a third to +that if you'll save all your time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> for me; I see that I'll have to have +lots of sewing done the next year or two;'—and though I knew it was me +she was thinking of more than herself, I was glad enough to say 'yes' to her offer."</p> + +<p>After this Miss Chatterwits wondered how she had happened to open her +heart so to Ben. A third person would have accounted for it by the fact +that Ben and Miss Chatterwits were both deeply interested in the same object.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap24.jpg" width='300' height='262' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XXIV.</span></h2> + +<p>Henceforth, after his conversation with Miss Chatterwits, Ben was more +attentive to her than he had ever been before. When he met her he always +accompanied her to the door, and if she had been at the grocer's or the +baker's, he insisted on carrying her parcels.</p> + +<p>"I used to think it was very shiftless to buy bakers' bread," she said +one day, apologizing for the large loaf which Ben had transferred under +his own arm. "But it ain't shiftless when you're only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> one. It wouldn't +pay me to have a regular baking. The bread would get stale before I +could eat it all,"—to which Ben assented.</p> + +<p>"Ben always was a good boy," she confided to a neighbor, "which it isn't +to be wondered at when you remember who his great-grandfather was. It +isn't every young man, especially with as good a position as he's got, +would walk up the street with an old woman like me." She appreciated his +kindness the more because the rising generation of the neighborhood paid +very little attention to her. They beheld only a little old woman, +somewhat bent in the back, with sparse, gray curls, queer clothes, and +an affected walk, instead of the dignified person, as she pictured +herself to be, whose acquaintance with better days gave her an elegance +of aspect which the boys ought at least to respect.</p> + +<p>Ben, therefore, realizing that the little woman was always glad to see +him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> made her frequent, if brief, calls. Sometimes he carried her a +book, or some fruit, or at least a breath of news from the outside +world—which she liked to hear about, even while professing to despise +it. Perhaps Ben was not altogether single-minded in this matter—who of +us is absolutely single-minded about anything? Perhaps he visited Miss +Chatterwits as much to hear her talk about Kate as to give pleasure to +the old lady herself.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Miss Chatterwits, reading his mind better than he did himself, +often talked purposely of the subject that lay so very near his heart. +It was certainly no accident when she turned nervously to Ben one day +with the words:</p> + +<p>"There's something I feel's if I ought to tell you;"—and the young man +rose from the little wooden rocker in which he had vainly tried to look +comfortable, saying cheerfully:</p> + +<p>"Is there? Well, do tell me."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>Then Miss Chatterwits bridled a little, and blushed, and said: "Well, +of course, there's some people that think an old maid hasn't any real +knowledge of matters relating to the affections"—she did not exactly +like to come out broadly with "love affairs"—"but, so far as I'm +concerned myself, I know pretty well what's going on around me and how +people feel about most things—though I don't always tell what I know."</p> + +<p>Then Ben felt himself growing a little uncomfortable, while the blood +rushed to his face. It was leap year, but surely Miss Chatterwits was +not going to wax sentimental toward him. She did not leave him long in doubt.</p> + +<p>"As I tell Kate," she continued, "people don't always know the exact +state of their own feelings. She thinks she'll be an old maid, but she's +making a mistake if she thinks she'd be happier,—not that I haven't got +along well enough myself. But Kate isn't calculated to live alone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> +Someway she and her mother ain't very congenial, and I guess Ralph's +rather domineering. I know he's tried to stop some of her cooking +classes—and—"</p> + +<p>Here Miss Chatterwits stopped—and then began to talk again.</p> + +<p>"Ben, you know that photograph that you and Ernest had taken in a +group—Ernest on his bicycle, and you standing alongside?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, a little tintype."</p> + +<p>"Yes, so it was. I guess it's six or seven years since it was taken."</p> + +<p>"Yes, it must be."</p> + +<p>"Well, one day I'd been fitting on something for Kate, and she left her +watch behind. There was a little locket hanging to the end of it, and I +went to pick the watch up; it caught on the handle of a drawer, and as I +pulled it it accidentally jerked open, and there, inside that locket, +was that picture."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear Miss Chatterwits, it was too large to go inside any locket."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I don't mean the whole picture, but the head—your head—it had +been cut clear off. There was your head in Kate's locket."</p> + +<p>Ben looked annoyed. He felt that something had been told him which he +had no right to hear. He did not know what to say.</p> + +<p>"I'm losing my own head," he murmured; but to Miss Chatterwits—putting +on a bold face—he said: "Oh, you must have seen Ernest's picture; you +know we look alike;"—and he laughed, for no two faces could be more unlike.</p> + +<p>But Miss Chatterwits shook her head. "Oh, no; I'm not blind. There's +many other things I could tell you, too; but I speak for your own good, +for I'm most as fond of you as I am of Kate."</p> + +<p>With these mysterious words, she opened the door for Ben, who seemed in +haste to go, to ponder perhaps what she had said, or to put it out of +his mind,—which, Miss Chatterwits wondered as he left her.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>In suggesting to Ben what she believed to be Kate's feeling toward him, +Miss Chatterwits was governed by various motives. Chief, probably, was +her belief that her interference was really for Kate's good. "I wish +that somebody had ever interfered for me," she said to herself, thinking +of the one young man who had ever interested her, who she really +believed had been prevented only by bashfulness from reciprocating her +feelings. "I believe it's the duty of older people to try to bring +things about," she thought. "At any rate, I don't believe Kate could be +offended at what I said. I know when people are just fitted for each +other. Miss Theodora don't understand about those things. She's all +wrong about it's being Ernest and Kate. She isn't observing. Mrs. Stuart +Digby would a sight rather it had been Ernest than Ben, little as she +cared for Ernest; and I'd be glad enough to help on things, just for +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> sake of bothering Mrs. Digby. She never looks my way when she meets +me, and I did hear that she told Kate she wished she wouldn't come to +see me so much. Well, it's easier to look behind you than ahead, and +I'll not say another word to Ben or Kate, but I'll wait and see."</p> + +<p>Ben tried to attach no importance to what Miss Chatterwits had said.</p> + +<p>"Suppose Kate does wear my picture in her locket—we're very old +friends, and that does not signify anything."</p> + +<p>The next day he chanced to meet Kate at the crowded Winter Street +crossing, after she had been shopping. Even as he piloted her across the +street, threading his way under the very feet of the car and carriage +horses, his eye fell on the old-fashioned locket dangling from her fob.</p> + +<p>"Whose picture have you in that locket? Whose picture have you in that +locket?" echoed itself in a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>dangerous refrain in his mind, until he +feared that he should utter the words aloud.</p> + +<p>It was a clear, crisp afternoon; the few autumn leaves that had fallen +cracked under their feet; the afternoon sun shone on the State House +dome until it looked itself like a second sun.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever know so delightful a day?" said Kate.</p> + +<p>"Never," said Ben positively. They took the longest way home, skirting +the edge of the Frog Pond; and then—what would Mrs. Digby have +said?—they sat down on a settee.</p> + +<p>Except for some small boys on the opposite shore sailing a refractory +toy boat, they were almost alone, though in the very heart of the city. +Kate gazed abstractedly at the clear reflection of the tall trees in the +mirror before them. She dared not look at Ben, for she felt his eyes +upon her, and this knowledge made her heart beat uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>She fingered nervously the little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>package that she had brought from +down town, and tried to think of something to say to break the spell. +Ben saw that she avoided his eyes, and after waiting vainly for a glance +from her, he could bear the strain no longer. Speak he must, and would. +For what reason could Kate have for treasuring that memento of himself, +if it were not that?—</p> + +<p>"Kate," he cried, leaning toward her, while the refrain in his brain +found vent at last in words, "whose picture have you in that locket?"</p> + +<p>Kate started violently, grasping the locket, as if detected in some crime.</p> + +<p>"Why do you ask?" she said, facing him resolutely, her cheeks crimson, +her eyes bright. But her voice trembled, and Ben, with a lover's +perception, taking courage from these signs, laid his hand gently on +hers and drew the tell-tale locket from her unresisting grasp.</p> + +<p>"Shall I open it, Kate?" he said slowly. "Remember, it will be my +answer."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> She looked into his eyes at last, and—well—what the answer +was he read there you or I need not inquire. It is enough to know that +half an hour later Ben and Kate walked homeward, apparently unconscious +of everything but each other's existence. They even passed by one or two +acquaintances without bowing, although without great effort they really +could have seen them perfectly well.</p> + +<p>When they reached Miss Theodora's door they stood for a minute looking +down the hill.</p> + +<p>"How blue the water is!" said Kate, gazing at the river, "and what an +exquisite tint in the sky! Did you ever see anything so lovely?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see something far lovelier now," said Ben, regarding Kate +herself intently. Her face seemed to reflect the ruddy tint she admired.</p> + +<p>"I meant the sunset," she said firmly.</p> + +<p>"I should call it sunrise," smiled Ben,—and thus they entered the house.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap25.jpg" width='300' height='293' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XXV.</span></h2> + +<p>Poor Miss Theodora! She could never have imagined herself so indifferent +to anything that concerned Kate as she was at first to the news of her +engagement. But at length, after she had several times seen Kate and Ben +together, she wondered that she had not long before realized their +fitness for each other. Perhaps, after all, she had made a mistake in +believing that Kate and Ernest could have been happy together. +Certainly, she had been very blind in her estimate of Kate's feelings.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p><p>She never knew, for pride forbade the young girl to dwell on the rather +painful subject, how difficult it was for Kate and Ben to gain Mrs. +Digby's consent to their engagement. It could hardly be said, indeed, +that she gave her consent. She simply submitted to the inevitable. Kate +was of age, and had her own money, an independence, if not a fortune; +and Mrs. Digby, after using every argument, decided to make the best of +what she could not help. Ralph, at least, would commit no social folly +like this of his sister's—Ralph, that model of discretion and mirror of +good form. She did not even, as Miss Theodora had dreaded, reprove her +cousin for allowing this love affair to develop unchecked by her. +Whatever she may have thought of Miss Theodora's blindness, she decided +to make Kate's engagement a family affair—an affair of her own small +family, in which, apparently, she intended not to include her cousin.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p><p>Then Miss Theodora, feeling her heart soften as she watched Kate and +Ben, wondered if she had not been too hard with Ernest. Ought she not to +show some interest in Eugenie? Though this query never shaped itself in +words spoken to Kate or any one else, it pressed itself upon her +constantly. A sentence from Ernest's last letter haunted her: "I cannot +be perfectly happy until I know that you and Eugenie have met. She has +not written to me for some time, and I am almost sure this is because +she is so much hurt at the coldness of my relatives. I did expect +something different from you and Kate."</p> + +<p>This letter touched Miss Theodora more than a little; but Kate made no +response when her cousin read it to her. Though she could not tell +exactly why, Kate's silence annoyed her. She even began to wonder what +she should wear when she made the first call, and she recalled all +Ernest had said about <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>Eugenie's critical taste in dress. She was glad +that Kate had insisted on her having an autumn street gown made at a +fairly fashionable dressmaker's.</p> + +<p>Miss Chatterwits happened to be sewing at Miss Theodora's on the day +when the latter made her decision about Eugenie.</p> + +<p>In spite of the new dressmaker, Miss Theodora still had some work for +the old seamstress. Her method of working always afforded Kate great amusement.</p> + +<p>For, as she talked, the points of a dozen pins projected from between +her teeth, where she held them for convenience. She still wore close to +her side the self-same little brown velvet cushion, or it looked like +the same one, which had always astonished Ernest by its capacity. Though +it was hardly an inch thick, Miss Chatterwits had a habit of running +into its smooth surface long darning needles and shawl pins, as well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> as +fine needles and pins. What became of them was always a matter of deep +conjecture to Ernest, for they were sometimes embedded until neither +head nor eyes could be seen. It seemed as if they must have pierced Miss +Chatterwits' bony waist. Could she possibly be so thin as not to have +any flesh to feel the pricks? Bones, of course, have no feeling, used to +think Ernest, watching with a kind of fascination each motion of Miss +Chatterwits' hand, as she thrust half a dozen long pins into the unresisting cushion.</p> + +<p>On this important day when Miss Theodora began to feel a change of heart +toward Eugenie, she sat down to help Miss Chatterwits with her work.</p> + +<p>"There's a morning paper," said the seamstress. "Tom Fetchum handed it +to me on his way down town; said he had read it all but the deaths and +marriages, which he knew I'd like to see. I ain't had time to look at it +yet, so you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> might read them to me, Miss Theodora."</p> + +<p>Miss Theodora, putting on her glasses, turned to the appointed place.</p> + +<p>"Not a soul I know among those deaths! I'm disappointed," said Miss +Chatterwits, after Miss Theodora had read the list. "Why, what is it?" +she added; for Ernest's aunt was looking up with a curiously dazed +expression, as she handed the paper to Miss Chatterwits, and pointed to a brief notice:</p> + +<p>"KURTZ—DIGBY.—At Troy, N. Y., on the 24th inst., by Rev. John Brown, +Eugenie, daughter of Simon Kurtz of Boston, to Ralph, son of the late +Stuart Digby of the same city."</p> + +<p>"Well, I never!" said Miss Chatterwits. "An elopement, I do believe! I'm +glad I'm most through this skirt, so's I can run over to Mrs. Fetchum's +and tell her. I guess she didn't read the paper very carefully this +morning. If she'd seen it she'd 'a' been over here to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> find out how we +took it. It's always safe to read the papers.</p> + +<p>"Well, how do you feel, Miss Theodora?" she asked at last.</p> + +<p>But Miss Theodora never told any one exactly how she felt when she heard +of the strange ending of Ernest's love affair. To Ernest, of course, she +gave a full measure of sympathy; and she was almost sorry that, as +things had turned out, he would never know that she had made up her mind +to make Eugenie's acquaintance. Since she had, though for only a brief +time, almost changed her point of view, she felt herself to be +hypocritical in receiving his praise for her acumen: "You knew better +than I what she was like."</p> + +<p>Kate was indignant at her brother's treachery.</p> + +<p>"I shall never forgive him for deceiving Ernest so. But I can't say that +I'm surprised. I knew that she and Ralph had had a great flirtation even +before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> she met Ernest. It was that which made me so unwilling to call +on her. But I never thought that Ralph would marry her. Mamma, I +believe, is going to receive her as if everything had been perfectly +above board. But I know it's only pride that leads her to take this +stand. She really feels the whole thing very keenly."</p> + +<p>Ben, when he heard of the elopement, could not help recalling the +episode of the stolen skates, and he wondered if Ralph had made love to +Eugenie from the mischievous motives by which he had so often in their +boyhood allowed himself to be influenced against Ernest. If so, he was +likely to be the meter out of his own punishment. For a bride stolen +merely to annoy another person is likely to make more trouble than any +other stolen possession.</p> + +<p>Strangely enough, Ernest himself recovered most quickly from the +mortification of the whole affair. There was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> at first the shock to his +pride, mingled with contempt for the deceit practised on him by Ralph +and Eugenie. But he was so young as to recover quickly, and the element +of contempt helped him to brush the whole matter aside.</p> + +<p>You, perhaps, may think less well of Ernest for finding consolation so +readily, but you must remember that he never was a sentimentalist. +Moreover, neither you nor I may know exactly what the workings of his +mind may have been. Doubtless there was many a sleepless night, and many +a bitter tear, before he was ready to show a stern front to the world. +In Boston it might have been a much harder thing for him to bear the +blow which fate had leveled at him. After all, Massachusetts and +Colorado are far apart; and if propinquity is fate bearing, distance and +separation are more destructive of sentimental illusions than the +average sentimentalist admits. In Ernest's case, hard work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> was +absorbing, and even Grace Easton, William Easton's pretty young +daughter, was a long time in winning the place which she afterward held in his heart.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/chap26.jpg" width='300' height='188' alt="Illustration" /></div> + +<h2><span>XXVI.</span></h2> + +<p>You who look at the simple events which I have been relating (from the +outside and at a distance) may have other criticisms to make of Ernest. +You may think it impossible that a youth so well placed, as he was at +Harvard, should have turned his back upon its paths of pleasantness for +the narrower way that meant so much hard work. Yet Ernest had not +allowed himself to be led or governed by an illusion. In the whole world +the serious student, the man who has his own way to make, can find no +better opportunity than at Harvard. No one could realize this better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> +than Ernest himself, in that time of storm and stress when he had felt +that the chart of his life must be mapped out by his own hand. But his, +he saw, was a special case, and the surest way to free himself from all +entanglements and to place himself at the command of duty, was, he +thought, to start out on an entirely new course. It was his Puritan +inheritance, this devotion to duty when once duty had shown clearly her +kindly but resolute visage.</p> + +<p>Yet my story has been ill told if it has seemed to be more the story of +Ernest than of Miss Theodora. For very few of us does life hold any +marked surprises, any startling events. A whole life is often merely the +summary of many very commonplace happenings. Its real events are more +likely to be those moral crises when the soul must put itself in harmony +with all those external happenings which it has no power to control. Nor +is it one of the least of life's lessons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> that it would be indeed a +fatal gift, if it were ours—this longed for power to turn the tide of events.</p> + +<p>Take, for example, the case of Miss Theodora; what a feeble figure she +had been in her efforts to turn the current of affairs that made up her +life. How helpless her will to accomplish her desires!</p> + +<p>If John had not married Dorothy—if Ernest had been willing to take his +grandfather's profession—if he had never met Eugenie—if he and Kate +had never cared for each other,—with all these "ifs" turned into +verities, how different, Miss Theodora thought, had been her outlook on +life. But we, who regard these things from the point of view of the +impartial onlooker, know that the fulfilling of her desires would not +have made her happiness, nor for the happiness of her nephew.</p> + +<p>If in trying to show you this I have seemed to dwell too long on the +ordinary happenings in a simple life, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>remember that these, after all, +were not the things which I count of chief importance.</p> + +<p>To me the great events in Miss Theodora's life were those three +occasions when she had to summon her strength to great decisions. These +soul crises counted for more than any other happenings in her life. +First, there was that struggle when she had to choose between her lover +and her nephew; then, almost as severe, though different in kind, the +battle in which at last she had given in to Ernest in his choice of a +profession; and last, although it had had no outward result, her merging +of her own prejudice against Eugenie in a readiness to do what would +probably make Ernest happier.</p> + +<p>Hardly less bitter than these three struggles was the one which Miss +Theodora waged to decide whether or not it was her duty to join Ernest +in the West. At last she yielded in this more quickly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> though with +greater pain than in the two cases when she had given in to Ernest about +Harvard and about Eugenie.</p> + +<p>She left Boston with the less reluctance, perhaps, because of certain +changes—some persons called them "improvements"—that had begun to +appear in her well-loved West End. The tall apartment houses which had +begun to creep in even before she left the city, the electric cars now +dashing through Charles street, were innovations that cut her to the heart.</p> + +<p>The breaking up of her modest little home soon followed.</p> + +<p>"You will spend half of every year with us," said Kate, now pleasantly +situated in a house whose western windows overlooked the river. She had +already begun to make life pleasant for Ben's sisters, one of whom was +always staying with her.</p> + +<p>"That will depend upon Ernest," Miss Theodora had answered, smiling. As +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> matter of fact, she did not return to Boston, even for a visit, until +after Ernest's marriage; and so with her removal to Colorado, her +story—as a West End story—may be said to end.</p> + +<p>But if I should tell you more about Miss Theodora, I would describe the +delightful New England home which, with Diantha's help, she made for +Ernest in Denver. Nor would I be able to omit telling of the romance +which came into her own life.</p> + +<p>At first she tried to avoid meeting William Easton, now a widower; but +efforts of this kind, of course, were useless. They met calmly enough; +and as they talked together, the years that had passed seemed as nothing.</p> + +<p>"So you have come West, after all, Theodora—and for Ernest's sake, too, +though it was for his sake you refused to come so long ago."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "for Ernest's sake it seems, though when I see how much +he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> owes to you, I realize that you are more than kind—almost cruelly +kind—"</p> + +<p>Then William Easton, smiling somewhat sadly, said nothing in reply, +though indeed there was no need of words. We all know how a story of +this kind ends in books; and even in real life old lovers sometimes +renew the pledges of youth.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p class="center">(The End.)</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Theodora, by Helen Leah Reed + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS THEODORA *** + +***** This file should be named 35337-h.htm or 35337-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/3/35337/ + +Produced by Heather Clark, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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