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.
"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 onlyone. 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.
"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.
Ben, therefore, realizing that the little woman was always glad to see him,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.
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:
"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:
"Is there? Well, do tell me."
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."
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.
"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.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—"
Here Miss Chatterwits stopped—and then began to talk again.
"Ben, you know that photograph that you and Ernest had taken in a group—Ernest on his bicycle, and you standing alongside?"
"Oh, a little tintype."
"Yes, so it was. I guess it's six or seven years since it was taken."
"Yes, it must be."
"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."
"Oh, my dear Miss Chatterwits, it was too large to go inside any locket."
"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."
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.
"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.
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."
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.
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 thesake 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."
Ben tried to attach no importance to what Miss Chatterwits had said.
"Suppose Kate does wear my picture in her locket—we're very old friends, and that does not signify anything."
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.
"Whose picture have you in that locket? Whose picture have you in that locket?" echoed itself in adangerous refrain in his mind, until he feared that he should utter the words aloud.
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.
"Did you ever know so delightful a day?" said Kate.
"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.
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.
She fingered nervously the littlepackage 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?—
"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?"
Kate started violently, grasping the locket, as if detected in some crime.
"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.
"Shall I open it, Kate?" he said slowly. "Remember, it will be my answer."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.
When they reached Miss Theodora's door they stood for a minute looking down the hill.
"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?"
"Yes, I see something far lovelier now," said Ben, regarding Kate herself intently. Her face seemed to reflect the ruddy tint she admired.
"I meant the sunset," she said firmly.
"I should call it sunrise," smiled Ben,—and thus they entered the house.
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.
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.
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."
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 aboutEugenie'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.
Miss Chatterwits happened to be sewing at Miss Theodora's on the day when the latter made her decision about Eugenie.
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.
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 wellas 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.
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.
"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 youmight read them to me, Miss Theodora."
Miss Theodora, putting on her glasses, turned to the appointed place.
"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:
"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."
"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 tofind out how we took it. It's always safe to read the papers.
"Well, how do you feel, Miss Theodora?" she asked at last.
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."
Kate was indignant at her brother's treachery.
"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 beforeshe 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."
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.
Strangely enough, Ernest himself recovered most quickly from the mortification of the whole affair. There wasat 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.
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 workwas 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.
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 betterthan 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.
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 lessonsthat it would be indeed a fatal gift, if it were ours—this longed for power to turn the tide of events.
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!
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.
If in trying to show you this I have seemed to dwell too long on the ordinary happenings in a simple life,remember that these, after all, were not the things which I count of chief importance.
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.
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 quicklythough with greater pain than in the two cases when she had given in to Ernest about Harvard and about Eugenie.
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.
The breaking up of her modest little home soon followed.
"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.
"That will depend upon Ernest," Miss Theodora had answered, smiling. As amatter 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.
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.
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.
"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."
"Yes," she said, "for Ernest's sake it seems, though when I see how much heowes to you, I realize that you are more than kind—almost cruelly kind—"
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.
(The End.)