Part 4

"You do not mean Miss Theodora?"

"Why not Miss Theodora? She walks along the street, never looking to the right or left, as if she were quite too good to speak to ordinary people."

"But she is terribly near-sighted. She does not see people unless they are right in front of her."

"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--"

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:

"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 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."

"Not the Digbys or Miss Theodora."

"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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

"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.

"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?"

"Who, mother?" laughed Ben.

"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.'"

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.

"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."

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.

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, she would be too "grown up" to enjoy them.

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.

XI.

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.

"Do change your mind, Aunt Teddy," he began imploringly.

His aunt, in a low, straight-backed chair, looked up from her sewing.

"Change my mind about what?"

"Oh, you know--going to Harvard. Why must I go?"

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.

"Of course I am perfectly willing to go to Harvard to please you, but--I wish I could study the things Ben studies."

Miss Theodora's voice had an unwonted note of sternness in it.

"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."

"Perhaps it won't be with honor in my case, Aunt Teddy. Remember my Greek."

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."

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.

"Now, Aunt Teddy, which is going to be a great man, Ben or Ralph?"

"I am no prophet, Ernest."

"Oh, well, you know what I mean. Would you rather have me grow up like Ben or like Ralph?"

"I am fond of Ben."

"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."

"You seem to believe that Ben's good qualities result from his ignorance of Greek, and Ralph's from his knowledge of the classics."

"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."

As Ernest seldom spoke so bitterly on this subject, Miss Theodora wisely avoided further discussion by turning to her writing-table.

"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."

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.

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 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 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.

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 the dreaded examinations and a truer knowledge of what the study of law meant had at last made the name of Harvard a bugbear.

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.

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?

"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.

XII.

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, 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.

When the boys came home, their friends noted a change in Ernest. Mrs. Fetchum thought that it was largely in the matter of clothes.

"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."

Justice drove Mrs. Fetchum to this admission; for when Ernest, walking up the hill a few days after his home 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.

"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."

Miss Chatterwits, who never agreed with any opinion of her neighbors, declared that Ernest was changed.

"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, 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."

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.

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 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.

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.

"It's quite at your service, Miss Chatterwits, although I more than half believe you are going to cut one just like it for little Tommie Grigsby. Just think of it, the latest London fashions for a six-year old."

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.

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 handsomely. But was it not for this that she had saved ever since John's death?

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.

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 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 was he altogether wrong, for many a Harvard student in those days longed for freedom from the fetters of prescribed studies.

XIII.

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 shadows dwindle. For he had been very fond of his cousin, and he sympathized to the full with Kate in her grief.

"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 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.

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 room. The solemn man-servant had hardly announced Ernest when Kate rushed forward to meet him.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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----"

"If what?"

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."

"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."

"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 buildings, compared with a good many up town; and then I felt that I must have changed."

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.