Part 7

"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 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 almost as Miss Theodora did, whispered, "Please don't think you're sorry that it isn't a Harvard A. B."

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.

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 grave of a large share of her happiness?

Ernest himself soon put an end to her wondering.

"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."

"Go?" she queried. "Go where?"--though in her heart she knew very well.

"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."

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."

"Isn't it fine to have such a chance?" 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.

"William Easton," she said, without answering his question; "how strange!"

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:

"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 thought,"--looking questioningly toward Miss Theodora.

"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."

"Just because I shall have to go so far away, I suppose. Now, what else would you have me do?"

"Surely there are other chances in Boston. You can find something to do here."

"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."

"Why not begin here and gradually work up? We don't need so very much money, Ernest--"

"Oh, Aunt Teddy, I do. What would you say if I told you I thought of getting married?"

"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."

"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.

"Who is the young lady?" she asked with some dignity.

"Why, Eugenie. Haven't you heard me speak of Eugenie Kurtz?"

Miss Theodora shook her head.

"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--"

"Who is her father?" asked Miss Theodora. "The name sounds familiar."

"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."

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:

"Her father--"

"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 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.

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 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.

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."

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, 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.

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 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.

XXI.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

As he looked from the car window across the wide stretch of open country, where the only objects between his eye 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.

"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 on nothing but love. I've talked with her, and know how she feels."

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.

He recalled the dignity with which Mr. Kurtz had drawn himself up as he said:

"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."

"But my people are so few," poor Ernest had said. "My aunt--"

"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."

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 almost begun, and he was hardly ready for it.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

"I should like to meet her," said Eugenie; and Ernest, before he left the city, had asked Kate to call on her.

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."

Nor, with all his attempts at persuasion, could Ernest get Miss Theodora to take the least interest in Eugenie.

"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."

What wonder that Ernest, nearing Denver, felt disheartened, oppressed by his aunt's opposition, and the indefiniteness of his relations with Eugenie.

XXII.

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 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:

"Why, yes, Aunt Theodora, that stump is so ugly that not even the kitten will climb over it."

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 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?

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."

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 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.

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.

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 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."

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:

"Mr. Somerset's in the house, ma'am. He's been waiting some time."

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.

"I think myself," said her cousin, 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."

"Yes, I know," responded Miss Theodora mildly.

"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 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."

Almost unconsciously Miss Theodora raised her hand in deprecation.

"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 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."