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.

"How do I disappoint you, Kate?" he asked.

"Oh, in many ways. I used to think that you would be an inventor, or--something. But now--"

"I am nothing but a Harvard freshman," he broke in laughing.

"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--"

There she stopped.

"Well, what does Cousin Richard say?" asked Ernest impatiently. But Kate, remembering that Richard Somerset might object to being quoted, was silent.

"Go to him yourself," she said at length. "He will tell you." Then their conversation pa.s.sed to less personal things, until it was time for Ernest to go.

Ernest, taking what Kate had said in 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. 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.

"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."

"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."

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 sometimes come to her as she sat alone by the front window, in the twilight, and say:

"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."

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XIV.

"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.

"So all that I have is just that much less for Aunt Teddy?"

"Yes,--if you put it that way. But 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.

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.

"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 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."

Richard Somerset looked aghast. Was this the effect of his words? What would Miss Theodora say?

"Why--why, you wouldn't disappoint your aunt like that, would you? What in the world would you do if you left college?"

"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."

"Everybody who goes West doesn't make money."

"Maybe not, but I met a man crossing on the Altruria this summer, who told 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."

"Rather presuming for a stranger," said Richard Somerset, with the true Boston manner.

"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."

"What was his name?"

"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."

"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.

Between Miss Theodora and William Easton there had once been an engagement, known only to their most intimate friends. John's cla.s.smate 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 a.s.signed. 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 claims Miss Theodora would have yielded.

"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.

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.

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. 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 a mortgage of almost the same amount had been put on the house to enable her to carry out her plans for Ernest.

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.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XV.

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 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, they knew the peaceful influence of the perfect evening.

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.

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.

"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.