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.
"Ernest," at length said Kate somewhat abruptly to the young man, "after
all you are more or less of a disappointment to me."
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 passed 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.
[Illustration]