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 only one. 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
the sake 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 a dangerous 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 little package 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.
[Illustration]