Miss Theodora/Chapter 12
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.