Miss Theodora/Chapter 22
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."
Much more to the same purpose said Richard Somerset, thereby astonishing his cousin. To her he had always seemed conservatism embodied. But he had not lived in the midst of a rapidly growing city without feeling the pulse of the time. While his own life was not likely to be affected by the new ideas which he had begun to absorb, he was not afraid to give occasional expression to them. Richard Somerset was several years older than Miss Theodora. In early life he had had the prospect of inheriting great wealth. With no desire for a profession, he let his taste turn in the direction of literary work. He had large intentions, which he was in no haste to carry out. With letters to several eminent men in England, France and Germany, he, as soon as he was graduated, started on a European tour. He studied in a desultory way at one or two great universities, enjoyed foreign social life of the quiet and professional kind, and acquired colloquial ease in two or three modern languages. Then his tour, which had lasted nearly three years, was cut short by his father's death. For several years afterward, with large business interests to look after, he had scant time for literary work. He managed, however, to bring out one historical monograph—a study of certain phases of Puritan life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thereafter, no other book came from his pen, though he contributed occasional brief articles to a well-known historical magazine, and over the signature of "Idem" sent many communications of local interest to a certain evening paper of exclusive circulation.
Finally Richard Somerset found himself so immersed in business that he ceased even to aspire to literary renown. But he continued to read voraciously, and at length, when the great fire swept away the two large buildings which he and his sister owned, he was less disturbed than he ought to have been.
His sister, however, took this loss to heart. She had married when not very young a man with no money, and had found herself not so very long afterwards a widow with two daughters to educate according to the station—as she said—in which Providence had placed them.
To make up, to an extent at least, for her loss, her brother surrendered a good share of the income remaining to him. He did this with a secret satisfaction not entirely due to the fact that he was helping his sister. He felt that he was paying a kind of premium for the freedom from care which the burning up of his property had brought him. He paid the premium cheerfully, betook himself to a sunny room in a house not far from the Athenaeum, and thereafter devoted himself to his books. His day was regularly divided; a certain amount of time to eating, sleeping, exercise, and to society, including the Club, for he was no hater of his fellow men and women—and a certain amount of time to the Athenaeum. At first he had intended to resume his historical research. But the periodical room of the Athenaeum at length claimed the most of his time. He read English newspapers, French reviews and American magazines, and this in itself was an occupation. Yet sometimes as he sat near one of the windowed alcoves, and looked out over the old graveyard, his conscience smote him.
When he saw the sunshine filtering through the overhanging boughs of the old trees upon the gray gravestones, his thoughts were often carried back to that historic past, in which he had once had so much interest. Then, as he glanced past the pyramidal Franklin monument, noting the busy rush of life in the great thoroughfare on the other side of the high iron fence, he would ponder a little over the contrasts between the Boston of today and the Boston of the past. His reflections if put on paper would have been valuable.
As it was, he did no more than give occasional expression to his views when among his intimate friends. He realized, nevertheless, that from them he received but scant sympathy. Like most persons with original ideas, he was thought to be just a little peculiar.
"Queer, you know; never sees things just as we do; but still awfully sensible," some of the club men would say, without observing the contradiction implied in this speech.
Yet in spite of an occasional criticism of this kind Richard Somerset was admittedly a popular man, constantly consulted in matters where real judgment was the chief requisite. In emergencies, when special committees were formed to attend to things philanthropic or literary, he was always the first man thought of as a suitable member.
Miss Theodora often wondered what she should have done without him; but reflecting long over this his latest advice about her attitude toward Eugenie, she felt not wholly satisfied.