Miss Theodora/Chapter 24
XXIV.
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.