Ernest's final decision was closely interwoven with a ride from Cambridge in an open horse-car one warm spring evening. Though his mind during this ride was constantly going over the subject that now lay near his heart, it afterward seemed to him as if he could recall every step of the way, so curiously sometimes does the external world weave itself into our mental processes. Long afterward he remembered that at first in the dim light he had noticed people, young and old, children or girls in light dresses, sitting on the piazzas or moving about the wide lawns of the houses near the Square. Next he saw the business blocks with their shops, in front of which groups of young men were lounging. Over-dressed girls and other young men promenaded the sidewalks in front of the shops, and he caught the occasional note of a loud laugh or a flippant remark. Farther on, rows of unpretentious dwellings, ending at last in unmistakable tenement houses, stamped themselves on his mind, with half-tidy women, men in their shirt sleeves, and little children crowding the doorways. Across the muddy flats and the broad river they might see, as he saw, the pretty hilly country beyond. Were they gossiping and scolding, much as they would gossip and scold in their narrow room? Perhaps for the time, like Ernest himself, they knew the peaceful influence of the perfect evening.
XV.
The indescribable May softness had, he felt sure, more than a little to do with his own exultation. His way opened perfectly clear before him. The arguments that he should use with his aunt stood out plainly defined. Go on longer as he had been doing!—he shivered at the thought.
Finding Miss Theodora alone in the twilight, he realized as never before the pathos of her lonely life. In saying what he was going to say he knew that he must shatter one of her cherished idols.
"In time, of course, she'll know that I have been right," he said to himself. Yet it required more than a little courage to speak, to argue with her against things that he knew she held so dear.
Though he hardly knew how it came about, the discussion ended, to Ernest's own surprise, with the advantage on his side. His skilful fashion of handling statistics told strongly in his favor, perhaps; for he proved to his aunt's satisfaction that it would be many, many years before he could probably support himself on a lawyer's income. He had figures and facts to show what he was certain to earn as soon as he began to practise engineering.
"But, Ernest," said Miss Theodora, "if you do not want to be a lawyer after you are graduated, there are many other things you might do without sacrificing your position in life." For although Miss Theodora knew well enough that mining engineers were not the same as the engineers whom she had seen on locomotives and steamboats, yet she felt that engineers in general, by reason of grimy hands and faces, were forever cut off from good society.
"What else can I find to do?" he insisted, "that would be as interesting and pay as well?"
"Well, I think that you could get into the treasurer's office of the Nashawapag Mills. Richard Somerset has great influence there."
"Now, Aunt Teddy, you wouldn't want me to be a book-keeper the rest of my life,—for that is all I'd be; and as for salary, unless I stayed there thirty or forty years, until those at the top died, I suppose that I could make a little more than a bare living, but it wouldn't be much more."
Then Miss Theodora, who could think of very few occupations outside of the learned professions in which a young man of good family might properly engage, at last surrendered to Ernest's arguments.
"We have so very little money," said Ernest, after he had let her know that Richard Somerset had told him how slight their resources were; "we are so poor, that in a few years I know that I would have to beg or borrow, and I'm sure you would not wish me to do one any more than the other."
"No, indeed," exclaimed his aunt.
"You see," he went on, "I am acquiring very extravagant tastes at Cambridge. There's no place like it for making you want money, if you once begin to contrast yourself with fellows who have plenty."
"But I thought you were independent," sighed poor Miss Theodora.
"Oh, I should be if I were really interested in my work," replied Ernest; "but, you see, I can't throw myself into my studies as I ought to."
It is to be feared that Ernest was worse than a little artful in thus painting himself as black as he could. He did not tell his aunt, what really was the truth, that it was harder for him to give up Harvard now than it would have been six months before. He had begun to have his own group of special friends; he had begun to enjoy many phases of college life. Despite certain distasteful studies, he might have gone through college without special discredit. He might have taken his degree, as many of his classmates would, with considerable culture and very little practical knowledge clinging to him. He trembled when he saw that he could take so kindly to dawdling ways. But his Puritan conscience interposed. When he knew how really poor they were, his love for his aunt and his pride all imparted to him a firmness at which he himself marvelled.