Poor Miss Theodora! She could never have imagined herself so indifferent to anything that concerned Kate as she was at first to the news of her engagement. But at length, after she had several times seen Kate and Ben together, she wondered that she had not long before realized their fitness for each other. Perhaps, after all, she had made a mistake in believing that Kate and Ernest could have been happy together. Certainly, she had been very blind in her estimate of Kate's feelings.
XXV.
She never knew, for pride forbade the young girl to dwell on the rather painful subject, how difficult it was for Kate and Ben to gain Mrs. Digby's consent to their engagement. It could hardly be said, indeed, that she gave her consent. She simply submitted to the inevitable. Kate was of age, and had her own money, an independence, if not a fortune; and Mrs. Digby, after using every argument, decided to make the best of what she could not help. Ralph, at least, would commit no social folly like this of his sister's—Ralph, that model of discretion and mirror of good form. She did not even, as Miss Theodora had dreaded, reprove her cousin for allowing this love affair to develop unchecked by her. Whatever she may have thought of Miss Theodora's blindness, she decided to make Kate's engagement a family affair—an affair of her own small family, in which, apparently, she intended not to include her cousin.
Then Miss Theodora, feeling her heart soften as she watched Kate and Ben, wondered if she had not been too hard with Ernest. Ought she not to show some interest in Eugenie? Though this query never shaped itself in words spoken to Kate or any one else, it pressed itself upon her constantly. A sentence from Ernest's last letter haunted her: "I cannot be perfectly happy until I know that you and Eugenie have met. She has not written to me for some time, and I am almost sure this is because she is so much hurt at the coldness of my relatives. I did expect something different from you and Kate."
This letter touched Miss Theodora more than a little; but Kate made no response when her cousin read it to her. Though she could not tell exactly why, Kate's silence annoyed her. She even began to wonder what she should wear when she made the first call, and she recalled all Ernest had said about Eugenie's critical taste in dress. She was glad that Kate had insisted on her having an autumn street gown made at a fairly fashionable dressmaker's.
Miss Chatterwits happened to be sewing at Miss Theodora's on the day when the latter made her decision about Eugenie.
In spite of the new dressmaker, Miss Theodora still had some work for the old seamstress. Her method of working always afforded Kate great amusement.
For, as she talked, the points of a dozen pins projected from between her teeth, where she held them for convenience. She still wore close to her side the self-same little brown velvet cushion, or it looked like the same one, which had always astonished Ernest by its capacity. Though it was hardly an inch thick, Miss Chatterwits had a habit of running into its smooth surface long darning needles and shawl pins, as well as fine needles and pins. What became of them was always a matter of deep conjecture to Ernest, for they were sometimes embedded until neither head nor eyes could be seen. It seemed as if they must have pierced Miss Chatterwits' bony waist. Could she possibly be so thin as not to have any flesh to feel the pricks? Bones, of course, have no feeling, used to think Ernest, watching with a kind of fascination each motion of Miss Chatterwits' hand, as she thrust half a dozen long pins into the unresisting cushion.
On this important day when Miss Theodora began to feel a change of heart toward Eugenie, she sat down to help Miss Chatterwits with her work.
"There's a morning paper," said the seamstress. "Tom Fetchum handed it to me on his way down town; said he had read it all but the deaths and marriages, which he knew I'd like to see. I ain't had time to look at it yet, so you might read them to me, Miss Theodora."
Miss Theodora, putting on her glasses, turned to the appointed place.
"Not a soul I know among those deaths! I'm disappointed," said Miss Chatterwits, after Miss Theodora had read the list. "Why, what is it?" she added; for Ernest's aunt was looking up with a curiously dazed expression, as she handed the paper to Miss Chatterwits, and pointed to a brief notice:
"KURTZ—DIGBY.—At Troy, N. Y., on the 24th inst., by Rev. John Brown, Eugenie, daughter of Simon Kurtz of Boston, to Ralph, son of the late Stuart Digby of the same city."
"Well, I never!" said Miss Chatterwits. "An elopement, I do believe! I'm glad I'm most through this skirt, so's I can run over to Mrs. Fetchum's and tell her. I guess she didn't read the paper very carefully this morning. If she'd seen it she'd 'a' been over here to find out how we took it. It's always safe to read the papers.
"Well, how do you feel, Miss Theodora?" she asked at last.
But Miss Theodora never told any one exactly how she felt when she heard of the strange ending of Ernest's love affair. To Ernest, of course, she gave a full measure of sympathy; and she was almost sorry that, as things had turned out, he would never know that she had made up her mind to make Eugenie's acquaintance. Since she had, though for only a brief time, almost changed her point of view, she felt herself to be hypocritical in receiving his praise for her acumen: "You knew better than I what she was like."
Kate was indignant at her brother's treachery.
"I shall never forgive him for deceiving Ernest so. But I can't say that I'm surprised. I knew that she and Ralph had had a great flirtation even before she met Ernest. It was that which made me so unwilling to call on her. But I never thought that Ralph would marry her. Mamma, I believe, is going to receive her as if everything had been perfectly above board. But I know it's only pride that leads her to take this stand. She really feels the whole thing very keenly."
Ben, when he heard of the elopement, could not help recalling the episode of the stolen skates, and he wondered if Ralph had made love to Eugenie from the mischievous motives by which he had so often in their boyhood allowed himself to be influenced against Ernest. If so, he was likely to be the meter out of his own punishment. For a bride stolen merely to annoy another person is likely to make more trouble than any other stolen possession.
Strangely enough, Ernest himself recovered most quickly from the mortification of the whole affair. There was at first the shock to his pride, mingled with contempt for the deceit practised on him by Ralph and Eugenie. But he was so young as to recover quickly, and the element of contempt helped him to brush the whole matter aside.
You, perhaps, may think less well of Ernest for finding consolation so readily, but you must remember that he never was a sentimentalist. Moreover, neither you nor I may know exactly what the workings of his mind may have been. Doubtless there was many a sleepless night, and many a bitter tear, before he was ready to show a stern front to the world. In Boston it might have been a much harder thing for him to bear the blow which fate had leveled at him. After all, Massachusetts and Colorado are far apart; and if propinquity is fate bearing, distance and separation are more destructive of sentimental illusions than the average sentimentalist admits. In Ernest's case, hard work was absorbing, and even Grace Easton, William Easton's pretty young daughter, was a long time in winning the place which she afterward held in his heart.