Title: The Landlord at Lion's Head — Complete
Author: Howells, William Dean
Language: English
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THE LANDLORD AT LION’S HEAD

By William Dean Howells



Part I.


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

In those dim recesses of the consciousness where things have their
beginning, if ever things have a beginning, I suppose the origin of this
novel may be traced to a fact of a fortnight’s sojourn on the western
shore of lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in the
State of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountain
form which the earlier French pioneers had named “Le Lion Couchant,”
 but which their plainer-minded Yankee successors preferred to call
“The Camel’s Hump.” It really looked like a sleeping lion; the head was
especially definite; and when, in the course of some ten years, I found
the scheme for a story about a summer hotel which I had long meant to
write, this image suggested the name of ‘The Landlord at Lion’s Head.’ I
gave the title to my unwritten novel at once and never wished to change
it, but rejoiced in the certainty that, whatever the novel turned out to
be, the title could not be better.

I began to write the story four years later, when we were settled for
the winter in our flat on Central Park, and as I was a year in doing it,
with other things, I must have taken the unfinished manuscript to and
from Magnolia, Massachusetts, and Long Beach, Long Island, where I spent
the following summer. It was first serialized in Harper’s Weekly and in
the London Illustrated News, as well as in an Australian newspaper--I
forget which one; and it was published as a completed book in 1896.

I remember concerning it a very becoming despair when, at a certain
moment in it, I began to wonder what I was driving at. I have always had
such moments in my work, and if I cannot fitly boast of them, I can at
least own to them in freedom from the pride that goes before a fall. My
only resource at such times was to keep working; keep beating harder
and harder at the wall which seemed to close me in, till at last I broke
through into the daylight beyond. In this case, I had really such a very
good grip of my characters that I need not have had the usual fear of
their failure to work out their destiny. But even when the thing was
done and I carried the completed manuscript to my dear old friend, the
late Henry Loomis Nelson, then editor of the Weekly, it was in more
fear of his judgment than I cared to show. As often happened with my
manuscript in such exigencies, it seemed to go all to a handful of
shrivelled leaves. When we met again and he accepted it for the Weekly,
with a handclasp of hearty welcome, I could scarcely gasp out my
unfeigned relief. We had talked the scheme of it over together; he had
liked the notion, and he easily made me believe, after my first dismay,
that he liked the result even better.

I myself liked the hero of the tale more than I have liked worthier
men, perhaps because I thought I had achieved in him a true rustic
New England type in contact with urban life under entirely modern
conditions. What seemed to me my esthetic success in him possibly
softened me to his ethical shortcomings; but I do not expect others to
share my weakness for Jeff Durgin, whose strong, rough surname had been
waiting for his personality ever since I had got it off the side of an
ice-cart many years before.

At the time the story was imagined Harvard had been for four years much
in the direct knowledge of the author, and I pleased myself in realizing
the hero’s experience there from even more intimacy with the university
moods and manners than had supported me in the studies of an earlier
fiction dealing with them. I had not lived twelve years in Cambridge
without acquaintance such as even an elder man must make with the
undergraduate life; but it is only from its own level that this can
be truly learned, and I have always been ready to stand corrected by
undergraduate experience. Still, I have my belief that as a jay--the
word may now be obsolete--Jeff Durgin is not altogether out of drawing;
though this is, of course, the phase of his character which is one of
the least important. What I most prize in him, if I may go to the bottom
of the inkhorn, is the realization of that anti-Puritan quality which
was always vexing the heart of Puritanism, and which I had constantly
felt one of the most interesting facts in my observation of New England.

As for the sort of summer hotel portrayed in these pages, it was
materialized from an acquaintance with summer hotels extending over
quarter of a century, and scarcely to be surpassed if paralleled. I had
a passion for knowing about them and understanding their operation which
I indulged at every opportunity, and which I remember was satisfied as
to every reasonable detail at one of the pleasantest seaside hostelries
by one of the most intelligent and obliging of landlords. Yet, hotels
for hotels, I was interested in those of the hills rather than those of
the shores.

I worked steadily if not rapidly at the story. Often I went back over
it, and tore it to pieces and put it together again. It made me feel at
times as if I should never learn my trade, but so did every novel I have
written; every novel, in fact, has been a new trade. In, the case of
this one the publishers were hurrying me in the revision for copy to
give the illustrator, who was hurrying his pictures for the English and
Australian serializations.

KITTERY POINT, MAINE, July, 1909.



THE LANDLORD AT LION’S HEAD



I.

If you looked at the mountain from the west, the line of the summit was
wandering and uncertain, like that of most mountain-tops; but, seen from
the east, the mass of granite showing above the dense forests of the
lower slopes had the form of a sleeping lion. The flanks and haunches
were vaguely distinguished from the mass; but the mighty head, resting
with its tossed mane upon the vast paws stretched before it, was boldly
sculptured against the sky. The likeness could not have been more
perfect, when you had it in profile, if it had been a definite intention
of art; and you could travel far north and far south before the illusion
vanished. In winter the head was blotted by the snows; and sometimes
the vagrant clouds caught upon it and deformed it, or hid it, at other
seasons; but commonly, after the last snow went in the spring until
the first snow came in the fall, the Lion’s Head was a part of the
landscape, as imperative and importunate as the Great Stone Face itself.

Long after other parts of the hill country were opened to summer
sojourn, the region of Lion’s Head remained almost primitively solitary
and savage. A stony mountain road followed the bed of the torrent that
brawled through the valley at its base, and at a certain point a still
rougher lane climbed from the road along the side of the opposite height
to a lonely farm-house pushed back on a narrow shelf of land, with a
meagre acreage of field and pasture broken out of the woods that clothed
all the neighboring steeps. The farm-house level commanded the best view
of Lion’s Head, and the visitors always mounted to it, whether they
came on foot, or arrived on buckboards or in buggies, or drove up in the
Concord stages from the farther and nearer hotels. The drivers of the
coaches rested their horses there, and watered them from the spring that
dripped into the green log at the barn; the passengers scattered about
the door-yard to look at the Lion’s Head, to wonder at it and mock at
it, according to their several makes and moods. They could scarcely have
felt that they ever had a welcome from the stalwart, handsome woman who
sold them milk, if they wanted it, and small cakes of maple sugar if
they were very strenuous for something else. The ladies were not able to
make much of her from the first; but some of them asked her if it were
not rather lonely there, and she said that when you heard the catamounts
scream at night, and the bears growl in the spring, it did seem
lonesome. When one of them declared that if she should hear a catamount
scream or a bear growl she should die, the woman answered, Well, she
presumed we must all die some time. But the ladies were not sure of a
covert slant in her words, for they were spoken with the same look she
wore when she told them that the milk was five cents a glass, and the
black maple sugar three cents a cake. She did not change when she owned
upon their urgence that the gaunt man whom they glimpsed around the
corners of the house was her husband, and the three lank boys with him
were her sons; that the children whose faces watched them through the
writhing window panes were her two little girls; that the urchin who
stood shyly twisted, all but his white head and sunburned face, into her
dress and glanced at them with a mocking blue eye, was her youngest, and
that he was three years old. With like coldness of voice and face, she
assented to their conjecture that the space walled off in the farther
corner of the orchard was the family burial ground; and she said, with
no more feeling that the ladies could see than she had shown concerning
the other facts, that the graves they saw were those of her husband’s
family and of the children she had lost there had been ten children, and
she had lost four. She did not visibly shrink from the pursuit of the
sympathy which expressed itself in curiosity as to the sickness they
had died of; the ladies left her with the belief that they had met a
character, and she remained with the conviction, briefly imparted to her
husband, that they were tonguey.

The summer folks came more and more, every year, with little variance in
the impression on either side. When they told her that her maple sugar
would sell better if the cake had an image of Lion’s Head stamped on it,
she answered that she got enough of Lion’s Head without wanting to see
it on all the sugar she made. But the next year the cakes bore a rude
effigy of Lion’s Head, and she said that one of her boys had cut the
stamp out with his knife; she now charged five cents a cake for the
sugar, but her manner remained the same. It did not change when the
excursionists drove away, and the deep silence native to the place
fell after their chatter. When a cock crew, or a cow lowed, or a horse
neighed, or one of the boys shouted to the cattle, an echo retorted
from the granite base of Lion’s Head, and then she had all the noise she
wanted, or, at any rate, all the noise there was most of the time. Now
and then a wagon passed on the stony road by the brook in the valley,
and sent up its clatter to the farm-house on its high shelf, but
there was scarcely another break from the silence except when the
coaching-parties came.

The continuous clash and rush of the brook was like a part of the
silence, as the red of the farm-house and the barn was like a part of
the green of the fields and woods all round them: the black-green of
pines and spruces, the yellow-green of maples and birches, dense to
the tops of the dreary hills, and breaking like a bated sea around the
Lion’s Head. The farmer stooped at his work, with a thin, inward-curving
chest, but his wife stood straight at hers; and she had a massive beauty
of figure and a heavily moulded regularity of feature that impressed
such as had eyes to see her grandeur among the summer folks. She was
forty when they began to come, and an ashen gray was creeping over the
reddish heaps of her hair, like the pallor that overlies the crimson of
the autumnal oak. She showed her age earlier than most fair people, but
since her marriage at eighteen she had lived long in the deaths of the
children she had lost. They were born with the taint of their father’s
family, and they withered from their cradles. The youngest boy alone;
of all her brood, seemed to have inherited her health and strength.
The rest as they grew up began to cough, as she had heard her husband’s
brothers and sisters cough, and then she waited in hapless patience the
fulfilment of their doom. The two little girls whose faces the ladies
of the first coaching-party saw at the farm-house windows had died away
from them; two of the lank boys had escaped, and in the perpetual exile
of California and Colorado had saved themselves alive. Their father
talked of going, too, but ten years later he still dragged himself
spectrally about the labors of the farm, with the same cough at sixty
which made his oldest son at twenty-nine look scarcely younger than
himself.



II.

One soft noon in the middle of August the farmer came in from the
corn-field that an early frost had blighted, and told his wife that they
must give it up. He said, in his weak, hoarse voice, with the catarrhal
catching in it, that it was no use trying to make a living on the farm
any longer. The oats had hardly been worth cutting, and now the corn was
gone, and there was not hay enough without it to winter the stock; if
they got through themselves they would have to live on potatoes. Have a
vendue, and sell out everything before the snow flew, and let the State
take the farm and get what it could for it, and turn over the balance
that was left after the taxes; the interest of the savings-bank mortgage
would soon eat that up.

The long, loose cough took him, and another cough answered it like an
echo from the barn, where his son was giving the horses their feed.
The mild, wan-eyed young man came round the corner presently toward the
porch where his father and mother were sitting, and at the same moment
a boy came up the lane to the other corner; there were sixteen years
between the ages of the brothers, who alone were left of the children
born into and borne out of the house. The young man waited till they
were within whispering distance of each other, and then he gasped:
“Where you been?”

The boy answered, promptly, “None your business,” and went up the steps
before the young man, with a lop-eared, liver-colored mongrel at his
heels. He pulled off his ragged straw hat and flung it on the floor of
the porch. “Dinner over?” he demanded.

His father made no answer; his mother looked at the boy’s hands and
face, all of much the same earthen cast, up to the eaves of his thatch
of yellow hair, and said: “You go and wash yourself.” At a certain light
in his mother’s eye, which he caught as he passed into the house with
his dog, the boy turned and cut a defiant caper. The oldest son sat down
on the bench beside his father, and they all looked in silence at the
mountain before them. They heard the boy whistling behind the house,
with sputtering and blubbering noises, as if he were washing his face
while he whistled; and then they heard him singing, with a muffled
sound, and sharp breaks from the muffled sound, as if he were singing
into the towel; he shouted to his dog and threatened him, and the
scuffling of his feet came to them through all as if he were dancing.

“Been after them woodchucks ag’in,” his father huskily suggested.

“I guess so,” said the mother. The brother did not speak; he coughed
vaguely, and let his head sink forward.

The father began a statement of his affairs.

The mother said: “You don’t want to go into that; we been all over it
before. If it’s come to the pinch, now, it’s come. But you want to be
sure.”

The man did not answer directly. “If we could sell off now and get out
to where Jim is in Californy, and get a piece of land--” He stopped,
as if confronted with some difficulty which he had met before, but had
hoped he might not find in his way this time.

His wife laughed grimly. “I guess, if the truth was known, we’re too
poor to get away.”

“We’re poor,” he whispered back. He added, with a weak obstinacy:
“I d’know as we’re as poor as that comes to. The things would fetch
something.”

“Enough to get us out there, and then we should be on Jim’s hands,” said
the woman.

“We should till spring, maybe. I d’know as I want to face another winter
here, and I d’know as Jackson does.”

The young man gasped back, courageously: “I guess I can get along here
well enough.”

“It’s made Jim ten years younger. That’s what he said,” urged the
father.

The mother smiled as grimly as she had laughed. “I don’t believe it ‘ll
make you ten years richer, and that’s what you want.”

“I don’t believe but what we should ha’ done something with the place by
spring. Or the State would,” the father said, lifelessly.

The voice of the boy broke in upon them from behind. “Say, mother, a’n’t
you never goin’ to have dinner?” He was standing in the doorway, with a
startling cleanness of the hands and face, and a strange, wet sleekness
of the hair. His clothes were bedrabbled down the front with soap and
water.

His mother rose and went toward him; his father and brother rose like
apparitions, and slanted after her at one angle.

“Say,” the boy called again to his mother, “there comes a peddler.” He
pointed down the road at the figure of a man briskly ascending the lane
toward the house, with a pack on his back and some strange appendages
dangling from it.

The woman did not look round; neither of the men looked round; they all
kept on in-doors, and she said to the boy, as she passed him: “I got no
time to waste on peddlers. You tell him we don’t want anything.”

The boy waited for the figure on the lane to approach. It was the figure
of a young man, who slung his burden lightly from his shoulders when he
arrived, and then stood looking at the boy, with his foot planted on the
lowermost tread of the steps climbing from the ground to the porch.



III.

The boy must have permitted these advances that he might inflict the
greater disappointment when he spoke. “We don’t want anything,” he said,
insolently.

“Don’t you?” the stranger returned. “I do. I want dinner. Go in and tell
your mother, and then show me where I can wash my hands.”

The bold ease of the stranger seemed to daunt the boy, and he stood
irresolute. His dog came round the corner of the house at the first word
of the parley, and, while his master was making up his mind what to do,
he smelled at the stranger’s legs. “Well, you can’t have any dinner,”
 said the boy, tentatively. The dog raised the bristles on his neck, and
showed his teeth with a snarl. The stranger promptly kicked him in the
jaw, and the dog ran off howling. “Come here, sir!” the boy called to
him, but the dog vanished round the house with a fading yelp.

“Now, young man,” said the stranger, “will you go and do as you’re bid?
I’m ready to pay for my dinner, and you can say so.” The boy stared at
him, slowly taking in the facts of his costume, with eyes that climbed
from the heavy shoes up the legs of his thick-ribbed stockings and his
knickerbockers, past the pleats and belt of his Norfolk jacket, to the
red neckcloth tied under the loose collar of his flannel outing-shirt,
and so by his face, with its soft, young beard and its quiet eyes, to
the top of his braidless, bandless slouch hat of soft felt. It was one
of the earliest costumes of the kind that had shown itself in the hill
country, and it was altogether new to the boy. “Come,” said the wearer
of it, “don’t stand on the order of your going, but go at once,” and he
sat down on the steps with his back to the boy, who heard these strange
terms of command with a face of vague envy.

The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of the
mountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms of
the Lion’s Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky.
Through the silvery veil there burned here and there on the densely
wooded acclivities the crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its
time, but everywhere else there was the unbroken green of the forest,
subdued to one tone of gray. The boy heard the stranger fetch his breath
deeply, and then expel it in a long sigh, before he could bring
himself to obey an order that seemed to leave him without the choice of
disobedience. He came back and found the stranger as he had left him.
“Come on, if you want your dinner,” he said; and the stranger rose and
looked at him.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Thomas Jefferson Durgin.”

“Well, Thomas Jefferson Durgin, will you show me the way to the pump and
bring a towel along?”

“Want to wash?”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Come along, then.” The boy made a movement as if to lead the way
indoors; the stranger arrested him.

“Here. Take hold of this and put it out of the rush of travel
somewhere.” He lifted his burden from where he had dropped it in the
road and swung it toward the boy, who ran down the steps and embraced
it. As he carried it toward a corner of the porch he felt of the various
shapes and materials in it.

Then he said, “Come on!” again, and went before the guest through the
dim hall running midway of the house to the door at the rear. He left
him on a narrow space of stone flagging there, and ran with a tin basin
to the spring at the barn and brought it back to him full of the cold
water.

“Towel,” he said, pulling at the family roller inside the little porch
at the door; and he watched the stranger wash his hands and face, and
then search for a fresh place on the towel.

Before the stranger had finished the father and the elder brother came
out, and, after an ineffectual attempt to salute him, slanted away to
the barn together. The woman, in-doors, was more successful, when he
found her in the dining-room, where the boy showed him. The table was
set for him alone, and it affected him as if the family had been hurried
away from it that he might have it to himself. Everything was very
simple: the iron forks had two prongs; the knives bone handles; the dull
glass was pressed; the heavy plates and cups were white, but so was the
cloth, and all were clean. The woman brought in a good boiled dinner
of corned-beef, potatoes, turnips, and carrots from the kitchen, and a
teapot, and said something about having kept them hot on the stove for
him; she brought him a plate of biscuit fresh from the oven; then she
said to the boy, “You come out and have your dinner with me, Jeff,” and
left the guest to make his meal unmolested.

The room was square, with two north windows that looked down the lane he
had climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in an
ell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor or a
ground-floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the lower sash
by green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern of brown
roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size pencil-drawing
of two little girls, one slightly older and slightly larger than the
other, each with round eyes and precise ringlets, and with her hand
clasped in the other’s hand.

The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallen
back in his chair at it when the woman came in with a pie.

“Thank you, I believe I don’t want any dessert,” he said. “The fact is,
the dinner was so good that I haven’t left any room for pie. Are those
your children?”

“Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her
hand. “They’re the last two I lost.”

“Oh, excuse me--” the guest began.

“It’s the way they appear in the spirit life. It’s a spirit picture.”

“Oh, I thought there was something strange about it.”

“Well, it’s a good deal like the photograph we had taken about a year
before they died. It’s a good likeness. They say they don’t change a
great deal at first.”

She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment, but he answered
wide of it:

“I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don’t mind, Mrs.
Durgin-Lion’s Head, I mean.”

“Oh yes. Well, I don’t know as we could stop you if you wanted to take
it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.

The painter rejoined in kind: “The town might have something to say, I
suppose.”

“Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it. We’ve
got mountains to spare.”

“Well, then, that’s arranged. What about a week’s board?”

“I guess you can stay if you’re satisfied.”

“I’ll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do you want?”

The woman looked down, probably with an inward anxiety between the
fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little. She said,
tentatively: “Some of the folks that come over from the hotels say they
pay as much as twenty dollars a week.”

“But you don’t expect hotel prices?”

“I don’t know as I do. We’ve never had anybody before.”

The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at the greed of her
suggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence. “I’m
in the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stay several
weeks. What do you say to seven for a single week?”

“I guess that ‘ll do,” said the woman, and she went out with the pie,
which she had kept in her hand.



IV.

The painter went round to the front of the house and walked up and down
before it for different points of view. He ran down the lane some way,
and then came back and climbed to the sloping field behind the barn,
where he could look at Lion’s Head over the roof of the house. He tried
an open space in the orchard, where he backed against the wall enclosing
the little burial-ground. He looked round at it without seeming to see
it, and then went back to the level where the house stood. “This is the
place,” he said to himself. But the boy, who had been lurking after
him, with the dog lurking at, his own heels in turn, took the words as a
proffer of conversation.

“I thought you’d come to it,” he sneered.

“Did you?” asked the painter, with a smile for the unsatisfied grudge in
the boy’s tone. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

The boy looked down, and apparently made up his mind to wait until
something sufficiently severe should come to him for a retort. “Want I
should help you get your things?” he asked, presently.

“Why, yes,” said the painter, with a glance of surprise. “I shall be
much obliged for a lift.” He started toward the porch where his burden
lay, and the boy ran before him. They jointly separated the knapsack
from the things tied to it, and the painter let the boy carry the easel
and campstool which developed themselves from their folds and hinges,
and brought the colors and canvas himself to the spot he had chosen.
The boy looked at the tag on the easel after it was placed, and read the
name on it--Jere Westover. “That’s a funny name.”

“I’m glad it amuses you,” said the owner of it.

Again the boy cast down his eyes discomfited, and seemed again resolving
silently to bide his time and watch for another chance.

Westover forgot him in the fidget he fell into, trying this and that
effect, with his head slanted one way and then slanted the other, his
hand held up to shut out the mountain below the granite mass of Lion’s
Head, and then changed to cut off the sky above; and then both hands
lifted in parallel to confine the picture. He made some tentative
scrawls on his canvas in charcoal, and he wasted so much time that the
light on the mountain-side began to take the rich tone of the afternoon
deepening to evening. A soft flush stole into it; the sun dipped behind
the top south of the mountain, and Lion’s Head stood out against the
intense clearness of the west, which began to be flushed with exquisite
suggestions of violet and crimson.

“Good Lord!” said Westover; and he flew at his colors and began to
paint. He had got his canvas into such a state that he alone could have
found it much more intelligible than his palette, when he heard the boy
saying, over his shoulder: “I don’t think that looks very much like
it.” He had last been aware of the boy sitting at the grassy edge of the
lane, tossing small bits of earth and pebble across to his dog, which
sat at the other edge and snapped at them. Then he lost consciousness of
him. He answered, dreamily, while he found a tint he was trying for with
his brush: “Perhaps you don’t know.” He was so sure of his effect that
the popular censure speaking in the boy’s opinion only made him happier
in it.

“I know what I see,” said the boy.

“I doubt it,” said Westover, and then he lost consciousness of him
again. He was rapt deep and far into the joy of his work, and had no
thought but for that, and for the dim question whether it would be such
another day to-morrow, with that light again on Lion’s Head, when he was
at last sensible of a noise that he felt he must have been hearing some
time without noting it. It was a lamentable, sound of screaming, as of
some one in mortal terror, mixed with wild entreaties. “Oh, don’t, Jeff!
Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t! Oh, please! Oh, do let us be! Oh, Jeff, don’t!”

Westover looked round bewildered, and not able, amid the clamor of the
echoes, to make out where the cries came from. Then, down at the point
where the lane joined the road to the southward and the road lost itself
in the shadow of a woodland, he saw the boy leaping back and forth
across the track, with his dog beside him; he was shouting and his dog
barking furiously; those screams and entreaties came from within the
shadow. Westover plunged down the lane headlong, with a speed that
gathered at each bound, and that almost flung him on his face when he
reached the level where the boy and the dog were dancing back and forth
across the road. Then he saw, crouching in the edge of the wood, a
little girl, who was uttering the appeals he had heard, and clinging to
her, with a face of frantic terror, a child of five or six years;
her cries had grown hoarse, and had a hard, mechanical action as they
followed one another. They were really in no danger, for the boy held
his dog tight by his collar, and was merely delighting himself with
their terror.

The painter hurled himself upon him, and, with a quick grip upon his
collar, gave him half a dozen flat-handed blows wherever he could plant
them and then flung him reeling away.

“You infernal little ruffian!” he roared at him; and the sound of his
voice was enough for the dog; he began to scale the hill-side toward the
house without a moment’s stay.

The children still crouched together, and Westover could hardly make
them understand that they were in his keeping when he bent over them
and bade them not be frightened. The little girl set about wiping
the child’s eyes on her apron in a motherly fashion; her own were dry
enough, and Westover fancied there was more of fury than of fright in
her face. She seemed lost to any sense of his presence, and kept on
talking fiercely to herself, while she put the little boy in order, like
an indignant woman.

“Great, mean, ugly thing! I’ll tell the teacher on him, that’s what I
will, as soon as ever school begins. I’ll see if he can come round with
that dog of his scaring folks! I wouldn’t ‘a’ been a bit afraid if it
hadn’t ‘a’ been for Franky. Don’t cry any more, Franky. Don’t you see
they’re gone? I presume he thinks it smart to scare a little boy and a
girl. If I was a boy once, I’d show him!”

She made no sign of gratitude to Westover: as far as any recognition
from her was concerned, his intervention was something as impersonal as
if it had been a thunder-bolt falling upon her enemies from the sky.

“Where do you live?” he asked. “I’ll go home with you if you’ll tell me
where you live.”

She looked up at him in a daze, and Westover heard the Durgin boy
saying: “She lives right there in that little wood-colored house at the
other end of the lane. There ain’t no call to go home with her.”

Westover turned and saw the boy kneeling at the edge of a clump of
bushes, where he must have struck; he was rubbing, with a tuft of grass,
at the dirt ground into the knees of his trousers.

The little, girl turned hawkishly upon him. “Not for anything you can
do, Jeff Durgin!”

The boy did not answer.

“There!” she said, giving a final pull and twitch to the dress of her
brother, and taking him by the hand tenderly. “Now, come right along,
Franky.”

“Let me have your other hand,” said Westover, and, with the little boy
between them, they set off toward the point where the lane joined the
road on the northward. They had to pass the bushes where Jeff Durgin was
crouching, and the little girl turned and made a face at him. “Oh, oh! I
don’t think I should have done that,” said Westover.

“I don’t care!” said the little girl. But she said, in explanation and
partial excuse: “He tries to scare all the girls. I’ll let him know ‘t
he can’t scare one!”

Westover looked up toward the Durgin house with a return of interest in
the canvas he had left in the lane on the easel. Nothing had happened
to it. At the door of the barn he saw the farmer and his eldest son
slanting forward and staring down the hill at the point he had come
from. Mrs. Durgin was looking out from the shelter of the porch, and she
turned and went in with Jeff’s dog at her skirts when Westover came in
sight with the children.



V.

Westover had his tea with the family, but nothing was said or done to
show that any of them resented or even knew of what had happened to the
boy from him. Jeff himself seemed to have no grudge. He went out with
Westover, when the meal was ended, and sat on the steps of the porch
with him, watching the painter watch the light darken on the lonely
heights and in the lonely depths around. Westover smoked a pipe, and the
fire gleamed and smouldered in it regularly with his breathing; the boy,
on a lower’ step, pulled at the long ears of his dog and gazed up at
him.

They were both silent till the painter asked: “What do you do here when
you’re not trying to scare little children to death?”

The boy hung his head and said, with the effect of excusing a long
arrears of uselessness: “I’m goin’ to school as soon as it commences.”

“There’s one branch of your education that I should like to undertake
if I ever saw you at a thing like that again. Don’t you feel ashamed of
yourself?”

The boy pulled so hard at the dog’s ear that the dog gave a faint yelp
of protest.

“They might ‘a’ seen that I had him by the collar. I wa’n’t a-goin’ to
let go.”

“Well, the next time I have you by the collar I won’t let go, either,”
 said the painter; but he felt an inadequacy in his threat, and he
imagined a superfluity, and he made some haste to ask: “who are they?”

“Whitwell is their name. They live in that little house where you
took them. Their father’s got a piece of land on Zion’s Head that he’s
clearin’ off for the timber. Their mother’s dead, and Cynthy keeps
house. She’s always makin’ up names and faces,” added the boy. “She
thinks herself awful smart. That Franky’s a perfect cry-baby.”

“Well, upon my word! You are a little ruffian,” said Westover, and he
knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “The next time you meet that poor
little creature you tell her that I think you’re about the shabbiest
chap I know, and that I hope the teacher will begin where I left off
with you and not leave blackguard enough in you to--”

He stopped for want of a fitting figure, and the boy said: “I guess the
teacher won’t touch me.”

Westover rose, and the boy flung his dog away from him with his foot.
“Want I should show you where to sleep?”

“Yes,” said Westover, and the boy hulked in before him, vanishing
into the dark of the interior, and presently appeared with a lighted
hand-lamp. He led the way upstairs to a front room looking down upon the
porch roof and over toward Zion’s Head, which Westover could see dimly
outlined against the night sky, when he lifted the edge of the paper
shade and peered out.

The room was neat, with greater comfort in its appointments than he
hoped for. He tried the bed, and found it hard, but of straw, and not
the feathers he had dreaded; while the boy looked into the water-pitcher
to see if it was full; and then went out without any form of goodnight.

Westover would have expected to wash in a tin basin at the back door,
and wipe on the family towel, but all the means of toilet, such as
they were, he found at hand here, and a surprise which he had felt at
a certain touch in the cooking renewed itself at the intelligent
arrangements for his comfort. A secondary quilt was laid across the foot
of his bed; his window-shade was pulled down, and, though the window
was shut and the air stuffy within, there was a sense of cleanliness in
everything which was not at variance with the closeness.

The bed felt fresh when he got into it, and the sweet breath of the
mountains came in so cold through the sash he had lifted that he was
glad to pull the secondary quilt up over him. He heard the clock tick
in some room below; from another quarter came the muffled sound of
coughing; but otherwise the world was intensely still, and he slept deep
and long.



VI.

The men folks had finished their breakfast and gone to their farm-work
hours before Westover came down to his breakfast, but the boy seemed
to be of as much early leisure as himself, and was lounging on the
threshold of the back door, with his dog in waiting upon him. He gave
the effect of yesterday’s cleanliness freshened up with more recent
soap and water. At the moment Westover caught sight of him, he heard his
mother calling to him from the kitchen, “Well, now, come in and get your
breakfast, Jeff,” and the boy called to Westover, in turn, “I’ll tell
her you’re here,” as he rose and came in-doors. “I guess she’s got your
breakfast for you.”

Mrs. Durgin brought the breakfast almost as soon as Westover had found
his way to the table, and she lingered as if for some expression of his
opinion upon it. The biscuit and the butter were very good, and he said
so; the eggs were fresh, and the hash from yesterday’s corned-beef could
not have been better, and he praised them; but he was silent about the
coffee.

“It a’n’t very good,” she suggested.

“Why, I’m used to making my own coffee; I lived so long in a country
where it’s nearly the whole of breakfast that I got into the habit of
it, and I always carry my little machine with me; but I don’t like to
bring it out, unless--”

“Unless you can’t stand the other folks’s,” said the woman, with a
humorous gleam. “Well, you needn’t mind me. I want you should have good
coffee, and I guess I a’n’t too old to learn, if you want to show me.
Our folks don’t care for it much; they like tea; and I kind of got out
of the way of it. But at home we had to have it.” She explained, to his
inquiring glance.

“My father kept the tavern on the old road to St. Albans, on the other
side of Lion’s Head. That’s where I always lived till I married here.”

“Oh,” said Westover, and he felt that she had proudly wished to account
for a quality which she hoped he had noticed in her cooking. He thought
she might be going to tell him something more of herself, but she only
said, “Well, any time you want to show me your way of makin’ coffee,”
 and went out of the room.

That evening, which was the close of another flawless day, he sat again
watching the light outside, when he saw her come into the hallway with
a large shade-lamp in her hand. She stopped at the door of a room he had
not seen yet, and looked out at him to ask:

“Won’t you come in and set in the parlor if you want to?”

He found her there when he came in, and her two sons with her; the
younger was sleepily putting away some school-books, and the elder
seemed to have been helping him with his lessons.

“He’s got to begin school next week,” she said to Westover; and at the
preparations the other now began to make with a piece of paper and
a planchette which he had on the table before him, she asked, in the
half-mocking, half-deprecating way which seemed characteristic of her:
“You believe any in that?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it work,” said the painter.

“Well, sometimes it won’t work,” she returned, altogether mockingly now,
and sat holding her shapely hands, which were neither so large nor so
rough as they might have been, across her middle and watching her son
while the machine pushed about under his palm, and he bent his wan eyes
upon one of the oval-framed photographs on the wall, as if rapt in a
supernal vision. The boy stared drowsily at the planchette, jerking this
way and that, and making abrupt starts and stops. At last the young man
lifted his palm from it, and put it aside to study the hieroglyphics it
had left on the paper.

“What’s it say?” asked his mother.

The young man whispered: “I can’t seem to make out very clear. I guess I
got to take a little time to it,” he added, leaning back wearily in his
chair. “Ever seen much of the manifestations?” he gasped at Westover.

“Never any, before,” said the painter, with a leniency for the invalid
which he did not feel for his belief.

The young man tried for his voice, and found enough of it to say:
“There’s a trance medium over at the Huddle. Her control says ‘t I can
develop into a writin’ medium.” He seemed to refer the fact as a sort of
question to Westover, who could think of nothing to say but that it must
be very interesting to feel that one had such a power.

“I guess he don’t know he’s got it yet,” his mother interposed. “And
planchette don’t seem to know, either.”

“We ha’n’t given it a fair trial yet,” said the young man, impartially,
almost impassively.

“Wouldn’t you like to see it do some of your sums, Jeff?” said the
mother to the drowsy boy, blinking in a corner. “You better go to bed.”

The elder brother rose. “I guess I’ll go, too.”

The father had not joined their circle in the parlor, now breaking up by
common consent.

Mrs. Durgin took up her lamp again and looked round on the appointments
of the room, as if she wished Westover to note them, too: the drab
wallpaper, the stiff chairs, the long, hard sofa in haircloth, the high
bureau of mahogany veneer.

“You can come in here and set or lay down whenever you feel like it,”
 she said. “We use it more than folks generally, I presume; we got in the
habit, havin’ it open for funerals.”



VII.

Four or five days of perfect weather followed one another, and Westover
worked hard at his picture in the late afternoon light he had chosen for
it. In the morning he tramped through the woods and climbed the hills
with Jeff Durgin, who seemed never to do anything about the farm, and
had a leisure unbroken by anything except a rare call from his mother to
help her in the house. He built the kitchen fire, and got the wood for
it; he picked the belated pease and the early beans in the garden, and
shelled them; on the Monday when the school opened he did a share of
the family wash, which seemed to have been begun before daylight, and
Westover saw him hanging out the clothes before he started off with
his books. He suffered no apparent loss of self-respect in these
employments, and, while he still had his days free, he put himself
at Westover’s disposal with an effect of unimpaired equality. He had
expected, evidently, that Westover would want to fish or shoot, or at
least join him in the hunt for woodchucks, which he still carried on
with abated zeal for lack of his company when the painter sat down to
sketch certain bits that struck him. When he found that Westover cared
for nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it, he
did not openly contemn him. He helped him get the flowers he studied,
and he learned to know true mushrooms from him, though he did not follow
his teaching in eating the toadstools, as his mother called them, when
they brought them home to be cooked.

If it could not be said that he shared the affection which began to grow
up in Westover from their companionship, there could be no doubt of
the interest he took in him, though it often seemed the same critical
curiosity which appeared in the eye of his dog when it dwelt upon the
painter. Fox had divined in his way that Westover was not only not to be
molested, but was to be respectfully tolerated, yet no gleam of kindness
ever lighted up his face at sight of the painter; he never wagged his
tail in recognition of him; he simply recognized him and no more, and he
remained passive under Westover’s advances, which he had the effect of
covertly referring to Jeff, when the boy was by, for his approval or
disapproval; when he was not by, the dog’s manner implied a reservation
of opinion until the facts could be submitted to his master.

On the Saturday morning which was the last they were to have together,
the three comrades had strayed from the vague wood road along one of the
unexpected levels on the mountain slopes, and had come to a standstill
in a place which the boy pretended not to know his way out of. Westover
doubted him, for he had found that Jeff liked to give himself credit
for woodcraft by discovering an escape from the depths of trackless
wildernesses.

“I guess you know where we are,” he suggested.

“No, honestly,” said the boy; but he grinned, and Westover still doubted
him.

“Hark! What’s that?” he said, hushing further speech from him with a
motion of his hand. It was the sound of an axe.

“Oh, I know where we are,” said Jeff. “It’s that Canuck chopping in
Whitwell’s clearing. Come along.”

He led the way briskly down the mountain-side now, stopping from time
to time and verifying his course by the sound of the axe. This came and
went, and by-and-by it ceased altogether, and Jeff crept forward with
a real or feigned uncertainty. Suddenly he stopped. A voice called,
“Heigh, there!” and the boy turned and fled, crashing through the
underbrush at a tangent, with his dog at his heels.

Westover looked after them, and then came forward. A lank figure of a
man at the foot of a poplar, which he had begun to fell, stood waiting
him, one hand on his axe-helve and the other on his hip. There was the
scent of freshly smitten bark and sap-wood in the air; the ground was
paved with broad, clean chips.

“Good-morning,” said Westover.

“How are you?” returned the other, without moving or making any sign of
welcome for a moment. But then he lifted his axe and struck it into the
carf on the tree, and came to meet Westover.

As he advanced he held out his hand. “Oh, you’re the one that stopped
that fellow that day when he was tryin’ to scare my children. Well,
I thought I should run across you some time.” He shook hands with
Westover, in token of the gratitude which did not express itself in
words. “How are you? Treat you pretty well up at the Durgins’? I guess
so. The old woman knows how to cook, anyway. Jackson’s about the best
o’ the lot above ground, though I don’t know as I know very much against
the old man, either. But that boy! I declare I ‘most feel like takin’
the top of his head off when he gets at his tricks. Set down.”

Whitwell, as Westover divined the man to be, took a seat himself on
a high stump, which suited his length of leg, and courteously waved
Westover to a place on the log in front of him. A long, ragged beard of
brown, with lines of gray in it, hung from his chin and mounted well up
on his thin cheeks toward his friendly eyes. His mustache lay sunken on
his lip, which had fallen in with the loss of his upper teeth. From the
lower jaw a few incisors showed at this slant and that as he talked.

“Well, well!” he said, with the air of wishing the talk to go on, but
without having anything immediately to offer himself.

Westover said, “Thank you,” as he dropped on the log, and Whitwell
added, relentingly: “I don’t suppose a fellow’s so much to blame, if
he’s got the devil in him, as what the devil is.”

He referred the point with a twinkle of his eyes to Westover, who said:
“It’s always a question, of course, whether it’s the devil. It may be
original sin with the fellow himself.”

“Well, that’s something so,” said Whitwell, with pleasure in the
distinction rather than assent. “But I guess it ain’t original sin in
the boy. Got it from his gran’father pootty straight, I should say,
and maybe the old man had it secondhand. Ha’d to say just where so much
cussedness gits statted.”

“His father’s father?” asked Westover, willing to humor Whitwell’s
evident wish to philosophize the Durgins’ history.

“Mother’s. He kept the old tavern stand on the west side of Lion’s Head,
on the St. Albans Road, and I guess he kept a pootty good house in the
old times when the stages stopped with him. Ever noticed how a man on
the mean side in politics always knows how to keep a hotel? Well, it’s
something curious. If there was ever a mean side to any question, old
Mason was on it. My folks used to live around there, and I can remember
when I was a boy hangin’ around the bar-room nights hearin’ him
argue that colored folks had no souls; and along about the time the
fugitive-slave law was passed the folks pootty near run him out o’ town
for puttin’ the United States marshal on the scent of a fellow that
was breakin’ for Canada. Well, it was just so when the war come. It was
known for a fact that he was in with them Secesh devils up over the line
that was plannin’ a raid into Vermont in ‘63. He’d got pootty low down
by that time; railroads took off all the travel; tavern ‘d got to be
a regular doggery; old man always drank some, I guess. That was a good
while after his girl had married Durgin. He was dead against it, and it
broke him up consid’able when she would have him: Well, one night the
old stand burnt up and him in it, and neither of ‘em insured.”

Whitwell laughed with a pleasure in his satire which gave the monuments
in his lower jaw a rather sinister action. But, as if he felt a rebuke
in Westover’s silence, he added: “There ain’t anything against Mis’
Durgin. She’s done her part, and she’s had more than her share of hard
knocks. If she was tough, to sta’t with, she’s had blows enough to
meller her. But that’s the way I account for the boy. I s’pose--I’d
oughtn’t to feel the way I do about him, but he’s such a pest to the
whole neighborhood that he’d have the most pop’la’ fune’l. Well, I guess
I’ve said enough. I’m much obliged to you, though, Mr.--”

“Westover,” the painter suggested. “But the boy isn’t so bad all the
time.”

“Couldn’t be,” said Whitwell, with a cackle of humorous enjoyment. “He
has his spells of bein’ decent, and he’s pootty smart, too. But when the
other spell ketches him it’s like as if the devil got a-hold of him,
as I said in the first place. I lost my wife here two-three years along
back, and that little girl you see him tormentin’, she’s a regular
little mother to her brother; and whenever Jeff Durgin sees her with
him, seems as if the Old Scratch got into him. Well, I’m glad I didn’t
come across him that day. How you gittin’ along with Lion’s Head? Sets
quiet enough for you?” Whitwell rose from the stump and brushed the
clinging chips from his thighs. “Folks trouble you any, lookin’ on?”

“Not yet,” said Westover.

“Well, there ain’t a great many to,” said Whitwell, going back to his
axe. “I should like to see you workin’ some day. Do’ know as I ever saw
an attist at it.”

“I should like to have you,” said Westover. “Any time.”

“All right.” Whitwell pulled his axe out of the carf, and struck it in
again with a force that made a wide, square chip leap out. He looked
over his shoulder at Westover, who was moving away. “Say, stop in some
time you’re passin’. I live in that wood-colored house at the foot of
the Durgins’ lane.”



VIII.

In a little sunken place, behind a rock, some rods away, Westover found
Jeff lurking with his dog, both silent and motionless. “Hello?” he said,
inquiringly.

“Come back to show you the way,” said the boy. “Thought you couldn’t
find it alone.”

“Oh, why didn’t you say you’d wait?” The boy grinned. “I shouldn’t think
a fellow like you would want to be afraid of any man, even for the fun
of scaring a little girl.” Jeff stopped grinning and looked interested,
as if this was a view of the case that had not occurred to him. “But
perhaps you like to be afraid.”

“I don’t know as I do,” said the boy, and Westover left him to the
question a great part of the way home. He did not express any regret or
promise any reparation. But a few days after that, when he had begun
to convoy parties of children up to see Westover at work, in the late
afternoon, on their way home from school, and to show the painter off to
them as a sort of family property, he once brought the young Whitwells.
He seemed on perfect terms with them now, and when the crowd of larger
children hindered the little boy’s view of the picture, Jeff, in his
quality of host, lifted him under his arms and held him up so that he
could look as long as he liked.

The girl seemed ashamed of the good understanding before Westover. Jeff
offered to make a place for her among the other children who had looked
long enough, but she pulled the front of her bonnet across her face and
said that she did not want to look, and caught her brother by the hand
and ran away with him. Westover thought this charming, somewhat; he
liked the intense shyness which the child’s intense passion had hidden
from him before.

Jeff acted as host to the neighbors who came to inspect the picture, and
they all came, within a circuit of several miles around, and gave
him their opinions freely or scantily, according to their several
temperaments. They were mainly favorable, though there was some frank
criticism, too, spoken over the painter’s shoulder as openly as if he
were not by. There was no question but of likeness; all finer facts were
far from them; they wished to see how good a portrait Westover had made,
and some of them consoled him with the suggestion that the likeness
would come out more when the picture got dry.

Whitwell, when he came, attempted a larger view of the artist’s work,
but apparently more out of kindness for him than admiration of the
picture. He said he presumed you could not always get a thing like that
just right the first time, and that you had to keep trying till you did
get it; but it paid in the end. Jeff had stolen down from the house with
his dog, drawn by the fascination which one we have injured always has
for us; when Whitwell suddenly turned upon him and asked, jocularly,
“What do you think, Jeff?” the boy could only kick his dog and drive it
home, as a means of hiding his feelings.

He brought the teacher to see the picture the last Friday before the
painter went away. She was a cold-looking, austere girl, pretty enough,
with eyes that wandered away from the young man, although Jeff used all
his arts to make her feel at home in his presence. She pretended to have
merely stopped on her way up to see Mrs. Durgin, and she did not venture
any comment on the painting; but, when Westover asked something about
her school, she answered him promptly enough as to the number and ages
and sexes of the school-children. He ventured so far toward a joke with
her as to ask if she had much trouble with such a tough subject as Jeff,
and she said he could be good enough when he had a mind. If he could get
over his teasing, she said, with the air of reading him a lecture, she
would not have anything to complain of; and Jeff looked ashamed, but
rather of the praise than the blame. His humiliation seemed complete
when she said, finally: “He’s a good scholar.”

On the Tuesday following, Westover meant to go. It was the end of his
third week, and it had brought him into September. The weather since he
had begun to paint Lion’s Head was perfect for his work; but, with the
long drought, it had grown very warm. Many trees now had flamed into
crimson on the hill-slopes; the yellowing corn in the fields gave out
a thin, dry sound as the delicate wind stirred the blades; but only the
sounds and sights were autumnal. The heat was oppressive at midday, and
at night the cold had lost its edge. There was no dew, and Mrs. Durgin
sat out with Westover on the porch while he smoked a final pipe there.
She had come to join him for some fixed purpose, apparently, and she
called to her boy, “You go to bed, Jeff,” as if she wished to be alone
with Westover; the men folks were already in bed; he could hear them
cough now and then.

“Mr. Westover,” the woman began, even as she swept her skirts forward
before she sat down, “I want to ask you whether you would let that
picture of yours go on part board? I’ll give you back just as much as
you say of this money.”

He looked round and saw that she had in the hand dropped in her lap the
bills he had given her after supper.

“Why, I couldn’t, very well, Mrs. Durgin--” he began.

“I presume you’ll think I’m foolish,” she pursued. “But I do want that
picture; I don’t know when I’ve ever wanted a thing more. It’s just
like Lion’s Head, the way I’ve seen it, day in and day out, every summer
since I come here thirty-five years ago; it’s beautiful!”

“Mrs. Durgin,” said Westover, “you gratify me more than I can tell you.
I wish--I wish I could let you have the picture. I--I don’t know what to
say--”

“Why don’t you let me have it, then? If we ever had to go away from
here--if anything happened to us--it’s the one thing I should want to
keep and take with me. There! That’s the way I feel about it. I can’t
explain; but I do wish you’d let me have it.”

Some emotion which did not utter itself in the desire she expressed made
her voice shake in the words. She held out the bank-notes to him, and
they rustled with the tremor of her hand.

“Mrs. Durgin, I suppose I shall have to be frank with you, and you
mustn’t feel hurt. I have to live by my work, and I have to get as much
as I can for it--”

“That’s what I say. I don’t want to beat you down on it. I’ll give you
whatever you think is right. It’s my money, and my husband feels just as
I do about it,” she urged.

“You don’t quite understand,” he said, gently. “I expect to have an
exhibition of my pictures in Boston this fall, and I hope to get two or
three hundred dollars for Lion’s Head.”

“I’ve been a proper fool,” cried the woman, and she drew in a long
breath.

“Oh, don’t mind,” he begged; “it’s all right. I’ve never had any offer
for a picture that I’d rather take than yours. I know the thing can’t be
altogether bad after what you’ve said. And I’ll tell you what! I’ll have
it photographed when I get to Boston, and I’ll send you a photograph of
it.”

“How much will that be?” Mrs. Durgin asked, as if taught caution by her
offer for the painting.

“Nothing. And if you’ll accept it and hang it up here somewhere I shall
be very glad.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Durgin, and the meekness, the wounded pride, he
fancied in her, touched him.

He did not know at first how to break the silence which she let follow
upon her words. At last he said:

“You spoke, just now, about taking it with you. Of course, you don’t
think of leaving Lion’s Head?”

She did not answer for so long a time that he thought she had not
perhaps heard him or heeded what he said; but she answered, finally:
“We did think of it. The day you come we had about made up our minds to
leave.”

“Oh!”

“But I’ve been thinkin’ of something since you’ve been here that I
don’t know but you’ll say is about as wild as wantin’ to buy a
three-hundred-dollar picture with a week’s board.” She gave a short,
self-scornful laugh; but it was a laugh, and it relieved the tension.

“It may not be worth any more,” he said, glad of the relief.

“Oh, I guess it is,” she rejoined, and then she waited for him to prompt
her.

“Well?”

“Well, it’s this; and I wanted to ask you, anyway. You think there’d be
any chance of my gettin’ summer folks to come here and board if I was
to put an advertisement in a Boston paper? I know it’s a lonesome place,
and there ain’t what you may call attractions. But the folks from the
hotels, sometimes, when they ride over in a stage to see the view,
praise up the scenery, and I guess it is sightly. I know that well
enough; and I ain’t afraid but what I can do for boarders as well as
some, if not better. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a capital idea, Mrs. Durgin.”

“It’s that or go,” she said. “There ain’t a livin’ for us on the farm
any more, and we got to do somethin’. If there was anything else I could
do! But I’ve thought it out and thought it out, and I guess there ain’t
anything I can do but take boarders--if I can get them.”

“I should think you’d find it rather pleasant on some accounts. Your
boarders would be company for you,” said Westover.

“We’re company enough for ourselves,” said Mrs. Durgin. “I ain’t ever
been lonesome here, from the first minute. I guess I had company enough
when I was a girl to last me the sort that hotel folks are. I presume
Mr. Whitwell spoke to you about my father?”

“Yes; he did, Mrs. Durgin.”

“I don’t presume he said anything that wa’n’t true. It’s all right. But
I know how my mother used to slave, and how I used to slave myself; and
I always said I’d rather do anything than wait on boarders; and now I
guess I got to come to it. The sight of summer folks makes me sick! I
guess I could ‘a’ had ‘em long ago if I’d wanted to. There! I’ve said
enough.” She rose, with a sudden lift of her powerful frame, and stood a
moment as if expecting Westover to say something.

He said: “Well, when you’ve made your mind up, send your advertisement
to me, and I’ll attend to it for you.”

“And you won’t forget about the picture?”

“No; I won’t forget that.”

The next morning he made ready for an early start, and in his
preparations he had the zealous and even affectionate help of Jeff
Durgin. The boy seemed to wish him to carry away the best impression
of him, or, at least, to make him forget all that had been sinister or
unpleasant in his behavior. They had been good comrades since the first
evil day; they had become good friends even; and Westover was touched
by the boy’s devotion at parting. He helped the painter get his pack
together in good shape, and he took pride in strapping it on Westover’s
shoulders, adjusting and readjusting it with care, and fastening it so
that all should be safe and snug. He lingered about at the risk of being
late for school, as if to see the last of the painter, and he waved his
hat to him when Westover looked back at the house from half down the
lane. Then he vanished, and Westover went slowly on till he reached
that corner of the orchard where the slanting gravestones of the family
burial-ground showed above the low wall. There, suddenly, a storm burst
upon him. The air rained apples, that struck him on the head, the back,
the side, and pelted in violent succession on his knapsack and canvases,
camp-stool and easel. He seemed assailed by four or five skilful
marksmen, whose missiles all told.

When he could lift his face to look round he heard a shrill, accusing
voice, “Oh, Jeff Durgin!” and he saw another storm of apples fly through
the air toward the little Whitwell girl, who dodged and ran along the
road below and escaped in the direction of the schoolhouse. Then the
boy’s face showed itself over the top of one of the gravestones, all
agrin with joy. He waited and watched Westover keep slowly on, as if
nothing had happened, and presently he let some apples fall from his
hands and walked slowly back to the house, with his dog at his heels.

When Westover reached the level of the road and the shelter of the woods
near Whitwell’s house, he unstrapped his load to see how much harm had
been done to his picture. He found it unhurt, and before he had got the
burden back again he saw Jeff Durgin leaping along the road toward the
school-house, whirling his satchel of books about his head and shouting
gayly to the girl, now hidden by the bushes at the other end of the
lane: “Cynthy! Oh, Cynthy! Wait for me! I want to tell you something!”



IX.

Westover, received next spring the copy for an advertisement from Mrs.
Durgin, which she asked to have him put in some paper for her. She said
that her son Jackson had written it out, and Westover found it so well
written that he had scarcely to change the wording. It offered the best
of farm-board, with plenty of milk and eggs, berries and fruit, for
five dollars a week at Lion’s Head Farm, and it claimed for the farm the
merit of the finest view of the celebrated Lion’s Head Mountain. It
was signed, as her letter was signed, “Mrs. J. M. Durgin,” with her
post-office address, and it gave Westover as a reference.

The letter was in the same handwriting as the advertisement, which he
took to be that of Jackson Durgin. It enclosed a dollar note to pay for
three insertions of the advertisement in the evening Transcript, and
it ended, almost casually: “I do not know as you have heard that my
husband, James Monroe Durgin, passed to spirit life this spring. My son
will help me to run the house.”

This death could not move Westover more than it had apparently moved
the widow. During the three weeks he had passed under his roof, he had
scarcely exchanged three words with James Monroe Durgin, who remained to
him an impression of large, round, dull-blue eyes, a stubbly upper
lip, and cheeks and chin tagged with coarse, hay-colored beard. The
impression was so largely the impression that he had kept of the
dull-blue eyes and the gaunt, slanted figure of Andrew Jackson Durgin
that he could not be very distinct in his sense of which was now the
presence and which the absence. He remembered, with an effort, that the
son’s beard was straw-colored, but he had to make no effort to recall
the robust effect of Mrs. Durgin and her youngest son. He wondered now,
as he had often wondered before, whether she knew of the final violence
which had avenged the boy for the prolonged strain of repression Jeff
had inflicted upon himself during Westover’s stay at the farm. After
several impulses to go back and beat him, to follow him to school and
expose him to the teacher, to write to his mother and tell her of his
misbehavior, Westover had decided to do nothing. As he had come off
unhurt in person and property, he could afford to be more generously
amused than if he had suffered damage in either. The more he thought of
the incident, the more he was disposed to be lenient with the boy,
whom he was aware of having baffled and subdued by his superior wit and
virtue in perhaps intolerable measure. He could not quite make out
that it was an act of bad faith; there was no reason to think that the
good-natured things the fellow had done, the constant little offices of
zeal and friendliness, were less sincere than this violent outbreak.

The letter from Lion’s Head Farm brought back his three weeks there very
vividly, and made Westover wish he was going there for the summer. But
he was going over to France for an indefinite period of work in the only
air where he believed modern men were doing good things in the right
way. He W a sale in the winter, and he had sold pictures enough to
provide the means for this sojourn abroad; though his lion’s Head
Mountain had not brought the two hundred and fifty or three hundred
dollars he had hoped for. It brought only a hundred and sixty; but the
time had almost come already when Westover thought it brought too much.
Now, the letter from Mrs. Durgin reminded him that he had never sent her
the photograph of the picture which he had promised her. He encased the
photograph at once, and wrote to her with many avowals of contrition for
his neglect, and strong regret that he was not soon to see the original
of the painting again. He paid a decent reverence to the bereavement
she had suffered, and he sent his regards to all, especially his comrade
Jeff, whom he advised to keep out of the apple-orchard.

Five years later Westover came home in the first week of a gasping
August, whose hot breath thickened round the Cunarder before she got
half-way up the harbor. He waited only to see his pictures through the
custom-house, and then he left for the mountains. The mountains meant
Lion’s Head for him, and eight hours after he was dismounting from the
train at a station on the road which had been pushed through on a new
line within four miles of the farm. It was called Lion’s Head House now,
as he read on the side of the mountain-wagon which he saw waiting at the
platform, and he knew at a glance that it was Jeff Durgin who was coming
forward to meet him and take his hand-bag.

The boy had been the prophecy of the man in even a disappointing degree.
Westover had fancied him growing up to the height of his father and
brother, but Jeff Durgin’s stalwart frame was notable for strength
rather than height. He could not have been taller than his mother, whose
stature was above the standard of her sex, but he was massive without
being bulky. His chest was deep, his square shoulders broad, his
powerful legs bore him with a backward bulge of the calves that showed
through his shapely trousers; he caught up the trunks and threw them
into the baggage-wagon with a swelling of the muscles on his short,
thick arms which pulled his coat-sleeves from his heavy wrists and
broad, short hands.

He had given one of these to Westover to shake when they met, but with
something conditional in his welcome, and with a look which was not so
much furtive as latent. The thatch of yellow hair he used to wear was
now cropped close to his skull, which was a sort of dun-color; and it
had some drops of sweat along the lighter edge where his hat had shaded
his forehead. He put his hat on the seat between himself and Westover,
and drove away from the station bareheaded, to cool himself after his
bout with the baggage, which was following more slowly in its wagon.
There was a good deal of it, and there were half a dozen people--women,
of course--going to Lion’s Head House. Westover climbed to the place
beside Jeff to let them have the other two seats to themselves, and
to have a chance of talking; but the ladies had to be quieted in
their several anxieties concerning their baggage, and the letters and
telegrams they had sent about their rooms, before they settled down to
an exchange of apprehensions among themselves, and left Jeff Durgin free
to listen to Westover.

“I don’t know but I ought to have telegraphed you that I was coming,”
 Westover said; “but I couldn’t realize that you were doing things on the
hotel scale. Perhaps you won’t have room for me?”

“Guess we can put you up,” said Jeff.

“No chance of getting my old room, I suppose?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. If there’s any one in it, I guess mother could
change ‘em.”

“Is that so?” asked Westover, with a liking for being liked, which his
tone expressed. “How is your mother?”

Jeff seemed to think a moment before he answered:

“Just exactly the same.”

“A little older?”

“Not as I can see.”

“Does she hate keeping a hotel as badly as she expected?”

“That’s what she says,” answered Jeff, with a twinkle. All the time,
while he was talking with Westover, he was breaking out to his horses,
which he governed with his voice, trotting them up hill and down, and
walking them on the short, infrequent levels, in the mountain fashion.

Westover almost feared to ask: “And how is Jackson?”

“First-rate--that is, for him. He’s as well as ever he was, I guess,
and he don’t appear a day older. You’ve changed some,” said Jeff, with a
look round at Westover.

“Yes; I’m twenty-nine now, and I wear a heavier beard.” Westover noticed
that Jeff was clean shaved of any sign of an approaching beard, and
artistically he rejoiced in the fellow’s young, manly beauty, which was
very regular and sculpturesque. “You’re about eighteen?”

“Nearer nineteen.”

“Is Jackson as much interested in the other world as he used to be?”

“Spirits?”

“Yes.”

“I guess he keeps it up with Mr. Whitwell. He don’t say much about it
at home. He keeps all the books, and helps mother run the house. She
couldn’t very well get along without him.”

“And where do you come in?”

“Well, I look after the transportation,” said Jeff, with a nod toward
his horses--“when I’m at home, that is. I’ve been at the Academy in
Lovewell the last three winters, and that means a good piece of the
summer, too, first and last. But I guess I’ll let mother talk to you
about that.”

“All right,” said Westover. “What I don’t know about education isn’t
worth knowing.”

Jeff laughed, and said to the off horse, which seemed to know that he
was meant: “Get up, there!”

“And Cynthia? Is Cynthia at home?” Westover asked.

“Yes; they’re all down in the little wood-colored house yet. Cynthia
teaches winters, and summers she helps mother. She has charge of the
dining-room.”

“Does Franky cry as much as ever?”

“No, Frank’s a fine boy. He’s in the house, too. Kind of bell-boy.”

“And you haven’t worked Mr. Whitwell in anywhere?”

“Well, he talks to the ladies, and takes parties of ‘em
mountain-climbing. I guess we couldn’t get along without Mr. Whitwell.
He talks religion to ‘em.” He cast a mocking glance at Westover over his
shoulder. “Women seem to like religion, whether they belong to church or
not.”

Westover laughed and asked: “And Fox? How’s Fox?”

“Well,” said Jeff, “we had to give Fox away. He was always cross with
the boarders’ children. My brother was on from Colorado, and he took Fox
back with him.”

“I didn’t suppose,” said Westover, “that I should have been sorry to
miss Fox. But I guess I shall be.”

Jeff seemed to enjoy the implication of his words. “He wasn’t a bad dog.
He was stupid.”

When they arrived at the foot of the lane, mounting to the farm,
Westover saw what changes had been made in the house. There were large
additions, tasteless and characterless, but giving the rooms that were
needed. There was a vulgar modernity in the new parts, expressed with a
final intensity in the four-light windows, which are esteemed the last
word of domestic architecture in the country. Jeff said nothing as
they approached the house, but Westover said: “Well, you’ve certainly
prospered. You’re quite magnificent.”

They reached the old level in front of the house, artificially widened
out of his remembrance, with a white flag-pole planted at its edge, and
he looked up at the front of the house, which was unchanged, except that
it had been built a story higher back of the old front, and discovered
the window of his old room. He could hardly wait to get his greetings
over with Mrs. Durgin and Jackson, who both showed a decorous pleasure
and surprise at his coming, before he asked:

“And could you let me have my own room, Mrs. Durgin?”

“Why, yes,” she said, “if you don’t want something a little nicer.”

“I don’t believe you’ve got anything nicer,” Westover said.

“All right, if you think so,” she retorted. “You can have the old room,
anyway.”



X.

Westover could not have said he felt very much at home on his first
sojourn at the farm, or that he had cared greatly for the Durgins.
But now he felt very much at home, and as if he were in the hands of
friends.

It was toward the close of the afternoon that he arrived, and he went
in promptly to the meal that was served shortly after. He found that the
farm-house had not evolved so far in the direction of a hotel as to have
reached the stage of a late dinner. It was tea that he sat down to,
but when he asked if there were not something hot, after listening to
a catalogue of the cold meats, the spectacled waitress behind his chair
demanded, with the air of putting him on his honor:

“You among those that came this afternoon?”

Westover claimed to be of the new arrivals.

“Well, then, you can have steak or chops and baked potatoes.”

He found the steak excellent, though succinct, and he looked round in
the distinction it conferred upon him, on the older guests, who were
served with cold ham, tongue, and corned-beef. He had expected to
be appointed his place by Cynthia Whitwell, but Jeff came to the
dining-room with him and showed him to the table he occupied, with an
effect of doing him special credit.

From his impressions of the berries, the cream, the toast, and the tea,
as well as the steak, he decided that on the gastronomic side there
could be no question but the Durgins knew how to keep a hotel; and his
further acquaintance with the house and its appointments confirmed him
in his belief. All was very simple, but sufficient; and no guest could
have truthfully claimed that he was stinted in towels, in water, in
lamp-light, in the quantity or quality of bedding, in hooks for clothes,
or wardrobe or bureau room. Westover made Mrs. Durgin his sincere
compliments on her success as they sat in the old parlor, which she had
kept for herself much in its former state, and she accepted them with
simple satisfaction.

“But I don’t know as I should ever had the courage to try it if it
hadn’t been for you happening along just when you did,” she said.

“Then I’m the founder of your fortunes?”

“If you want to call them fortunes. We don’t complain It’s been a fight,
but I guess we’ve got the best of it. The house is full, and we’re
turnin’ folks away. I guess they can’t say that at the big hotels they
used to drive over from to see Lion’s Head at the farm.” She gave a low,
comfortable chuckle, and told Westover of the struggle they had made.
It was an interesting story and pathetic, like all stories of human
endeavor the efforts of the most selfish ambition have something of this
interest; and the struggle of the Durgins had the grace of the wish to
keep their home.

“And is Jeff as well satisfied as the rest?” Westover asked, after other
talk and comment on the facts.

“Too much so,” said Mrs. Durgin. “I should like to talk with you about
Jeff, Mr. Westover; you and him was always such friends.”

“Yes,” said Westover; “I shall be glad if I can be of use to you.”

“Why, it’s just this. I don’t see why Jeff shouldn’t do something
besides keep a hotel.”

Westover’s eyes wandered to the photograph of his painting of Lion’s
Head which hung over the mantelpiece, in what he felt to be the place of
the greatest honor in the whole house, and a sudden fear came upon him
that perhaps Jeff had developed an artistic talent in the belief of his
family. But he waited silently to hear.

“We did think that before we got through the improvements last spring a
year ago we should have to get the savings-bank to put a mortgage on the
place; but we had just enough to start the season with, and we thought
we would try to pull through. We had a splendid season, and made money,
and this year we’re doin’ so well that I ain’t afraid for the future any
more, and I want to give Jeff a chance in the world. I want he should go
to college.”

Westover felt all the boldness of the aspiration, but it was at least
not in the direction of art. “Wouldn’t you rather miss him in the
management?”

“We should, some. But he would be here the best part of the summer, in
his vacations, and Jackson and I are full able to run the house without
him.”

“Jackson seems very well,” said Westover, evasively.

“He’s better. He’s only thirty-four years old. His father lived to be
sixty, and he had the same kind. Jeff tell you he had been at Lovewell
Academy?”

“Yes; he did.”

“He done well there. All his teachers that he ever had,” Mrs. Durgin
went on, with the mother-pride that soon makes itself tiresome to the
listener, “said Jeff done well at school when he had a mind to, and at
the Academy he studied real hard. I guess,” said Mrs. Durgin, with her
chuckle, “that he thought that was goin’ to be the end of it. One thing,
he had to keep up with Cynthy, and that put him on his pride. You seen
Cynthy yet?”

“No. Jeff told me she was in charge of the diningroom.”

“I guess I’m in charge of the whole house,” said Mrs. Durgin. “Cynthy’s
the housekeeper, though. She’s a fine girl, and a smart girl,” said Mrs.
Durgin, with a visible relenting from some grudge, “and she’ll do well
wherever you put her. She went to the Academy the first two winters Jeff
did. We’ve about scooped in the whole Whitwell family. Franky’s here,
and his father’s--well, his father’s kind of philosopher to the lady
boarders.” Mrs. Durgin laughed, and Westover laughed with her. “Yes, I
want Jeff should go to college, and I want he should be a lawyer.”

Westover did not find that he had anything useful to say to this; so he
said: “I’ve no doubt it’s better than being a painter.”

“I’m not so sure; three hundred dollars for a little thing like that.”
 She indicated the photograph of his Lion’s Head, and she was evidently
so proud of it that he reserved for the moment the truth as to the
price he had got for the painting. “I was surprised when you sent me a
photograph full as big. I don’t let every one in here, but a good many
of the ladies are artists themselves-amateurs, I guess--and first and
last they all want to see it. I guess they’ll all want to see you, Mr.
Westover. They’ll be wild, as they call it, when they know you’re in the
house. Yes, I mean Jeff shall go to college.”

“Bowdoin or Dartmouth?” Westover suggested.

“Well, I guess you’ll think I’m about as forth-putting as I was when
I wanted you to give me a three-hundred-dollar picture for a week’s
board.”

“I only got a hundred and sixty, Mrs. Durgin,” said Westover,
conscientiously.

“Well, it’s a shame. Any rate, three hundred’s the price to all my
boarders. My, if I’ve told that story once, I guess I’ve told it fifty
times!”

Mrs. Durgin laughed at herself jollily, and Westover noted how
prosperity had changed her. It had freed her tongue, it has brightened
her humor, it had cheered her heart; she had put on flesh, and her
stalwart frame was now a far greater bulk than he remembered.

“Well, there,” she said, “the long and the short of it is, I want Jeff
should go to Harvard.”

He commanded himself to say: “I don’t see why he shouldn’t.”

Mrs. Durgin called out, “Come in, Jackson,” and Westover looked round
and saw the elder son like a gaunt shadow in the doorway. “I’ve just got
where I’ve told Mr. Westover where I want Jeff should go. It don’t seem
to have ca’d him off his feet any, either.”

“I presume,” said Jackson, coming in and sitting lankly down in the
feather-cushioned rocking-chair which his mother pushed toward him with
her foot, “that the expense would be more at Harvard than it would at
the other colleges.”

“If you want the best you got to pay for it,” said Mrs. Durgin.

“I suppose it would cost more,” Westover answered Jackson’s conjecture.
“I really don’t know much about it. One hears tremendous stories at
Boston of the rate of living among the swell students in Cambridge.
People talk of five thousand a year, and that sort of thing.” Mrs.
Durgin shut her lips, after catching her breath. “But I fancy that
it’s largely talk. I have a friend whose son went through Harvard for a
thousand a year, and I know that many fellows do it for much less.”

“I guess we can manage to let Jeff have a thousand a year,” said Mrs.
Durgin, proudly, “and not scrimp very much, either.”

She looked at her elder son, who said: “I don’t believe but what we
could. It’s more of a question with me what sort of influence Jeff would
come under there. I think he’s pretty much spoiled here.”

“Now, Jackson!” said his mother.

“I’ve heard,” said Westover, “that Harvard takes the nonsense out of
a man. I can’t enter into what you say, and it isn’t my affair; but in
regard to influence at Harvard, it depends upon the set Jeff is thrown
with or throws himself with. So, at least, I infer from what I’ve heard
my friend say of his son there. There are hard-working sets, loafing
sets, and fast sets; and I suppose it isn’t different at Harvard in such
matters from other colleges.”

Mrs. Durgin looked a little grave. “Of course,” she said, “we don’t
know anybody at Cambridge, except some ladies that boarded with us one
summer, and I shouldn’t want to ask any favor of them. The trouble would
be to get Jeff started right.”

Westover surmised a good many things, but in the absence of any
confidences from the Durgins he could not tell just how much Jackson
meant in saying that Jeff was pretty much spoiled, or how little. At
first, from Mrs. Durgin’s prompt protest, he fancied that Jackson meant
that the boy had been over-indulged by his mother: “I understand,” he
said, in default of something else to say, “that the requirements at
Harvard are pretty severe.”

“He’s passed his preliminary examinations,” said Jackson, with a touch
of hauteur, “and I guess he can enter this fall if we should so decide.
He’ll have some conditions, prob’ly, but none but what he can work off,
I guess.”

“Then, if you wish to have him go to college, by all means let him go to
Harvard, I should say. It’s our great university and our oldest. I’m
not a college man myself; but, if I were, I should wish to have been a
Harvard man. If Jeff has any nonsense in him, it will take it out; and
I don’t believe there’s anything in Harvard, as Harvard, to make him
worse.”

“That’s what we both think,” said Jackson.

“I’ve heard,” Westover continued, and he rose and stood while he spoke,
“that Harvard’s like the world. A man gets on there on the same terms
that he gets on in the world. He has to be a man, and he’d better be a
gentleman.”

Mrs. Durgin still looked serious. “Have you come back to Boston for good
now? Do you expect to be there right along?”

“I’ve taken a studio there. Yes, I expect to be in Boston now. I’ve
taken to teaching, and I fancy I can make a living. If Jeff comes to
Cambridge, and I can be of any use--”

“We should be ever so much obliged to you,” said his mother, with an air
of great relief.

“Not at all. I shall be very glad. Your mountain air is drugging me,
Mrs. Durgin. I shall have to say good-night, or I shall tumble asleep
before I get upstairs. Oh, I can find the way, I guess; this part of
the house seems the same.” He got away from them, and with the lamp that
Jackson gave him found his way to his room. A few moments later some
one knocked at his door, and a boy stood there with a pitcher. “Some
ice-water, Mr. Westover?”

“Why, is that you, Franky? I’m glad to see you again. How are you?”

“I’m pretty well,” said the boy, shyly. He was a very handsome little
fellow of distinctly dignified presence, and Westover was aware at once
that here was not a subject for patronage. “Is there anything else you
want, Mr. Westover? Matches, or soap, or anything?” He put the pitcher
down and gave a keen glance round the room.

“No, everything seems to be here, Frank,” said Westover.

“Well, good-night,” said the boy, and he slipped out, quietly closing
the door after him.

Westover pushed up his window and looked at Lion’s Head in the
moonlight. It slumbered as if with the sleep of centuries-austere,
august. The moon-rays seemed to break and splinter on the outline of the
lion-shape, and left all the mighty mass black below.

In the old porch under his window Westover heard whispering. Then, “You
behave yourself, Jeff Durgin!” came in a voice which could be no other
than Cynthia Whitwell’s, and Jeff Durgin’s laugh followed.

He saw the girl in the morning. She met him at the door of the
dining-room, and he easily found in her shy, proud manner, and her pure,
cold beauty, the temperament and physiognomy of the child he remembered.
She was tall and slim, and she held herself straight without stiffness;
her face was fine, with a straight nose, and a decided chin, and a mouth
of the same sweetness which looked from her still, gray eyes; her hair,
of the average brown, had a rough effect of being quickly tossed into
form, which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him to
place him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily,
unwillingly graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of a
hermit-thrush; but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion in
Cynthia’s looks, her acts were of plain and honest prose, such as giving
Westover the pleasantest place and the most intelligent waitress in the
room.

He would have liked to keep her in talk a moment, but she made
business-like despatch of all his allusions to the past, and got herself
quickly away. Afterward she came back to him, with the effect of having
forced herself to come, and the color deepened in her cheeks while she
stayed.

She seemed glad of his being there, but helpless against the instincts
or traditions that forbade her to show her pleasure in his presence.
Her reticence became almost snubbing in its strictness when he asked her
about her school-teaching in the winter; but he found that she taught at
the little school-house at the foot of the hill, and lived at home with
her father.

“And have you any bad boys that frighten little girls in your school?”
 he asked, jocosely.

“I don’t know as I have,” she said, with a consciousness that flamed
into her cheeks.

“Perhaps the boys have reformed?” Westover suggested.

“I presume,” she said, stiffly, “that there’s room for improvement
in every one,” and then, as if she were afraid he might take this
personally, she looked unhappy and tried to speak of other things. She
asked him if he did not see a great many changes at Lion’s Head; he
answered, gravely, that he wished he could have found it just as he left
it, and then she must have thought she had gone wrong again, for she
left him in an embarrassment that was pathetic, but which was charming.



XI.

After breakfast Westover walked out and saw Whitwell standing on the
grass in front of the house, beside the flagstaff. He suffered Westover
to make the first advances toward the renewal of their acquaintance, but
when he was sure of his friendly intention he responded with a cordial
openness which the painter had fancied wanting in his children. Whitwell
had not changed much. The most noticeable difference was the compact
phalanx of new teeth which had replaced the staggering veterans of
former days, and which displayed themselves in his smile of relenting.
There was some novelty of effect also in an arrangement of things in his
hat-band. At first Westover thought they were fishhooks and artificial
flies, such as the guides wear in the Adirondacks to advertise their
calling about the hotel offices and the piazzas. But another glance
showd him that they were sprays and wild flowers of various sorts, with
gay mosses and fungi and some stems of Indian-pipe.

Whitwell seemed pleased that these things should have caught Westover’s
eye. He said, almost immediately: “Lookin’ at my almanac? This is one
of our field-days; we have ‘em once a week; and I like to let the ladies
see beforehand what nature’s got on the bill for ‘em, in the woods and
pastur’s.”

“It’s a good idea,” said Westover, “and it’s fresh and picturesque.”
 Whitwell laughed for pleasure.

“They told me what a consolation you were to the ladies, with your walks
and talks.”

“Well, I try to give ‘em something to think about,” said Whitwell.

“But why do you confine your ministrations to one sex?”

“I don’t, on purpose. But it’s the only sex here, three-fourths of the
time. Even the children are mostly all girls. When the husbands come up
Saturday nights, they don’t want to go on a tramp Sundays. They want
to lay off and rest. That’s about how it is. Well, you see some changes
about Lion’s Head, I presume?” he asked, with what seemed an impersonal
pleasure in them.

“I should rather have found the old farm. But I must say I’m glad to
find such a good hotel.”

“Jeff and his mother made their brags to you?” said Whitwell, with a
kind of amiable scorn. “I guess if it wa’n’t for Cynthy she wouldn’t
know where she was standin’, half the time. It don’t matter where Jeff
stands, I guess. Jackson’s the best o’ the lot, now the old man’s
gone.” There was no one by at the moment to hear these injuries except
Westover, but Whitwell called them out with a frankness which was
perhaps more carefully adapted to the situation than it seemed. Westover
made no attempt to parry them formally; but he offered some generalities
in extenuation of the unworthiness of the Durgins, which Whitwell did
not altogether refuse.

“Oh, it’s all right. Old woman talk to you about Jeff’s going to
college? I thought so. Wants to make another Dan’el Webster of him.
Guess she can’s far forth as Dan’el’s graduatin’ went.” Westover
tried to remember how this had been with the statesman, but could not.
Whitwell added, with intensifying irony so of look and tone: “Guess
the second Dan’el won’t have a chance to tear his degree up; guess he
wouldn’t ever b’en ready to try for it if it had depended on him.
They don’t keep any record at Harvard, do they, of the way fellows are
prepared for their preliminary examinations?”

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” said Westover.

“Oh, nothin’. You get a chance some time to ask Jeff who done most of
his studyin’ for him at the Academy.”

This hint was not so darkling but Westover could understand that
Whitwell attributed Jeff’s scholarship to the help of Cynthia, but
he would not press him to an open assertion of the fact. There was
something painful in it to him; it had the pathos which perhaps most of
the success in the world would reveal if we could penetrate its outside.

He was silent, and Whitwell left the point. “Well,” he concluded,
“what’s goin’ on in them old European countries?”

“Oh, the old thing,” said Westover. “But I can’t speak for any except
France, very well.”

“What’s their republic like, over there? Ours? See anything of it, how
it works?”

“Well, you know,” said Westover, “I was working so hard myself all the
time--”

“Good!” Whitwell slapped his leg. Westover saw that he had on long
India-rubber boots, which came up to his knees, and he gave a wayward
thought to the misery they would be on an August day to another man; but
Whitwell was probably insensible to any discomfort from them. “When a
man’s mindin’ his own business any government’s good, I guess. But I
should like to prowl round some them places where they had the worst
scenes of the Revolution, Ever been in the Place de la Concorde?”
 Whitwell gave it the full English pronunciation.

“I passed through it nearly every day.”

“I want to know! And that column that they, pulled down in the Commune
that had that little Boney on it--see that?”

“In the Place Vendome?”

“Yes, Plass Vonndome.”

“Oh yes. You wouldn’t know it had ever been down.”

“Nor the things it stood for?”

“As to that, I can’t be so sure.”

“Well, it’s funny,” said the philosopher, “how the world seems to always
come out at the same hole it went in at!” He paused, with his mouth
open, as if to let the notion have full effect with Westover.

The painter said: “And you’re still in the old place, Mr. Whitwell?”

“Yes, I like my own house. They’ve wanted me to come up here often
enough, but I’m satisfied where I am. It’s quiet down there, and, when
I get through for the day, I can read. And I like to keep my family
together. Cynthy and Frank always sleep at home, and Jombateeste eats
with me. You remember Jombateeste?”

Westover had to say that he did not.

“Well, I don’t know as you did see him much. He was that Canuck I had
helpin’ me clear that piece over on Lion’s Head for the pulp-mill;
pulp-mill went all to thunder, and I never got a cent. And sometimes
Jackson comes down with his plantchette, and we have a good time.”

“Jackson still believes in the manifestations?”

“Yes. But he’s never developed much himself. He can’t seem to do much
without the plantchette. We’ve had up some of them old philosophers
lately. We’ve had up Socrates.”

“Is that so? It must be very interesting.”

Whitwell did not answer, and Westover saw his eye wander. He looked
round. Several ladies were coming across the grass toward him from the
hotel, lifting their skirts and tiptoeing through the dew. They called
to him, “Good-morning, Mr. Whitwell!” and “Are you going up Lion’s
Head to-day?” and “Don’t you think it will rain?”--“Guess not,” said
Whitwell, with a fatherly urbanity and an air of amusement at the
anxieties of the sex which seemed habitual to him. He waited tranquilly
for them to come up, and then asked, with a wave of his hand toward
Westover: “Acquainted with Mr. Westover, the attist?” He named each of
them, and it would have been no great vanity in Westover to think they
had made their little movement across the grass quite as much in the
hope of an introduction to him as in the wish to consult Whitwell about
his plans.

The painter found himself the centre of an agreeable excitement with all
the ladies in the house. For this it was perhaps sufficient to be a man.
To be reasonably young and decently good-looking, to be an artist,
and an artist not unknown, were advantages which had the splendor of
superfluity.

He liked finding himself in the simple and innocent American
circumstance again, and he was not sorry to be confronted at once with
one of the most characteristic aspects of our summer. He could read
in the present development of Lion’s Head House all the history of its
evolution from the first conception of farm-board, which sufficed the
earliest comers, to its growth in the comforts and conveniences which
more fastidious tastes and larger purses demanded. Before this point was
reached, the boarders would be of a good and wholesome sort, but they
would be people of no social advantages, and not of much cultivation,
though they might be intelligent; they would certainly not be
fashionable; five dollars a week implied all that, except in the case
of some wandering artist or the family of some poor young professor. But
when the farm became a boarding-house and called itself a hotel, as at
present with Lion’s Head House, and people paid ten dollars a week, or
twelve for transients, a moment of its character was reached which could
not be surpassed when its prosperity became greater and its inmates more
pretentious. In fact, the people who can afford to pay ten dollars a
week for summer board, and not much more, are often the best of the
American people, or, at least, of the New England people. They may not
know it, and those who are richer may not imagine it. They are apt to be
middle-aged maiden ladies from university towns, living upon carefully
guarded investments; young married ladies with a scant child or two,
and needing rest and change of air; college professors with nothing but
their modest salaries; literary men or women in the beginning of their
tempered success; clergymen and their wives away from their churches in
the larger country towns or the smaller suburbs of the cities; here
and there an agreeable bachelor in middle life, fond of literature and
nature; hosts of young and pretty girls with distinct tastes in art,
and devoted to the clever young painter who leads them to the sources
of inspiration in the fields and woods. Such people are refined, humane,
appreciative, sympathetic; and Westover, fresh from the life abroad
where life is seldom so free as ours without some stain, was glad to
find himself in the midst of this unrestraint, which was so sweet and
pure. He had seen enough of rich people to know that riches seldom
bought the highest qualities, even among his fellow-countrymen who
suppose that riches can do everything, and the first aspects of society
at Lion’s Head seemed to him Arcadian. There really proved to be a
shepherd or two among all that troop of shepherdesses, old and young;
though it was in the middle of the week, remote alike from the Saturday
of arrivals and the Monday of departures. To be sure, there was none
quite so young as himself, except Jeff Durgin, who was officially
exterior to the social life.

The painter who gave lessons to the ladies was already a man of forty,
and he was strongly dragoned round by a wife almost as old, who had
taken great pains to secure him for herself, and who worked him to far
greater advantage in his profession than he could possibly have worked
himself: she got him orders; sold his pictures, even in Boston, where
they never buy American pictures; found him pupils, and kept the boldest
of these from flirting with him. Westover, who was so newly from Paris,
was able to console him with talk of the salons and ateliers, which he
had not heard from so directly in ten years. After the first inevitable
moment of jealousy, his wife forgave Westover when she found that he did
not want pupils, and she took a leading part in the movement to have
him read Browning at a picnic, organized by the ladies shortly after he
came.



XII.

The picnic was held in Whitwell’s Clearing, on the side of Lion’s Head,
where the moss, almost as white as snow, lay like belated drifts among
the tall, thin grass which overran the space opened by the axe, and
crept to the verge of the low pines growing in the shelter of the
loftier woods. It was the end of one of Whitwell’s “Tramps Home to
Nature,” as he called his walks and talks with the ladies, and on this
day Westover’s fellow-painter had added to his lessons in woodlore the
claims of art, intending that his class should make studies of various
bits in the clearing, and should try to catch something of its peculiar
charm. He asked Westover what he thought of the notion, and Westover
gave it his approval, which became enthusiastic when he saw the place.
He found in it the melancholy grace, the poignant sentiment of ruin
which expresses itself in some measure wherever man has invaded nature
and then left his conquest to her again. In Whitwell’s Clearing the
effect was intensified by the approach on the fading wood road, which
the wagons had made in former days when they hauled the fallen timber
to the pulp-mill. In places it was so vague and faint as to be hardly a
trail; in others, where the wheel-tracks remained visible, the trees
had sent out a new growth of lower branches in the place of those lopped
away, and almost forbade the advance of foot-passengers. The ladies said
they did not see how Jeff was ever going to get through with the wagon,
and they expressed fears for the lunch he was bringing, which seemed
only too well grounded.

But Whitwell, who was leading them on, said: “You let a Durgin alone to
do a thing when he’s made up his mind to it. I guess you’ll have your
lunch all right;” and by the time that they had got enough of Browning
they heard the welcome sound of wheels crashing upon dead boughs and
swishing through the underbrush, and, in the pauses of these pleasant
noises, the voice of Jeff Durgin encouraging his horses. The children of
the party broke away to meet him, and then he came in sight ahead of his
team, looking strong and handsome in his keeping with the scene: Before
he got within hearing, the ladies murmured a hymn of praise to his type
of beauty; they said he looked like a young Hercules, and Westover owned
with an inward smile that Jeff had certainly made the best of himself
for the time being. He had taken a leaf from the book of the summer
folks; his stalwart calves revealed themselves in thick, ribbed
stockings; he wore knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket of corduroy; he
had style as well as beauty, and he had the courage of his clothes and
looks. Westover was still in the first surprise of the American facts,
and he wondered just what part in the picnic Jeff was to bear socially.
He was neither quite host nor guest; but no doubt in the easy play
of the life, which Westover was rather proud to find so charming, the
question would solve itself rationally and gracefully.

“Where do you want the things?” the young fellow asked of the company at
large, as he advanced upon them from the green portals of the roadway,
pulling off his soft wool hat, and wiping his wet forehead with his
blue-bordered white handkerchief.

“Oh, right here, Jeff!” The nimblest of the nymphs sprang to her feet
from the lounging and crouching circle about Westover. She was a young
nymph no longer, but with a daughter not so much younger than herself as
to make the contrast of her sixteen years painful. Westover recognized
the officious, self-approving kind of the woman, but he admired the
brisk efficiency with which she had taken possession of the affair from
the beginning and inspired every one to help, in strict subordination to
herself.

When the cloths were laid on the smooth, elastic moss, and the meal
was spread, she heaped a plate without suffering any interval in her
activities.

“I suppose you’ve got to go back to your horses, Jeff, and you shall be
the first served,” she said, and she offered him the plate with a bright
smile and friendly grace, which were meant to keep him from the hurt of
her intention.

Jeff did not offer to take the plate which she raised to him from where
she was kneeling, but looked down at her with perfect intelligence. “I
guess I don’t want anything,” he said, and turned and walked away into
the woods.

The ill-advised woman remained kneeling for a moment with her
ingratiating smile hardening on her face, while the sense of her blunder
petrified the rest. She was the first to recover herself, and she said,
with a laugh that she tried to make reckless, “Well, friends, I suppose
the rest of you are hungry; I know I am,” and she began to eat.

The others ate, too, though their appetites might well have been
affected by the diplomatic behavior of Whitwell. He would not take
anything, just at present, he said, and got his long length up from the
root of a tree where he had folded it down. “I don’t seem to care much
for anything in the middle of the day; breakfast’s my best meal,” and he
followed Jeff off into the woods.

“Really,” said the lady, “what did they expect?” But the question was so
difficult that no one seemed able to make the simple answer.

The incident darkened the day and spoiled its pleasure; it cast a
lessening shadow into the evening when the guests met round the fire in
the large, ugly new parlor at the hotel.

The next morning the ladies assembled again on the piazza to decide what
should be done with the beautiful day before them. Whitwell stood at the
foot of the flag-staff with one hand staying his person against it, like
a figure posed in a photograph to verify proportions in the different
features of a prospect.

The heroine of the unhappy affair of the picnic could not forbear
authorizing herself to invoke his opinion at a certain point of the
debate, and “Mr. Whitwell,” she called to him, “won’t you please come
here a moment?”

Whitwell slowly pulled himself across the grass to the group, and at
the same moment, as if she had been waiting for him to be present, Mrs.
Durgin came out of the office door and advanced toward the ladies.

“Mrs. Marven,” she said, with the stony passivity which the ladies used
to note in her when they came over to Lion’s Head Farm in the tally-hos,
“the stage leaves here at two o’clock to get the down train at three.
I want you should have your trunks ready to go on the wagon a little
before two.”

“You want I should have my--What do you mean, Mrs. Durgin?”

“I want your rooms.”

“You want my rooms?”

Mrs. Durgin did not answer. She let her steadfast look suffice; and Mrs.
Marven went on in a rising flutter: “Why, you can’t have my rooms! I
don’t understand you. I’ve taken my rooms for the whole of August, and
they are mine; and--”

“I have got to have your rooms,” said Mrs. Durgin.

“Very well, then, I won’t give them up,” said the lady. “A bargain’s a
bargain, and I have your agreement--”

“If you’re not out of your rooms by two o’clock, your things will be
put out; and after dinner to-day you will not eat another bite under my
roof.”

Mrs. Durgin went in, and it remained for the company to make what they
could of the affair. Mrs. Marven did not wait for the result. She was
not a dignified person, but she rose with hauteur and whipped away to
her rooms, hers no longer, to make her preparations. She knew at least
how to give her going the effect of quitting the place with disdain and
abhorrence.

The incident of her expulsion was brutal, but it was clearly meant to be
so. It made Westover a little sick, and he would have liked to pity Mrs.
Marven more than he could. The ladies said that Mrs. Durgin’s behavior
was an outrage, and they ought all to resent it by going straight to
their own rooms and packing their things and leaving on the same stage
with Mrs. Marven. None of them did so, and their talk veered around to
something extenuating, if not justifying, Mrs. Durgin’s action.

“I suppose,” one of them said, “that she felt more indignant about it
because she has been so very good to Mrs. Marven, and her daughter, too.
They were both sick on her hands here for a week after they came, first
one and then the other, and she looked after them and did for them like
a mother.”

“And yet,” another lady suggested, “what could Mrs. Marven have done?
What did she do? He wasn’t asked to the picnic, and I don’t see why he
should have been treated as a guest. He was there, purely and simply, to
bring the things and take them away. And, besides, if there is anything
in distinctions, in differences, if we are to choose who is to associate
with us--or our daughters--”

“That is true,” the ladies said, in one form or another, with the tone
of conviction; but they were not so deeply convinced that they did not
want a man’s opinion, and they all looked at Westover.

He would not respond to their look, and the lady who had argued for Mrs.
Marven had to ask: “What do you think, Mr. Westover?”

“Ah, it’s a difficult question,” he said. “I suppose that as long as one
person believes himself or herself socially better than another, it must
always be a fresh problem what to do in every given case.”

The ladies said they supposed so, and they were forced to make what
they could of wisdom in which they might certainly have felt a want of
finality.

Westover went away from them in a perplexed mind which was not
simplified by the contempt he had at the bottom of all for something
unmanly in Jeff, who had carried his grievance to his mother like a
slighted boy, and provoked her to take up arms for him.

The sympathy for Mrs. Marven mounted again when it was seen that she did
not come to dinner, or permit her daughter to do so, and when it became
known later that she had refused for both the dishes sent to their
rooms. Her farewells to the other ladies, when they gathered to see
her off on the stage, were airy rather than cheery; there was almost
a demonstration in her behalf, but Westover was oppressed by a kind of
inherent squalor in the incident.

At night he responded to a knock which he supposed that of Frank
Whitwell with ice-water, and Mrs. Durgin came into his room and sat down
in one of his two chairs. “Mr. Westover,” she said, “if you knew all I
had done for that woman and her daughter, and how much she had pretended
to think of us all, I don’t believe you’d be so ready to judge me.”

“Judge you!” cried Westover. “Bless my soul, Mrs. Durgin! I haven’t said
a word that could be tormented into the slightest censure.”

“But you think I done wrong?”

“I have not been at all able to satisfy myself on that point, Mrs.
Durgin. I think it’s always wrong to revenge one’s self.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Mrs. Durgin, humbly; and the tears came
into her eyes. “I got the tray ready with my own hands that was sent to
her room; but she wouldn’t touch it. I presume she didn’t like having a
plate prepared for her! But I did feel sorry for her. She a’n’t over and
above strong, and I’m afraid she’ll be sick; there a’n’t any rest’rant
at our depot.”

Westover fancied this a fit mood in Mrs. Durgin for her further
instruction, and he said: “And if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Durgin, I don’t
think what you did was quite the way to keep a hotel.”

More tears flashed into Mrs. Durgin’s eyes, but they were tears of wrath
now. “I would ‘a’ done it,” she said, “if I thought every single one of
‘em would ‘a’ left the house the next minute, for there a’n’t one that
has the first word to say against me, any other way. It wa’n’t that I
cared whether she thought my son was good enough to eat with her or not;
I know what I think, and that’s enough for me. He wa’n’t invited to the
picnic, and he a’n’t one to put himself forward. If she didn’t want him
to stay, all she had to do was to do nothin’. But to make him up a plate
before everybody, and hand it to him to eat with the horses, like a
tramp or a dog--” Mrs. Durgin filled to the throat with her wrath, and
the sight of her made Westover keenly unhappy.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “it was a miserable business.” He could not help
adding: “If Jeff could have kept it to himself--but perhaps that wasn’t
possible.”

“Mr. Westover!” said Mrs. Durgin, sternly. “Do you think Jeff would come
to me, like a great crybaby, and complain of my lady boarders and the
way they used him? It was Mr. Whit’ell that let it out, or I don’t know
as I should ever known about it.”

“I’m glad Jeff didn’t tell you,” said Westover, with a revulsion of good
feeling toward him.

“He’d ‘a’ died first,” said his mother. “But Mr. Whit’ell done just
right all through, and I sha’n’t soon forget it. Jeff’s give me a proper
goin’ over for what I done; both the boys have. But I couldn’t help it,
and I should do just so again. All is, I wanted you should know just
what you was blamin’ me for--”

“I don’t know that I blame you. I only wish you could have helped
it--managed some other way.”

“I did try to get over it, and all I done was to lose a night’s rest.
Then, this morning, when I see her settin’ there so cool and mighty with
the boarders, and takin’ the lead as usual, I just waited till she got
Whit’ell across, and nearly everybody was there that saw what she done
to Jeff, and then I flew out on her.”

Westover could not suppress a laugh. “Well, Mrs. Durgin, your
retaliation was complete; it was dramatic.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Mrs. Durgin, rising and
resuming her self-control; she did not refuse herself a grim smile. “But
I guess she thought it was pretty perfect herself--or she will, when
she’s able to give her mind to it. I’m sorry for her daughter; I never
had anything against her; or her mother, either, for that matter,
before. Franky look after you pretty well? I’ll send him up with your
ice-water. Got everything else you want?”

“I should have to invent a want if I wished to complain,” said Westover.

“Well, I should like to have you do it. We can’t ever do too much for
you. Well, good-night, Mr. Westover.”

“Good’-night, Mrs. Durgin.”



XIII.

Jeff Durgin entered Harvard that fall, with fewer conditions than most
students have to work off. This was set down to the credit of Lovewell
Academy, where he had prepared for the university; and some observers in
such matters were interested to note how thoroughly the old school in a
remote town had done its work for him.

None who formed personal relations with him at that time conjectured
that he had done much of the work for himself, and even to Westover,
when Jeff came to him some weeks after his settlement in Cambridge, he
seemed painfully out of his element, and unamiably aware of it. For the
time, at least, he had lost the jovial humor, not too kindly always,
which largely characterized him, and expressed itself in sallies of
irony which were not so unkindly, either. The painter perceived that he
was on his guard against his own friendly interest; Jeff made haste to
explain that he came because he had told his mother that he would do
so. He scarcely invited a return of his visit, and he left Westover
wondering at the sort of vague rebellion against his new life which he
seemed to be in. The painter went out to see him in Cambridge, not long
after, and was rather glad to find him rooming with some other rustic
Freshman in a humble street running from the square toward the river;
for he thought Jeff must have taken his lodging for its cheapness,
out of regard to his mother’s means. But Jeff was not glad to be found
there, apparently; he said at once that he expected to get a room in the
Yard the next year, and eat at Memorial Hall. He spoke scornfully of his
boarding-house as a place where they were all a lot of jays together;
and Westover thought him still more at odds with his environment than
he had before. But Jeff consented to come in and dine with him at his
restaurant, and afterward go to the theatre with him.

When he came, Westover did not quite like his despatch of the
half-bottle of California claret served each of them with the Italian
table d’hote. He did not like his having already seen the play he
proposed; and he found some difficulty in choosing a play which Jeff had
not seen. It appeared then that he had been at the theatre two or three
times a week for the last month, and that it was almost as great a
passion with him as with Westover himself. He had become already a
critic of acting, with a rough good sense of it, and a decided opinion.
He knew which actors he preferred, and which actresses, better still.
It was some consolation for Westover to find that he mostly took an
admission ticket when he went to the theatre; but, though he could not
blame Jeff for showing his own fondness for it, he wished that he had
not his fondness.

So far Jeff seemed to have spent very few of his evenings in Cambridge,
and Westover thought it would be well if he had some acquaintance there.
He made favor for him with a friendly family, who asked him to
dinner. They did it to oblige Westover, against their own judgment and
knowledge, for they said it was always the same with Freshmen; a single
act of hospitality finished the acquaintance. Jeff came, and he behaved
with as great indifference to the kindness meant him as if he were
dining out every night; he excused himself very early in the evening
on the ground that he had to go into Boston, and he never paid his
dinner-call. After that Westover tried to consider his whole duty to him
fulfilled, and not to trouble himself further. Now and then, however,
Jeff disappointed the expectation Westover had formed of him, by coming
to see him, and being apparently glad of the privilege. But he did not
make the painter think that he was growing in grace or wisdom, though he
apparently felt an increasing confidence in his own knowledge of life.

Westover could only feel a painful interest tinged with amusement in
his grotesque misconceptions of the world where he had not yet begun to
right himself. Jeff believed lurid things of the society wholly unknown
to him; to his gross credulity, Boston houses, which at the worst were
the homes of a stiff and cold exclusiveness, were the scenes of riot
only less scandalous than the dissipation to which fashionable ladies
abandoned themselves at champagne suppers in the Back Bay hotels and on
their secret visits to the Chinese opium-joints in Kingston Street.

Westover tried to make him see how impossible his fallacies were; but
he could perceive that Jeff thought him either wilfully ignorant or
helplessly innocent, and of far less authority than a barber who had the
entree of all these swell families as hair-dresser, and who corroborated
the witness of a hotel night-clerk (Jeff would not give their names)
to the depravity of the upper classes. He had to content himself with
saying: “I hope you will be ashamed some day of having believed such
rot. But I suppose it’s something you’ve got to go through. You may take
my word for it, though? that it isn’t going to do you any good. It’s
going to do you harm, and that’s why I hate to have you think it, for
your own sake. It can’t hurt any one else.”

What disgusted the painter most was that, with all his belief in
the wickedness of the fine world, it was clear that Jeff would
have willingly been of it; and he divined that if he had any strong
aspirations they were for society and for social acceptance. He had
fancied, when the fellow seemed to care so little for the studies of the
university, that he might come forward in its sports. Jeff gave more and
more the effect of tremendous strength in his peculiar physique, though
there was always the disappointment of not finding him tall. He was of
the middle height, but he was hewn out and squared upward massively. He
felt like stone to any accidental contact, and the painter brought away
a bruise from the mere brunt of his shoulders. He learned that Jeff was
a frequenter of the gymnasium, where his strength must have been known,
but he could not make out that he had any standing among the men who
went in for athletics. If Jeff had even this, the sort of standing in
college which he failed of would easily have been won, too. But he
had been falsely placed at the start, or some quality of his nature
neutralized other qualities that would have made him a leader in
college, and he remained one of the least forward men in it. Other jays
won favor and liking, and ceased to be jays; Jeff continued a jay. He
was not chosen into any of the nicer societies; those that he joined
when he thought they were swell he could not care for when he found they
were not.

Westover came into a knowledge of the facts through his casual and
scarcely voluntary confidences, and he pitied him somewhat while he
blamed him a great deal more, without being able to help him at all.

It appeared to him that the fellow had gone wrong more through ignorance
than perversity, and that it was a stubbornness of spirit rather than a
badness of heart that kept him from going right. He sometimes wondered
whether it was not more a baffled wish to be justified in his own esteem
than anything else that made him overvalue the things he missed. He knew
how such an experience as that with Mrs. Marven rankles in the heart of
youth, and will not cease to smart till some triumph in kind brines it
ease; but between the man of thirty and the boy of twenty there is a
gulf fixed, and he could not ask. He did not know that a college man
often goes wrong in his first year, out of no impulse that he can very
clearly account for himself, and then when he ceases to be merely of his
type and becomes more of his character, he pulls up and goes right. He
did not know how much Jeff had been with a set that was fast without
being fine. The boy had now and then a book in his hand when he came;
not always such a book as Westover could have wished, but still a book;
and to his occasional questions about how he was getting on with his
college work, Jeff made brief answers, which gave the notion that he was
not neglecting it.

Toward the end of his first year he sent to Westover one night from a
station-house, where he had been locked up for breaking a street-lamp
in Boston. By his own showing he had not broken the lamp, or assisted,
except through his presence, at the misdeed of the tipsy students who
had done it. His breath betrayed that he had been drinking, too; but
otherwise he seemed as sober as Westover himself, who did not know
whether to augur well or ill for him from the proofs he had given before
of his ability to carry off a bottle of wine with a perfectly level
head. Jeff seemed to believe Westover a person of such influence that
he could secure his release at once, and he was abashed to find that
he must pass the night in the cell, where he conferred with Westover
through the bars.

In the police court, where his companions were fined, the next morning,
he was discharged for want of evidence against him; but the university
authorities did not take the same view as the civil authorities. He
was suspended, and for the time he passed out of Westover’s sight and
knowledge.

He expected to find him at Lion’s Head, where he went to pass the month
of August--in painting those pictures of the mountain which had in some
sort, almost in spite of him, become his specialty. But Mrs. Durgin
employed the first free moments after their meeting in explaining that
Jeff had got a chance to work his way to London on a cattle-steamer, and
had been abroad the whole summer. He had written home that the voyage
had been glorious, with plenty to eat and little to do; and he had made
favor with the captain for his return by the same vessel in September.
By other letters it seemed that he had spent the time mostly in England;
but he had crossed over into France for a fortnight, and had spent a
week in Paris. His mother read some passages from his letters aloud to
show Westover how Jeff was keeping his eyes open. His accounts of his
travel were a mixture of crude sensations in the presence of famous
scenes and objects of interest, hard-headed observation of the facts of
life, narrow-minded misconception of conditions, and wholly intelligent
and adequate study of the art of inn-keeping in city and country.

Mrs. Durgin seemed to feel that there was some excuse due for the
relative quantity of the last. “He knows that’s what I’d care for the
most; and Jeff a’n’t one to forget his mother.” As if the word reminded
her, she added, after a moment: “We sha’n’t any of us soon forget what
you done for Jeff--that time.”

“I didn’t do anything for him, Mrs. Durgin; I couldn’t,” Westover
protested.

“You done what you could, and I know that you saw the thing in the right
light, or you wouldn’t ‘a’ tried to do anything. Jeff told me every word
about it. I know he was with a pretty harum-scarum crowd. But it was
a lesson to him; and I wa’n’t goin’ to have him come back here, right
away, and have folks talkin’ about what they couldn’t understand, after
the way the paper had it.”

“Did it get into the papers?”

“Mm.” Mrs. Durgin nodded. “And some dirty, sneakin’ thing, here, wrote a
letter to the paper and told a passel o’ lies about Jeff and all of us;
and the paper printed Jeff’s picture with it; I don’t know how they
got a hold of it. So when he got that chance to go, I just said, ‘Go.’
You’ll see he’ll keep all straight enough after this, Mr. Westover.”

“Old woman read you any of Jeff’s letters?” Whit-well asked, when his
chance for private conference with Westover came. “What was the rights
of that scrape he got into?”

Westover explained as favorably to Jeff as he could; the worst of the
affair was the bad company he was in.

“Well, where there’s smoke there’s some fire. Cou’t discharged him and
college suspended him. That’s about where it is? I guess he’ll keep out
o’ harm’s way next time. Read you what he said about them scenes of the
Revolution in Paris?”

“Yes; he seems to have looked it all up pretty thoroughly.”

“Done it for me, I guess, much as anything. I was always talkin’ it up
with him. Jeff’s kep’ his eyes open, that’s a fact. He’s got a head on
him, more’n I ever thought.”

Westover decided that Mrs. Durgin’s prepotent behavior toward Mrs.
Marven the summer before had not hurt her materially, with the witnesses
even. There were many new boarders, but most of those whom he had
already met were again at Lion’s Head. They said there was no air like
it, and no place so comfortable. If they had sold their birthright for a
mess of pottage, Westover had to confess that the pottage was very good.
Instead of the Irish woman at ten dollars a week who had hitherto been
Mrs. Durgin’s cook, under her personal surveillance and direction,
she had now a man cook, whom she boldly called a chef and paid eighty
dollars a month. He wore the white apron and white cap of his calling,
but Westover heard him speak Yankee through his nose to one of the
stablemen as they exchanged hilarities across the space between the
basement and the barn-door. “Yes,” Mrs. Durgin admitted, “he’s an
American; and he learnt his trade at one of the best hotels in Portland.
He’s pretty headstrong, but I guess he does what he’s told--in the
end. The meanyous? Oh, Franky Whitwell prints then. He’s got an amateur
printing-office in the stable-loft.”



XIV.

One morning toward the end of August, Whitwell, who was starting
homeward, after leaving his ladies, burdened with their wishes and
charges for the morrow, met Westover coming up the hill with his
painting-gear in his hand. “Say!” he hailed him. “Why don’t you come
down to the house to-night? Jackson’s goin’ to come, and, if you ha’n’t
seen him work the plantchette for a spell, you’ll be surprised. There
a’n’t hardly anybody he can’t have up. You’ll come? Good enough!”

What affected Westover first of all at the seance, and perhaps most of
all, was the quality of the air in the little house; it was close and
stuffy, mixed with an odor of mould and an ancient smell of rats. The
kerosene-lamp set in the centre of the table, where Jackson afterward
placed his planchette, devoured the little life that was left in it.
At the gasps which Westover gave, with some despairing glances at the
closed windows, Whitwell said: “Hot? Well, I guess it is a little. But,
you see, Jackson has got to be careful about the night air; but I guess
I can fix it for you.” He went out into the ell, and Westover heard him
raising a window. He came back and asked, “That do? It ‘ll get around in
here directly,” and Westover had to profess relief.

Jackson came in presently with the little Canuck, whom Whitwell
presented to Westover: “Know Jombateeste?”

The two were talking about a landslide which had taken place on the
other side of the mountain; the news had just come that they had found
among the ruins the body of the farm-hand who had been missing since the
morning of the slide; his funeral was to be the next day.

Jackson put his planchette on the table, and sat down before it with a
sigh; the Canuck remained standing, and on foot he was scarcely a head
higher than the seated Yankees. “Well,” Jackson said, “I suppose he
knows all about it now,” meaning the dead farm-hand.

“Yes,” Westover suggested, “if he knows anything.”

“Know anything!” Whitwell shouted. “Why, man, don’t you believe he’s as
much alive as ever he was?”

“I hope so,” said Westover, submissively.

“Don’t you know it?”

“Not as I know other things. In fact, I don’t know it,” said Westover,
and he was painfully aware of having shocked his hearers by the
agnosticism so common among men in towns that he had confessed it quite
simply and unconsciously. He perceived that faith in the soul and life
everlasting was as quick as ever in the hills, whatever grotesque or
unwonted form it wore. Jackson sat with closed eyes and his head fallen
back; Whitwell stared at the painter, with open mouth; the little Canuck
began to walk up and down impatiently; Westover felt a reproach, almost
an abhorrence, in all of them.

Whitwell asked: “Why, don’t you think there’s any proof of it?”

“Proof? Oh Yes. There’s testimony enough to carry conviction to the
stubbornest mind on any other point. But it’s very strange about all
that. It doesn’t convince anybody but the witnesses. If a man tells
me he’s seen a disembodied spirit, I can’t believe him. I must see the
disembodied spirit myself.”

“That’s something so,” said Whitwell, with a relenting laugh.

“If one came back from the dead, to tell us of a life beyond the grave,
we should want the assurance that he’d really been dead, and not merely
dreaming.”

Whitwell laughed again, in the delight the philosophic mind finds even
in the reasoning that hates it.

The Canuck felt perhaps the simpler joy that the average man has in
any strange notion that he is able to grasp. He stopped in his walk and
said: “Yes, and if you was dead and went to heaven, and stayed so long
you smelt, like Lazarus, and you come back and tol’ ‘em what you saw,
nobody goin’ believe you.”

“Well, I guess you’re right there, Jombateeste,” said Whitwell, with
pleasure in the Canuck’s point. After a moment he suggested to Westover:
“Then I s’pose, if you feel the way you do, you don’t care much about
plantchette?”

“Oh yes, I do,” said the painter. “We never know when we may be upon the
point of revelation. I wouldn’t miss any chance.”

Whether Whitwell felt an ironic slant in the words or not, he paused a
moment before he said: “Want to start her up, Jackson?”

Jackson brought to the floor the forefeet of his chair, which he had
tilted from it in leaning back, and without other answer put his hand
on the planchette. It began to fly over the large sheet of paper spread
upon the table, in curves and angles and eccentrics.

“Feels pootty lively to-night,” said Whitwell, with a glance at
Westover.

The little Canuck, as if he had now no further concern in the matter,
sat down in a corner and smoked silently. Whitwell asked, after a
moment’s impatience:

“Can’t you git her down to business, Jackson?”

Jackson gasped: “She’ll come down when she wants to.”

The little instrument seemed, in fact, trying to control itself.
Its movements became less wild and large; the zigzags began to shape
themselves into something like characters. Jackson’s wasted face gave no
token of interest; Whitwell laid half his gaunt length across the table
in the endeavor to make out some meaning in them; the Canuck, with his
hands crossed on his stomach, smoked on, with the same gleam in his pipe
and eye.

The planchette suddenly stood motionless.

“She done?” murmured Whitwell.

“I guess she is, for a spell, anyway,” said Jackson, wearily.

“Let’s try to make out what she says.” Whitwell drew the sheets toward
himself and Westover, who sat next him. “You’ve got to look for the
letters everywhere. Sometimes she’ll give you fair and square writin’,
and then again she’ll slat the letters down every which way, and you’ve
got to hunt ‘em out for yourself. Here’s a B I’ve got. That begins along
pretty early in the alphabet. Let’s see what we can find next.”

Westover fancied he could make out an F and a T.

Whitwell exulted in an unmistakable K and N; and he made sure of an I,
and an E. The painter was not so sure of an S. “Well, call it an S,”
 said Whitwell. “And I guess I’ve got an O here, and an H. Hello! Here’s
an A as large as life. Pootty much of a mixture.”

“Yes; I don’t see that we’re much better off than we were before,” said
Westover.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Whitwell.

“Write ‘em down in a row and see if we can’t pick out some sense.
I’ve had worse finds than this; no vowels at all sometimes; but here’s
three.”

He wrote the letters down, while Jackson leaned back against the wall,
in patient quiet.

“Well, sir,” said Whitwell, pushing the paper, where he had written the
letters in a line, to Westover, “make anything out of ‘em?”

Westover struggled with them a moment. “I can make out one word-shaft.”

“Anything else?” demanded Whitwell, with a glance of triumph at Jackson.

Westover studied the remaining letters. “Yes, I get one other
word-broken.”

“Just what I done! But I wanted you to speak first. It’s Broken Shaft.
Jackson, she caught right onto what we was talkin’ about. This life,”
 he turned to Westover, in solemn exegesis, “is a broken shaft when death
comes. It rests upon the earth, but you got to look for the top of it
in the skies. That’s the way I look at it. What do you think, Jackson?
Jombateeste?”

“I think anybody can’t see that. Better go and get some heye-glass.”

Westover remained in a shameful minority. He said, meekly: “It suggests
a beautiful hope.”

Jackson brought his chair-legs down again, and put his hand on the
planchette.

“Feel that tinglin’?” asked. Whitwell, and Jackson made yes with silent
lips. “After he’s been workin’ the plantchette for a spell, and then
leaves off, and she wants to say something more,” Whitwell explained to
Westover, “he seems to feel a kind of tinglin’ in his arm, as if it was
asleep, and then he’s got to tackle her again. Writin’ steady enough
now, Jackson!” he cried, joyously. “Let’s see.” He leaned over and read,
“Thomas Jefferson--” The planchette stopped, “My, I didn’t go to
do that,” said Whitwell, apologetically. “You much acquainted with
Jefferson’s writin’s?” he asked of Westover.

The painter had to own his ignorance of all except the diction that the
government is best which governs least; but he was not in a position to
deny that Jefferson had ever said anything about a broken shaft.

“It may have come to him on the other side,” said Whitwell.

“Perhaps,” Westover assented.

The planchette began to stir itself again. “She’s goin’ ahead!” cried
Whitwell. He leaned over the table so as to get every letter as it
was formed. “D--Yes! Death. Death is the Broken Shaft. Go on!” After a
moment of faltering the planchette formed another letter. It was a U,
and it was followed by an R, and so on, till Durgin had been spelled.
“Thunder!” cried Whitwell. “If anything’s happened to Jeff!”

Jackson lifted his hand from the planchette.

“Oh, go on, Jackson!” Whitwell entreated. “Don’t leave it so!”

“I can’t seem to go on,” Jackson whispered, and Westover could not
resist the fear that suddenly rose among them. But he made the first
struggle against it. “This is nonsense. Or, if there’s any sense in it,
it means that Jeff’s ship has broken her shaft and put back.”

Whitwell gave a loud laugh of relief. “That’s so! You’ve hit it, Mr.
Westover.”

Jackson said, quietly: “He didn’t mean to start home till tomorrow. And
how could he send any message unless he was--”

“Easily!” cried Westover. “It’s simply an instance of mental
impression-of telepathy, as they call it.”

“That’s so!” shouted Whitwell, with eager and instant conviction.

Westover could see that Jackson still doubted. “If you believe that a
disembodied spirit can communicate with you, why not an embodied spirit?
If anything has happened to your brother’s ship, his mind would be
strongly on you at home, and why couldn’t it convey its thought to you?”

“Because he ha’n’t started yet,” said Jackson.

Westover wanted to laugh; but they all heard voices without, which
seemed to be coming nearer, and he listened with the rest. He made out
Frank Whitwell’s voice, and his sister’s; and then another voice, louder
and gayer, rose boisterously above them. Whitwell flung the door open
and plunged out into the night. He came back, hauling Jeff Durgin in by
the shoulder.

“Here, now,” he shouted to Jackson, “you just let this feller and
plantchette fight it out together!”

“What’s the matter with plantchette?” said Jeff, before he said to his
brother, “Hello, Jackson!” and to the Canuck, “Hello, Jombateeste!” He
shook hands conventionally with them both, and then with the painter,
whom he greeted with greater interest. “Glad to see you here, Mr.
Westover. Did I take you by surprise?” he asked of the company at large.

“No, sir,” said Whitwell. “Didn’t surprise us any, if you are a
fortnight ahead of time,” he added, with a wink at the others.

“Well, I took a notion I wouldn’t wait for the cattle-ship, and I
started back on a French boat. Thought I’d try it. They live well. But I
hoped I should astonish you a little, too. I might as well waited.”

Whitwell laughed. “We heard from you--plantchette kept right round after
you.”

“That so?” asked Jeff, carelessly.

“Fact. Have a good voyage?” Whitwell had the air of putting a casual
question.

“First-rate,” said Jeff. “Plantchette say not?”

“No. Only about the broken shaft.”

“Broken shaft? We didn’t have any broken shaft. Plantchette’s got mixed
a little. Got the wrong ship.”

After a moment of chop-fallenness, Whitwell said:

“Then somebody’s been makin’ free with your name. Curious how them
devils cut up oftentimes.”

He explained, and Jeff laughed uproariously when he understood the whole
case. “Plantchette’s been havin’ fun with you.”

Whitwell gave himself time for reflection. “No, sir, I don’t look at
it that way. I guess the wires got crossed some way. If there’s such a
thing as the spirits o’ the livin’ influencin’ plantchette, accordin’
to Mr. Westover’s say, here, I don’t see why it wa’n’t. Jeff’s being
so near that got control of her and made her sign his name to somebody
else’s words. It shows there’s something in it.”

“Well, I’m glad to come back alive, anyway,” said Jeff, with a joviality
new to Westover. “I tell you, there a’n’t many places finer than old
Lion’s Head, after all. Don’t you think so, Mr. Westover? I want to
get the daylight on it, but it does well by moonlight, even.” He looked
round at the tall girl, who had been lingering to hear the talk of
planchette; at the backward tilt he gave his head, to get her in range,
she frowned as if she felt his words a betrayal, and slipped out of the
room; the boy had already gone, and was making himself heard in the low
room overhead.

“There’s a lot of folks here this summer, mother says,” he appealed from
the check he had got to Jackson. “Every room taken for the whole month,
she says.”

“We’ve been pretty full all July, too,” said Jackson, blankly.

“Well, it’s a great business; and I’ve picked up a lot of hints over
there. We’re not so smart as we think we are. The Swiss can teach us a
thing or two. They know how to keep a hotel.”

“Go to Switzerland?” asked Whitwell.

“I slipped over into the edge of it.”

“I want to know! Well, now them Alps, now--they so much bigger ‘n the
White Hills, after all?”

“Well, I don’t know about all of ‘em,” said Jeff. “There may be some
that would compare with our hills, but I should say that you could take
Mount Washington up and set it in the lap of almost any one of the Alps
I saw, and it would look like a baby on its mother’s knee.”

“I want to know!” said Whitwell again. His tone expressed
disappointment, but impartiality; he would do justice to foreign
superiority if he must. “And about the ocean. What about waves runnin?
mountains high?”

“Well, we didn’t have it very rough. But I don’t believe I saw any waves
much higher than Lion’s Head.” Jeff laughed to find Whitwell taking him
seriously. “Won’t that satisfy you?”

“Oh, it satisfies me. Truth always does. But, now, about London. You
didn’t seem to say so much about London in your letters, now. Is it so
big as they let on? Big--that is, to the naked eye, as you may say?”

“There a’n’t any one place where you can get a complete bird’s-eye view
of it,” said Jeff, “and two-thirds of it would be hid in smoke, anyway.
You’ve got to think of a place that would take in the whole population
of New England, outside of Massachusetts, and not feel as if it had more
than a comfortable meal.”

Whitwell laughed for joy in the bold figure.

“I’ll tell you. When you’ve landed and crossed up from Liverpool, and
struck London, you feel as if you’d gone to sea again. It’s an ocean--a
whole Atlantic of houses.”

“That’s right!” crowed Whitwell. “That’s the way I thought it was.
Growin’ any?”

Jeff hesitated. “It grows in the night. You’ve heard about Chicago
growing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, London grows a whole Chicago every night.”

“Good!” said Whitwell. “That suits me. And about Paris, now. Paris
strike you the same way?”

“It don’t need to,” said Jeff. “That’s a place where I’d like to live.
Everybody’s at home there. It’s a man’s house and his front yard, and
I tell you they keep it clean. Paris is washed down every morning;
scrubbed and mopped and rubbed dry. You couldn’t find any more dirt than
you could in mother’s kitchen after she’s hung out her wash. That so,
Mr. Westover?”

Westover confirmed in general Jeff’s report of the cleanliness of Paris.

“And beautiful! You don’t know what a good-looking town is till you
strike Paris. And they’re proud of it, too. Every man acts as if he
owned it. They’ve had the statue of Alsace in that Place de la Concorde
of yours, Mr. Whitwell, where they had the guillotine all draped in
black ever since the war with Germany; and they mean to have her back,
some day.”

“Great country, Jombateeste!” Whitwell shouted to the Canuck.

The little man roused himself from the muse in which he was listening
and smoking. “Me, I’m Frantsh,” he said.

“Yes, that’s what Jeff was sayin’,” said Whitwell. “I meant France.”

“Oh,” answered Jombateeste, impatiently, “I thought you mean the Hunited
State.”

“Well, not this time,” said Whitwell, amid the general laughter.

“Good for Jombateeste,” said Jeff. “Stand up for Canada every time,
John. It’s the livest country, in the world three months of the year,
and the ice keeps it perfectly sweet the other nine.”

Whitwell could not brook a diversion from the high and serious inquiry
they had entered upon. “It must have made this country look pretty slim
when you got back. How’d New York look, after Paris?”

“Like a pigpen,” said Jeff. He left his chair and walked round the
table toward a door opening into the adjoining room. For the first time
Westover noticed a figure in white seated there, and apparently rapt in
the talk which had been going on. At the approach of Jeff, and before
he could have made himself seen at the doorway, a tremor seemed to pass
over the figure; it fluttered to its feet, and then it vanished into
the farther dark of the room. When Jeff disappeared within, there was a
sound of rustling skirts and skurrying feet and the crash of a closing
door, and then the free rise of laughing voices without. After a
discreet interval, Westover said: “Mr. Whitwell, I must say good-night.
I’ve got another day’s work before me. It’s been a most interesting
evening.”

“You must try it again,” said Whitwell, hospitably. “We ha’n’t got to
the bottom of that broken shaft yet. You’ll see ‘t plantchette ‘ll have
something more to say about it: Heigh, Jackson?” He rose to receive
Westover’s goodnight; the others nodded to him.

As the painter climbed the hill to the hotel he saw two figures on
the road below; the one in white drapery looked severed by a dark
line slanting across it at the waist. In the country, he knew, such
an appearance might mark the earliest stages of love-making, or
mere youthful tenderness, in which there was nothing more implied or
expected. But whatever the fact was, Westover felt a vague distaste for
it, which, as it related itself to a more serious possibility, deepened
to something like pain. It was probable that it should come to this
between those two, but Westover rebelled against the event with a sense
of its unfitness for which he could not give himself any valid reason;
and in the end he accused himself of being a fool.

Two ladies sat on the veranda of the hotel and watched a cloud-wreath
trying to lift itself from the summit of Lion’s Head. In the effort it
thinned away to transparency in places; in others, it tore its frail
texture asunder and let parts of the mountain show through; then the
fragments knitted themselves loosely together, and the vapor lay again
in dreamy quiescence.

The ladies were older and younger, and apparently mother and daughter.
The mother had kept her youth in face and figure so admirably that
in another light she would have looked scarcely the elder. It was the
candor of the morning which confessed the fine vertical lines running
up and down to her lips, only a shade paler than the girl’s, and that
showed her hair a trifle thinner in its coppery brown, her blue eyes
a little dimmer. They were both very graceful, and they had soft,
caressing voices; they now began to talk very politely to each other, as
if they were strangers, or as if strangers were by. They talked of the
landscape, and of the strange cloud effect before them. They said that
they supposed they should see the Lion’s Head when the cloud lifted, and
they were both sure they had never been quite so near a cloud before.
They agreed that this was because in Switzerland the mountains were so
much higher and farther off. Then the daughter said, without changing
the direction of her eyes or the tone of her voice, “The gentleman who
came over from the station with us last night,” and the mother was aware
of Jeff Durgin advancing toward the corner of the veranda where they
sat.

“I hope you have got rested,” he said, with the jovial bluntness which
was characteristic of him with women.

“Oh, yes indeed,” said the elder lady. Jeff had spoken to her, but had
looked chiefly at the younger. “I slept beautifully. So quiet here, and
with this delicious air! Have you just tasted it?”

“No; I’ve been up ever since daylight, driving round,” said Jeff. “I’m
glad you like the air,” he said, after a certain hesitation. “We always
want to have people do that at Lion’s Head. There’s no air like it,
though perhaps I shouldn’t say so.”

“Shouldn’t?” the lady repeated.

“Yes; we own the air here--this part of it.” Jeff smiled easily down at
the lady’s puzzled face.

“Oh! Then you are--are you a son of the house?”

“Son of the hotel, yes,” said Jeff, with increasing ease. The lady
continued her question in a look, and he went on: “I’ve been scouring
the country for butter and eggs this morning. We shall get all our
supplies from Boston next year, I hope, but we depend on the neighbors a
little yet.”

“How very interesting!” said the lady. “You must have a great many queer
adventures,” she suggested in a provisional tone.

“Well, nothing’s queer to me in the hill country. But you see some
characters here.” He nodded over his shoulder to where Whitwell stood by
the flag-staff, waiting the morning impulse of the ladies. “There’s one
of the greatest of them now.”

The lady put up a lorgnette and inspected Whitwell. “What are those
strange things he has got in his hatband?”

“The flowers and the fungi of the season,” said Jeff. “He takes
parties of the ladies walking, and that collection is what he calls his
almanac.”

“Really?” cried the girl. “That’s charming!”

“Delightful!” said the mother, moved by the same impulse, apparently.

“Yes,” said Jeff. “You ought to hear him talk. I’ll introduce him to you
after breakfast, if you like.”

“Oh, we should only be too happy,” said the mother, and her daughter,
from her inflection, knew that she would be willing to defer her
happiness.

But Jeff did not. “Mr. Whitwell!” he called out, and Whitwell came
across the grass to the edge of the veranda. “I want to introduce you to
Mrs. Vostrand--and Miss Vostrand.”

Whitwell took their slim hands successively into his broad, flat palm,
and made Mrs. Vostrand repeat her name to him. “Strangers at Lion’s
Head, I presume?” Mrs. Vostrand owned as much; and he added: “Well, I
guess you won’t find a much sightlier place anywhere; though, accordin’
to Jeff’s say, here, they’ve got bigger mountains on the other side.
Ever been in Europe?”

“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Vostrand, with a little mouth of deprecation. “In
fact, we’ve just come home. We’ve been living there.”

“That so?” returned Whitwell, in humorous toleration. “Glad to get back,
I presume?”

“Oh yes--yes,” said Mrs. Vostrand, in a sort of willowy concession, as
if the character before her were not to be crossed or gainsaid.

“Well, it ‘ll do you good here,” said Whitwell. “‘N’ the young lady,
too. A few tramps over these hills ‘ll make you look like another
woman.” He added, as if he had perhaps made his remarks too personal to
the girl, “Both of you.”

“Oh yes,” the mother assented, fervently. “We shall count upon your
showing us all their-mysteries.”

Whitwell looked pleased. “I’ll do my best-whenever you’re ready.” He
went on: “Why, Jeff, here, has just got back, too. Jeff, what was the
name of that French boat you said you crossed on? I want to see if I
can’t make out what plantchette meant by that broken shaft. She must
have meant something, and if I could find out the name of the ship--Tell
the ladies about it?” Jeff laughed, with a shake of the head, and
Whitwell continued, “Why, it was like this,” and he possessed the ladies
of a fact which they professed to find extremely interesting. At the end
of their polite expressions he asked Jeff again: “What did you say the
name was?”

“Aquitaine,” said Jeff, briefly.

“Why, we came on the Aquitaine!” said Mrs. Vostrand, with a smile for
Jeff. “But how did we happen not to see one another?”

“Oh, I came second-cabin,” said Jeff. “I worked my way over on a
cattle-ship to London, and, when I decided not to work my way back, I
found I hadn’t enough money for a first-cabin passage. I was in a
hurry to get back in time to get settled at Harvard, and so I came
second-cabin. It wasn’t bad. I used to see you across the rail.”

“Well!” said Whitwell.

“How very--amusing!” said Mrs. Vostrand. “What a small world it is!”
 With these words she fell into a vagary; her daughter recalled her from
it with a slight movement. “Breakfast? How impatient you are, Genevieve!
Well!” She smiled the sweetest parting to Whitwell, and suffered herself
to be led away by Jeff.

“And you’re at Harvard? I’m so interested! My own boy will be going
there soon.”

“Well, there’s no place like Harvard,” said Jeff. “I’m in my Sophomore
year now.”

“Oh, a Sophomore! Fancy!” cried Mrs. Vostrand, as if nothing could give
her more pleasure. “My son is going to prepare at St. Mark’s. Did you
prepare there?”

“No, I prepared at Lovewell Academy, over here.” Jeff nodded in a
southerly direction.

“Oh, indeed!” said Mrs. Vostrand, as if she knew where Lovewell was, and
instantly recognized the name of the ancient school.

They had reached the dining room, and Jeff pushed the screen-door
open with one hand, and followed the ladies in. He had the effect of
welcoming them like invited guests; he placed the ladies himself at a
window, where he said Mrs. Vostrand would be out of the draughts, and
they could have a good view of Lion’s Head.

He leaned over between them, when they were seated, to get sight of the
mountain, and, “There!” he said. “That cloud’s gone at last.” Then, as
if it would be modester in the proprietor of the view to leave them
to their flattering raptures in it, he moved away and stood talking
a moment with Cynthia Whitwell near the door of the serving-room. He
talked gayly, with many tosses of the head and turns about, while she
listened with a vague smile, motionlessly.

“She’s very pretty,” said Miss Vostrand to her mother.

“Yes. The New England type,” murmured the mother.

“They all have the same look, a good deal,” said the girl, glancing over
the room where the waitresses stood ranged against the wall with their
hands folded at their waists. “They have better faces than figures, but
she is beautiful every way. Do you suppose they are all schoolteachers?
They look intellectual. Or is it their glasses?”

“I don’t know,” said the mother. “They used to be; but things change
here so rapidly it may all be different. Do you like it?”

“I think it’s charming here,” said the younger lady, evasively.
“Everything is so exquisitely clean. And the food is very good. Is this
corn-bread--that you’ve told me about so much?”

“Yes, this is corn-bread. You will have to get accustomed to it.”

“Perhaps it won’t take long. I could fancy that girl knowing about
everything. Don’t you like her looks?”

“Oh, very much.” Mrs. Vostrand turned for another glance at Cynthia.

“What say?” Their smiling waitress came forward from the wall where she
was leaning, as if she thought they had spoken to her.

“Oh, we were speaking--the young lady to whom Mr. Durgin was
talking--she is--”

“She’s the housekeeper--Miss Whitwell.”

“Oh, indeed! She seems so young--”

“I guess she knows what to do-o-o,” the waitress chanted. “We think
she’s about ri-i-ght.” She smiled tolerantly upon the misgiving of
the stranger, if it was that, and then retreated when the mother and
daughter began talking together again.

They had praised the mountain with the cloud off, to Jeff, very
politely, and now the mother said, a little more intimately, but
still with the deference of a society acquaintance: “He seems very
gentlemanly, and I am sure he is very kind. I don’t quite know what to
do about it, do you?”

“No, I don’t. It’s all strange to me, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose it must be. But you will get used to it if we remain in
the country. Do you think you will dislike it?”

“Oh no! It’s very different.”

“Yes, it’s different. He is very handsome, in a certain way.” The
daughter said nothing, and the mother added: “I wonder if he was trying
to conceal that he had come second-cabin, and was not going to let us
know that he crossed with us?”

“Do you think he was bound to do so?”

“No. But it was very odd, his not mentioning it. And his going out on a
cattle-steamer?” the mother observed.

“Oh, but that’s very chic, I’ve heard,” the daughter replied. “I’ve
heard that the young men like it and think it a great chance. They have
great fun. It isn’t at all like second-cabin.”

“You young people have your own world,” the mother answered,
caressingly.



XVI.

Westover met the ladies coming out of the dining-room as he went in
rather late to breakfast; he had been making a study of Lion’s Head in
the morning light after the cloud lifted from it. He was always doing
Lion’s Heads, it seemed to him; but he loved the mountain, and he was
always finding something new in it.

He was now seeing it inwardly with so exclusive a vision that he had no
eyes for these extremely pretty women till they were out of sight. Then
he remembered noticing them, and started with a sense of recognition,
which he verified by the hotel register when he had finished his meal.
It was, in fact, Mrs. James W. Vostrand, and it was Miss Vostrand, whom
Westover had know ten years before in Italy. Mrs. Vostrand had then
lately come abroad for the education of her children, and was pausing
in doubt at Florence whether she should educate them in Germany or
Switzerland. Her husband had apparently abandoned this question to her,
and he did not contribute his presence to her moral support during her
struggle with a problem which Westover remembered as having a tendency
to solution in the direction of a permanent stay in Florence.

In those days he liked Mrs. Vostrand very much, and at twenty he
considered her at thirty distinctly middle-aged. For one winter she had
a friendly little salon, which was the most attractive place in Florence
to him, then a cub painter sufficiently unlicked. He was aware of her
children being a good deal in the salon: a girl of eight, who was like
her mother, and quite a savage little boy of five, who may have been
like his father. If he was, and the absent Mr. Vostrand had the same
habit of sulking and kicking at people’s shins, Westover could partly
understand why Mrs. Vostrand had come to Europe for the education of her
children. It all came vividly back to him, while he went about looking
for Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter on the verandas and in the parlors.
But he did not find them, and he was going to send his name to their
rooms when he came upon Jeff Durgin figuring about the office in a fresh
London conception of an outing costume.

“You’re very swell,” said Westover, halting him to take full note of it.

“Like it? Well, I knew you’d understand what it meant. Mother thinks
it’s a little too rowdy-looking. Her idea is black broadcloth frock-coat
and doeskin trousers for a gentleman, you know.” He laughed with a young
joyousness, and then became serious. “Couple of ladies here, somewhere,
I’d like to introduce you to. Came over with me from the depot last
night. Very nice people, and I’d like to make it pleasant for them--get
up something--go somewhere--and when you see their style you can judge
what it had better be. Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter.”

“Thank you,” said Westover. “I think I know them already at least one of
them. I used to go to Mrs. Vostrand’s house in Florence.”

“That so? Well, fact is, I crossed with them; but I came second-cabin,
because I’d spent all my money, and I didn’t get acquainted with them
on the ship, but we met in the train coming up last night. Said they had
heard of Lion’s Head on the other side from friends. But it was quite
a coincidence, don’t you think? I’d like to have them see what this
neighborhood really is; and I wish, Mr. Westover, you’d find out, if you
can, what they’d like. If they’re for walking, we could get Whitwell to
personally conduct a party, and if they’re for driving, I’d like to show
them a little mountain-coaching myself.”

“I don’t know whether I’d better not leave the whole thing to you,
Jeff,” Westover said, after a moment’s reflection. “I don’t see exactly
how I could bring the question into a first interview.”

“Well, perhaps it would be rather rushing it. But, if I get up
something, you’ll come, Mr. Westover?”

“I will, with great pleasure,” said Westover, and he went to make his
call.

A half-hour later he was passing the door of the old parlor which Mrs.
Durgin still kept for hers, on his way up to his room, when a sound
of angry voices came out to him. Then the voice of Mrs. Durgin defined
itself in the words: “I’m not goin’ to have to ask any more folks for
their rooms on your account, Jeff Durgin--Mr. Westover! Mr. Westover,
is that you?” her voice broke off to call after him as he hurried by,
“Won’t you come in here a minute?”

He hesitated, and then Jeff called, “Yes, come in, Mr. Westover.”

The painter found him sitting on the old hair-cloth sofa, with his stick
between his hands and knees, confronting his mother, who was rocking
excitedly to and fro in the old hair-cloth easy-chair.

“You know these folks that Jeff’s so crazy about?” she demanded.

“Crazy!” cried Jeff, laughing and frowning at the same time. “What’s
crazy in wanting to go off on a drive and choose your own party?”

“Do you know them?” Mrs. Durgin repeated to Westover.

“The Vostrands? Why, yes. I knew Mrs. Vostrand in Italy a good many
years ago, and I’ve just been calling on her and her daughter, who was a
little girl then.”

“What kind of folks are they?”

“What kind? Really! Why, they’re very charming people--”

“So Jeff seems to think. Any call to show them any particular
attention?”

“I don’t know if I quite understand--”

“Why, it’s just this. Jeff, here, wants to make a picnic for them, or
something, and I can’t see the sense of it. You remember what happened
at that other picnic, with that Mrs. Marven”--Jeff tapped the floor with
his stick impatiently, and Westover felt sorry for him--“and I don’t
want it to happen again, and I’ve told Jeff so. I presume he thinks
it ‘ll set him right with them, if they’re thinkin’ demeaning of him
because he came over second-cabin on their ship.”

Jeff set his teeth and compressed his lips to bear as best he could,
the give-away which his mother could not appreciate in its importance to
him:

“They’re not the kind of people to take such a thing shabbily,” said
Westover. “They didn’t happen to mention it, but Mrs. Vostrand must have
got used to seeing young fellows in straits of all kinds during her life
abroad. I know that I sometimes made the cup of tea and biscuit she used
to give me in Florence do duty for a dinner, and I believe she knew it.”

Jeff looked up at Westover with a grateful, sidelong glance.

His mother said: “Well, then, that’s all right, and Jeff needn’t do
anything for them on that account. And I’ve made up my mind about one
thing: whatever the hotel does has got to be done for the whole hotel.
It can’t pick and choose amongst the guests.” Westover liked so little
the part of old family friend which he seemed, whether he liked it or
not, to bear with the Durgins, that he would gladly have got away now,
but Mrs. Durgin detained him with a direct appeal. “Don’t you think so,
Mr. Westover?”

Jeff spared him the pain of a response. “Very well,” he said to his
mother; “I’m not the hotel, and you never want me to be. I can do this
on my own account.”

“Not with my coach and not with my hosses,” said his mother.

Jeff rose. “I might as well go on down to Cambridge, and get to work on
my conditions.”

“Just as you please about that,” said Mrs. Durgin, with the same
impassioned quiet that showed in her son’s handsome face and made it one
angry red to his yellow hair. “We’ve got along without you so far, this
summer, and I guess we can the rest of the time. And the sooner you work
off your conditions the better, I presume.”

The next morning Jeff came to take leave of him, where Westover had
pitched his easel and camp-stool on the slope behind the hotel.

“Why, are you really going?” he asked. “I was in hopes it might have
blown over.”

“No, things don’t blow over so easy with mother,” said Jeff, with an
embarrassed laugh, but no resentment. “She generally means what she
says.”

“Well, in this case, Jeff, I think she was right.”

“Oh, I guess so,” said Jeff, pulling up a long blade of grass and taking
it between his teeth. “Anyway, it comes to the same thing as far as I’m
concerned. It’s for her to say what shall be done and what sha’n’t be
done in her own house, even if it is a hotel. That’s what I shall do in
mine. We’re used to these little differences; but we talk it out, and
that’s the end of it. I shouldn’t really go, though, if I didn’t think
I ought to get in some work on those conditions before the thing begins
regularly. I should have liked to help here a little, for I’ve had a
good time and I ought to be willing to pay for it. But she’s in good
hands. Jackson’s well--for him--and she’s got Cynthia.”

The easy security of tone with which Jeff pronounced the name vexed
Westover. “I suppose your mother would hardly know how to do without
her, even if you were at home,” he said, dryly.

“Well, that’s a fact,” Jeff assented, with a laugh for the hit. “And
Jackson thinks the world of her. I believe he trusts her judgment more
than he does mother’s about the hotel. Well, I must be going. You don’t
know where Mrs. Vostrand is going to be this winter, I suppose?”

“No, I don’t,” said Westover. He could not help a sort of blind
resentment in the situation. If he could not feel that Jeff was the best
that could be for Cynthia, he had certainly no reason to regret that his
thoughts could be so lightly turned from her. But the fact anomalously
incensed him as a slight to the girl, who might have been still more
sacrificed by Jeff’s constancy. He forced himself to add: “I fancy Mrs.
Vostrand doesn’t know herself.”

“I wish I didn’t know where I was going to be,” said Jeff. “Well,
good-bye, Mr. Westover. I’ll see you in Boston.”

“Oh, good-bye.” The painter freed himself from his brush and palette for
a parting handshake, reluctantly.

Jeff plunged down the hill, waving a final adieu from the corner of the
hotel before he vanished round it.

Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter were at breakfast when Westover came in
after the early light had been gone some time. They entreated him to
join them at their table, and the mother said: “I suppose you were up
soon enough to see young Mr. Durgin off. Isn’t it too bad he has to go
back to college when it’s so pleasant in the country?”

“Not bad for him,” said Westover. “He’s a young man who can stand a
great deal of hard work.” Partly because he was a little tired of Jeff,
and partly because he was embarrassed in their presence by the reason of
his going, he turned the talk upon the days they had known together.

Mrs. Vostrand was very willing to talk of her past, even apart from his,
and she told him of her sojourn in Europe since her daughter had
left school. They spent their winters in Italy and their summers
in Switzerland, where it seemed her son was still at his studies in
Lausanne. She wished him to go to Harvard, she said, and she supposed he
would have to finish his preparation at one of the American schools; but
she had left the choice entirely to Mr. Vostrand.

This seemed a strange event after twelve years’ stay in Europe for the
education of her children, but Westover did not feel authorized to make
any comment upon it. He fell rather to thinking how very pleasant both
mother and daughter were, and to wondering how much wisdom they had
between them. He reflected that men had very little wisdom, as far as
he knew them, and he questioned whether, after all, the main difference
between men and women might not be that women talked their follies and
men acted theirs. Probably Mrs. Vostrand, with all her babble, had
done fewer foolish things than her husband, but here Westover felt his
judgment disabled by the fact that he had never met her husband; and his
mind began to wander to a question of her daughter, whom he had there
before him. He found himself bent upon knowing more of the girl, and
trying to eliminate her mother from the talk, or, at least, to make
Genevieve lead in it. But apparently she was not one of the natures
that like to lead; at any rate, she remained discreetly in abeyance, and
Westover fancied she even respected her mother’s opinions and ideas. He
thought this very well for both of them, whether it was the effect of
Mrs. Vostrand’s merit or Miss Vostrand’s training. They seemed both
of one exquisite gentleness, and of one sweet manner, which was rather
elaborate and formal in expression. They deferred to each other as
politely as they deferred to him, but, if anything, the daughter
deferred most.



XVII.

The Vostrands did not stay long at Lion’s Head. Before the week was
out Mrs. Vostrand had a letter summoning them to meet her husband at
Montreal, where that mysterious man, who never came into the range of
Westover’s vision, somehow, was kept by business from joining them in
the mountains.

Early in October the painter received Mrs. Vostrand’s card at his studio
in Boston, and learned from the scribble which covered it that she was
with her daughter at the Hotel Vendome. He went at once to see them
there, and was met, almost before the greetings were past, with a prayer
for his opinion.

“Favorable opinion?” he asked.

“Favorable? Oh yes; of course. It’s simply this. When I sent you my
card, we were merely birds of passage, and now I don’t know but we
are--What is the opposite of birds of passage?”

Westover could not think, and said so.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. We were walking down the street, here, this
morning, and we saw the sign of an apartment to let, in a window, and we
thought, just for amusement, we would go in and look at it.”

“And you took it?”

“No, not quite so rapid as that. But it was lovely; in such a pretty
‘hotel garni’, and so exquisitely furnished! We didn’t really think of
staying in Boston; we’d quite made up our minds on New York; but this
apartment is a temptation.”

“Why not yield, then?” said Westover. “That’s the easiest way with a
temptation. Confess, now, that you’ve taken the apartment already!”

“No, no, I haven’t yet,” said Mrs. Vostrand.

“And if I advised not, you wouldn’t?”

“Ah, that’s another thing!”

“When are you going to take possession, Mrs. Vostrand?”

“Oh, at once, I suppose--if we do!”

“And may I come in when I’m hungry, just as I used to do in Florence,
and will you stay me with flagons in the old way?”

“There never was anything but tea, you know well enough.”

“The tea had rum in it.”

“Well, perhaps it will have rum in it here, if you’re very good.”

“I will try my best, on condition that you’ll make any and every
possible use of me. Mrs. Vostrand, I can’t tell you how very glad I am
you’re going to stay,” said the painter, with a fervor that made her
impulsively put out her hand to him. He kept it while he could add,
“I don’t forget--I can never forget--how good you were to me in those
days,” and at that she gave his hand a quick pressure. “If I can do
anything at all for you, you will let me, won’t you. I’m afraid you’ll
be so well provided for that there won’t be anything. Ask them to slight
you, to misuse you in something, so that I can come to your rescue.”

“Yes, I will,” Mrs. Vostrand promised. “And may we come to your studio
to implore your protection?”

“The sooner the better.” Westover got himself away with a very sweet
friendship in his heart for this rather anomalous lady, who, more than
half her daughter’s life, had lived away from her daughter’s father,
upon apparently perfectly good terms with him, and so discreetly and
self-respectfully that no breath of reproach had touched her. Until now,
however, her position had not really concerned Westover, and it would
not have concerned him now, if it had not been for a design that formed
itself in his mind as soon as he knew that Mrs. Vostrand meant to pass
the winter in Boston. He felt at once that he could not do things
by halves for a woman who had once done them for him by wholes and
something over, and he had instantly decided that he must not only
be very pleasant to her himself, but he must get his friends to be
pleasant, too. His friends were some of the nicest people in Boston;
nice in both the personal and the social sense; he knew they would not
hesitate to sacrifice themselves for him in a good cause, and that made
him all the more anxious that the cause should be good beyond question.

Since his last return from Paris he had been rather a fad as a teacher,
and his class had been kept quite strictly to the ladies who got it up
and to such as they chose to let enter it. These were not all chosen
for wealth or family; there were some whose gifts gave the class
distinction, and the ladies were glad to have them. It would be easy to
explain Mrs. Vostrand to these, but the others might be more difficult;
they might have their anxieties, and Westover meant to ask the leader of
the class to help him receive at the studio tea he had at once imagined
for the Vostrands, and that would make her doubly responsible.

He found himself drawing a very deep and long breath before he began
to mount the many stairs to his studio, and wishing either that Mrs.
Vostrand had not decided to spend the winter in Boston, or else that he
were of a slacker conscience and could wear his gratitude more lightly.
But there was some relief in thinking that he could do nothing for a
month yet. He gained a degree of courage by telling the ladies, when he
went to find them in their new apartment, that he should want them to
meet a few of his friends at tea as soon as people began to get back
to town; and he made the most of their instant joy in accepting his
invitation.

His pleasure was somehow dashed a little, before he left them, by the
announcement of Jeff Durgin’s name.

“I felt bound to send him my card,” said Mrs. Vostrand, while Jeff was
following his up in the elevator. “He was so very kind to us the day
we arrived at Zion’s Head; and I didn’t know but he might be feeling a
little sensitive about coming over second-cabin in our ship; and--”

“How like you, Mrs. Vostrand!” cried Westover, and he was now distinctly
glad he had not tried to sneak out of doing something for her. “Your
kindness won’t be worse wasted on Durgin than it was on me, in the old
days, when I supposed I had taken a second-cabin passage for the voyage
of life. There’s a great deal of good in him; I don’t mean to say he got
through his Freshman year without trouble with the college authorities,
but the Sophomore year generally brings wisdom.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Vostrand, “they’re always a little wild at first, I
suppose.”

Later, the ladies brought Jeff with them when they came to Westover’s
studio, and the painter perceived that they were very good friends, as
if they must have met several times since he had seen them together. He
interested himself in the growing correctness of Jeff’s personal effect.
During his Freshman year, while the rigor of the unwritten Harvard law
yet forbade him a silk hat or a cane, he had kept something of the boy,
if not the country boy. Westover had noted that he had always rather
a taste for clothes, but in this first year he did not get beyond a
derby-hat and a sack-coat, varied toward the end by a cutaway. In the
outing dress he wore at home he was always effective, but there was
something in Jeff’s figure which did not lend itself to more formal
fashion; something of herculean proportion which would have marked him
of a classic beauty perhaps if he had not been in clothes at all, or
of a yeomanly vigor and force if he had been clad for work, but which
seemed to threaten the more worldly conceptions of the tailor with
danger. It was as if he were about to burst out of his clothes, not
because he wore them tight, but because there was somehow more of the
man than the citizen in him; something native, primitive, something that
Westover could not find quite a word for, characterized him physically
and spiritually. When he came into the studio after these delicate
ladies, the robust Jeff Durgin wore a long frockcoat, with a flower in
his button-hole, and in his left hand he carried a silk hat turned
over his forearm as he must have noticed people whom he thought stylish
carrying their hats. He had on dark-gray trousers and sharp-pointed
enamelled-leather shoes; and Westover grotesquely reflected that he was
dressed, as he stood, to lead Genevieve Vostrand to the altar.

Westover saw at once that when he made his studio tea for the Vostrands
he must ask Jeff; it would be cruel, and for several reasons impossible,
not to do so, and he really did not see why he should not. Mrs. Vostrand
was taking him on the right ground, as a Harvard student, and nobody
need take him on any other. Possibly people would ask him to teas at
their own houses, from Westover’s studio, but he could not feel that he
was concerned in that. Society is interested in a man’s future, not his
past, as it is interested in a woman’s past, not her future.

But when he gave his tea it went off wonderfully well in every way,
perhaps because it was one of the first teas of the fall. It brought
people together in their autumnal freshness before the winter had begun
to wither their resolutions to be amiable to one another, to dull their
wits, to stale their stories, or to give so wide a currency to their
sayings that they could not freely risk them with every one.

Westover had thought it best to be frank with the leading lady of his
class, when she said she should be delighted to receive for him, and
would provide suitable young ladies to pour: a brunette for the tea, and
a blonde for the chocolate. She took his scrupulosity very lightly when
he spoke of Mrs. Vostrand’s educational sojourn in Europe; she laughed
and said she knew the type, and the situation was one of the most
obvious phases of the American marriage.

He protested in vain that Mrs. Vostrand was not the type; she laughed
again, and said, Oh, types were never typical. But she was hospitably
gracious both to her and to Miss Genevieve; she would not allow that the
mother was not the type when Westover challenged her experience, but she
said they were charming, and made haste to get rid of the question with
the vivid demand: “But who was your young friend who ought to have worn
a lion-skin and carried a club?”

Westover by this time disdained palliation. He said that Jeff was the
son of the landlady at Lion’s Head Mountain, which he had painted so
much, and he was now in his second year at Harvard, where he was going
to make a lawyer of himself; and this interested the lady. She asked
if he had talent, and a number of other things about him and about his
mother; and Westover permitted himself to be rather graphic in telling
of his acquaintance with Mrs. Durgin.



XVIII.

After all, it was rather a simple-hearted thing of Westover to have
either hoped or feared very much for the Vostrands. Society, in the
sense of good society, can always take care of itself, and does so
perfectly. In the case of Mrs. Vostrand some ladies who liked Westover
and wished to be civil to him asked her and her daughter to other
afternoon teas, shook hands with them at their coming, and said, when
they went, they were sorry they must be going so soon. In the crowds
people recognized them now and then, both of those who had met them
at Westover’s studio, and of those who had met them at Florence and
Lausanne. But if these were merely people of fashion they were readily,
rid of the Vostrands, whom the dullest among them quickly perceived not
to be of their own sort, somehow. Many of the ladies of Westover’s class
made Genevieve promise to let them paint her; and her beauty and her
grace availed for several large dances at the houses of more daring
spirits, where the daughters made a duty of getting partners for her,
and discharged it conscientiously. But there never was an approach to
more intimate hospitalities, and toward the end of February, when good
society in Boston goes southward to indulge a Lenten grief at Old Point
Comfort, Genevieve had so many vacant afternoons and evenings at
her disposal that she could not have truthfully pleaded a previous
engagement to the invitations Jeff Durgin made her. They were chiefly
for the theatre, and Westover saw him with her and her mother at
different plays; he wondered how Jeff had caught on to the notion of
asking Mrs. Vostrand to come with them.

Jeff’s introductions at Westover’s tea had not been many, and they had
not availed him at all. He had been asked to no Boston houses, and when
other students, whom he knew, were going in to dances, the whole winter
he was socially as quiet, but for the Vostrands, as at the Mid-year
Examinations. Westover could not resent the neglect of society in his
case, and he could not find that he quite regretted it; but he thought
it characteristically nice of Mrs. Vostrand to make as much of the
friendless fellow as she fitly could. He had no doubt but her tact would
be equal to his management in every way, and that she could easily see
to it that he did not become embarrassing to her daughter or herself.

One day, after the east wind had ceased to blow the breath of the
ice-fields of Labrador against the New England coast, and the buds on
the trees along the mall between the lawns of the avenue were venturing
forth in a hardy experiment of the Boston May, Mrs. Vostrand asked
Westover if she had told him that Mr. Vostrand was actually coming on to
Boston. He rejoiced with her in this prospect, and he reciprocated
the wish which she said Mr. Vostrand had always had for a meeting with
himself.

A fortnight later, when the leaves had so far inured themselves to the
weather as to have fully expanded, she announced another letter from
Mr. Vostrand, saying that, after all, he should not be able to come to
Boston, but hoped to be in New York before she sailed.

“Sailed!” cried Westover.

“Why, yes! Didn’t you know we were going to sail in June? I thought I
had told you!”

“No--”

“Why, yes. We must go out to poor Checco, now; Mr. Vostrand insists
upon that. If ever we are a united family again, Mr. Westover--if
Mr. Vostrand can arrange his business, when Checco is ready to enter
Harvard--I mean to take a house in Boston. I’m sure I should be
contented to live nowhere else in America. The place has quite bewitched
me--dear old, sober, charming Boston! I’m sure I should like to live
here all the rest of my life. But why in the world do people go out of
town so early? Those houses over there have been shut for a whole month
past!”

They were sitting at Mrs. Vostrand’s window looking out on the avenue,
where the pale globular electrics were swimming like jelly-fish in the
clear evening air, and above the ranks of low trees the houses on the
other side were close-shuttered from basement to attic.

Westover answered: “Some go because they have such pleasant houses at
the shore, and some because they want to dodge their taxes.”

“To dodge their taxes?” she repeated, and he had to explain how if
people were in their country-houses before the 1st of May they would
not have to pay the high personal tax of the city; and she said that she
would write that to Mr. Vostrand; it would be another point in favor of
Boston. Women, she declared, would never have thought of such a
thing; she denounced them as culpably ignorant of so many matters that
concerned them, especially legal matters. “And you think,” she asked,
“that Mr. Durgin will be a good lawyer? That he will-distinguish
himself?”

Westover thought it rather a short-cut to Jeff from the things they had
been talking of, but if she wished to speak of him he had no reason to
oppose her wish. “I’ve heard it’s all changed a good deal. There are
still distinguished lawyers, and lawyers who get on, but they don’t
distinguish themselves in the old way so much, and they get on best by
becoming counsel for some powerful corporation.”

“And you think he has talent?” she pursued. “For that, I mean.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Westover. “I think he has a good head. He can
do what he likes within certain limits, and the limits are not all on
the side I used to fancy. He baffles me. But of late I fancy you’ve seen
rather more of him than I have.”

“I have urged him to go more to you. But,” said Mrs. Vostrand, with a
burst of frankness, “he thinks you don’t like him.”

“He’s wrong,” said Westover. “But I might dislike him very much.”

“I see what you mean,” said Mrs. Vostrand, “and I’m glad you’ve been
so frank with me. I’ve been so interested in Mr. Durgin, so interested!
Isn’t he very young?”

The question seemed a bit of indirection to Westover. But he answered
directly enough. “He’s rather old for a Sophomore, I believe. He’s
twenty-two.”

“And Genevieve is twenty. Mr. Westover, may I trust you with something?”

“With everything, I hope, Mrs. Vostrand.”

“It’s about Genevieve. Her father is so opposed to her making a foreign
marriage. It seems to be his one great dread. And, of course, she’s very
much exposed to it, living abroad so much with me, and I feel doubly
bound on that account to respect her father’s opinions, or even
prejudices. Before we left Florence--in fact, last winter--there was a
most delightful young officer wished to marry her. I don’t know that
she cared anything for him, though he was everything that I could have
wished: handsome, brilliant, accomplished, good family; everything
but rich, and that was what Mr. Vostrand objected to; or, rather, he
objected to putting up, as he called it, the sum that Captain Grassi
would have had to deposit with the government before he was allowed to
marry. You know how it is with the poor fellows in the army, there;
I don’t understand the process exactly, but the sum is something like
sixty thousand francs, I believe; and poor Gigi hadn’t it: I always
called him Gigi, but his name is Count Luigi de’ Popolani Grassi; and he
is descended from one of the old republican families of Florence. He is
so nice! Mr. Vostrand was opposed to him from the beginning, and as soon
as he heard of the sixty thousand francs, he utterly refused. He called
it buying a son-in-law, but I don’t see why he need have looked at it in
that light. However, it was broken off, and we left Florence--more
for poor Gigi’s sake than for Genevieve’s, I must say. He was quite
heart-broken; I pitied him.”

Her voice had a tender fall in the closing words, and Westover could
fancy how sweet she would make her compassion to the young man. She
began several sentences aimlessly, and he suggested, to supply the
broken thread of her discourse rather than to offer consolation, while
her eyes seemed to wander with her mind, and ranged the avenue up and
down: “Those foreign marriages are not always successful.”

“No, they are not,” she assented. “But don’t you think they’re better
with Italians than with Germans, for instance.”

“I don’t suppose the Italians expect their wives to black their boots,
but I’ve heard that they beat them, sometimes.”

“In exaggerated cases, perhaps they do,” Mrs. Vostrand admitted. “And,
of course,” she added, thoughtfully, “there is nothing like a purely
American marriage for happiness.”

Westover wondered how she really regarded her own marriage, but she
never betrayed any consciousness of its variance from the type.



XIX.

A young couple came strolling down the avenue who to Westover’s artistic
eye first typified grace and strength, and then to his more personal
perception identified themselves as Genevieve Vostrand and Jeff Durgin.

They faltered before one of the benches beside the mall, and he seemed
to be begging her to sit down. She cast her eyes round till they must
have caught the window of her mother’s apartment; then, as if she felt
safe under it, she sank into the seat and Jeff put himself beside her.
It was quite too early yet for the simple lovers who publicly notify
their happiness by the embraces and hand-clasps everywhere evident in
our parks and gardens; and a Boston pair of social tradition would not
have dreamed of sitting on a bench in Commonwealth Avenue at any hour.
But two such aliens as Jeff and Miss Vostrand might very well do so; and
Westover sympathized with their bohemian impulse.

Mrs. Vostrand and he watched them awhile, in talk that straggled away
from them, and became more and more distraught in view of them. Jeff
leaned forward, and drew on the ground with the point of his stick;
Genevieve held her head motionless at a pensive droop. It was only their
backs that Westover could see, and he could not, of course, make out
a syllable of what was effectively their silence; but all the same he
began to feel as if he were peeping and eavesdropping. Mrs. Vostrand
seemed not to share his feeling, and there was no reason why he should
have it if she had not. He offered to go, but she said, No, no; he must
not think of it till Genevieve came in; and she added some banalities
about her always scolding when she had missed one of his calls; they
would be so few, now, at the most.

“Why, do you intend to go so soon?” he asked.

She did not seem to hear him, and he could see that she was watching
the young people intently. Jeff had turned his face up toward Genevieve,
without lifting his person, and was saying something she suddenly shrank
back from. She made a start as if to rise, but he put out his hand in
front of her, beseechingly or compellingly, and she sank down again.
But she slowly shook her head at what he was saying, and turned her face
toward him so that it gave her profile to the spectators. In that light
and at that distance it was impossible to do more than fancy anything
fateful in the words which she seemed to be uttering; but Westover chose
to fancy this. Jeff waited a moment in apparent silence, after she had
spoken. He sat erect and faced her, and this gave his profile, too. He
must have spoken, for she shook her head again; and then, at other words
from him, nodded assentingly. Then she listened motionlessly while he
poured a rapid stream of visible but inaudible words. He put out his
hand, as if to take hers, but she put it behind her; Westover could see
it white there against the belt of her dark dress.

Jeff went on more vehemently, but she remained steadfast, slowly shaking
her head. When he ended she spoke, and with something of his own energy;
he made a gesture of submission, and when she rose he rose, too. She
stood a moment, and with a gentle and almost entreating movement she put
out her hand to him. He stood looking down, with both his hands resting
on the top of his stick, as if ignoring her proffer. Then he suddenly
caught her hand, held it a moment; dropped it, and walked quickly away
without looking back. Genevieve ran across the lawn and roadway toward
the house.

“Oh, must, you go?” Mrs. Vostrand said to Westover. He found that he had
probably risen in sympathy with Jeff’s action. He was not aware of
an intention of going, but he thought he had better not correct Mrs.
Vostrand’s error.

“Yes, I really must, now,” he said.

“Well, then,” she returned, distractedly, “do come often.”

He hurried out to avoid meeting Genevieve. He passed her, on the public
stairs of the house, but he saw that she did not recognize him in the
dim light.

Late that night he was startled by steps that seemed to be seeking their
way up the stairs to his landing, and then by a heavy knock on his door.
He opened it, and confronted Jeff Durgin.

“May I come in, Mr. Westover?” he asked, with unwonted deference.

“Yes, come in,” said Westover, with no great relish, setting his door
open, and then holding onto it a moment, as if he hoped that, having
come in, Jeff might instantly go out again.

His reluctance was lost upon Jeff, who said, unconscious of keeping his
hat on: “I want to talk with you--I want to tell you something--”

“All right. Won’t you sit down?”

At this invitation Jeff seemed reminded to take his hat off, and he put
it on the floor beside his chair. “I’m not in a scrape, this time--or,
rather, I’m in the worst kind of a scrape, though it isn’t the kind that
you want bail for.”

“Yes,” Westover prompted.

“I don’t know whether you’ve noticed--and if you haven’t it don’t
make any difference--that I’ve seemed to--care a good deal for Miss
Vostrand?”

Westover saw no reason why he should not be frank, and said: “Too much,
I’ve fancied sometimes, for a student in his Sophomore year.”

“Yes, I know that. Well, it’s over, whether it was too much or too
little.” He laughed in a joyless, helpless way, and looked deprecatingly
at Westover. “I guess I’ve been making a fool of myself--that’s all.”

“It’s better to make a fool of one’s self than to make a fool of some
one else,” said Westover, oracularly.

“Yes,” said Jeff, apparently finding nothing more definite in the oracle
than people commonly find in oracles. “But I think,” he went on, with
a touch of bitterness, “that her mother might have told me that she was
engaged--or the same as engaged.”

“I don’t know that she was bound to take you seriously, or to suppose
you took yourself so, at your age and with your prospects in life. If
you want to know,”--Westover faltered, and then went on--“she began to
be kind to you because she was afraid that you might think she didn’t
take your coming home second-cabin in the right way; and one thing led
to another. You mustn’t blame her for what’s happened.”

Westover defended Mrs. Vostrand, but he did not feel strong in her
defence; he was not sure that Durgin was quite wrong, absurd as he had
been. He sat down and looked up at his visitor under his brows.

“What are you here for, Jeff? Not to complain of Mrs. Vostrand?”

Jeff gave a short, shamefaced laugh. “No, it’s this you’re such an old
friend of Mrs. Vostrand’s that I thought she’d be pretty sure to
tell you about it; and I wanted to ask--to ask--that you wouldn’t say
anything to mother.”

“You are a boy! I shouldn’t think of meddling with your affairs,” said
Westover; he got up again, and Jeff rose, too.

Before noon the next day a district messenger brought Westover a letter
which he easily knew, from, the now belated tall, angular hand, to be
from Mrs. Vostrand. It announced on a much criss-crossed little sheet
that she and Genevieve were inconsolably taking a very sudden departure,
and were going on the twelve-o’clock train to New York, where Mr.
Vostrand was to meet them. “In regard to that affair which I mentioned
last night, he withdraws his objections (we have had an overnight
telegram), and so I suppose all will go well. I cannot tell you how
sorry we both are not to see you again; you have been such a dear, good
friend to us; and if you don’t hear from us again at New York, you will
from the other side. Genevieve had some very strange news when she came
in, and we both feel very sorry for the poor young fellow. You must
console him from us all you can. I did not know before how much she was
attached to Gigi: but it turned out very fortunately that she could say
she considered herself bound to him, and did everything to save Mr. D.’s
feelings.”



XX.

Westover was not at Lion’s Head again till the summer before Jeff’s
graduation. In the mean time the hotel had grown like a living thing. He
could not have imagined wings in connection with the main edifice,
but it had put forth wings--one that sheltered a new and enlarged
dining-room, with two stories of chambers above, and another that
hovered a parlor and ball-room under a like provision of chambers. An
ell had been pushed back on the level behind the house; the barn had
been moved farther to the southward, and on its old site a laundry
built, with quarters for the help over it. All had been carefully,
frugally, yet sufficiently done, and Westover was not surprised to learn
that it was all the effect of Jackson Durgin’s ingenuity and energy.
Mrs. Durgin confessed to having no part in it; but she had kept pace,
with Cynthia Whitwell’s help, in the housekeeping. As Jackson had
cautiously felt his way to the needs of their public in the enlargement
and rearrangement of the hotel, the two housewives had watchfully
studied, not merely the demands, but the half-conscious instincts of
their guests, and had responded to them simply and adequately, in the
spirit of Jackson’s exterior and structural improvements. The walls of
the new rooms were left unpapered and their floors uncarpeted; there
were thin rugs put down; the wood-work was merely stained. Westover
found that he need not to ask especially for some hot dish at night;
there was almost the abundance of a dinner, though dinner was still at
one o’clock.

Mrs. Durgin asked him the first day if he would not like to go into the
serving-room and see it while they were serving dinner. She tried to
conceal her pride in the busy scene--the waitresses pushing in through
one valve of the double-hinged doors with their empty trays, and out
through the other with the trays full laden; delivering their dishes
with the broken victual at the wicket, where the untouched portions were
put aside and the rest poured into the waste; following in procession
along the reeking steamtable, with its great tanks of soup and
vegetables, where, the carvers stood with the joints and the trussed
fowls smoking before them, which they sliced with quick sweeps of their
blades, or waiting their turn at the board where the little plates with
portions of fruit and dessert stood ready. All went regularly on amid a
clatter of knives and voices and dishes; and the clashing rise and fall
of the wire baskets plunging the soiled crockery into misty depths,
whence it came up clean and dry without the touch of finger or towel.
Westover could not deny that there were elements of the picturesque
in it, so that he did not respond quite in kind to Jeff’s
suggestion--“Scene for a painter, Mr. Westover.”

The young fellow followed satirically at his mother’s elbow, and made a
mock of her pride in it, trying to catch Westover’s eye when she led him
through the kitchen with its immense range, and introduced him to a new
chef, who wiped his hand on his white apron to offer it to Westover.

“Don’t let him get away without seeing the laundry, mother,” her son
jeered at a final air of absent-mindedness in her, and she defiantly
accepted his challenge.

“Jeff’s mad because he wasn’t consulted,” she explained, “and because we
don’t run the house like his one-horse European hotels.”

“Oh, I’m not in it at all, Mr. Westover,” said the young fellow. “I’m as
much a passenger as you are. The only difference is that I’m allowed to
work my passage.”

“Well, one thing,” said his mother, “is that we’ve got a higher class of
boarders than we ever had before. You’ll see, Mr. Westover, if you stay
on here till August. There’s a class that boards all the year round, and
that knows what a hotel is--about as well as Jeff, I guess. You’ll find
‘em at the big city houses, the first of the winter, and then they go
down to Floridy or Georgy for February and March; and they get up to
Fortress Monroe in April, and work along north about the middle of May
to them family hotels in the suburbs around Boston; and they stay there
till it’s time to go to the shore. They stay at the shore through
July, and then they come here in August, and stay till the leaves turn.
They’re folks that live on their money, and they’re the very highest
class, I guess. It’s a round of gayety with ‘em the whole year through.”

Jeff, from the vantage of his greater worldly experience, was trying
to exchange looks of intelligence with Westover concerning those
hotel-dwellers whom his mother revered as aristocrats; but he did not
openly question her conceptions. “They’ve told me how they do, some of
the ladies have,” she went on. “They’ve got the money for it, and they
know how to get the most for their money. Why, Mr. Westover, we’ve got
rooms in this house, now, that we let for thirty-five to fifty dollars
a week for two persons, and folks like that take ‘em right along through
August and September, and want a room apiece. It’s different now, I can
tell you, from what it was when folks thought we was killin’ ‘em if we
wanted ten or twelve dollars.”

Westover had finished his dinner before this tour of the house began,
and when it was over the two men strolled away together.

“You see, it’s on the regular American lines,” Jeff pursued, after
parting with his mother. “Jackson’s done it, and he can’t imagine
anything else. I don’t say it isn’t well done in its way, but the way’s
wrong; it’s stupid and clumsy.” When they were got so far from the hotel
as to command a prospect of its ungainly mass sprawled upon the plateau,
his smouldering disgust burst out: “Look at it! Did you ever see
anything like it? I wish the damned thing would burn up--or down!”

Westover was aware in more ways than one of Jeff’s exclusion from
authority in the place, where he was constantly set aside from the
management as if his future were so definitely dedicated to another
calling that not even his advice was desired or permitted; and he could
not help sympathizing a little with him when he chafed at his rejection.
He saw a great deal of him, and he thought him quite up to the
average of Harvard’s Seniors in some essentials. He had been sobered,
apparently, by experience; his unfortunate love-affair seemed to have
improved him, as the phrase is.

They had some long walks and long talks together, and in one of them
Jeff opened his mind, if not his heart, to the painter. He wanted to
be the Landlord of the Lion’s Head, which he believed he could make the
best hotel in the mountains. He knew, of course, that he could not hope
to make any changes that did not suit his mother and his brother, as
long as they had the control, but he thought they would let him have the
control sooner if his mother could only be got to give up the notion of
his being a lawyer. As nearly as he could guess, she wanted him to be
a lawyer because she did not want him to be a hotel-keeper, and her
prejudice against that was because she believed that selling liquor made
her father a drunkard.

“Well, now you know enough about me, Mr. Westover, to know that drink
isn’t my danger.”

“Yes, I think I do,” said Westover.

“I went a little wild in my Freshman year, and I got into that scrape,
but I’ve never been the worse for liquor since; fact is, I never touch
it now. There isn’t any more reason why I should take to drink because I
keep a hotel than Jackson; but just that one time has set mother against
it, and I can’t seem to make her understand that once is enough for me.
Why, I should keep a temperance house, here, of course; you can’t
do anything else in these days. If I was left to choose between
hotel-keeping and any other life that I know of, I’d choose it every
time,” Jeff went on, after a moment of silence. “I like a hotel. You can
be your own man from the start; the start’s made here, and I’ve helped
to make it. All you’ve got to do is to have common-sense in the hotel
business, and you’re sure to succeed. I believe I’ve got common-sense,
and I believe I’ve got some ideas that I can work up into a great
success. The reason that most people fail in the hotel business is that
they waste so much, and the landlord that wastes on his guests can’t
treat them well. It’s got so now that in the big city houses they can’t
make anything on feeding people, and so they try to make it up on the
rooms. I should feed them well--I believe I know how--and I should make
money on my table, as they do in Europe.

“I’ve thought a good many things out; my mind runs on it all the time;
but I’m not going to bore you with it now.”

“Oh, not at all,” said Westover. “I’d like to know what your ideas are.”

“Well, some time I’ll tell you. But look here, Mr. Westover, I wish if
mother gets to talking about me with you that you’d let her know how I
feel. We can’t talk together, she and I, without quarrelling about it;
but I guess you could put in a word that would show her I wasn’t quite
a fool. She thinks I’ve gone crazy from seeing the way they do things in
Europe; that I’m conceited and unpatriotic, and I don’t know what
all.” Jeff laughed as if with an inner fondness for his mother’s
wrong-headedness.

“And would you be willing to settle down here in the country for
the rest of your life, and throw away your Harvard training on
hotel-keeping?”

“What do the other fellows do with their Harvard training when they go
into business, as nine-tenths of them do? Business is business, whether
you keep a hotel or import dry-goods or manufacture cotton or run a
railroad or help a big trust to cheat legally. Harvard has got to take
a back seat when you get out of Harvard. But you don’t suppose that
keeping a summer hotel would mean living in the country the whole time,
do you? That’s the way mother does, but I shouldn’t. It isn’t good for
the hotel, even. If I had such a place as Lion’s Head, I should put a
man and his family into it for the winter to look after it, and I should
go to town myself--to Boston or New York, or I might go to London or
Paris. They’re not so far off, and it’s so easy to get to them that you
can hardly keep away.” Jeff laughed, and looked up at Westover from the
log where he sat, whittling a pine stick; Westover sat on the stump from
which the log had been felled eight or ten years before.

“You are modern,” he said.

“That’s what I should do at first. But I don’t believe I should have
Lion’s Head very long before I had another hotel--in Florida, or the
Georgia uplands, or North Carolina, somewhere. I should take my help
back and forth; it would be as easy to run two hotels as one-easier! It
would keep my hand in. But if you want to know, I’d rather stick here
in the country, year in and year out, and run Lion’s Head, than to be a
lawyer and hang round trying to get a case for nine or ten years. Who’s
going to support me? Do you suppose I want to live on mother till I’m
forty? She don’t think of that. She thinks I can go right into court and
begin distinguishing myself, if I can fight the people off from sending
me to Congress. I’d rather live in the country, anyway. I think town’s
the place for winter, or two-three months of it, and after that I
haven’t got any use for it. But mother, she’s got this old-fashioned
ambition to have me go to a city and set up there. She thinks that if
I was a lawyer in Boston I should be at the top of the heap. But I know
better than that, and so do you; and I want you to give her some little
hint of how it really is: how it takes family and money and a lot of
influence to get to the top in any city.”

It occurred to Westover, and not for the first time, that the frankest
thing in Jeff Durgin was his disposition to use his friends. It seemed
to him that Jeff was always asking something of him, and it did not
change the fact that in this case he thought him altogether in the
right. He said that if Mrs. Durgin spoke to him of the matter he would
not keep the light from her. He looked behind him, now, for the first
time, in recognition of the place where they had stopped. “Why, this is
Whitwell’s Clearing.”

“Didn’t you know it?” Jeff asked. “It changes a good deal every year,
and you haven’t been here for awhile, have you?”

“Not since Mrs. Marven’s picnic,” said Westover, and he added, quickly,
to efface the painful association which he must have called up by his
heedless words:

“The woods have crowded back upon it so. It can’t be more than half its
old size.”

“No,” Jeff assented. He struck his heel against a fragment of the pine
bough he had been whittling, and drove it into the soft ground beside
the log, and said, without looking up from it: “I met that woman at a
dance last winter. It wasn’t her dance, but she was running it as if it
were, just the way she did with the picnic. She seemed to want to let
bygones be bygones, and I danced with her daughter. She’s a nice girl.
I thought mother did wrong about that.” Now he looked at Westover. “She
couldn’t help it, but it wasn’t the thing to do. A hotel is a public
house, and you can’t act as if it wasn’t. If mother hadn’t known how to
keep a hotel so well in other ways, she might have ruined the house by
not knowing in a thing like that. But we’ve got some of the people with
us this year that used to come here when we first took farm-boarders;
mother don’t know that they’re ever so much nicer, socially, than the
people that take the fifty-dollar rooms.” He laughed, and then he said,
seriously: “If I ever had a son, I don’t believe I should let my
pride in him risk doing him mischief. And if you’ve a mind to let her
understand that you believe I’m set against the law for good and all--”

“I guess I shall not be your ambassador, so far as that. Why don’t you
tell her yourself?”

“She won’t believe me,” said Jeff, with a laugh. “She thinks I don’t
know my mind. And I don’t like the way we differ when we differ. We
differ more than we mean to. I don’t pretend to say I’m always right.
She was right about that other picnic--the one I wanted to make for Mrs.
Vostrand. I suppose,” he ended, unexpectedly, “that you hear from them,
now and then?”

“No, I don’t. I haven’t heard from them for a year; not since--You knew
Genevieve was married?”

“Yes, I knew that,” said Jeff, steadily.

“I don’t quite make it all out. Mr. Vostrand was very much opposed to
it, Mrs. Vostrand told me; but he must have given way at last; and
he must have put up the money.” Jeff looked puzzled, and Westover
explained. “You know the officers in the Italian army--and all the other
armies in Europe, for that matter--have to deposit a certain sum with
the government before they can marry and in the case of Count Grassi,
Mr. Vostrand had to furnish the money.”

Jeff said, after a moment: “Well, she couldn’t help that.”

“No, the girl wasn’t to blame. I don’t know that any one was to blame.
But I’m afraid our girls wouldn’t marry many titles if their fathers
didn’t put up the money.”

“Well, I don’t see why they shouldn’t spend their money that way as well
as any other,” said Jeff, and this proof of his impartiality suggested
to Westover that he was not only indifferent to the mercenary
international marriages, which are a scandal to so many of our casuists,
but had quite outlived his passion for the girl concerned in this.

“At any rate,” Jeff added, “I haven’t got anything to say against it.
Mr. Westover, I’ve always wanted to say one thing to you. Then I came
to your room that night, I wanted to complain of Mrs. Vostrand for
not letting me know about the engagement; and I wasn’t man enough to
acknowledge that what you said would account for their letting me make a
fool of myself. But I believe I am now, and I want to say it.”

“I’m glad you can see it in that way,” said Westover, “and since you do,
I don’t mind saying that I think Mrs. Vostrand might have been a little
franker with you without being less kind. She was kind, but she wasn’t
quite frank.”

“Well, it’s all over now,” said Jeff, and he rose up and brushed the
whittlings from his knees. “And I guess it’s just as well.”



XXI.

That afternoon Westover saw Jeff helping Cynthia Whitwell into his
buckboard, and then, after his lively horse had made some paces of a
start, spring to the seat beside her, and bring it to a stand. “Can I
do anything for you over at Lovewell, Mr. Westover?” he called, and he
smiled toward the painter. Then he lightened the reins on the mare’s
back; she squared herself for a start in earnest, and flashed down the
sloping hotel road to the highway below, and was lost to sight in the
clump of woods to the southward.

“That’s a good friend of yours, Cynthy,” he said, leaning toward the
girl with a simple comfort in her proximity. She was dressed in a
pale-pink color, with a hat of yet paler pink; without having a great
deal of fashion, she had a good deal of style. She looked bright and
fresh; there was a dash of pink in her cheeks, which suggested the color
of the sweetbrier, its purity and sweetness, and if there was something
in Cynthia’s character and temperament that suggested its thorns too,
one still could not deny that she was like that flower. She liked to
shop, and she liked to ride after a good horse, as the neighbors would
have said; she was going over to Lovewell to buy a number of things,
and Jeff Durgin was driving her there with the swift mare that was his
peculiar property. She smiled upon him without the usual reservations
she contrived to express in her smiles.

“Well, I don’t know anybody I’d rather have for my friend than Mr.
Westover.” She added: “He acted like a friend the very first time I saw
him.”

Jeff laughed with shameless pleasure in the reminiscence her words
suggested. “Well, I did get my come-uppings that time. And I don’t know
but he’s been a pretty good friend to me, too. I’m not sure he likes me;
but Mr. Westover is a man that could be your friend if he didn’t like
you.”

“What have you done to make him like you?” asked the girl.

“Nothing!” said Jeff, with a shout of laughter in his conviction. “I’ve
done a lot of things to make him despise me from the start. But if you
like a person yourself, you want him to like you whether you deserve it
or not.”

“I don’t know as I do.”

“You say that because you always deserve it. You can’t tell how it is
with a fellow like me. I should want you to like me, Cynthy, whatever
you thought of me.” He looked round into her face, but she turned it
away.

They had struck the level, long for the hill country, at the foot of
the hotel road, and the mare, that found herself neither mounting nor
descending a steep, dropped from the trot proper for an acclivity into a
rapid walk.

“This mare can walk like a Kentucky horse,” said Jeff. “I believe I
could teach her single-foot.” He added, with a laugh, “If I knew how,”
 and now Cynthia laughed with him.

“I was just going to say that.”

“Yes, you don’t lose many chances to give me a dig, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know as I look for them. Perhaps I don’t need to.” The pine
woods were deep on either side. They whispered in the thin, sweet wind,
and gave out their odor in the high, westering sun. They covered with
their shadows the road that ran velvety between them.

“This is nice,” said Jeff, letting himself rest against the back of the
seat. He stretched his left arm along the top, and presently it dropped
and folded itself about the waist of the girl.

“You may take your arm away, Jeff,” she said, quietly.

“Why?”

“Because it has no right there, for one thing!” She drew herself a
little aside and looked round at him. “You wouldn’t put it round a town
girl if you were riding with her.”

“I shouldn’t be riding with her: Girls don’t go buggy-riding in town any
more,” said Jeff, brutally.

“Then I shall know what to do the next time you ask me.”

“Oh, they’d go quick enough if I asked them up here in the country.
Etiquette don’t count with them when they’re on a vacation.”

“I’m not on a vacation; so it counts with me. Please take your arm
away,” said Cynthia.

“Oh, all right. But I shouldn’t object to your putting your arm around
me.”

“You will never have the chance.”

“Why are you so hard on me, Cynthy?” asked Jeff. “You didn’t used to be
so.”

“People change.”

“Do I?”

“Not for the better.”

Jeff was dumb. She was pleased with her hit, and laughed. But her laugh
did not encourage him to put his arm round her again. He let the mare
walk on, and left her to resume the conversation at whatever point she
would.

She made no haste to resume it. At last she said, with sufficient
apparent remoteness from the subject they had dropped: “Jeff, I don’t
know whether you want me to talk about it. But I guess I ought to, even
if it isn’t my place exactly. I don’t think Jackson’s very well, this
summer.”

Jeff faced round toward her. “What makes you think he isn’t well?”

“He’s weaker. Haven’t you noticed it?”

“Yes, I have noticed that. He’s worked down; that’s all.”

“No, that isn’t all. But if you don’t think so--”

“I want to know what you think, Cynthy,” said Jeff, with the amorous
resentment all gone from his voice. “Sometimes folks outside notice
the signs more--I don’t mean that you’re an outsider, as far as we’re
concerned--”

She put by that point. “Father’s noticed it, too; and he’s with Jackson
a good deal.”

“I’ll look after it. If he isn’t so well, he’s got to have a doctor.
That medium’s stuff can’t do him any good. Don’t you think he ought to
have a doctor?”

“Oh yes.”

“You don’t think a doctor can do him much good?”

“He ought to have one,” said the girl, noncommittally.

“Cynthia, I’ve noticed that Jackson was weak, too; and it’s no use
pretending that he’s simply worked down. I believe he’s worn out. Do you
think mother’s ever noticed it?”

“I don’t believe she has.”

“It’s the one thing I can’t very well make up my mind to speak to her
about. I don’t know what she would do.” He did not say, “If she lost
Jackson,” but Cynthia knew he meant that, and they were both silent. “Of
course,” he went on, “I know that she places a great deal of dependence
upon you, but Jackson’s her main stay. He’s a good man, and he’s a good
son. I wish I’d always been half as good.”

Cynthia did not protest against his self-reproach as he possibly hoped
she would. She said: “I think Jackson’s got a very good mind. He reads a
great deal, and he’s thought a great deal, and when it comes to talking,
I never heard any one express themselves better. The other night, we
were out looking at the stars--I came part of the way home with him;
I didn’t like to let him go alone, he seemed so feeble and he got to
showing me Mars. He thinks it’s inhabited, and he’s read all that the
astronomers say about it, and the seas and the canals that they’ve found
on it. He spoke very beautifully about the other life, and then he spoke
about death.” Cynthia’s voice broke, and she pulled her handkerchief out
of her belt, and put it to her eyes. Jeff’s heart melted in him at the
sight; he felt a tender affection for her, very unlike the gross content
he had enjoyed in her presence before, and he put his arm round her
again, but this time almost unconsciously, and drew her toward him. She
did not repel him; she even allowed her head to rest a moment on his
shoulder; though she quickly lifted it, and drew herself away, not
resentfully, it seemed, but for her greater freedom in talking.

“I don’t believe he’s going to die,” Jeff said, consolingly, more as if
it were her brother than his that he meant. “But he’s a very sick man,
and he’s got to knock off and go somewhere. It won’t do for him to pass
another winter here. He must go to California, or Colorado; they’d be
glad to have him there, either of them; or he can go to Florida, or over
to Italy. It won’t matter how long he stays--”

“What are you talking about, Jeff Durgin?” Cynthia demanded, severely.
“What would your mother do? What would she do this winter?”

“That brings me to something, Cynthia,” said Jeff, “and I don’t want you
to say anything till I’ve got through. I guess I could help mother run
the place as well as Jackson, and I could stay here next winter.”

“You?”

“Now, you let me talk! My mind’s made up about one thing: I’m not going
to be a lawyer. I don’t want to go back to Harvard. I’m going to keep a
hotel, and, if I don’t keep one here at Lion’s Head, I’m going to keep
it somewhere else.”

“Have you told your mother?”

“Not yet: I wanted to hear what you would say first.”

“I? Oh, I haven’t got anything to do with it,” said Cynthia.

“Yes, you have! You’ve got everything to do with it, if you’ll say one
thing first. Cynthia, you know how I feel about you. It’s been so ever
since we were boy and girl here. I want you to promise to marry me. Will
you?”

The girl seemed neither surprised nor very greatly pleased; perhaps her
pleasure had spent itself in that moment of triumphant expectation when
she foresaw what was coming, or perhaps she was preoccupied in clearing
the way in her own mind to a definite result.

“What do you say, Cynthia?” Jeff pursued, with more injury than
misgiving in his voice at her delay in answering. “Don’t you-care for
me?”

“Oh yes, I presume I’ve always done that--ever since we were boy and
girl, as you say. But----”

“Well?” said Jeff, patiently, but not insecurely.

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Always cared for me.”

He could not find his voice quite as promptly as before. He cleared his
throat before he asked: “Has Mr. Westover been saying anything about
me?”

“I don’t know what you mean, exactly; but I presume you do.”

“Well, then--I always expected to tell you--I did have a fancy for that
girl, for Miss Vostrand, and I told her so. It’s like something that
never happened. She wouldn’t have me. That’s all.”

“And you expect me to take what she wouldn’t have?”

“If you like to call it that. But I should call it taking a man that had
been out of his head for a while, and had come to his senses again.”

“I don’t know as I should ever feel safe with a man that had been out of
his head once.”

“You wouldn’t find many men that hadn’t,” said Jeff, with a laugh that
was rather scornful of her ignorance.

“No, I presume not,” she sighed. “She was beautiful, and I believe she
was good, too. She was very nice. Perhaps I feel strangely about it.
But, if she hadn’t been so nice, I shouldn’t have been so willing that
you should have cared for her.”

“I suppose I don’t understand,” said Jeff, “but I know I was hard hit.
What’s the use? It’s over. She’s married. I can’t go back and unlive it
all. But if you want time to think--of course you do--I’ve taken time
enough--”

He was about to lift the reins on the mare’s back as a sign to her that
the talk was over for the present, and to quicken her pace, when Cynthia
put out her hand and laid it on his, and said with a certain effect
of authority: “I shouldn’t want you should give up your last year in
Harvard.”

“Just as you say, Cynthy;” and in token of intelligence he wound his arm
round her neck and kissed her. It was not the first kiss by any means;
in the country kisses are not counted very serious, or at all binding,
and Cynthia was a country girl; but they both felt that this kiss sealed
a solemn troth between them, and that a common life began for them with
it.



XXII.

Cynthia came back in time to go into the dining-room and see that all
was in order there for supper before the door opened. The waitresses
knew that she had been out riding, as they called it, with Jeff Durgin;
the fact had spread electrically to them where they sat in a shady angle
of the hotel listening to one who read a novel aloud, and skipped all
but the most exciting love parts. They conjectured that the pair had
gone to Lovewell, but they knew nothing more, and the subtlest of
them would not have found reason for further conjecture in Cynthia’s
behavior, when she came in and scanned the tables and the girls’ dresses
and hair, where they stood ranged against the wall. She was neither
whiter nor redder than usual, and her nerves and her tones were under as
good control as a girl’s ever are after she has been out riding with a
fellow. It was not such a great thing, anyway, to ride with Jeff Durgin.
First and last, nearly all the young lady boarders had been out with
him, upon one errand or another to Lovewell.

After supper, when the girls had gone over to their rooms in the helps’
quarters, and the guests had gathered in the wide, low office, in the
light of the fire kindled on the hearth to break the evening chill, Jeff
joined Cynthia in her inspection of the dining-room. She always gave it
a last look, to see that it was in perfect order for breakfast, before
she went home for the night. Jeff went home with her; he was impatient
of her duties, but he was in no hurry when they stole out of the side
door together under the stars, and began to stray sidelong down the hill
over the dewless grass.

He lingered more and more as they drew near her father’s house, in the
abandon of a man’s love. He wished to give himself solely up to it, to
think and to talk of nothing else, after a man’s fashion. But a woman’s
love is no such mere delight. It is serious, practical. For her it is
all future, and she cannot give herself wholly up to any present moment
of it, as a man does.

“Now, Jeff,” she said, after a certain number of partings, in which she
had apparently kept his duty clearly in mind, “you had better go home
and tell your mother.”

“Oh, there’s time enough for that,” he began.

“I want you to tell her right away, or there won’t be anything to tell.”

“Is that so?” he joked back. “Well, if I must, I must, I suppose. But I
didn’t think you’d take the whip-hand so soon, Cynthia.”

“Oh, I don’t ever want to take the whip-hand with you, Jeff. Don’t make
me!”

“Well, I won’t, then. But what are you in such a hurry to have mother
know for? She’s not going to object. And if she does--”

“It isn’t that,” said the girl, quickly. “If I had to go round a single
day with your mother hiding this from her, I should begin to hate you. I
couldn’t bear the concealment. I shall tell father as soon as I go in.”

“Oh, your father ‘ll be all right, of course.”

“Yes, he’ll be all right, but if he wouldn’t, and I knew it, I should
have to tell him, all the same. Now, good-night. Well, there, then; and
there! Now, let me go!”

She paused for a moment in her own room, to smooth her tumbled hair,
and try to identify herself in her glass. Then she went into the
sitting-room, where she found her father pulled up to the table, with
his hat on, and poring over a sheet of hieroglyphics, which represented
the usual evening with planchette.

“Have you been to help Jackson up?” she asked.

“Well, I wanted to, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’s feelin’ ever so
much better to-night, and he wanted to go alone. I just come in.”

“Yes, you’ve got your hat on yet.”

Whitwell put his hand up and found that his daughter was right. He
laughed, and said: “I guess I must ‘a’ forgot it. We’ve had the most
interestin’ season with plantchette that I guess we’ve about ever had.
She’s said something here--”

“Well, never mind; I’ve got something more important to say than
plantchette has,” said Cynthia, and she pulled the sheet away from under
her father’s eyes.

This made him look up at her. “Why, what’s happened?”

“Nothing. Jeff Durgin has asked me to marry him.”

“He has!” The New England training is not such as to fit people for the
expression of strong emotion, and the best that Whitwell found himself
able to do in view of the fact was to pucker his mouth for a whistle
which did not come.

“Yes--this afternoon,” said Cynthia, lifelessly. The tension of her
nerves relaxed in a languor which was evident even to her father, though
his eyes still wandered to the sheet she had taken from him.

“Well, you don’t seem over and above excited about it. Did--did
your--What did you say--”

“How should I know what I said? What do you think of it, father?”

“I don’t know as I ever give the subject much attention,” said the
philosopher. “I always meant to take it out of him, somehow, if he got
to playin’ the fool.”

“Then you wanted I should accept him?”

“What difference ‘d it make what I wanted? That what you done?”

“Yes, I’ve accepted him,” said the girl, with a sigh. “I guess I’ve
always expected to.”

“Well, I thought likely it would come to that, myself. All I can say,
Cynthy, is ‘t he’s a lucky feller.”

Whitwell leaned back, bracing his knees against the table, which was one
of his philosophic poses. “I have sometimes believed that Jeff Durgin
was goin’ to turn out a blackguard. He’s got it in him. He’s as like his
gran’father as two peas, and he was an old devil. But you got to account
in all these here heredity cases for counteractin’ influences. The
Durgins are as good as wheat, right along, all of ‘em; and I guess Mis’
Durgin’s mother must have been a pretty good woman too. Mis’ Durgin’s
all right, too, if she has got a will of her own.” Whitwell returned
from his scientific inquiry to ask: “How ‘ll she take it?”

“I don’t know,” said Cynthia, dreamily, but without apparent misgiving.
“That’s Jeff’s lookout.”

“So ‘tis. I guess she won’t make much fuss. A woman never likes to see
her son get married; but you’ve been a kind of daughter to her so long.
Well, I guess that part of it ‘ll be all right. Jackson,” said Whitwell,
in a tone of relief, as if turning from an irrelevant matter to
something of real importance, “was down here to-night tryin’ to ring
up some them spirits from the planet Mars. Martians, he calls ‘em. His
mind’s got to runnin’ a good deal on Mars lately. I guess it’s this
apposition that they talk about that does it. Mars comin’ so much nearer
the earth by a million of miles or so, it stands to reason that he
should be more influenced by the minds on it. I guess it’s a case o’
that telepathy that Mr. Westover tells about. I judge that if he kept at
it before Mars gits off too far again he might make something out of it.
I couldn’t seem to find much sense in what plantchette done to-night; we
couldn’t either of us; but she has her spells when you can’t make head
or tail of her. But mebbe she’s just leadin’ up to something, the way
she did about that broken shaft when Jeff come home. We ha’n’t ever made
out exactly what she meant by that yet.”

Whitwell paused, and Cynthia seized the advantage of his getting round
to Jeff again. “He wanted to give up going to Harvard this last year,
but I wouldn’t let him.”

“Jeff did?” asked her father. “Well, you done a good thing that time,
anyway, Cynthy. His mother ‘d never get over it.”

“There’s something else she’s got to get over, and I don’t know how she
ever will. He’s going to give up the law.”

“Give up the law!”

“Yes. Don’t tease, father! He says he’s never cared about it, and he
wants to keep a hotel. I thought that I’d ought to tell him how we felt
about Jackson’s having a rest and going off somewhere; and he wanted
to begin at once. But I said if he left off the last year at Harvard I
wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

Whitwell put his hand in his pocket for his knife, and mechanically
looked down for a stick to whittle. In default of any, he scratched his
head. “I guess she’ll make it warm for him. She’s had her mind set on
his studyin’ law so long, ‘t she won’t give up in a hurry. She can’t see
that Jackson ain’t fit to help her run the hotel any more--till he’s had
a rest, anyway--and I believe she thinks her and Frank could run it--and
you. She’ll make an awful kick,” said Whitwell, solemnly. “I hope you
didn’t encourage him, Cynthy?”

“I should encourage him,” said the girl. “He’s got the right to shape
his own life, and nobody else has got the right to do it; and I should
tell his mother so, if she ever said anything to me about it.”

“All right,” said Whitwell. “I suppose you know what you’re about.”

“I do, father. Jeff would make a good landlord; he’s got ideas about a
hotel, and I can see that they’re the right ones. He’s been out in the
world, and he’s kept his eyes open. He will make Lion’s Head the best
hotel in the mountains.”

“It’s that already.”

“He doesn’t think it’s half as good as he can make it.”

“It wouldn’t be half what it is now, if it wa’n’t for you and Frank.”

“I guess he understands that,” said Cynthia. “Frank would be the clerk.”

“Got it all mapped out!” said Whitwell, proudly, in his turn. “Look out
you don’t slip up in your calculations. That’s all.”

“I guess we cha’n’t slip up.”



XIII.

Jeff came into the ugly old family parlor, where his mother sat mending
by the kerosene-lamp which she had kept through all the household
changes, and pushed enough of her work aside from the corner of the
table to rest his arm upon it.

“Mother, I want you to listen to me, and to wait till I get done. Will
you?”

She looked up at him over her spectacles from the stocking she was
darning; the china egg gleamed through the frayed place. “What notion
have you got in your head, now?”

“It’s about Jackson. He isn’t well. He’s got to leave off work and go
away.”

The mother’s hand dropped at the end of the yarn she had drawn through
the stocking heel, and she stared at Jeff. Then she resumed her work
with the decision expressed in her tone. “Your father lived to be sixty
years old, and Jackson a’n’t forty! The doctor said there wa’n’t any
reason why he shouldn’t live as long as his father did.”

“I’m not saying he won’t live to a hundred. I’m saying he oughtn’t to
stay another winter here,” Jeff said, decisively.

Mrs. Durgin was silent for a time, and then she said. “Jeff, is that
your notion about Jackson, or whose is it?”

“It’s mine, now.”

Mrs. Durgin waited a moment. Then she began, with a feeling quite at
variance with her words:

“Well, I’ll thank Cynthy Whit’ell to mind her own business! Of course,”
 she added, and in what followed her feeling worked to the surface in her
words, “I know ‘t she thinks the world of Jackson, and he does of her;
and I presume she means well. I guess she’d be more apt to notice, if
there was any change, than what I should. What did she say?”

Jeff told, as nearly as he could remember, and he told what Cynthia and
he had afterward jointly worked out as to the best thing for Jackson
to do. Mrs. Durgin listened frowningly, but not disapprovingly, as it
seemed; though at the end she asked: “And what am I going to do, with
Jackson gone?”

Jeff laughed, with his head down. “Well, I guess you and Cynthy could
run it, with Frank and Mr. Whitwell.”

“Mr. Whit’ell!” said Mrs. Durgin, concentrating in her accent of his
name the contempt she could not justly pour out on the others.

“Oh,” Jeff went on, “I did think that I could take hold with you, if you
could bring yourself to let me off this last year at Harvard.”

“Jeff!” said his mother, reproachfully. “You know you don’t mean that
you’d give up your last year in college?”

“I do mean it, but I don’t expect you to do it; and I don’t ask it. I
suggested it to Cynthy, when we got to talking it over, and she saw it
wouldn’t do.”

“Well, she showed some sense that time,” Mrs. Durgin said.

“I don’t know when Cynthy hasn’t shown sense; except once, and then I
guess it was my fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, this afternoon I asked her to marry me some time, and she said she
would.” He looked at his mother and laughed, and then he did not laugh.
He had expected her to be pleased; he had thought to pave the way with
this confession for the declaration of his intention not to study law,
and to make his engagement to Cynthia serve him in reconciling his
mother to the other fact. But a menacing suspense followed his words.

His mother broke out at last: “You asked Cynthy Whit’ell to marry you!
And she said she would! Well, I can tell her she won’t, then!”

“And I can tell you she will!” Jeff stormed back. He rose to his feet
and stood over his mother.

She began steadily, as if he had not spoken. “If that designin’--”

“Look out, mother! Don’t you say anything against Cynthia! She’s been
the best girl to you in the world, and you know it. She’s been as true
to you as Jackson has himself. She hasn’t got a selfish bone in her
body, and she’s so honest she couldn’t design anything against you or
any one, unless she told you first. Now you take that back! Take it
back! She’s no more designing than--than you are!”

Mrs. Durgin was not moved by his storming, but she was inwardly
convinced of error. “I do take it back. Cynthy is all right. She’s all
you say and more. It’s your fault, then, and you’ve got yourself to
thank, for whosever fault it is, she’ll pack--”

“If Cynthy packs, I pack!” said Jeff. “Understand that. The moment she
leaves this house I leave it, too, and I’ll marry her anyway. Frank ‘d
leave and--and--Pshaw! What do you care for that? But I don’t know what
you mean! I always thought you liked Cynthy and respected her. I didn’t
believe I could tell you a thing that would please you better than that
she had said she would have me. But if it don’t, all right.”

Mrs. Durgin held her peace in bewilderment; she stared at her son with
dazed eyes, under the spectacles lifted above her forehead. She felt
a change of mood in his unchanged tone of defiance, and she met him
half-way. “I tell you I take back what I called Cynthia, and I told you
so. But--but I didn’t ever expect you to marry her.”

“Why didn’t you? There isn’t one of the summer folks to compare with
her. She’s got more sense than all of ‘em. I’ve known her ever since I
can remember. Why didn’t you expect it?”

“I didn’t expect it.”

“Oh, I know! You thought I’d see somebody in Boston--some swell girl.
Well, they wouldn’t any of them look at me, and if they would, they
wouldn’t look at you.”

“I shouldn’t care whether they looked at me or not.”

“I tell you they wouldn’t look at me. You don’t understand about these
things, and I do. They marry their own kind, and I’m not their kind,
and I shouldn’t be if I was Daniel Webster himself. Daniel Webster! Who
remembers him, or cares for him, or ever did? You don’t believe it? You
think that because I’ve been at Harvard--Oh, can’t I make you see it?
I’m what they call a jay in Harvard, and Harvard don’t count if you’re a
jay.”

His mother looked at him without speaking. She would not confess the
ambition he taxed her with, and perhaps she had nothing so definite
in her mind. Perhaps it was only her pride in him, and her faith in a
splendid future for him, that made her averse to his marriage in the lot
she had always known, and on a little lower level in it that her own.
She said at last:

“I don’t know what you mean by being a jay. But I guess we better not
say anything more about this to-night.”

“All right,” Jeff returned. There never were any formal good-nights
between the Durgins, and he went away now without further words.

His mother remained sitting where he left her. Two or three times she
drew her empty darning-needle through the heel of the stocking she was
mending.

She was still sitting there when Jackson passed on his way to bed, after
leaving the office in charge of the night porter. He faltered, as he
went by, and as he stood on the threshold she told him what Jeff had
told her.

“That’s good,” he said, lifelessly. “Good for Jeff,” he added,
thoughtfully, conscientiously.

“Why a’n’t it good for her, too?” demanded Jeff’s mother, in quick
resentment of the slight put upon him.

“I didn’t say it wa’n’t,” said Jackson. “But it’s better for Jeff.”

“She may be very glad to get him!”

“I presume she is. She’s always cared for him, I guess. She’ll know how
to manage him.”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Durgin, “as I like to have you talk so,
about Jeff. He was here, just now, wantin’ to give up his last year in
Harvard, so ‘s to let you go off on a vacation. He thinks you’ve worked
yourself down.”

Jackson made no recognition of Jeff’s professed self-sacrifice. “I don’t
want any vacation. I’m feeling first-rate now. I guess that stuff I had
from the writin’ medium has begun to take hold of me. I don’t know when
I’ve felt so well. I believe I’m going to get stronger than ever I was.
Jeff say I needed a rest?”

Something like a smile of compassion for the delusion of his brother
dawned upon the sick man’s wasted face, which was blotched with large
freckles, and stared with dim, large eyes from out a framework of
grayish hair, and grayish beard cut to the edges of the cheeks and chin.



XXIV.

Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia did not seek any formal meeting the next
morning. The course of their work brought them together, but it was not
till after they had transacted several household affairs of pressing
importance that Mrs. Durgin asked: “What’s this about you and Jeff?”

“Has he been telling you?” asked Cynthia, in her turn, though she knew
he had.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Durgin, with a certain dryness, which was half
humorous. “I presume, if you two are satisfied, it’s all right.”

“I guess we’re satisfied,” said the girl, with a tremor of relief which
she tried to hide.

Nothing more was said, and there was no physical demonstration of
affection or rejoicing between the women. They knew that the time would
come when they would talk over the affair down to the bone together,
but now they were content to recognize the fact, and let the time for
talking arrive when it would. “I guess,” said Mrs. Durgin, “you’d better
go over to the helps’ house and see how that youngest Miller girl’s
gittin’ along. She’d ought to give up and go home if she a’n’t fit for
her work.”

“I’ll go and see her,” said Cynthia. “I don’t believe she’s strong
enough for a waitress, and I have got to tell her so.”

“Well,” returned Mrs. Durgin, glumly, after a moment’s reflection, “I
shouldn’t want you should hurry her. Wait till she’s out of bed, and
give her another chance.”

“All right.”

Jeff had been lurking about for the event of the interview, and he
waylaid Cynthia on the path to the helps’ house.

“I’m going over to see that youngest Miller girl,” she explained.

“Yes, I know all about that,” said Jeff. “Well, mother took it just
right, didn’t she? You can’t always count on her; but I hadn’t much
anxiety in this case. She likes you, Cynthia.”

“I guess so,” said the girl, demurely; and she looked away from him to
smile her pleasure in the fact.

“But I believe if she hadn’t known you were with her about my last year
in Harvard--it would have been different. I could see, when I brought it
in that you wanted me to go back, her mind was made up for you.”

“Why need you say anything about that?”

“Oh, I knew it would clinch her. I understand mother. If you want
something from her you mustn’t ask it straight out. You must propose
something very disagreeable. Then when she refuses that, you can come in
for what you were really after and get it.”

“I don’t know,” said Cynthia, “as I should like to think that your
mother had been tricked into feeling right about me.”

“Tricked!” The color flashed up in Jeff’s face.

“Not that, Jeff,” said the girl, tenderly. “But you know what I mean. I
hope you talked it all out fully with her.”

“Fully? I don’t know what you mean.”

“About your not studying law, and--everything.”

“I don’t believe in crossing a river till I come to it,” said Jeff. “I
didn’t say anything to her about that.”

“You didn’t!”

“No. What had it got to do with our being engaged?”

“What had your going back to Harvard to do with it? If your mother
thinks I’m with her in that, she’ll think I’m with her in the other. And
I’m not. I’m with you.” She let her hand find his, as they walked side
by side, and gave it a little pressure.

“It’s the greatest thing, Cynthy,” he said, breathlessly, “to have you
with me in that. But, if you said I ought to study law, I should do it.”

“I shouldn’t say that, for I believe you’re right; but even if I
believed you were wrong, I shouldn’t say it. You have a right to make
your life what you want it; and your mother hasn’t. Only she must know
it, and you must tell her at once.”

“At once?”

“Yes--now. What good will it do to put it off? You’re not afraid to tell
her!”

“I don’t like you to use that word.”

“And I don’t like to use it. But I know how it is. You’re afraid that
the brunt of it will come on ME. She’ll think you’re all right, but I’m
all wrong because I agree with you.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, now, I’m not afraid of anything she can say; and what could she
do? She can’t part us, unless you let her, and then I should let her,
too.”

“But what’s the hurry? What’s the need of doing it right off?”

“Because it’s a deceit not to do it. It’s a lie!”

“I don’t see it in that light. I might change my mind, and still go on
and study law.”

“You know you never will. Now, Jeff! Why do you act so?”

Jeff did not answer at once. He walked beside her with a face of trouble
that became one of resolve in the set jaws. “I guess you’re right,
Cynthy. She’s got to know the worst, and the sooner she knows it the
better.”

“Yes!”

He had another moment of faltering. “You don’t want I should talk it
over with Mr. Westover?”

“What has he got to do with it?”

“That’s true!”

“If you want to see it in the right light, you can think you’ve let it
run on till after you’re out of college, and then you’ve got to tell
her. Suppose she asked you how long you had made up your mind against
the law, how should you feel? And if she asked me whether I’d known it
all along, and I had to say I had, and that I’d supported and encouraged
you in it, how should I feel?”

“She mightn’t ask any such question,” said Jeff, gloomily. Cynthia gave
a little impatient “Oh!” and he hastened to add: “But you’re right; I’ve
got to tell her. I’ll tell her to-night--”

“Don’t wait till to-night; do it now.”

“Now?”

“Yes; and I’ll go with you as soon as I’ve seen the youngest Miller
girl.” They had reached the helps’ house now, and Cynthia said: “You
wait outside here, and I’ll go right back with you. Oh, I hope it isn’t
doing wrong to put it off till I’ve seen that girl!” She disappeared
through the door, and Jeff waited by the steps outside, plucking up one
long grass stem after another and biting it in two. When Cynthia came
out she said: “I guess she’ll be all right. Now come, and don’t-lose
another second.”

“You’re afraid I sha’n’t do it if I wait any longer!”

“I’m afraid I sha’n’t.” There was a silence after this.

“Do you know what I think of you, Cynthy?” asked Jeff, hurrying to keep
up with her quick steps. “You’ve got more courage--”

“Oh, don’t praise me, or I shall break down!”

“I’ll see that you don’t break down,” said Jeff, tenderly. “It’s the
greatest thing to have you go with me!”

“Why, don’t you SEE?” she lamented. “If you went alone, and told your
mother that I approved of it, you would look as if you were afraid, and
wanted to get behind me; and I’m not going to have that.”

They found. Mrs. Durgin in the dark entry of the old farmhouse, and
Cynthia said, with involuntary imperiousness: “Come in here, Mrs.
Durgin; I want to tell you something.”

She led the way to the old parlor, and she checked Mrs. Durgin’s
question, “Has that Miller girl--”

“It isn’t about her,” said Cynthy, pushing the door to. “It’s about me
and Jeff.”

Mrs. Durgin became aware of Jeff’s presence with an effect of surprise.
“There a’n’t anything more, is there?”

“Yes, there is!” Cynthia shrilled. “Now, Jeff!”

“It’s just this, mother: Cynthy thinks I ought to tell you--and she
thinks I ought to have told you last night--she expected me to--that I’m
not going to study law.”

“And I approve of his not doing it,” Cynthia promptly followed, and
she put herself beside Jeff where he stood in front of his mother’s
rocking-chair.

She looked from one to the other of the faces before her. “I’m sorry a
son of mine,” she said, with dignity, “had to be told how to act with
his mother. But, if he had, I don’t know as anybody had a better right
to do it than the girl that’s going to marry him. And I’ll say this,
Cynthia Whitwell, before I say anything else: you’ve begun right. I wish
I could say Jeff had.”

There was an uncomfortable moment before Cynthia said: “He expected to
tell you.”

“Oh Yes! I know,” said his mother, sadly. She added, sharply: “And did
he expect to tell me what he intended to do for a livin’?”

Jeff took the word. “Yes, I did. I intend to keep a hotel.”

“What hotel?” asked Mrs. Durgin, with a touch of taunting in her tone.

“This one.”

The mother of the bold, rebellious boy that Jeff had been stirred in
Mrs. Durgin’s heart, and she looked at him with the eyes, that used
to condone his mischief. But she said: “I guess you’ll find out that
there’s more than one has to agree to that.”

“Yes, there are two: you and Jackson; and I don’t know but what three,
if you count Cynthy, here.”

His mother turned to the girl. “You think this fellow’s got sense enough
to keep a hotel?”

“Yes, Mrs. Durgin, I do. I think he’s got good ideas about a hotel.”

“And what’s he goin’ to do with his college education?”

Jeff interposed. “You think that all the college graduates turn out
lawyers and doctors and professors? Some of ‘em are mighty glad to sweep
out banks in hopes of a clerkship; and some take any sort of a place in
a mill or a business house, to work up; and some bum round out West ‘on
cattle ranches; and some, if they’re lucky, get newspaper reporters’
places at ten dollars a week.”

Cynthia followed with the generalization: “I don’t believe anybody
can know too much to keep a hotel. It won’t hurt Jeff if he’s been to
Harvard, or to Europe, either.”

“I guess there’s a pair of you,” said Mrs. Durgin, with superficial
contempt. She was silent for a time, and they waited. “Well, there!” she
broke out again. “I’ve got something to chew upon for a spell, I guess.
Go along, now, both of you! And the next time you’ve got to face your
mother, Jeff, don’t you come in lookin’ round anybody’s petticoats! I’ll
see you later about all this.”

They went away with the joyful shame of children who have escaped
punishment.

“That’s the last of it, Cynthy,” said Jeff.

“I guess so,” the girl assented, with a certain grief in her voice. “I
wish you had told her first!”

“Oh, never mind that now!” cried Jeff, and in the dim passageway he took
her in his arms and kissed her.

He would have released her, but she lingered in his embrace. “Will you
promise that if there’s ever anything like it again, you won’t wait for
me to make you?”

“I like your having made me, but I promise,” he said.

Then she tightened her arms round his neck and kissed him.



XXV.

The will of Jeff’s mother relaxed its grip upon the purpose so long
held, as if the mere strain of the tenacity had wearied and weakened
it. When it finally appeared that her ambition for her son was not his
ambition for himself and would never be, she abandoned it. Perhaps it
was the easier for her to forego her hopes of his distinction in the
world, because she had learned before that she must forego her hopes of
him in other ways. She had vaguely fancied that with the acquaintance
his career at Harvard would open to him Jeff would make a splendid
marriage. She had followed darkling and stumbling his course in society
as far as he would report it to her, and when he would not suffer her to
glory in it, she believed that he was forbidding her from a pride that
would not recognize anything out of the common in it. She exulted in
his pride, and she took all his snubbing reserves tenderly, as so many
proofs of his success.

At the bottom of her heart she had both fear and contempt of all
towns-people, whom she generalized from her experience of them as summer
folks of a greater or lesser silliness. She often found herself unable
to cope with them, even when she felt that she had twice their sense;
she perceived that they had something from their training that with
all her undisciplined force she could never hope to win from her own
environment. But she believed that her son would have the advantages
which baffled her in them, for he would have their environment; and she
had wished him to rivet his hold upon those advantages by taking a wife
from among them, and by living the life of their world. Her wishes, of
course, had no such distinct formulation, and the feeling she had toward
Cynthia as a possible barrier to her ambition had no more definition.
There had been times when the fitness of her marriage with Jeff had
moved the mother’s heart to a jealousy that she always kept silent,
while she hoped for the accident or the providence which should annul
the danger. But Genevieve Vostrand had not been the kind of accident
or the providence that she would have invoked, and when she saw Jeff’s
fancy turning toward her, Mrs. Durgin had veered round to Cynthia. All
the same she kept a keen eye upon the young ladies among the summer
folks who came to Lion’s Head, and tacitly canvassed their merits and
inclinations with respect to Jeff in the often-imagined event of
his caring for any one of them. She found that her artfully casual
references to her son’s being in Harvard scarcely affected their mothers
in the right way. The fact made them think of the head waiters whom
they had met at other hotels, and who were working their way through
Dartmouth or Williams or Yale, and it required all the force of Jeff’s
robust personality to dissipate their erroneous impressions of him. He
took their daughters out of their arms and from under their noses on
long drives upon his buckboard, and it became a convention with them
to treat his attentions somewhat like those of a powerful but faithful
vassal.

Whether he was indifferent, or whether the young ladies were coy, none
of these official flirtations came to anything. He seemed not to care
for one more than another; he laughed and joked with them all, and had
an official manner with each which served somewhat like a disparity of
years in putting them at their ease with him. They agreed that he was
very handsome, and some thought him very talented; but they questioned
whether he was quite what you would call a gentleman. It is true that
this misgiving attacked them mostly in the mass; singly, they were
little or not at all troubled by it, and they severally behaved in an
unprincipled indifference to it.

Mrs. Durgin had the courage of her own purposes, but she had the fear
of Jeff’s. After the first pang of the disappointment which took final
shape from his declaration that he was going to marry Cynthia, she did
not really care much. She had the habit of the girl; she respected her,
she even loved her. The children, as she thought of them, had known each
other from their earliest days; Jeff had persecuted Cynthia throughout
his graceless boyhood, but he had never intimidated her; and his mother,
with all her weakness for him, felt that it was well for him that his
wife should be brave enough to stand up against him.

She formulated this feeling no more than the others, but she said to
Westover, whom Jeff bade her tell of the engagement: “It a’n’t exactly
as I could ‘a’ wished it to be. But I don’t know as mothers are ever
quite suited with their children’s marriages. I presume it’s from always
kind of havin’ had her round under my feet ever since she was born, as
you may say, and seein’ her family always so shiftless. Well, I can’t
say that of Frank, either. He’s turned out a fine boy; but the father!
Cynthy is one of the most capable girls, smart as a trap, and bright as
a biscuit. She’s masterful, too! she NEED to have a will of her own with
Jeff.”

Something of the insensate pride that mothers have in their children’s
faults, as their quick tempers, or their wastefulness, or their
revengefulness, expressed itself in her tone; and it was perhaps this
that irritated Westover.

“I hope he’ll never let her know it. I don’t think a strong will is a
thing to be prized, and I shouldn’t consider it one of Cynthia’s good
points. The happiest life for her would be one that never forced her to
use it.”

“I don’t know as I understand you exactly,” said Mrs. Durgin, with some
dryness. “I know Jeff’s got rather of a domineering disposition, but
I don’t believe but she can manage him without meetin’ him on his own
ground, as you may say.”

“She’s a girl in a thousand,” Westover returned, evasively.

“Then you think he’s shown sense in choosin’ of her?” pursued Jeff’s
mother, resolute to find some praise of him in Westover’s words.

“He’s a very fortunate man,” said the painter.

“Well, I guess you’re right,” Mrs. Durgin acquiesced, as much to Jeff’s
advantage as she could. “You know I was always afraid he would make a
fool of himself, but I guess he’s kept his eyes pretty well open all
the while. Well!” She closed the subject with this exclamation. “Him and
Cynthy’s been at me about Jackson,” she added, abruptly. “They’ve cooked
it up between ‘em that he’s out of health or run down or something.”

Her manner referred the matter to Westover, and he said: “He isn’t
looking so well this summer. He ought to go away somewhere.”

“That’s what they thought,” said Mrs. Durgin, smiling in her pleasure
at having their opinion confirmed by the old and valued friend of the
family.

“Whereabouts do you think he’d best go?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Italy--or Egypt--”

“I guess, if you could get Jackson to go away at all, it would be to
some of them old Bible countries,” said Mrs. Durgin. “We’ve got to have
a fight to get him off, make the best of it, and I’ve thought it over
since the children spoke about it, and I couldn’t seem to see Jackson
willin’ to go out to Californy or Colorady, to either of his brothers.
But I guess he would go to Egypt. That a good climate for the--his
complaint?”

She entered eagerly into the question, and Westover promised to write
to a Boston doctor, whom he knew very well, and report Jackson’s case to
him, and get his views of Egypt.

“Tell him how it is,” said Mrs. Durgin, “and the tussle we shall have to
have anyway to make Jackson believe he’d ought to have a rest. He’ll go
to Egypt if he’ll go anywheres, because his mind keeps runnin’ on Bible
questions, and it ‘ll interest him to go out there; and we can make him
believe it’s just to bang around for the winter. He’s terrible hopeful.”
 Now that she began to speak, all her long-repressed anxiety poured
itself out, and she hitched her chair nearer to Westover and wistfully
clutched his sleeve. “That’s the worst of Jackson. You can’t make him
believe anything’s the matter. Sometimes I can’t bear to hear him go on
about himself as if he was a well young man. He expects that medium’s
stuff is goin’ to cure him!”

“People sick in that way are always hopeful,” said Westover.

“Oh, don’t I know it! Ha’n’t I seen my children and my husband--Oh, do
ask that doctor to answer as quick as he can!”



XXVI.

Westover had a difficulty in congratulating Jeff which he could scarcely
define to himself, but which was like that obscure resentment we feel
toward people whom we think unequal to their good fortune. He was
ashamed of his grudge, whatever it was, and this may have made
him overdo his expressions of pleasure. He was sensible of a false
cordiality in them, and he checked himself in a flow of forced sentiment
to say, more honestly: “I wish you’d speak to Cynthia for me. You know
how much I think of her, and how much I want to see her happy. You ought
to be a very good fellow, Jeff!”

“I’ll tell her that; she’ll like that,” said Jeff. “She thinks the world
of you.”

“Does she? Well!”

“And I guess she’ll be glad you sent word. She’s been wondering what you
would say; she’s always so afraid of you.”

“Is she? You’re not afraid of me, are you? But perhaps you don’t think
so much of me.”

“I guess Cynthia and I think alike on that point,” said Jeff, without
abating Westover’s discomfort.

There was a stress of sharp cold that year about the 20th of August.
Then the weather turned warm again, and held fine till the beginning of
October, within a week of the time when Jackson was to sail. It had not
been so hard to make him consent when he knew where the doctor wished
him to go, and he had willingly profited by Westover’s suggestions about
getting to Egypt. His interest in the matter, which he tried to hide at
first under a mask of decorous indifference, mounted with the fire of
Whitwell’s enthusiasm, and they held nightly councils together, studying
his course on the map, and consulting planchette upon the points at
variance that rose between them, while Jombateeste sat with his chair
tilted against the wall, and pulled steadily at his pipe, which mixed
its strong fumes with the smell of the kerosene-lamp and the perennial
odor of potatoes in the cellar under the low room where the companions
forgathered.

Toward the end of September Westover spent the night before he went back
to town with them. After a season with planchette, their host pushed
himself back with his knees from the table till his chair reared upon
its hind legs, and shoved his hat up from his forehead in token of
philosophical mood.

“I tell you, Jackson,” he said, “you’d ought to get hold o’ some them
occult devils out there, and squeeze their science out of ‘em. Any
Buddhists in Egypt, Mr. Westover?”

“I don’t think there are,” said Westover. “Unless Jackson should come
across some wandering Hindu. Or he might push on, and come home by the
way of India.”

“Do it, Jackson!” his friend conjured him. “May cost you something more,
but it ‘ll be worth the money. If it’s true, what some them Blavetsky
fellers claim, you can visit us here in your astral body--git in with
‘em the right way. I should like to have you try it. What’s the reason
India wouldn’t be as good for him as Egypt, anyway?” Whitwell demanded
of Westover.

“I suppose the climate’s rather too moist; the heat would be rather
trying to him there.”

“That so?”

“And he’s taken his ticket for Alexandria,” Westover pursued.

“Well, I guess that’s so.” Whitwell tilted his backward sloping hat
to one side, so as to scratch the northeast corner of his bead
thoughtfully.

“But as far as that is concerned,” said Westover, “and the doctrine of
immortality generally is concerned, Jackson will have his hands full if
he studies the Egyptian monuments.”

“What they got to do with it?”

“Everything. Egypt is the home of the belief in a future life; it was
carried from Egypt to Greece. He might come home by way of Athens.”

“Why, man!” cried Whitwell. “Do you mean to say that them old Hebrew
saints, Joseph’s brethren, that went down into Egypt after corn, didn’t
know about immortality, and them Egyptian devils did?”

“There’s very little proof in the Old Testament that the Israelites knew
of it.”

Whitwell looked at Jackson. “That the idee you got?”

“I guess he’s right,” said Jackson. “There’s something a little about it
in Job, and something in the Psalms: but not a great deal.”

“And we got it from them Egyptian d----”

“I don’t say that,” Westover interposed. “But they had it before we had.
As we imagine it, we got it though Christianity.”

Jombateeste, who had taken his pipe out of his mouth in a controversial
manner, put it back again.

Westover added, “But there’s no question but the Egyptians believed in
the life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments for the deeds
done in the body, thousands of years before our era.”

“Well, I’m dumned,” said Whitwell.

Jombateeste took his pipe out again. “Hit show they got good sense. They
know--they feel it in their bone--what goin’ ‘appen--when you dead. Me,
I guess they got some prophet find it hout for them; then they goin’
take the credit.”

“I guess that’s something so, Jombateeste,” said Whitwell. “It don’t
stand to reason that folks without any alphabet, as you may say, and
only a lot of pictures for words, like Injuns, could figure out the
immortality of the soul. They got the idee by inspiration somehow. Why,
here! It’s like this. Them Pharaohs must have always been clawin’ out
for the Hebrews before they got a hold of Joseph, and when they found
out the true doctrine, they hushed up where they got it, and their
priests went on teachin’ it as if it was their own.”

“That’s w’at I say. Got it from the ‘Ebrew.”

“Well, it don’t matter a great deal where they got it, so they got it,”
 said Jackson, as he rose.

“I believe I’ll go with you,” said Westover.

“All there is about it,” said the sick man, solemnly, with a frail
effort to straighten himself, to which his sunken chest would not
respond, “is this: no man ever did figure that out for himself. A man
sees folks die, and as far as his senses go, they don’t live again. But
somehow he knows they do; and his knowledge comes from somewhere else;
it’s inspired--”

“That’s w’at I say,” Jombateeste hastened to interpose. “Got it from the
‘Ebrew. Feel it in ‘is bone.”

Out under the stars Jackson and Westover silently mounted the hill-side
together. At one of the thank-you-marms in the road the sick man
stopped, like a weary horse, to breathe. He took off his hat and wiped
the sweat of weakness that had gathered upon his forehead, and looked
round the sky, powdered with the constellations and the planets. “It’s
sightly,” he whispered.

“Yes, it is fine,” Westover assented. “But the stars of our Northern
nights are nothing to what you’ll see in Egypt.”

Jackson repeated, vaguely: “Egypt! Where I should like to go is Mars.”
 He fixed his eyes on the flaming planets, in a long stare. “But I
suppose they have their own troubles, same as we do. They must get sick
and die, like the rest of us. But I should like to know more about ‘em.
You believe it’s inhabited, don’t you?”

Westover’s agnosticism did not, somehow, extend to Mars. “Yes, I’ve no
doubt of it.”

Jackson seemed pleased. “I’ve read everything I can lay my hands on
about it. I’ve got a notion that if there’s any choosin’, after we get
through here, I should like to go to Mars for a while, or as long as I
was a little homesick still, and wanted to keep as near the earth as I
could,” he added, quaintly.

Westover laughed. “You could study up the subject of irrigation, there;
they say that’s what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and
telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians
perfect their signal code.”

Perhaps the invalid’s fancy flagged. He drew a long, ragged breath. “I
don’t know as I care to leave home, much. If it wa’n’t a kind of duty,
I shouldn’t.” He seemed impelled by a sudden need to say, “How do you
think Jefferson and mother will make it out together?”

“I’ve no doubt they’ll manage,” said Westover.

“They’re a good deal alike,” Jackson suggested.

“Westover preferred not to meet his overture. You’ll be back, you know,
almost as soon as the season commences, next summer.”

“Yes,” Jackson assented, more cheerfully. “And now, Cynthy’s sure to be
here.”

“Yes, she will be here,” said Westover, not so cheerfully.

Jackson seemed to find the opening he was seeking, in Westover’s tone.
“What do you think of gettin’ married, anyway, Mr. Westover?” he asked.

“We haven’t either of us thought so well of it as to try it, Jackson,”
 said the painter, jocosely.

“Think it’s a kind of chance?”

“It’s a chance.”

Jackson was silent. Then, “I a’n’t one of them,” he said, abruptly,
“that think a man’s goin’ to be made over by marryin’ this woman or
that. If he a’n’t goin’ to be the right kind of a man himself, he a’n’t
because his wife’s a good woman. Sometimes I think that a man’s wife is
the last person in the world that can change his disposition. She can
influence him about this and about that, but she can’t change him.
It seems as if he couldn’t let her if he tried, and after the first
start-off he don’t try.”

“That’s true,” Westover assented. “We’re terribly inflexible. Nothing
but something like a change of heart, as they used to call it, can make
us different, and even then we’re apt to go back to our old shape. When
you look at it in that light, marriage seems impossible. Yet it takes
place every day!”

“It’s a great risk for a woman,” said Jackson, putting on his hat and
stirring for an onward movement. “But I presume that if the man is
honest with her it’s the best thing she can have. The great trouble is
for the man to be honest with her.”

“Honesty is difficult,” said Westover.

He made Jackson promise to spend a day with him in Boston, on his way to
take the Mediterranean steamer at New York. When they met he yielded to
an impulse which the invalid’s forlornness inspired, and went on to see
him off. He was glad that he did that, for, though Jackson was not sad
at parting, he was visibly touched by Westover’s kindness.

Of course he talked away from it. “I guess I’ve left ‘em in pretty good
shape for the winter at Lion’s Head,” he said. “I’ve got Whitwell to
agree to come up and live in the house with mother, and she’ll have
Cynthy with her, anyway; and Frank and Jombateeste can look after the
bosses easy enough.”

He had said something like this before, but Westover could see that it
comforted him to repeat it, and he encouraged him to do so in full. He
made him talk about getting home in the spring, after the frost was
out of the ground, but he questioned involuntarily, while the sick man
spoke, whether he might not then be lying under the sands that had
never known a frost since the glacial epoch. When the last warning for
visitors to go ashore came, Jackson said, with a wan smile, while he
held Westover’s hand: “I sha’n’t forget this very soon.”

“Write to me,” said Westover.



Part II.



XXVII.

Jackson kept his promise to write to Westover, but he was better than
his word to his mother, and wrote to her every week that winter.

“I seem just to live from letter to letter. It’s ridic’lous,” she said
to Cynthia once when the girl brought the mail in from the barn, where
the men folks kept it till they had put away their horses after driving
over from Lovewell with it. The trains on the branch road were taken off
in the winter, and the post-office at the hotel was discontinued. The
men had to go to the town by cutter, over a highway that the winds
sifted half full of snow after it had been broken out by the ox-teams in
the morning. But Mrs. Durgin had studied the steamer days and calculated
the time it would take letters to come from New York to Lovewell; and,
unless a blizzard was raging, some one had to go for the mail when the
day came. It was usually Jombateeste, who reverted in winter to the type
of habitant from which he had sprung. He wore a blue woollen cap, like a
large sock, pulled over his ears and close to his eyes, and below it his
clean-shaven brown face showed. He had blue woollen mittens, and boots
of russet leather, without heels, came to his knees; he got a pair every
time he went home on St. John’s day. His lean little body was swathed in
several short jackets, and he brought the letters buttoned into one
of the innermost pockets. He produced the letter from Jackson promptly
enough when Cynthia came out to the barn for it, and then he made a
show of getting his horse out of the cutter shafts, and shouting
international reproaches at it, till she was forced to ask, “Haven’t you
got something for me, Jombateeste?”

“You expec’ some letter?” he said, unbuckling a strap and shouting
louder.

“You know whether I do. Give it to me.”

“I don’ know. I think I drop something on the road. I saw something
white; maybe snow; good deal of snow.”

“Don’t plague! Give it here!”

“Wait I finish unhitch. I can’t find any letter till I get some time to
look.”

“Oh, now, Jombateeste! Give me my letter!”

“W’at you want letter for? Always same thing. Well! ‘Old the ‘oss; I
goin’ to feel.”

Jombateeste felt in one pocket after another, while Cynthia clung to
the colt’s bridle, and he was uncertain till the last whether he had any
letter for her. When it appeared she made a flying snatch at it and ran;
and the comedy was over, to be repeated in some form the next week.

The girl somehow always possessed herself of what was in her letters
before she reached the room where Mrs. Durgin was waiting for hers. She
had to read that aloud to Jackson’s mother, and in the evening she had
to read it again to Mrs. Durgin and Whitwell and Jombateeste and Frank,
after they had done their chores, and they had gathered in the old
farm-house parlor, around the air-tight sheet-iron stove, in a heat of
eighty degrees. Whitwell listened, with planchette ready on the table
before him, and he consulted it for telepathic impressions of Jackson’s
actual mental state when the reading was over.

He got very little out of the perverse instrument. “I can’t seem to work
her. If Jackson was here--”

“We shouldn’t need to ask planchette about him,” Cynthia once suggested,
with the spare sense of humor that sometimes revealed itself in her.

“Well, I guess that’s something so,” her father candidly admitted.
But the next time he consulted the helpless planchette as hopefully as
before. “You can’t tell, you can’t tell,” he urged.

“The trouble seems to be that planchette can’t tell,” said Mrs. Durgin,
and they all laughed. They were not people who laughed a great deal, and
they were each intent upon some point in the future that kept them from
pleasure in the present. The little Canuck was the only one who suffered
himself a contemporaneous consolation. His early faith had so far
lapsed from him that he could hospitably entertain the wild psychical
conjectures of Whitwell without an accusing sense of heresy, and he
found the winter of northern New England so mild after that of Lower
Canada that he experienced a high degree of animal comfort in it, and
looked forward to nothing better. To be well fed, well housed, and well
heated; to smoke successive pipes while the others talked, and to catch
through his smoke-wreaths vague glimpses of their meanings, was enough.
He felt that in being promoted to the care of the stables in Jackson’s
absence he occupied a dignified and responsible position, with a
confidential relation to the exile which justified him in sending
special messages to him, and attaching peculiar value to Jackson’s
remembrances.

The exile’s letters said very little about his health, which in the
sense of no news his mother held to be good news, but they were full
concerning the monuments and the ethnological interest of life in Egypt.

They were largely rescripts of each day’s observations and experiences,
close and full, as his mother liked them in regard to fact, and
generously philosophized on the side of politics and religion for
Whitwell. The Eastern question became in the snow-choked hills of New
England the engrossing concern of this speculative mind, and he was
apt to spring it upon Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia at mealtimes and other
defenceless moments. He tried to debate it with Jombateeste, who
conceived of it as a form of spiritualistic inquiry, and answered
from the hay-loft, where he was throwing down fodder for the cattle
to Whitwell, volubly receiving it on the barn floor below, that he
believed, him, everybody got a hastral body, English same as Mormons.

“Guess you mean Moslems,” said Whitwell, and Jombateeste asked the
difference, defiantly.

The letters which came to Cynthia could not be made as much a general
interest, and, in fact, no one else cared so much for them as for
Jackson’s letters, not even Jeff’s mother. After Cynthia got one of
them, she would ask, perfunctorily, what Jeff said, but when she was
told there was no news she did not press her question.

“If Jackson don’t get back in time next summer,” Mrs. Durgin said, in
one of the talks she had with the girl, “I guess I shall have to let
Jeff and you run the house alone.”

“I guess we shall want a little help from you,” said Cynthia, demurely.
She did not refuse the implication of Mrs. Durgin’s words, but she would
not assume that there was more in them than they expressed.

When Jeff came home for the three days’ vacation at Thanksgiving, he
wished again to relinquish his last year at Harvard, and Cynthia had to
summon all her forces to keep him to his promise of staying. He brought
home the books with which he was working off his conditions, with
a half-hearted intention of study, and she took hold with him, and
together they fought forward over the ground he had to gain. His mother
was almost willing at last that he should give up his last year in
college.

“What is the use?” she asked. “He’s give up the law, and he might as
well commence here first as last, if he’s goin’ to.”

The girl had no reason to urge against this; she could only urge her
feeling that he ought to go back and take his degree with the rest of
his class.

“If you’re going to keep Lion’s Head the way you pretend you are,” she
said to him, as she could not say to his mother, “you want to keep all
your Harvard friends, don’t you, and have them remember you? Go back,
Jeff, and don’t you come here again till after you’ve got your degree.
Never mind the Christmas vacation, nor the Easter. Stay in Cambridge
and work off your conditions. You can do it, if you try. Oh, don’t you
suppose I should like to have you here?” she reproached him.

He went back, with a kind of grudge in his heart, which he confessed in
his first letter home to her, when he told her that she was right and he
was wrong. He was sure now, with the impulse which their work on them
in common had given him, that he should get his conditions off, and he
wanted her and his mother to begin preparing their minds to come to his
Class Day. He planned how they could both be away from the hotel for
that day. The house was to be opened on the 20th of June, but it was not
likely that there would be so many people at once that they could not
give the 21st to Class Day; Frank and his father could run Lion’s Head
somehow, or, if they could not, then the opening could be postponed till
the 24th. At all events, they must not fail to come. Cynthia showed the
whole letter to his mother, who refused to think of such a thing, and
then asked, as if the fact had not been fully set before her: “When is
it to be?”

“The 21st of June.”

“Well, he’s early enough with his invitation,” she grumbled.

“Yes, he is,” said Cynthia; and she laughed for shame and pleasure as
she confessed, “I was thinking he was rather late.”

She hung her head and turned her face away. But Mrs. Durgin understood.
“You be’n expectin’ it all along, then.”

“I guess so.”

“I presume,” said the elder woman, “that he’s talked to you about it.
He never tells me much. I don’t see why you should want to go. What’s it
like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But it’s the day the graduating class have to
themselves, and all their friends come.”

“Well, I don’t know why anybody should want to go,” said Mrs. Durgin.
“I sha’n’t. Tell him he won’t want to own me when he sees me. What am I
goin’ to wear, I should like to know? What you goin’ to wear, Cynthy?”



XXVIII.

Jeff’s place at Harvard had been too long fixed among the jays to allow
the hope of wholly retrieving his condition now. It was too late for
him to be chosen in any of the nicer clubs or societies, but he was not
beyond the mounting sentiment of comradery, which begins to tell in
the last year among college men, and which had its due effect with his
class. One of the men, who had always had a foible for humanity, took
advantage of the prevailing mood in another man, and wrought upon him
to ask, among the fellows he was asking to a tea at his rooms, several
fellows who were distinctly and almost typically jay. The tea was for
the aunt of the man who gave it, a very pretty woman from New York, and
it was so richly qualified by young people of fashion from Boston that
the infusion of the jay flavor could not spoil it, if it would not
rather add an agreeable piquancy. This college mood coincided that year
with a benevolent emotion in the larger world, from which fashion was
not exempt. Society had just been stirred by the reading of a certain
book, which had then a very great vogue, and several people had
been down among the wretched at the North End doing good in a
conscience-stricken effort to avert the millennium which the book in
question seemed to threaten. The lady who matronized the tea was said
to have done more good than you could imagine at the North End, and she
caught at the chance to meet the college jays in a spirit of Christian
charity. When the man who was going to give the tea rather sheepishly
confessed what the altruistic man had got him in for, she praised him
so much that he went away feeling like the hero of a holy cause. She
promised the assistance and sympathy of several brave girls, who would
not be afraid of all the jays in college.

After all, only one of the jays came. Not many, in fact, had been asked,
and when Jeff Durgin actually appeared, it was not known that he was
both the first and the last of his kind. The lady who was matronizing
the tea recognized him, with a throe of her quickened conscience, as the
young fellow whom she had met two winters before at the studio tea which
Mr. Westover had given to those queer Florentine friends of his, and
whom she had never thought of since, though she had then promised
herself to do something for him. She had then even given him some
vague hints of a prospective hospitality, and she confessed her sin of
omission in a swift but graphic retrospect to one of her brave girls,
while Jeff stood blocking out a space for his stalwart bulk amid the
alien elegance just within the doorway, and the host was making his way
toward him, with an outstretched hand of hardy welcome.

At an earlier period of his neglect and exclusion, Jeff would not have
responded to the belated overture which had now been made him, for no
reason that he could divine. But he had nothing to lose by accepting
the invitation, and he had promised the altruistic man, whom he rather
liked; he did not dislike the giver of the tea so much as some other
men, and so he came.

The brave girl whom the matron was preparing to devote to him stood
shrinking with a trepidation which she could not conceal at sight of
his strange massiveness, with his rust-gold hair coming down toward his
thick yellow brows and mocking blue eyes in a dense bang, and his jaw
squaring itself under the rather insolent smile of his full mouth. The
matron felt that her victim teas perhaps going to fail her, when a voice
at her ear said, as if the question were extorted, “Who in the world is
that?”

She instantly turned, and flashed out in a few inspired syllables
the fact she had just imparted to her treacherous heroine. “Do let me
introduce him, Miss Lynde. I must do something for him, when he gets up
to me, if he ever does.”

“By all means,” said the girl, who had an impulse to laugh at the rude
force of Jeff’s face and figure, so disproportioned to the occasion, and
she vented it at the matron’s tribulation. The matron was shaking hands
with people right and left, and exchanging inaudible banalities with
them. She did not know what the girl said in answer, but she was aware
that she remained near her. She had professed her joy at seeing Jeff
again, when he reached her, and she turned with him and said, “Let me
present you to Miss Lynde, Mr. Durgin,” and so abandoned them to each
other.

As Jeff had none of the anxiety for social success which he would have
felt at an earlier period, he now left it to Miss Lynde to begin the
talk, or not, as she chose. He bore himself with so much indifference
that she was piqued to an effort to hold his eyes, that wandered from
her to this face and that in the crowd.

“Do you find many people you know, Mr. Durgin?”

“I don’t find any.”

“I supposed you didn’t from the way you looked at them.”

“How did I look at them?”

“As if you wanted to eat them, and one never wants to eat one’s
friends.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They wouldn’t agree with one.”

Jeff laughed, and he now took fuller note of the slender girl who stood
before him, and swayed a little backward, in a graceful curve. He saw
that she had a dull, thick complexion, with liquid eyes, set wide apart
and slanted upward slightly, and a nose that was deflected inward from
the straight line; but her mouth was beautiful and vividly red like a
crimson blossom.

“Couldn’t you find me some place to sit down, Mr. Durgin?” she asked.

He had it on his tongue to say, “Well, not unless you want to sit down
on some enemy,” but he did not venture this: when it comes to daring of
that sort, the boldest man is commonly a little behind a timid woman.

Several of the fellows had clubbed their rooms, and lent them to the man
who was giving the tea; he used one of the apartments for a cloak-room,
and he meant the other for the social overflow from his own. But people
always prefer to remain dammed-up together in the room where they are
received, and Miss Lynde looked between the neighboring heads, and over
the neighboring shoulders, and saw the borrowed apartment quite empty.
At the moment of this discovery the host came fighting his way up to
make sure that Jeff had been provided for in the way of introductions.
He promptly introduced him to Miss Lynde. She said: “Oh, that’s been
done! Can’t you think of something new?” Jeff liked the style of this.
“I don’t mind it, but I’m afraid Mr. Durgin must find it monotonous.”

“Oh, well, do something original yourself, then, Miss Lynde!” said the
host. “Start a movement for that room across the passage; that’s mine,
too, for the occasion; and save some of these people’s lives. It’s
suffocating in here.”

“I don’t mind saving Mr. Durgin’s,” said the girl, “if he wants it
saved.”

“Oh, I know he’s just dying to have you save it,” said the host, and he
left them, to inspire other people to follow their example. But such as
glanced across the passage into the overflow room seemed to think it now
the possession solely of the pioneers of the movement. At any rate, they
made no show of joining them; and after Miss Lynde and Jeff had looked
at the pictures on the walls and the photographs on the mantel of the
room where they found themselves, they sat down on chairs fronting the
open door and the door of the room they had left. The window-seat would
have been more to Jeff’s mind, and he had proposed it, but the girl
seemed not to have heard him; she took the deep easy-chair in full view
of the company opposite, and left him to pull up a chair beside her.

“I always like to see the pictures in a man’s room,” she said, with a
little sigh of relief from their inspection and a partial yielding of
her figure to the luxury of the chair. “Then I know what the man is.
This man--I don’t know whose room it is--seems to have spent a good deal
of his time at the theatre.”

“Isn’t that where most of them spend their time?” asked Jeff.

“I’m sure I don’t know. Is that where you spend yours?”

“It used to be. I’m not spending my time anywhere just now.” She looked
questioningly, and he added, “I haven’t got any to spend.”

“Oh, indeed! Is that a reason? Why don’t you spend somebody else’s?”

“Nobody has any, that I know.”

“You’re all working off conditions, you mean?”

“That’s what I’m doing, or trying to.”

“Then it’s never certain whether you can do it, after all?”

“Not so certain as to be free from excitement,” said Jeff, smiling.

“And are you consumed with the melancholy that seems to be balling up
all the men at the prospect of having to leave Harvard and go out into
the hard, cold world?”

“I don’t look it, do I? Jeff asked:

“No, you don’t. And you don’t feel it? You’re not trying concealment,
and so forth?”

“No; if I’d had my own way, I’d have left Harvard before this.” He could
see that his bold assumption of difference, or indifference, told upon
her. “I couldn’t get out into the hard, cold world too soon.”

“How fearless! Most of them don’t know what they’re going to do in it.”

“I do.”

“And what are you going to do? Or perhaps you think that’s asking!”

“Oh no. I’m going to keep a hotel.”

He had hoped to startle her, but she asked, rather quietly, “What do
you mean?” and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her:
“I’ve heard that it requires gifts for that. Isn’t there some proverb?”

“Yes. But I’m going to try to do it on experience.” He laughed, and
he did not mind her trying to hit him, for he saw that he had made her
curious.

“Do you mean that you have kept a hotel?”

“For three generations,” he returned, with a gravity that mocked her
from his bold eyes.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said, indifferently. “Where
is your hotel? In Boston--New York--Chicago?”

“It’s in the country--it’s a summer hotel,” he said, as before.

She looked away from him toward the other room. “There’s my brother. I
didn’t know he was coming.”

“Shall I go and tell him where you are?” Jeff asked, following the
direction of her eyes.

“No, no; he can find me,” said the girl, sinking back in her chair
again. He left her to resume the talk where she chose, and she said: “If
it’s something ancestral, of course--”

“I don’t know as it’s that, exactly. My grandfather used to keep a
country tavern, and so it’s in the blood, but the hotel I mean is
something that we’ve worked up into from a farm boarding-house.”

“You don’t talk like a country person,” the girl broke in, abruptly.

“Not in Cambridge. I do in the country.”

“And so,” she prompted, “you’re going to turn it into a hotel when
you’ve got out of Harvard.”

“It’s a hotel already, and a pretty big one; but I’m going to make the
right kind of hotel of it when I take hold of it.”

“And what is the right kind of a hotel?”

“That’s a long story. It would make you tired.”

“It might, but we’ve got to spend the time somehow. You could begin, and
then if I couldn’t stand it you could stop.”

“It’s easier to stop first and begin some other time. I guess I’ll let
you imagine my hotel, Miss Lynde.”

“Oh, I understand now,” said the girl. “The table will be the great
thing. You will stuff people.”

“Do you mean that I’m trying to stuff you?”

“How do I know? You never can tell what men really mean.”

Jeff laughed with mounting pleasure in her audacity, that imparted a
sense of tolerance for him such as he had experienced very seldom from
the Boston girls he had met; after all, he had met but few. It flattered
him to have her doubt what he had told her in his reckless indifference;
it implied that he was fit for better things than hotel-keeping.

“You never can tell how much a woman believes,” he retorted.

“And you keep trying to find out?”

“No, but I think that they might believe the truth.”

“You’d better try them with it!”

“Well, I will. Do you really want to know what I’m going to do when I
get through?”

“Let me see!” Miss Lynde leaned forward, with her elbow on her knee and
her chin in her hand, and softly kicked the edge of her skirt with the
toe of her shoe, as if in deep thought. Jeff waited for her to play her
comedy through. “Yes,” she said, “I think I did wish to know--at one
time.”

“But you don’t now?”

“Now? How can I tell? It was a great while ago!”

“I see you don’t.”

Miss Lynde did not make any reply. She asked, “Do you know my aunt,
Durgin?”

“I didn’t know you had one.”

“Yes, everybody has an aunt--even when they haven’t a mother, if you can
believe the Gilbert operas. I ask because I happen to live with my aunt,
and if you knew her she might--ask you to call.” Miss Lynde scanned
Jeff’s face for the effect of this.

He said, gravely: “If you’ll introduce me to her, I’ll ask her to let
me.”

“Would you, really?” said the girl. “I’ve half a mind to try. I wonder
if you’d really have the courage.”

“I don’t think I’m easily rattled.”

“You mean that I’m trying to rattle you.”

“No--”

“I’m not. My aunt is just what I’ve said.”

“You haven’t said what she was. Is she here?”

“No; that’s the worst of it. If she were, I should introduce you, just
to see if you’d dare. Well, some other time I will.”

“You think there’ll be some other time?” Jeff asked.

“I don’t know. There are all kinds of times. By-the-way, what time is
it?”

Jeff looked at his watch. “Quarter after six.”

“Then I must go.” She jumped to her feet, and faced about for a glimpse
of herself in the little glass on the mantel, and put her hand on the
large pink roses massed at her waist. One heavy bud dropped from its
stem to the floor, where, while she stood, the edge of her skirt pulled
and pushed it. She moved a little aside to peer over at a photograph.
Jeff stooped and picked up the flower, which he offered her.

“You dropped it,” he said, bowing over it.

“Did I?” She looked at it with an effect of surprise and doubt.

“I thought so, but if you don’t, I shall keep it.”

The girl removed her careless eyes from it. “When they break off so
short, they won’t go back.”

“If I were a rose, I should want to go back,” said Jeff.

She stopped in one of her many aversions and reversions, and looked at
him steadily across her shoulder. “You won’t have to keep a poet, Mr.
Durgin.”

“Thank you. I always expected to write the circulars myself. I’ll send
you one.”

“Do.”

“With this rose pressed between the leaves, so you’ll know.”

“That would, be very pretty. But you must take me to Mrs. Bevidge, now,
if you can.”

“I guess I can,” said Jeff; and in a minute or two they stood before the
matronizing hostess, after a passage through the babbling and laughing
groups that looked as impossible after they had made it as it looked
before.

Mrs. Bevidge gave the girl’s hand a pressure distinct from the official
touch of parting, and contrived to say, for her hearing alone: “Thank
you so much, Bessie. You’ve done missionary work.”

“I shouldn’t call it that.”

“It will do for you to say so! He wasn’t really so bad, then? Thank you
again, dear!”

Jeff had waited his turn. But now, after the girl had turned away, as if
she had forgotten him, his eyes followed her, and he did not know that
Mrs. Bevidge was speaking to him. Miss Lynde had slimly lost herself in
the mass, till she was only a graceful tilt of hat, before she turned
with a distraught air. When her eyes met Jeff’s they lighted up with
a look that comes into the face when one remembers what one has been
trying to think of. She gave him a brilliant smile that seemed to
illumine him from head to foot, and before it was quenched he felt as if
she had kissed her hand to him from her rich mouth.

Then he heard Mrs. Bevidge asking something about a hall, and he was
aware of her bending upon him a look of the daring humanity that had
carried her triumphantly through her good works at the North End.

“Oh, I’m not in the Yard,” said Jeff, with belated intelligence.

“Then will just Cambridge reach you?”

He gave his number and street, and she thanked him with the benevolence
that availed so much with the lower classes. He went away thrilling and
tingling, with that girl’s tones in his ear, her motions in his nerves,
and the colors of her face filling his sight, which he printed on the
air whenever he turned, as one does with a vivid light after looking at
it.



XXIX

When Jeff reached his room he felt the need of writing to Cynthia, with
whatever obscure intention of atonement. He told her of the college tea
he had just come from, and made fun of it, and the kind of people he had
met, especially the affected girl who had tried to rattle him; he said
he guessed she did not think she had rattled him a great deal.

While he wrote he kept thinking how this Miss Lynde was nearer his early
ideal of fashion, of high life, which Westover had pretty well snubbed
out of him, than any woman he had seen yet; she seemed a girl who would
do what she pleased, and would not be afraid if it did not please
other people. He liked her having tried to rattle him, and he smiled to
himself in recalling her failure. It was as if she had laid hold of him
with her little hands to shake him, and had shaken herself. He laughed
out in the dark when this image came into his mind; its intimacy
flattered him; and he believed that it was upon some hint from her that
Mrs. Bevidge had asked his address. She must be going to ask him to her
house, and very soon, for it was part of Jeff’s meagre social experience
that this was the way swells did; they might never ask you twice, but
they would ask you promptly.

The thing that Mrs. Bevidge asked Jeff to, when her note reached him the
second day after the tea, was a meeting to interest young people in
the work at the North End, and Jeff swore under his breath at the
disappointment and indignity put upon him. He had reckoned upon an
afternoon tea, at least, or even, in the flights of fancy which he now
disowned to himself, a dance after the Mid-Years, or possibly an
earlier reception of some sort. He burned with shame to think of a
theatre-party, which he had fondly specialized, with a seat next Miss
Lynde.

He tore Mrs. Bevidge’s note to pieces, and decided not to answer it at
all, as the best way of showing how he had taken her invitation. But
Mrs. Bevidge’s benevolence was not wanting in courage; she believed that
Jeff should pay his footing in society, such as it was, and should allow
himself to be made use of, the first thing; when she had no reply from
him, she wrote him again, asking him to an adjourned meeting of the
first convocation, which had been so successful in everything but
numbers. This time she baited her hook, in hoping that the young men
would feel something of the interest the young ladies had already shown
in the matter. She expressed the fear that Mr. Durgin had not got her
earlier letter, and she sent this second to the care of the man who had
given the tea.

Jeff’s resentment was now so far past that he would have civilly
declined to go to the woman’s house; but all his hopes of seeing that
girl, as he always called Miss Lynde in his thought, were revived by the
mention of the young ladies interested in the cause. He accepted, though
all the way into Boston he laid wagers with himself that she would not
be there; and up to the moment of taking her hand he refused himself any
hope of winning.

There was not much business before the meeting; that had really been all
transacted before; it was mainly to make sure of the young men, who were
present in the proportion of one to five young ladies at least. Mrs.
Bevidge explained that she had seen the wastefulness of amateur effort
among the poor, and announced that hereafter she was going to work with
the established charities. These were very much in want of visitors,
especially young men, to go about among the applicants for relief, and
inquire into their real necessities, and get work for them. She was hers
self going to act as secretary for the meetings during the coming month,
and apparently she wished to signalize her accession to the regular
forces of charity by bringing into camp as large a body of recruits as
she could.

But Jeff had not come to be made use of, or as a jay who was willing to
work for his footing in society. He had come in the hope of meeting Miss
Lynde, and now that he had met her he had no gratitude to Mrs. Bevidge
as a means, and no regret for the defeat of her good purposes so far as
she intended their fulfilment in him. He was so cool and self-possessed
in excusing himself, for reasons that he took no pains to make seem
unselfish, that the altruistic man who had got him asked to the college
tea as a friendless jay felt it laid upon him to apologize for Mrs.
Bevidge’s want of tact.

“She means well, and she’s very much in earnest, in this work; but I
must say she can make herself very offensive--when she doesn’t try! She
has a right to ask our help, but not to parade us as the captives of her
bow and spear.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jeff. He perceived that the amiable fellow
was claiming for all an effect that Jeff knew really implicated himself
alone. “I couldn’t load up with anything of that sort, if I’m to work
off my conditions, you know.”

“Are you in that boat?” said the altruist, as if he were, too; and he
put his hand compassionately on Jeff’s iron shoulder, and left him to
Miss Lynde, whose side he had not stirred from since he had found her.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that where there are so many of you in the
same boat, you might manage to get ashore somehow.”

“Yes, or all go down together.” Jeff laughed, and ate Mrs. Bevidge’s
bread-and-butter, and drank her tea, with a relish unaffected by his
refusal to do what she asked him. He was right, perhaps, and perhaps she
deserved nothing better at his hands, but the altruist, when he glanced
at him from the other side of the room, thought that he had possibly
wasted his excuses upon Jeff’s self-complacence.

He went away in a halo of young ladies; several of the other girls
grouped themselves in their departure; and it happened that Miss
Lynde and Jeff took leave together. Mrs. Bevidge said to her, with the
caressing tenderness of one in the same set, “Good-bye, dear!” To Jeff
she said, with the cold conscience of those whom their nobility obliges,
“I am always at home on Thursdays, Mr. Durgin.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Jeff. He understood what the words and the manner
meant together, but both were instantly indifferent to him when he got
outside and found that Miss Lynde was not driving. Something, which was
neither look, nor smile, nor word, of course, but nothing more at most
than a certain pull and tilt of the shoulder, as she turned to walk away
from Mrs. Bevidge’s door, told him from her that he might walk home with
her if he would not seem to do so.

It was one of the pink evenings, dry and clear, that come in the Boston
December, and they walked down the sidehill street, under the delicate
tracery of the elm boughs in the face of the metallic sunset. In the
section of the Charles that the perspective of the street blocked out,
the wrinkled current showed as if glazed with the hard color. Jeff’s
strong frame rejoiced in the cold with a hale pleasure when he looked
round into the face of the girl beside him, with the gray film of her
veil pressed softly against her red mouth by her swift advance. Their
faces were nearly on a level, as they looked into each other’s eyes,
and he kept seeing the play of the veil’s edge against her lips as they
talked.

“Why sha’n’t you go to Mrs. Bevidge’s Thursdays?” she asked. “They’re
very nice.”

“How do you know I’m not going?” he retorted.

“By the way you thanked her.”

“Do you advise me to go?”

“I haven’t got anything to do with it. What do mean by that?”

“I don’t know. Curiosity, I suppose.”

“Well, I do advise you to go,” said the girl. “Shall you be there next
Thursday?”

“I? I never go to Mrs. Bevidge’s Thursdays!”

“Touche,” said Jeff, and they both laughed. “Can you always get in at an
enemy that way?”

“Enemy?”

“Well, friend. It’s the same thing.”

“I see,” said the girl. “You belong to the pessimistic school of
Seniors.”

“Why don’t you try to make an optimist of me?”

“Would it be worth while?”

“That isn’t for me to say.”

“Don’t be diffident! That’s staler yet.”

“I’ll be anything you like.”

“I’m not sure you could.” For an instant Jeff did not feel the point,
and he had not the magnanimity, when he did, to own himself touched
again. Apparently, if this girl could not rattle him, she could beat him
at fence, and the will to dominate her began to stir in him. If he could
have thought of any sarcasm, no matter how crushing, he would have come
back at her with it. He could not think of anything, and he walked at
her side, inwardly chafing for the chance which would not come.

When they reached her door there was a young man at the lock with a
latch-key, which he was not making work, for, after a bated blasphemy of
his failure, he turned and twitched the bell impatiently.

Miss Lynde laughed provokingly, and he looked over his shoulder at her
and at Jeff, who felt his injury increased by the disadvantage this
young man put him at. Jeff was as correctly dressed; he wore a silk hat
of the last shape, and a long frock-coat; he was properly gloved and
shod; his clothes fitted him, and were from the best tailor; but
at sight of this young man in clothes of the same design he felt
ill-dressed. He was in like sort aware of being rudely blocked out
physically, and coarsely colored as to his blond tints of hair and
eye and cheek. Even the sinister something in the young man’s look had
distinction, and there was style in the signs of dissipation in his
handsome face which Jeff saw with a hunger to outdo him.

Miss Lynde said to Jeff, “My brother, Mr. Durgin,” and then she added
to the other, “You ought to ring first, Arthur, and try your key
afterward.”

“The key’s all right,” said the young man, without paying any attention
to Jeff beyond a glance of recognition; he turned his back, and waited
for the door to be opened.

His sister suggested, with an amiability which Jeff felt was meant in
reparation to him, “Perhaps a night latch never works before dark--or
very well before midnight.” The door was opened, and she said to Jeff,
with winning entreaty, “Won’t you come in, Mr. Durgin?”

Jeff excused himself, for he perceived that her politeness was not so
much an invitation to him as a defiance to her brother; he gave her
credit for no more than it was worth, and he did not wish any the less
to get even with her because of it.



XXX.

At dinner, in the absence of the butler, Alan Lynde attacked his sister
across the table for letting herself be seen with a jay, who was not
only a jay, but a cad, and personally so offensive to most of the
college men that he had never got into a decent club or society; he had
been suspended the first year, and if he had not had the densest kind
of cheek he would never have come back. Lynde said he would like to know
where she had picked the fellow up.

She answered that she had picked him up, if that was the phrase he
liked, at Mrs. Bevidge’s; and then Alan swore a little, so as not to be
heard by their aunt, who sat at the head of the table, and looked down
its length between them, serenely ignorant, in her slight deafness,
of what was going on between them. To her perception Alan was no more
vehement than usual, and Bessie no more smilingly self-contained. He
said he supposed that it was some more of Lancaster’s damned missionary
work, then, and he wondered that a gentleman like Morland had ever let
Lancaster work such a jay in on him; he had seen her ‘afficher’ herself
with the fellow at Morland’s tea; he commanded her to stop it; and he
professed to speak for her good.

Bessie returned that she knew how strongly he felt from the way he had
misbehaved when she introduced him to Mr. Durgin, but that she supposed
he had been at the club and his nerves were unstrung. Was that the
reason, perhaps, why he could not make his latchkey work? Mr. Durgin
might be a cad, and she would not say he was not a jay, but so far he
had not sworn at her; and, if he had been suspended and come back, there
were some people who had not been suspended or come back, either, though
that might have been for want of cheek.

She ended by declaring she was used to going into society without her
brother’s protection, or even his company, and she would do her best to
get on without his advice. Or was it his conduct he wished her to profit
by?

It had come to the fish going out by this time, and Alan, who had eaten
with no appetite, and drunken feverishly of apollinaris, flung down his
napkin and went out, too.

“What is the matter?” asked his aunt, looking after him.

Bessie shrugged, but she said, presently, with her lips more than her
voice: “I don’t think he feels very well.”

“Do you think he--”

The girl frowned assent, and the meal went on to its end. Then she
and her aunt went into the large, dull library, where they passed the
evenings which Bessie did not spend in some social function. These
evenings were growing rather more frequent, with her advancing years,
for she was now nearly twenty-five, and there were few Seniors so old.
She was not the kind of girl to renew her youth with the Sophomores and
Freshmen in the classes succeeding the class with which she had danced
through college; so far as she had kept up the old relation with
students, she continued it with the men who had gone into the
law-school. But she saw less and less of these without seeing more of
other men, and perhaps in the last analysis she was not a favorite. She
was allowed to be fascinating, but she was not felt to be flattering,
and people would rather be flattered than fascinated. In fact, the men
were mostly afraid of her; and it has been observed of girls of this
kind that the men who are not afraid of them are such as they would do
well to be afraid of. Whether that was quite the case with Bessie Lynde
or not, it was certain that she who was always the cleverest girl in
the room, and if not the prettiest, then the most effective, had not the
best men about her. Her men were apt to be those whom the other girls
called stupid or horrid, and whom it would not be easy, though it might
be more just, to classify otherwise. The other girls wondered what she
could see in them; but perhaps it was not necessary that she should see
anything in them, if they could see all she wished them to see, and no
more, in her.

The room where tea was now brought and put before her was volumed round
by the collections of her grandfather, except for the spaces filled by
his portrait and that of earlier ancestors, going back to the time when
Copley made masterpieces of his fellow-Bostonians. Her aunt herself
looked a family portrait of the middle period, a little anterior to her
father’s, but subsequent to her great-grandfather’s. She had a comely
face, with large, smooth cheeks and prominent eyes; the edges of her
decorous brown wig were combed rather near their corners, and a fitting
cap palliated but did not deny the wig. She had the quiet but rather
dull look of people slightly deaf, and she had perhaps been stupefied by
a life of unalloyed prosperity and propriety. She had grown an old maid
naturally, but not involuntarily, and she was without the sadness or
the harshness of disappointment. She had never known much of the world,
though she had always lived in it. She knew that it was made up of two
kinds of people--people who were like her and people who were not like
her; and she had lived solely in the society of people who were like
her, and in the shelter of their opinions and ideals. She did not
contemn or exclude the people who were unlike her, but she had never
had any more contact with them than she now had with the weather of the
streets, as she sat, filling her large arm-chair full of her ladylike
correctness, in the library of the handsome house her father had left
her. The irruption of her brother’s son and daughter into its cloistered
quiet had scarcely broken its invulnerable order. It was right and fit
they should be there after his death, and it was not strange that in
the course of time they should both show certain unregulated tendencies
which, since they were not known to be Lynde tendencies, must have been
derived from the Southwestern woman her brother had married during his
social and financial periclitations in a region wholly inconceivable to
her. Their mother was dead, too, and their aunt’s life closed about them
with full acceptance, if not complacence, as part of her world. They had
grown to manhood and womanhood without materially discomposing her
faith in the old-fashioned Unitarian deity, whose service she had always
attended.

When Alan left college in his Freshman year, and did not go back, but
went rather to Europe and Egypt and Japan, it appeared to her myopic
optimism that his escapades had been pretty well hushed up by time and
distance. After he came home and devoted himself to his club, she could
have wished that he had taken up some profession or business; but since
there was money enough, she waited in no great disquiet until he showed
as decided a taste for something else as he seemed for the present to
have only for horses. In the mean while, from time to time, it came to
her doctor’s advising his going to a certain retreat. But he came out
the first time so much better and remained well so long that his aunt
felt a kind of security in his going again and again, whenever he became
at all worse. He always came back better. As she took the cup of tea
that Bessie poured out for her, she recurred to the question that she
had partly asked already:

“Do you think Alan is getting worse again?”

“Not so very much,” said the girl, candidly. “He’s been at the club, I
suppose, but he left the table partly because I vexed him.”

“Because you what?”

“Because I vexed him. He was scolding me, and I wouldn’t stand it.”

Her aunt tasted her tea, and found it so quite what she liked that she
said, from a natural satisfaction with Bessie, “I don’t see what he had
to scold you about.”

“Well,” returned Bessie, and she got her pretty voice to the level of
her aunt’s hearing, with some straining, and kept it there, “when he is
in that state, he has to scold some one; and I had been rather annoying,
I suppose.”

“What had you been doing?” asked her aunt, making out her words more
from the sight than from the sound, after all.

“I had been walking home with a jay, and we found Alan trying to get in
at the front door with his key, and I introduced him to the jay.”

Miss Louisa Lynde had heard the word so often from her niece and nephew,
that she imagined herself in full possession of its meaning. She asked:
“Where had you met him?”

“I met him first,” said the girl, “at Willie Morland’s tea, last week,
and to-day I found him at Mrs. Bevidge’s altruistic toot.”

“I didn’t know,” said her aunt, after a momentary attention to her tea,
“that jays were interested in that sort of thing.”

The girl laughed. “I believe they’re not. It hasn’t quite reached them,
yet; and I don’t think it will ever reach my jay. Mrs. Bevidge tried
to work him into the cause, but he refused so promptly, and
so-intelligently, don’t you know--and so almost brutally, that poor
Freddy Lancaster had to come and apologize to him for her want of tact.”
 Bessie enjoyed the fact, which she had colored a little, in another
laugh, but she had apparently not possessed her aunt of the humor of it.
She remained seriously-attentive, and the girl went on: “He was not the
least abashed at having refused; he stayed till the last, and as we came
out together and he was going my way, I let him walk home with me. He’s
a jay, but he isn’t a common jay.” Bessie leaned forward and tried to
implant some notion of Jeff’s character and personality in her aunt’s
mind.

Miss Lynde listened attentively enough, but she merely asked, when all
was said: “And why was Alan vexed with you about him?”

“Well,” said the girl, falling back into her chair, “generally because
this man’s a jay, and particularly because he’s been rather a baddish
jay, I believe. He was suspended in his first year for something or
other, and you know poor Alan’s very particular! But Molly Enderby says
Freddy Lancaster gives him the best of characters now.” Bessie pulled
down her mouth, with an effect befitting the notion of repentance and
atonement. Then she flashed out: “Perhaps he had been drinking when he
got into trouble. Alan could never forgive him for that.”

“I think,” said her aunt, “it is to your brother’s credit that he is
anxious about your associations.”

“Oh, very much!” shouted Bessie, with a burst of laughter. “And as he
isn’t practically so, I ought to have been more patient with his theory.
But when he began to scold me I lost my temper, and I gave him a few
wholesome truths in the guise of taunts. That was what made him go away,
I suppose.”

“But I don’t really see,” her aunt pursued,--“what occasion he had to be
angry with you in this instance.”

“Oh, I do!” said Bessie. “Mr. Durgin isn’t one to inspire the casual
beholder with the notion of his spiritual distinction. His face is so
rude and strong, and he has such a primitive effect in his clothes, that
you feel as if you were coming down the street with a prehistoric man
that the barbers and tailors had put a ‘fin de siecle’ surface on.” At
the mystification which appeared in her aunt’s face the girl laughed
again. “I should have been quite as anxious, if I had been in Alan’s
place, and I shall tell him so, sometime. If I had not been so
interested in the situation I don’t believe I could have kept my
courage. Whenever I looked round, and found that prehistoric man at my
elbow, it gave me the creeps, a little, as if he were really carrying me
off to his cave. I shall try to express that to Alan.”



XXXI.

The ladies finished their tea, and the butler came and took the
cups away. Miss Lynde remained silent in her chair at her end of the
library-table, and by-and-by Bessie got a book and began to read. When
her aunt woke up it was half past nine. “Was that Alan coming in?” she
asked.

“I don’t think he’s been out,” said the girl. “It isn’t late enough for
him to come in--or early enough.”

“I believe I’ll go to bed,” Miss Lynde returned. “I feel rather drowsy.”

Bessie did not smile at a comedy which was apt to be repeated every
evening that she and her aunt spent at home together; they parted for
the night with the decencies of family affection, and Bessie delivered
the elder lady over to her maid. Then the girl sank down again, and
lay musing in her deep chair before the fire with her book shut on her
thumb. She looked rather old and worn in her reverie; her face lost
the air of gay banter which, after the beauty of her queer eyes and her
vivid mouth, was its charm. The eyes were rather dull now, and the mouth
was a little withered.

She was waiting for her brother to come down, as he was apt to do if he
was in the house, after their aunt went to bed, to smoke a cigar in the
library. He was in his house shoes when he shuffled into the room, but
her ear had detected his presence before a hiccough announced it. She
did not look up, but let him make several failures to light his cigar,
and damn the matches under his breath, before she pushed the drop-light
to him in silent suggestion. As he leaned over her chair-back to reach
its chimney with his cigar in his mouth, she said, “You’re all right,
Alan.”

He waited till he got round to his aunt’s easy-chair and dropped into it
before he answered, “So are you, Bess.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said the girl, “as I should be if you were
still scolding me. I knew that he was a jay, well enough, and I’d just
seen him behaving very like a cad to Mrs. Bevidge.”

“Then I don’t understand how you came to be with him.”

“Oh yes, you do, Alan. You mustn’t be logical! You might as well say
you can’t understand how you came to be more serious than sober.” The
brother laughed helplessly. “It was the excitement.”

“But you can’t give way to that sort of thing, Bess,” said her brother,
with the gravity of a man feeling the consequences of his own errors.

“I know I can’t, but I do,” she returned. “I know it’s bad for me, if it
isn’t for other people. Come! I’ll swear off if you will!”

“I’m always ready, to swear off,” said the young man, gloomily. He
added, “But you’ve got brains, Bess, and I hate to see you playing the
fool.”

“Do you really, Alan?” asked the girl, pleased perhaps as much by his
reproach as by his praise. “Do you think I’ve got brains?”

“You’re the only girl that has.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to ask so much as that! But what’s the reason I can’t
do anything with them? Other girls draw, and play, and write. I don’t
do anything but go in for the excitement that’s bad for me. I wish you’d
explain it.”

Alan Lynde did not try. The question seemed to turn his thoughts back
upon himself to dispiriting effect. “I’ve got brains, too, I believe,”
 he began.

“Lots of them!” cried his sister, generously. “There isn’t any of the
men to compare with you. If I had you to talk with all the time, I
shouldn’t want jays. I don’t mean to flatter. You’re a constant feast of
reason; I don’t care for flows of soul. You always take right views of
things when you’re yourself, and even when you’re somebody else you’re
not stupid. You could be anything you chose.”

“The devil of it is I can’t choose,” he replied.

“Yes, I suppose that’s the devil of it,” said the girl.

“You oughtn’t to use such language as that, Bess,” said her brother,
severely.

“Oh, I don’t with everybody,” she returned. “Never with ladies!”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye with a smile at once
rueful and comic.

“You got me, I guess, that time,” he owned.

“‘Touche’,’ Mr. Durgin says. He fences, it seems, and he speaks French.
It was like an animal speaking French; you always expect them to speak
English. But I don’t mind your swearing before me; I know that it helps
to carry off the electricity.” She laughed, and made him laugh with her.

“Is there anything to him?” he growled, when they stopped laughing.

“Yes, a good deal,” said Bessie, with an air of thoughtfulness; and
then she went on to tell all that Jeff had told her of himself, and
she described his aplomb in dealing with the benevolent Bevidge, as she
called her, and sketched his character, as it seemed to her. The sketch
was full of shrewd guesses, and she made it amusing to her brother, who
from the vantage of his own baddishness no doubt judged the original
more intelligently.

“Well, you’d better let him alone, after this,” he said, at the end.

“Yes,” she pensively assented. “I suppose it’s as if you took to some
very common kind of whiskey, isn’t it? I see what you mean. If one must,
it ought to be champagne.”

She turned upon him a look of that keen but limited knowledge which
renders women’s conjectures of evil always so amusing, or so pathetic,
to men.

“Better let the champagne alone, too,” said her brother, darkly.

“Yes, I know that,” she admitted, and she lay back in her chair, looking
dreamily into the fire. After a while she asked, abruptly: “Will you
give it up if I will?”

“I am afraid I couldn’t.”

“You could try.”

“Oh, I’m used to that.”

“Then it’s a bargain,” she said. She jumped from her chair and went over
to him, and smoothed his hair over his forehead and kissed the place she
had smoothed, though it was unpleasantly damp to her lips. “Poor boy,
poor boy! Now, remember! No more jays for me, and no more jags for you.
Goodnight.”

Her brother broke into a wild laugh at her slanging, which had such a
bizarre effect in relation to her physical delicacy.



XXXII.

Jeff did not know whether Miss Bessie Lynde meant to go to Mrs.
Bevidge’s Thursdays or not. He thought she might have been bantering him
by what she said, and he decided that he would risk going to the first
of them on the chance of meeting her. She was not there, and there was
no one there whom he knew. Mrs. Bevidge made no effort to enlarge his
acquaintance, and after he had drunk a cup of her tea he went away with
rage against society in his heart, which he promised himself to vent at
the first chance of refusing its favors. But the chance seemed not to
come. The world which had opened its gates to him was fast shut again,
and he had to make what he could of renouncing it. He worked pretty
hard, and he renewed himself in his fealty to Cynthia, while his mind
strayed curiously to that other girl. But he had almost abandoned the
hope of meeting her again, when a large party was given on the eve of
the Harvard Mid-Year Examinations, which end the younger gayeties of
Boston, for a fortnight at least, in January. The party was so large
that the invitations overflowed the strict bounds of society at some
points. In the case of Jeff Durgin the excess was intentional beyond the
vague benevolence which prompted the giver of the party to ask certain
other outsiders. She was a lady of a soul several sizes larger than the
souls of some other society leaders; she was not afraid to do as she
liked; for instance, she had not only met the Vostrands at Westover’s
tea, several years before, but she had afterward offered some
hospitalities to those ladies which had discharged her whole duty toward
them without involving her in any disadvantages. Jeff had been presented
to her at Westover’s, but she disliked him so promptly and decidedly
that she had left him out of even the things that she asked some other
jays to, like lectures and parlor readings for good objects. It was not
until one of her daughters met him, first at Willie Morland’s tea and
then at Mrs. Bevidge’s meeting, that her social conscience concerned
itself with him. At the first her daughter had not spoken to him, as
might very well have happened, since Bessie Lynde had kept him away with
her nearly all the time; but at the last she had bowed pleasantly to him
across the room, and Jeff had responded with a stiff obeisance, whose
coldness she felt the more for having been somewhat softened herself in
Mrs. Bevidge’s altruistic atmosphere.

“I think he was hurt, mamma,” the girl explained to her mother, “that
you’ve never had him to anything. I suppose they must feel it.”

“Oh, well, send him a card, then,” said her mother; and when Jeff got
the card, rather near the eleventh hour, he made haste to accept, not
because he cared to go to Mrs. Enderby’s house, but because he hoped he
should meet Miss Lynde there.

Bessie was the first person he met after he turned from paying his
duty to the hostess. She was with her aunt, and she presented him, and
promised him a dance, which she let him write on her card. She sat out
another dance with him, and he took her to supper.

To Westover, who had gone with the increasing forlornness a man feels in
such pleasures after thirty-five, it seemed as if the two were in each
other’s company the whole evening. The impression was so strong with him
that when Jeff restored Bessie to her aunt for the dance that was to be
for some one else, and came back to the supper-room, the painter tried
to satisfy a certain uneasiness by making talk with him. But Jeff would
not talk; he got away with a bottle of champagne, which he had captured,
and a plate heaped with croquettes and pease, and galantine and salad.
There were no ladies left in the room by that time, and few young men;
but the oldsters crowded the place, with their bald heads devoutly bowed
over their victual, or their frosty mustaches bathed in their drink,
singly or in groups; the noise of their talk and laughter mixed with
the sound of their eating and drinking, and the clash of the knives and
dishes. Over their stooped shoulders and past their rounded stomachs
Westover saw Alan Lynde vaguely making his way with a glass in his hand,
and looking vaguely about for wine; he saw Jeff catch his wandering
eye, and make offer of his bottle, and then saw Lynde, after a moment of
haughty pause, unbend and accept it. His thin face was flushed, and his
hair tossed over his forehead, but Jeff seemed not to take note of that.
He laughed boisterously at something Lynde said, and kept filling his
glass for him. His own color remained clear and cool. It was as if his
powerful physique absorbed the wine before it could reach his brain.

Westover wanted to interfere, and so far as Jeff was concerned he would
not have hesitated; but Lynde was concerned, too, and you cannot save
such a man from himself without offence. He made his way to the young
man, hoping he might somehow have the courage he wanted.

Jeff held up the bottle, and called to him, “Get yourself a glass, Mr.
Westover.” He put on the air of a host, and would hardly be denied.
“Know Mr. Westover, Mr. Lynde? Just talking about you,” he explained to
Westover.

Alan had to look twice at the painter. “Oh yes. Mr. Durgin,
here--telling me about his place in the mountains. Says you’ve been
there. Going--going myself in the summer. See his--horses.” He made
pauses between his words as some people do when they, try to keep from
stammering.

Westover believed Lynde understood Jeff to be a country gentleman
of sporting tastes, and he would not let that pass. “Yes, it’s the
pleasantest little hotel in the mountains.”

“Strictly-temperance, I suppose?” said Alan, trying to smile with lips
that obeyed him stiffly. He appeared not to care who or what Jeff was;
the champagne had washed away all difference between them. He went on to
say that he had heard of Jeff’s intention of running the hotel himself
when he got out of Harvard. He held it to be damned good stuff.

Jeff laughed. “Your sister wouldn’t believe me when I told her.”

“I think I didn’t mention Miss Lynde,” said Alan, haughtily.

Jeff filled his glass; Alan looked at it, faltered, and then drank it
off. The talk began again between the young men, but it left Westover
out, and he had to go away. Whether Jeff was getting Lynde beyond
himself from the love of mischief, such as had prompted him to tease
little children in his boyhood, or was trying to ingratiate himself with
the young fellow through his weakness, or doing him harm out of mere
thoughtlessness, Westover came away very unhappy at what he had seen.
His unhappiness connected itself so distinctly with Lynde’s family
that he went and sat down beside Miss Lynde from an obscure impulse of
compassion, and tried to talk with her. It would not have been so
hard if she were merely deaf, for she had the skill of deaf people in
arranging the conversation so that a nodded yes or no would be all that
was needed to carry it forward. But to Westover she was terribly dull,
and he was gasping, as in an exhausted receiver, when Bessie came up
with a smile of radiant recognition for his extremity. She got rid of
her partner, and devoted herself at once to Westover. “How good of you!”
 she said, without giving him the pain of an awkward disclaimer.

He could counter in equal sincerity and ambiguity, “How beautiful of
you.”

“Yes,” she said, “I am looking rather well, tonight; but don’t you think
effective would have been a better word?” She smiled across her aunt at
him out of a cloud of pink, from which her thin shoulders and slender
neck emerged, and her arms, gloved to the top, fell into her lap; one of
them seemed to terminate naturally in the fan which sensitively shared
the inquiescence of her person.

“I will say effective, too, if you insist,” said Westover. “But at the
same time you’re the most beautiful person here.”

“How lovely of you, even if you don’t mean it,” she sighed. “If girls
could have more of those things said to them, they would be better,
don’t you think? Or at least feel better.”

Westover laughed. “We might organize a society--they have them for
nearly everything now--for saying pleasant things to young ladies with a
view to the moral effect.”

“Oh, do I.”

“But it ought to be done conscientiously, and you couldn’t go round
telling every one that she was the most beautiful girl in the room.”

“Why not? She’d believe it!”

“Yes; but the effect on the members of the society?”

“Oh yes; that! But you could vary it so as to save your conscience. You
could say, ‘How divinely you’re looking!’ or ‘How angelic!’ or ‘You’re
the very poetry of motion,’ or ‘You are grace itself,’ or ‘Your gown is
a perfect dream, or any little commonplace, and every one would take it
for praise of her personal appearance, and feel herself a great beauty,
just as I do now, though I know very well that I’m all out of drawing,
and just chicqued together.”

“I couldn’t allow any one but you to say that, Miss Bessie; and I only
let it pass because you say it so well.”

“Yes; you’re always so good! You wouldn’t contradict me even when you
turned me out of your class.”

“Did I turn you out of my class?”

“Not just in so many words, but when I said I couldn’t do anything in
art, you didn’t insist that it was because I wouldn’t, and of course
then I had to go. I’ve never forgiven you, Mr. Westover, never! Do keep
on talking very excitedly; there’s a man coming up to us that I don’t
want to think I see him, or he’ll stop. There! He’s veered off! Where
were you, Mr. Westover?”

“Ah, Miss Bessie,” said the painter; delighted at her drama, “there
isn’t anything you couldn’t do if you would.”

“You mean parlor entertainments; impersonations; impressions; that sort
of thing? I have thought of it. But it would be too easy. I want to try
something difficult.”

“For instance.”

“Well, being very, very good. I want something that would really tax my
powers. I should like to be an example. I tried it the other night just
before I went to sleep, and it was fine. I became an example to others.
But when I woke up--I went on in the old way. I want something hard,
don’t you know; but I want it to be easy!”

She laughed, and Westover said: “I am glad you’re not serious. No one
ought to be an example to others. To be exemplary is as dangerous as to
be complimentary.

“It certainly isn’t so agreeable to the object,” said the girl. “But
it’s fine for the subject as long as it lasts. How metaphysical we’re
getting! The objective and the subjective. It’s quite what I should
expect of talk at a Boston dance if I were a New-Yorker. Have you seen
anything of my brother, within the last hour or so, Mr. Westover?”

“Yes; I just left him in the supper-room. Shall I go get him for you?”
 When he had said this, with the notion of rescuing him from Jeff,
Westover was sorry, for he doubted if Alan Lynde were any longer in the
state to be brought away from the supper-room, and he was glad to have
Bessie say:

“No, no. He’ll look us up in the course of the evening--or the morning.”
 A young fellow came to claim her for a dance, and Westover had not the
face to leave Miss Lynde, all the less because she told him he must not
think of staying. He stayed till the dance was over, and Bessie came
back to him.

“What time is it, Mr. Westover? I see my aunt beginning to nod on her
perch.”

Westover looked at his watch. “It’s ten minutes past two.”

“How early!” sighed the girl. “I’m tired of it, aren’t you?”

“Very,” said Westover. “I was tired an hour ago.”

Bessie sank back in her chair with an air of nervous collapse, and did
not say anything. Westover saw her watching the young couples who passed
in and out of the room where the dancing was, or found corners on
sofas, or window-seats, or sheltered spaces beside the doors and the
chimney-piece, the girls panting and the men leaning forward to fan
them. She looked very tired of it; and when a young fellow came up and
asked her to dance, she told him that she was provisionally engaged.
“Come back and get me, if you can’t do better,” she said, and he
answered there was no use trying to do better, and said he would wait
till the other man turned up, or didn’t, if she would let him. He sat
down beside her, and some young talk began between them.

In the midst of it Jeff appeared. He looked at Westover first, and then
approached with an embarrassed face.

Bessie got vividly to her feet. “No apologies, Mr. Durgin, please! But
in just another moment you’d have last your dance.”

Westover saw what he believed a change pass in Jeff’s look from
embarrassment to surprise and then to flattered intelligence. He beamed
all over; and he went away with Bessie toward the ballroom, and left
Westover to a wholly unsupported belief that she had not been engaged to
dance with Jeff. He wondered what her reckless meaning could be, but he
had always thought her a young lady singularly fitted by nature and art
to take care of herself, and when he reasoned upon what was in his mind
he had to own that there was no harm in Jeff’s dancing with her.

He took leave of Miss Lynde, and was going to get his coat and hat for
his walk home when he was mysteriously stopped in a corner of the stairs
by one of the caterer’s men whom he knew. It is so unnatural to be
addressed by a servant at all unless he asks you if you will have
something to eat or drink, that Westover was in a manner prepared to
have him say something startling. “It’s about young Mr. Lynde, sor.
We’ve got um in one of the rooms up-stairs, but he ain’t fit to go home
alone, and I’ve been lookin’ for somebody that knows the family to help
get um into a car’ge. He won’t go for anny of us, sor.”

“Where is he?” asked Westover, in anguish at being unable to refuse the
appeal, but loathing the office put upon him.

“I’ll show you, sor,” said the caterer’s man, and he sprang up the
stairs before Westover, with glad alacrity.



XXXIII.

In a little room at the side of that where the men’s hats and coats were
checked, Alan Lynde sat drooping forward in an arm-chair, with his head
fallen on his breast. He roused himself at the flash of the burner which
the man turned up. “What’s all this?” he demanded, haughtily. “Where’s
the carriage? What’s the matter?”

“Your carriage is waiting, Lynde,” said Westover. “I’ll see you down to
it,” and he murmured, hopelessly, to the caterer’s man: “Is there any
back way?”

“There’s the wan we got um up by.”

“It will do,” said Westover, as simply.

But Lynde called out, defiantly: “Back way; I sha’n’t go down back way.
Inshult to guest. I wish--say--good-night to--Mrs. Enderby. Who you,
anyway? Damn caterer’s man?”

“I’m Westover, Lynde,” the painter began, but the young fellow broke in
upon him, shaking his hand and then taking his arm.

“Oh, Westover! All right! I’ll go down back way with you.
Thought--thought it was damn caterer’s man. No--offence.”

“No. It’s all right.” Westover got his arm under Lynde’s elbow, and,
with the man going before for them to fall upon jointly in case they
should stumble, he got him down the dark and twisting stairs and through
the basement hall, which was vaguely haunted by the dispossessed women
servants of the family, and so out upon the pavement of the moonlighted
streets.

“Call Miss Lynde’s car’ge,” shouted the caterer’s man to the barker, and
escaped back into the basement, leaving Westover to stay his helpless
charge on the sidewalk.

It seemed a publication of the wretch’s shame when the barker began to
fill the night with hoarse cries of, “Miss Lynde’s carriage; carriage
for Miss Lynde!” The cries were taken up by a coachman here and there in
the rank of vehicles whose varnished roofs shone in the moon up and down
the street. After a time that Westover of course felt to be longer than
it was, Miss Lynde’s old coachman was roused from his sleep on the box
and started out of the rank. He took in the situation with the eye of
custom, when he saw Alan supported on the sidewalk by a stranger at the
end of the canopy covering the pavement.

He said, “Oh, ahl right, sor!” and when the two white-gloved policemen
from either side of it helped Westover into the carriage with Lynde, he
set off at a quick trot. The policemen clapped their hands together,
and smiled across the strip of carpet that separated them, and winks and
nods of intelligence passed among the barkers to the footmen about the
curb and steps. There were none of them sorry to see a gentleman in that
state; some of them had perhaps seen Alan in that state before.

Half-way home he roused himself and put his hand on the carriage-door
latch. “Tell the coachman drive us to--the--club. Make night of it.”

“No, no,” said Westover, trying to restrain him. “We’d better go right
on to your house.”

“Who--who--who are you?” demanded Alan.

“Westover.”

“Oh yes--Westover. Thought we left Westover at Mrs. Enderby’s. Thought
it was that jay--What’s his name? Durgin. He’s awful jay, but civil
to me, and I want be civil to him. You’re not--jay? No? That’s right.
Fellow made me sick; but I took his champagne; and I must show him
some--attention.” He released the door-handle, and fell back against
the cushioned carriage wall. “He’s a blackguard!” he said, sourly.
“Not--simple jay-blackguard, too. No--no--business bring in my sister’s
name, hey? You--you say it’s--Westover? Oh yes, Westover. Old friend of
family. Tell you good joke, Westover--my sister’s. No more jays for me,
no more jags for you. That’s what she say--just between her and me, you
know; she’s a lady, Bess is; knows when to use--slang. Mark--mark of a
lady know when to use slang. Pretty good--jays and jags. Guess we didn’t
count this time--either of us.”

When the carriage pulled up before Miss Lynde’s house, Westover opened
the door. “You’re at home, now, Lynde. Come, let’s get out.”

Lynde did not stir. He asked Westover again who he was, and when he had
made sure of him, he said, with dignity, Very well; now they must get
the other fellow. Westover entreated; he even reasoned; Lynde lay back
in the corner of the carriage, and seemed asleep.

Westover thought of pulling him up and getting him indoors by main
force. He appealed to the coachman to know if they could not do it
together.

“Why, you see, I couldn’t leave me harsses, sor,” said the coachman.
“What’s he wants, sor?” He bent urbanely down from his box and listened
to the explanation that Westover made him, standing in the cold on the
curbstone, with one hand on the carriage door. “Then it’s no use, sor,”
 the man decided. “Whin he’s that way, ahl hell couldn’t stir um. Best go
back, sor, and try to find the gentleman.”

This was in the end what Westover had to do, feeling all the time that
a thing so frantically absurd could not be a waking act, but helpless
to escape from its performance. He thought of abandoning his charge and
leaving him, to his fate when he opened the carriage door before Mrs.
Enderby’s house; but with the next thought he perceived that this was
on all accounts impossible. He went in, and began his quest for Jeff,
sending various serving men about with vague descriptions of him, and
asking for him of departing guests, mostly young men he did not know,
but who, he thought, might know Jeff.

He had to take off his overcoat at last, and reappear at the ball. The
crowd was still great, but visibly less dense than it had been. By a
sudden inspiration he made his way to the supper-room, and he found Jeff
there, filling a plate, as if he were about to carry it off somewhere.
He commanded Jeff’s instant presence in the carriage outside; he told
him of Alan’s desire for him.

Jeff leaned back against the wall with the plate in his hand and laughed
till it half slipped from his hold. When he could get his breath, he
said: “I’ll be back in a few minutes; I’ve got to take this to Miss
Bessie Lynde. But I’ll be right back.”

Westover hardly believed him. But when he got on his own things again,
Jeff joined him in his hat and overcoat, and they went out together.

It was another carriage that stopped the way now, and once more the
barker made the night ring with what Westover felt his heartless and
shameless cries for Miss Lynde’s carriage. After a maddening delay, it
lagged up to the curb and Jeff pulled the door open.

“Hello!” he said. “There’s nobody here!”

“Nobody there?” cried Westover, and they fell upon the coachman with
wild question and reproach; the policeman had to tell him at last that
the carriage must move on, to make way for others.

The coachman had no explanation to offer: he did not know how or when
Mr. Alan had got away.

“But you can give a guess where he’s gone?” Jeff suggested, with a
presence of mind which Westover mutely admired.

“Well, sor, I know where he do be gahn, sometimes,” the man admitted.

“Well, that will do; take me there,” said Jeff. “You go in and account
for me to Miss Lynde,” he instructed Westover, across his shoulder.
“I’ll get him home before morning, somehow; and I’ll send the carriage
right back for the ladies, now.”

Westover had the forethought to decide that Miss Bessie should ask for
Jeff if she wanted him, and this simplified matters very much. She asked
nothing about him. At sight of Westover coming up to her where she sat
with her aunt, she merely said: “Why, Mr. Westover! I thought you took
leave of this scene of gayety long ago.”

“Did you?” Westover returned, provisionally, and she saved him from the
sin of framing some deceit in final answer by her next question.

“Have you seen anything of Alan lately?” she asked, in a voice
involuntarily lowered.

Westover replied in the same octave: “Yes; I saw him going a good while
ago.”

“Oh!” said the girl. “Then I think my aunt and I had better go, too.”

Still she did not go, and there was an interval in which she had the air
of vaguely waiting. To Westover’s vision, the young people still passing
to and from the ballroom were like the painted figures of a picture
quickened with sudden animation. There were scarcely any elders to
be seen now, except the chaperons, who sat in their places with iron
fortitude; Westover realized that he was the only man of his age left.
He felt that the lights ought to have grown dim, but the place was as
brilliant as ever. A window had been opened somewhere, and the cold
breath of the night was drawing through the heated rooms.

He was content to have Bessie stay on, though he was almost dropping
with sleep, for he was afraid that if she went at once, the carriage
might not have got back, and the whole affair must somehow be given
away; at last, if she were waiting, she decided to wait no longer, and
then Westover did not know how to keep her. He saw her rise and stoop
over her aunt, putting her mouth to the elder lady’s ear, and he heard
her saying, “I am going home, Aunt Louisa.” She turned sweetly to him.
“Won’t you let us set you down, Mr. Westover?”

“Why, thank you, I believe I prefer walking. But do let me have your
carriage called,” and again he hurried himself into his overcoat and
hat, and ran down-stairs, and the barker a third time sent forth his
lamentable cries in summons of Miss Lynde’s carriage.

While he stood on the curb-stone eagerly peering up and down the street,
he heard, without being able either to enjoy or resent it, one of the
policemen say across him to the other, “Miss lynde seems to be doin’ a
livery-stable business to-night.”

Almost at the moment a carriage drove up, and he recognized Miss Lynde’s
coachman, who recognized him.

“Just got back, sor,” he whispered, and a minute later Bessie came
daintily out over the carpeted way with her aunt.

“How good of you!” she said, and “Good-night, Mr. Westover,” said Miss
Lynde, with an implication in her voice that virtue was peculiarly its
own reward for those who performed any good office for her or hers.

Westover shut them in, the carriage rolled off, and he started on his
homeward walk with a long sigh of relief.



XXXIV.

Bessie asked the sleepy man who opened her aunt’s door whether her
brother had come in yet, and found that he had not. She helped her aunt
off up-stairs with her maid, and when she came down again she sent the
man to bed; she told him she was going to sit up and she would let
her brother in. The caprices of Alan’s latch-key were known to all the
servants, and the man understood what she, meant. He said he had left
a light in the reception-room and there was a fire there; and Bessie
tripped on down from the library floor, where she had met him. She had
put off her ball dress and had slipped into the simplest and easiest
of breakfast frocks, which was by no means plain. Bessie had no plain
frocks for any hour of the day; her frocks all expressed in stuff and
style and color, and the bravery of their flying laces and ribbons, the
audacity of spirit with which she was herself chicqued together, as she
said. This one she had on now was something that brightened her dull
complexion, and brought out the best effect of her eyes and mouth, and
seemed the effluence of her personal dash and grace. It made the most
of her, and she liked it beyond all her other negligees for its
complaisance.

She got a book, and sat down in a long, low chair before the fire and
crossed her pretty slippers on the warm hearth. It was a quarter after
three by the clock on the mantel; but she had never felt more eagerly
awake. The party had not been altogether to her mind, up to midnight,
but after that it had been a series of rapid and vivid emotions, which
continued themselves still in the tumult of her nerves, and seemed to
demand an indefinite sequence of experience. She did not know what state
her brother might be in when he came home; she had not seen anything of
him after she first went out to supper; till then, though, he had kept
himself straight, as he needs must; but she could not tell what happened
to him afterward. She hoped that he would come home able to talk, for
she wished to talk. She wished to talk about herself; and as she had
already had flattery enough, she wanted some truth about herself; she
wanted Alan to say what he thought of her behavior the whole evening
with that jay. He must have seen something of it in the beginning, and
she should tell him all the rest. She should tell him just how often she
had danced with the man, and how many dances she had sat out with him;
how she had pretended once that she was engaged when another man asked
her, and then danced with the jay, to whom she pretended that he had
engaged her for the dance. She had wished to see how he would take it;
for the same reason she had given to some one else a dance that was
really his. She would tell Alan how the jay had asked her for that last
dance, and then never come near her again. That would give him the whole
situation, and she would know just what he thought of it.

What she thought of herself she hardly knew, or made believe she hardly
knew. She prided herself upon not being a flirt; she might not be very
good, as goodness went, but she was not despicable, and a flirt was
despicable. She did not call the audacity of her behavior with the jay
flirting; he seemed to understand it as well as she, and to meet her
in her own spirit; she wondered now whether this jay was really more
interesting than the other men one met, or only different; whether he
was original, like Alan himself, or merely novel, and would soon wear
down to the tiresomeness that seemed to underlie them all, and made one
wish to do something dreadful. In the jay’s presence she had no wish to
do anything dreadful. Was it because he was dreadful enough for both,
all the time, without doing anything? She would like to ask Alan that,
and see how he would take it. Nothing seemed to put the jay out, so far
as she had tried, and she had tried some bold impertinences with him. He
was very jolly through them all, and at the worst of them he laughed and
asked her for that dance, which he never came to claim, though in the
mean time he brought her some belated supper, and was devoted to her and
her aunt, inventing services to do for them. Then suddenly he went off
and did not return, and Mr. Westover mysteriously reappeared, and got
their carriage.

She heard a scratching at the key-hole of the outside door; she knew it
was Alan’s latch. She had left the inner door ajar that there might be
no uncertainty of hearing him, and she ran out into the space between
that and the outer door where the fumbling and scraping kept on.

“Is that you, Alan?” she called, softly, and if she had any doubt
before, she had none when she heard her brother outside, cursing his
luck with his key as usual.

She flung the door open, and confronted him with another man, who had
his arms around him as if he had caught him from falling with the inward
pull of the door. Alan got to his feet and grappled with the man, and
insisted that he should come in and make a night of it.

Bessie saw that it was Jeff, and they stood a moment, looking at each
other. Jeff tried to free himself with an appeal to Bessie: “I beg your
pardon, Miss Lynde. I walked home with your brother, and I was just
helping him to get in--I didn’t think that you--”

Alan said, with his measured distinctness: “Nobody cares what you think.
Come in, and get something to carry you over the bridge. Cambridge cars
stopped running long ago. I say you shall!” He began to raise his voice.
A light flashed in a window across the way, and a sash was lifted; some
one must be looking out.

“Oh, come in with him!” Bessie implored, and at a little yielding in
Jeff her brother added:

“Come in, you damn jay!” He pulled at Jeff.

Jeff made haste to shut the door behind them. He was laughing; and if it
was from mere brute insensibility to what would have shocked another in
the situation, his frank recognition of its grotesqueness was of better
effect than any hopeless effort to ignore it would have been. People
adjust themselves to their trials; it is the pretence of the witness
that there is no trial which hurts, and Bessie was not wounded by Jeff’s
laugh.

“There’s a fire here in the reception-room,” she said. “Can you get him
in?”

“I guess so.”

Jeff lifted Alan into the room and stayed him on foot there, while he
took off his hat and overcoat, and then he let him sink into the low
easy-chair Bessie had just risen from. All the time, Alan was
bidding her ring and have some champagne and cold meat set out on the
side-board, and she was lightly promising and coaxing. But he drowsed
quickly in the warmth, and the last demand for supper died half uttered
on his lips.

Jeff asked across him: “Can’t I get him up-stairs for you? I can carry
him.”

She shook her head and whispered back, “I can leave him here,” and
she looked at Jeff with a moment’s hesitation. “Did you--do you think
that--any one noticed him at Mrs. Enderby’s?”

“No; they had got him in a room by himself--the caterer’s men had.”

“And you found him there?”

“Mr. Westover found him there,” Jeff answered.

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t he come to you after I left?”

“Yes.”

“I told him to excuse me--”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, I guess he was pretty badly rattled.” Jeff stopped himself in
the vague laugh of one who remembers something ludicrous, and turned his
face away.

“Tell me what it was!” she demanded, nervously.

“Mr. Westover had been home with him once, and he wouldn’t stay. He made
Mr. Westover come back for me.”

“What did he want with you?”

Jeff shrugged.

“And then what?”

“We went out to the carriage, as soon as I could get away from you; but
he wasn’t in it. I sent Mr. Westover back to you and set out to look for
him.”

“That was very good of you. And I--thank you for your kindness to my
brother. I shall not forget it. And I wish to beg your pardon.”

“What for?” asked Jeff, bluntly.

“For blaming you when you didn’t come back for the dance.”

If Bessie had meant nothing but what was fitting to the moment some
inherent lightness of nature played her false. But even the histrionic
touch which she could not keep out of her voice, her manner, another
sort of man might have found merely pathetic.

Jeff laughed with subtle intelligence. “Were you very hard on me?”

“Very,” she answered in kind, forgetting her brother and the whole
terrible situation.

“Tell me what you thought of me,” he said, and he came a little nearer
to her, looking very handsome and very strong. “I should like to know.”

“I said I should never speak to you again.”

“And you kept your word,” said Jeff. “Well, that’s all right.
Good-night-or good-morning, whichever it is.” He took her hand, which
she could not withdraw, or feigned to herself that she could not
withdraw, and looked at her with a silent laugh, and a hardy, sceptical
glance that she felt take in every detail of her prettiness, her
plainness. Then he turned and went out, and she ran quickly and locked
the door upon him.



XXXV.

Bessie crept up to her room, where she spent the rest of the night
in her chair, amid a tumult of emotion which she would have called
thinking. She asked herself the most searching questions, but she got no
very candid answers to them, and she decided that she must see the whole
fact with some other’s eyes before she could know what she had meant or
what she had done.

When she let the daylight into her room, it showed her a face in her
mirror that bore no trace of conflicting anxieties. Her complexion
favored this effect of inward calm; it was always thick; and her eyes
seemed to her all the brighter for their vigils.

A smile, even, hovered on her mouth as she sat down at the
breakfast-table, in the pretty negligee she had worn all night, and
poured out Miss Lynde’s coffee for her.

“That’s always very becoming to you, Bessie,” said her aunt. “It’s the
nicest breakfast gown you have.”

“Do you think so?” Bessie looked down at it, first on one side and then
on the other, as a woman always does when her dress is spoken of.

“Mr. Alan said he would have his breakfast in his room, miss,” murmured
the butler, in husky respectfulness, as he returned to Bessie from
carrying Miss Lynde’s cup to her. “He don’t want anything but a little
toast and coffee.”

She perceived that the words were meant to make it easy for her to ask:
“Isn’t he very well, Andrew?”

“About as usual, miss,” said Andrew, a thought more sepulchral than
before. “He’s going on--about as usual.”

She knew this to mean that he was going on from bad to worse, and that
his last night’s excess was the beginning of a debauch which could end
only in one way. She must send for the doctor; he would decide what was
best, when he saw how Alan came through the day.

Late in the afternoon she heard Mary Enderby’s voice in the
reception-room, bidding the man say that if Miss Bessie were lying down
she would come up to her, or would go away, just as she wished. She flew
downstairs with a glad cry of “Molly! What an inspiration! I was just
thinking of you, and wishing for you. But I didn’t suppose you were up
yet!”

“It’s pretty early,” said Miss Enderby. “But I should have been here
before if I could, for I knew I shouldn’t wake you, Bessie, with
your habit of turning night into day, and getting up any time in the
forenoon.”

“How dissipated you sound!”

“Yes, don’t I? But I’ve been thinking about you ever since I woke, and I
had to come and find out if you were alive, anyhow.”

“Come up-stairs and see!” said Bessie, holding her friend’s hand on the
sofa where they had dropped down together, and going all over the scene
of last night in that place for the thousandth time.

“No, no; I really mustn’t. I hope you had a good time?”

“At your house!”

“How dear of you! But, Bessie, I got to thinking you’d been rather
sacrificed. It came into my mind the instant I woke, and gave me this
severe case of conscience. I suppose it’s a kind of conscience.”

“Yes, yes. Go on! I like having been a martyr, if I don’t know what
about.”

“Why, you know, Bessie, or if you don’t you will presently, that it was
I who got mamma to send him a card; I felt rather sorry for him, that
day at Mrs. Bevidge’s, because she’d so obviously got him there to use
him, and I got mamma to ask him. Everything takes care of itself, at a
large affair, and I thought I might trust in Providence to deal with
him after he came; and then I saw you made a means the whole evening! I
didn’t reflect that there always has to be a means!”

“It’s a question of Mr. Durgin?” said Bessie, coldly thrilling at the
sound of a name that she pronounced so gayly in a tone of sympathetic
amusement.

Miss Enderby bobbed her head. “It shows that we ought never to do a good
action, doesn’t it? But, poor thing! How you must have been swearing
off!”

“I don’t know. Was it so very bad? I’m trying to think,” said Bessie,
thinking that after this beginning it would be impossible to confide in
Mary Enderby.

“Oh, now, Bessie! Don’t you be patient, or I shall begin to lose my
faith in human nature. Just say at once that it was an outrage and I’ll
forgive you! You see,” Miss Enderby went on, “it isn’t merely that he’s
a jay; but he isn’t a very nice jay. None of the men like him--except
Freddy Lancaster, of course; he likes everybody, on principle; he
doesn’t count. I thought that perhaps, although he’s so crude and blunt,
he might be sensitive and high-minded; you’re always reading about such
things; but they say he isn’t, in the least; oh, not the least! They say
he goes with a set of fast jays, and that he’s dreadful; though he has
a very good mind, and could do very well if he chose. That’s what cousin
Jim said to-day; he’s just been at our house; and it was so extremely
telepathic that I thought I must run round and prevent your having the
man on your conscience if you felt you had had too much of him. You
won’t lay him up against us, will you?” She jumped to her feet.

“You dear!” said Bessie, keeping Mary Enderby’s hand, and pressing it
between both of hers against her breast as they now stood face to face,
“do come up and have some tea!”

“No, no! Really, I can’t.”

They were both involuntarily silent. The door had been opened to some
one, and there was a brief parley, which ended in a voice they knew to
be the doctor’s, saying, “Then I’ll go right up to his room.” Both the
girls broke into laughing adieux, to hide their consciousness that the
doctor was going up to see Alan Lynde, who was never sick except in the
one way.

Miss Enderby even said: “I was so glad to see Alan looking so well, last
night.”

“Yes, he had such a good time,” said Bessie, and she followed her friend
to the door, where she kissed her reassuringly, and thanked her for
taking all the trouble she had, bidding her not be the least anxious on
her account.

It seemed to her that she should sink upon the stairs in mounting
them to the library. Mary Enderby had told her only what she had known
before; it was what her brother had told her; but then it had not been
possible for the man to say that he had brought Alan home tipsy, and
been alone in the house with her at three o’clock in the morning. He
would not only boast of it to all that vulgar comradehood of his, but
it might get into those terrible papers which published the society
scandals. There would be no way but to appeal to his pity, his
generosity. She fancied herself writing to him, but he could show her
note, and she must send for him to come and see her, and try to put him
on his honor. Or, that would not do, either. She must make it happen
that they should be thrown together, and then speak to him. Even that
might make him think she was afraid of him; or he might take it wrong,
and believe that she cared for him. He had really been very good to
Alan, and she tried to feel safe in the thought of that. She did feel
safe for a moment; but if she had meant nothing but to make him believe
her grateful, what must he infer from her talking to him in the light
way she did about forgiving him for not coming back to dance with her.
Her manner, her looks, her tone, had given him the right to say that
she had been willing to flirt with him there, at that hour, and in those
dreadful circumstances.

She found herself lying in a deep arm-chair in the library, when she was
aware of Dr. Lacy pausing at the door and looking tentatively in upon
her.

“Come in, doctor,” she said, and she knew that her face was wet with
tears, and that she spoke with the voice of weeping.

He came forward and looked narrowly at her, without sitting down.
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about, Miss Bessie,” he said. “But I
think your brother had better leave home again, for a while.”

“Yes,” she said, blankly. Her mind was not on his words.

“I will make the arrangements.”

“Thank you,” said Bessie, listlessly.

The doctor had made a step backward, as if he were going away, and now
he stopped. “Aren’t you feeling quite well, Miss Bessie?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and she began to cry.

The doctor came forward and said, cheerily: “Let me see.” He pulled a
chair up to hers, and took her wrist between his fingers. “If you were
at Mrs. Enderby’s last night, you’ll need another night to put you just
right. But you’re pretty well as it is.” He let her wrist softly go,
and said: “You mustn’t distress yourself about your brother’s case.
Of course, it’s hard to have it happen now after he’s held up so long;
longer than it has been before, I think, isn’t it? But it’s something
that it has been so long. The next time, let us hope, it will be longer
still.”

The doctor made as if to rise. Bessie put her hand out to stay him.
“What is it makes him do it?”

“Ah, that’s a great mystery,” said the doctor. “I suppose you might say
the excitement.”

“Yes!”

“But it seems to me very often, in such cases, as if it were to escape
the excitement. I think you’re both keyed up pretty sharply by nature,
Miss Bessie,” said the doctor, with the personal kindness he felt for
the girl, and the pity softening his scientific spirit.

“I know!” she answered. “We’re alike. Why don’t I take to drinking,
too?”

The doctor laughed at such a question from a young lady, but with an
inner seriousness in his laugh, as if, coming from a patient, it was
to be weighed. “Well, I suppose it isn’t the habit of your sex, Miss
Bessie.”

“Sometimes it is. Sometimes women get drunk, and then I think they
do less harm than if they did other things to get away from the
excitement.” She longed to confide in him; the words were on her tongue;
she believed he could help her, tell her what to do; out of his stores
of knowledge and experience he must have some suggestion, some remedy;
he could advise her; he could stand her friend, so far. People told
their doctors all kinds of things, silly things. Why should she not tell
her doctor this?

It would have been easier if it had been an older man, who might have
had a daughter of her age. But he was in that period of the early
forties when a doctor sometimes has a matter-of-fact, disagreeable
wife whose idea stands between him and the spiritual intimacy of his
patients, so that it seems as if they were delivering their confidences
rather to her than to him. He was able, he was good, he was extremely
acute, he was even with the latest facts and theories; but as he sat
straight up in his chair his stomach defined itself as a half-moon
before him, and he said to the quivering heap of emotions beside him,
“You mean like breaking hearts, and such little matters?”

It was fatally stupid, and it beat her back into herself.

“Yes,” she said, with a contempt that she easily hid from him, “that’s
worse than getting drunk, isn’t it?”

“Well, it isn’t so regarded,” said the doctor, who supposed himself to
have made a sprightly answer, and laughed at it. “I wish, Miss Bessie,
you’d take a little remedy I’m going to send you. You’ve merely been
up too late, but it’s a very good thing for people who’ve been up too
late.”

“Thank you. And about my brother?”

“Oh! I’ll send a man to look after him to-night, and tomorrow I really
think he’d better go.”



XXXVI.

Miss Lynde had gone earlier than usual to bed, when Bessie heard Alan’s
door open, and then heard him feeling his way fumbingly down-stairs.
She surmised that he had drunk up all that he had in his room, and was
making for the side-board in the dining-room.

She ran and got the two decanters-one of whiskey and one of brandy,
which he was in the habit of carrying back to his room from such an
incursion.

“Alan!” she called to him, in a low voice.

“Where are you?” he answered back.

“In the library,” she said. “Come in here, please.”

He came, and stood looking gloomily in from the doorway. He caught sight
of the decanters and the glasses on the library table. “Oh!” he said,
and gave a laugh cut in two by a hiccough.

“Come in, and shut the door, Alan,” she said. “Let’s make a night of it.
I’ve got the materials here.” She waved her hand toward the decanters.

Alan shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.” But he came forward, and
slouched into one of the deep chairs.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” said Bessie, with a laugh. “We’re both
excited, and we want to get away from ourselves. Isn’t that what’s the
matter with you when it begins? Doctor Lacy thinks it is.”

“Does he?” Alan asked. “I didn’t suppose he had so much sense. What of
it?”

“Nothing. Merely that I’m going to drink a glass of whiskey and a glass
of brandy for every glass that you drink to-night.”

“You mustn’t play the fool, Bess,” said her brother, with dignified
severity.

“But I’m really serious, Alan. Shall I give you something? Which shall
we begin on? And we’d better begin soon, for there’s a man coming from
the doctor to look after you, and then you won’t get anything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Give me those decanters!” Alan struggled out of
his chair, and trembled over to where she had them on the table beside
her.

She caught them up, one in either hand, and held them as high as she
could lift them. “If you don’t sit down and promise to keep still, I’ll
smash them both on the hearth. You know I will.”

Her strange eyes gleamed, and he hesitated; then he went back to his
chair.

“I don’t see what’s got into you to-night. I don’t want anything,” he
said. He tried to brave it out, but presently he cast a piteous glance
at the decanters where she had put them down beside her again. “Does the
doctor think I’d better go again?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“To-morrow.”

He looked at the decanters. “And when is that fellow coming?”

“He may be here any moment.”

“It’s pretty rough,” he sighed. “Two glasses of that stuff would drive
you so wild you wouldn’t know where you were, Bess,” he expostulated.

“Well, I wish I didn’t know where I was. I wish I wasn’t anywhere.” He
looked at her, and then dropped his eyes, with the effect of giving up a
hopeless conundrum.

But he asked: “What’s the matter?”

She scanned him keenly before she answered: “Something that I should
like to tell you--that you ought to know. Alan, do you think you are fit
to judge of a very serious matter?”

He laughed pathetically. “I don’t believe I’m in a very judicial frame
of mind to-night, Bess. To-morrow--”

“Oh, to-morrow! Where will you be to-morrow?”

“That’s true! Well, what is it? I’ll try to listen. But if you knew
how my nerves were going.” His eyes wandered from hers back to the
decanters. “If I had just one glass--”

“I’ll have one, too,” she said, with a motion toward the decanter next
her.

He threw up his arms. “Oh well, go on. I’ll listen as well as I can.”
 He sank down in his chair and stretched his little feet out toward the
fire. “Go on!”

She hesitated before she began. “Do you know who brought you home last
night, Alan?”

“Yes,” he answered, quickly, “Westover.”

“Yes, Mr. Westover brought you, and you wouldn’t stay. You don’t
remember anything else?”

“No. What else?”

“Nothing for you, if you don’t remember.” She sat in silent hopelessness
for a while, and her brother’s eyes dwelt on the decanters, which she
seemed to have forgotten. “Alan!” she broke out, abruptly, “I’m worried,
and if I can’t tell you about it there’s no one I can.”

The appeal in her voice must have reached him, though he seemed scarcely
to have heeded her words. “What is it?” he asked, kindly.

“You went back to the Enderbys’ after Mr. Westover brought you home, and
then some one else had to bring you again.”

“How do you know?”

“I was up, and let you in--”

“Did you, Bessie? That was like you,” he said, tenderly.

“And I had to let him in, too. You pulled him into the house, and you
made such a disturbance at the door that he had to come in for fear you
would bring the police.”

“What a beast!” said Alan, of himself, as if it were some one else.

“He came in with you. And you wanted him to have some supper. And you
fell asleep before the fire in the reception-room.”

“That--that was the dream!” said Alan, severely. “What are you talking
that stuff for, Bessie?”

“Oh no!” she retorted, with a laugh, as if the pleasure of its coming
in so fitly were compensation for the shame of the fact. “The dream was
what happened afterward. The dream was that you fell asleep there, and
left me there with him--”

“Well, poor old Westover; he’s a gentleman! You needn’t be worried about
him--”

“You’re not fit!” cried the girl. “I give it up.” She got upon her feet
and stood a moment listless.

“No, I’m not, Bessie. I can’t pull my mind together tonight. But
look here!” He seemed to lose what he wanted to say. He asked: “Is it
something I’ve got you in for? Do I understand that?”

“Partly,” she said.

“Well, then, I’ll help you out. You can trust me, Bessie; you can,
indeed. You don’t believe it?”

“Oh, I believe you think I can trust you.”

“But this time you can. If you need my help I will stand by you, right
or wrong. If you want to tell me now I’ll listen, and I’ll advise you
the best I can--”

“It’s just something I’ve got nervous about,” she said, while her eyes
shone with sudden tears. “But I won’t trouble you with it to-night.
There’s no such great hurry. We can talk about it in the morning if
you’re better then. Oh, I forgot! You’re going away!”

“No,” said the young man, with pathetic dignity, “I’m not going if you
need my help. But you’re right about me tonight, Bessie. I’m not fit.
I’m afraid I can’t grasp anything to-night. Tell me in the morning. Oh,
don’t be afraid!” he cried out at the glance she gave the decanters.
“That’s over, now; you could put them in my hands and be safe enough.
I’m going back to bed, and in the morning--”

He rose and went toward the door. “If that doctor’s man comes to-night
you can send him away again. He needn’t bother.”

“All right, Alan,” she said, fondly. “Good-night. Don’t worry about me.
Try to get some sleep.”

“And you must sleep, too. You can trust me, Bessie.”

He came back after he got out of the room and looked in. “Bess, if
you’re anxious about it, if you don’t feel perfectly sure of me, you
can take those things to your room with you.” He indicated the decanters
with a glance.

“Oh no! I shall leave them here. It wouldn’t be any use your just
keeping well overnight. You’ll have to keep well a long time, Alan, if
you’re going to help me. And that’s the reason I’d rather talk to you
when you can give your whole mind to what I say.”

“Is it something so serious?”

“I don’t know. That’s for you to judge. Not very--not at all, perhaps.”

“Then I won’t fail you, Bessie. I shall ‘keep well,’ as you call it, as
long as you want me. Good-night.”

“Good-night. I shall leave these bottles here, remember.”

“You needn’t be afraid. You might put them beside my bed.”

Bessie slept soundly, from exhaustion, and in that provisional fashion
in which people who have postponed a care to a given moment are able to
sleep. But she woke early, and crept down-stairs before any one else was
astir, and went to the library. The decanters stood there on the table,
empty. Her brother lay a shapeless heap in one of the deep arm-chairs.



XXXVII.

Westover got home from the Enderby dance at last with the forecast of a
violent cold in his system, which verified itself the next morning. He
had been housed a week, when Jeff Durgin came to see him. “Why didn’t
you let me know you were sick?” he demanded, “I’d have come and looked
after you.”

“Thank you,” said Westover, with as much stiffness as he could command
in his physical limpness. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to look after
me; and I want you to understand, now, that there can’t be any sort of
friendliness between us till you’ve accounted for your behavior with
Lynde the other night.”

“You mean at the party?” Jeff asked, tranquilly.

“Yes!” cried Westover. “If I had not been shut up ever since, I should
have gone to see you and had it out with you. I’ve only let you in, now,
to give you the chance to explain; and I refuse to hear a word from you
till you do.” Westover did not think that this was very forcible, and he
was not much surprised that it made Jeff smile.

“Why, I don’t know what there is to explain. I suppose you think I got
him drunk; I know what you thought that night. But he was pretty well
loaded when he struck my champagne. It wasn’t a question of what he was
going to do any longer, but how he was going to do it. I kept an eye on
him, and at the right time I helped the caterer’s man to get him up into
that room where he wouldn’t make any trouble. I expected to go back and
look after him, but I forgot him.”

“I don’t suppose, really, that you’re aware what a devil’s argument that
is,” said Westover. “You got Lynde drunk, and then you went back to his
sister, and allowed her to treat you as if you were a gentleman,
and didn’t deserve to be thrown out of the house.” This at last was
something like what Westover had imagined he would say to Jeff, and he
looked to see it have the imagined effect upon him.

“Do you suppose,” asked Jeff, with cheerful cynicism, “that it was the
first time she was civil to a man her brother got drunk with?”

“No! But all the more you ought to have considered her helplessness.
It ought to have made her the more sacred”--Jeff gave an exasperating
shrug--“to you, and you ought to have kept away from her for decency’s
sake.”

“I was engaged to dance with her.”

“I can’t allow you to be trivial with me, Durgin,” said Westover.
“You’ve acted like a blackguard, and worse, if there is anything worse.”

Jeff stood at a corner of the fire, leaning one elbow on the mantel, and
he now looked thoughtfully down on Westover, who had sunk weakly into a
chair before the hearth. “I don’t deny it from your point of view,
Mr. Westover,” he said, without the least resentment in his tone. “You
believe that everything is done from a purpose, or that a thing is
intended because it’s done. But I see that most things in this world are
not thought about, and not intended. They happen, just as much as the
other things that we call accidents.”

“Yes,” said Westover, “but the wrong things don’t happen from people who
are in the habit of meaning the right ones.”

“I believe they do, fully half the time,” Jeff returned; “and, as far as
the grand result is concerned, you might as well think them and intend
them as not. I don’t mean that you ought to do it; that’s another thing,
and if I had tried to get Lynde drunk, and then gone to dance with his
sister, I should have been what you say I am. But I saw him getting
worse without meaning to make him so; and I went back to her because--I
wanted to.”

“And you think, I suppose,” said Westover, “that she wouldn’t have cared
any more than you cared if she had known what you did.”

“I can’t say anything about that.”

The painter continued, bitterly: “You used to come in here, the first
year, with notions of society women that would have disgraced a Goth,
or a gorilla. Did you form your estimate of Miss Lynde from those
premises?”

“I’m not a boy now,” Jeff answered, “and I haven’t stayed all the kinds
of a fool I was.”

“Then you don’t think Miss Lynde would speak to you, or look at you,
after she knew what you had done?”

“I should like to tell her and see,” said Jeff, with a hardy laugh.
“But I guess I sha’n’t have the chance. I’ve never been a favorite in
society, and I don’t expect to meet her again.”

“Perhaps you’d like to have me tell her?”

“Why, yes, I believe I should, if you could tell me what she
thought--not what she said about it.”

“You are a brute,” answered Westover, with a puzzled air. What puzzled
him most and pleased him least was the fellow’s patience under his
severity, which he seemed either not to feel or not to mind. It was of
a piece with the behavior of the rascally boy whom he had cuffed for
frightening Cynthia and her little brother long ago, and he wondered
what final malevolence it portended.

Jeff said, as if their controversy were at an end and they might now
turn to more personal things: “You look pretty slim, Mr. Westover. A’n’t
there something I can do for you-get you? I’ve come in with a message
from mother. She says if you ever want to get that winter view of Lion’s
Head, now’s your time. She wants you to come up there; she and Cynthia
both do. They can make you as comfortable as you please, and they’d like
to have a visit from you. Can’t you go?”

Westover shook his head ruefully. “It’s good of them, and I want you to
thank them for me. But I don’t know when I’m going to get out again.”

“Oh, you’ll soon get out,” said Jeff. “I’m going to look after you a
little,” and this time Westover was too weak to protest. He did not
forbid Jeff’s taking off his overcoat; he suffered him to light his
spirit-lamp and make a punch of the whiskey which he owned the doctor
was giving him; and when Jeff handed him the steaming glass, and asked
him, “How’s that?” he answered, with a pleasure in it which he knew to
be deplorable, “It’s fine.”

Jeff stayed the whole evening with him, and made him more comfortable
than he had been since his cold began. Westover now talked seriously and
frankly with him, but no longer so harshly, and in his relenting he felt
a return of his old illogical liking for him. He fancied in Durgin’s
kindness to himself an indirect regret, and a desire to atone for what
he had done, and he said: “The effect is in you--the worst effect. I
don’t think either of the young Lyndes very exemplary people. But you’d
be doing yourself a greater wrong than you’ve done then if you didn’t
recognize that you had been guilty toward them.”

Jeff seemed struck by this notion. “What do you want me to do? What can
I do? Chase myself out of society? Something like that? I’m willing.
It’s too easy, though. As I said, I’ve never been wanted much, there,
and I shouldn’t be missed.”

“Well, then, how would you like to leave it to the people at Lion’s Head
to say what you should do?” Westover suggested.

“I shouldn’t like it,” said Jeff, promptly. “They’d judge it as you
do--as if they’d done it themselves. That’s the reason women are not fit
to judge.” His gay face darkened. “But tell ‘em if you want to.”

“Bah!” cried the painter. “Why should I want to I’m not a woman in
everything.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Westover. I didn’t mean that. I only meant that
you’re an idealist. I look at this thing as if some one else had done
it; I believe that’s the practical way; and I shouldn’t go in for
punishing any one else for such a thing very severely.” He made another
punch--for himself this time, he said; but Westover joined him in a
glass of it.

“It won’t do to take that view of your faults, Jeff,” he said, gravely.

“What’s the reason?” Jeff demanded; and now either the punch had begun
to work in Westover’s brain, or some other influence of like force
and quality. He perceived that in this earth-bound temperament was the
potentiality of all the success it aimed at. The acceptance of the moral
fact as it was, without the unconscious effort to better it, or to hold
himself strictly to account for it, was the secret of the power in the
man which would bring about the material results he desired; and this
simplicity of the motive involved had its charm.

Westover was aware of liking Durgin at that moment much more than he
ought, and of liking him helplessly. In the light of his good-natured
selfishness, the injury to the Lyndes showed much less a sacrilege than
it had seemed; Westover began to see it with Jeff’s eyes, and to see it
with reference to what might be low and mean in them, instead of what
might be fine and high.

He was sensible of the growth Jeff had made intellectually. He had not
been at Harvard nearly four years for nothing. He had phrases and could
handle them. In whatever obscure or perverse fashion, he had profited by
his opportunities. The fellow who could accuse him of being an idealist,
and could in some sort prove it, was no longer a naughty boy to be
tutored and punished. The revolt latent in him would be violent in
proportion to the pressure put upon him, and Westover began to be
without the wish to press his fault home to him so strongly. In the
optimism generated by the punch, he felt that he might leave the case to
Jeff himself; or else in the comfort we all experience in sinking to a
lower level, he was unwilling to make the effort to keep his own moral
elevation. But he did make an effort to save himself by saying: “You
can’t get what you’ve done before yourself as you can the action of some
one else. It’s part of you, and you have to judge the motive as well as
the effect.”

“Well, that’s what I’m doing,” said Jeff; “but it seems to me that
you’re trying to have me judge of the effect from a motive I didn’t
have. As far as I can make out, I hadn’t any motive at all.”

He laughed, and all that Westover could say was, “Then you’re still
responsible for the result.” But this no longer appeared so true to him.



XXXVIII.

It was not a condition of Westover’s welcome at Lion’s Head that he
should seem peculiarly the friend of Jeff Durgin, but he could not help
making it so, and he began to overact the part as soon as he met Jeff’s
mother. He had to speak of him in thanking her for remembering his wish
to paint Lion’s Head in the winter, and he had to tell her of Jeff’s
thoughtfulness during the past fortnight; he had to say that he did not
believe he should ever have got away if it had not been for him. This
was true; Durgin had even come in from Cambridge to see him off on the
train; he behaved as if the incident with Lynde and all their talk about
it had cemented the friendship between Westover and himself, and he
could not be too devoted. It now came out that he had written home all
about Westover, and made his mother put up a stove in the painter’s old
room, so that he should have the instant use of it when he arrived.

It was an air-tight wood-stove, and it filled the chamber with a heat in
which Westover drowsed as soon as he entered it. He threw himself on the
bed, and slept away the fatigue of his railroad journey and the cold of
his drive with Jombateeste from the station. His nap was long, and he
woke from it in a pleasant languor, with the dream-clouds still hanging
in his brain. He opened the damper of his stove, and set it roaring
again; then he pulled down the upper sash of his window and looked
out on a world whose elements of wood and snow and stone he tried to
co-ordinate. There was nothing else in that world but these things, so
repellent of one another. He suffered from the incongruity of the wooden
bulk of the hotel, with the white drifts deep about it, and with the
granite cliffs of Lion’s Head before it, where the gray crags darkened
under the pink afternoon light which was beginning to play upon its
crest from the early sunset. The wind that had seemed to bore through
his thick cap and his skull itself, and that had tossed the dry snow
like dust against his eyes on his way from the railroad, had now fallen,
and an incomparable quiet wrapped the solitude of the hills. A
teasing sense of the impossibility of the scene, as far as his art was
concerned, filled him full of a fond despair of rendering its feeling.
He could give its light and color and form in a sufficiently vivid
suggestion of the fact, but he could not make that pink flush seem
to exhale, like a long breath, upon those rugged shapes; he could not
impart that sentiment of delicately, almost of elegance, which he
found in the wilderness, while every detail of civilization physically
distressed him. In one place the snow had been dug down to the pine
planking of the pathway round the house; and the contact of this
woodenness with the frozen ground pierced his nerves and set his teeth
on edge like a harsh noise. When once he saw it he had to make an effort
to take his eyes from it, and in a sort unknown to him in summer he
perceived the offence of the hotel itself amid the pure and lonely
beauty of the winter landscape. It was a note of intolerable banality,
of philistine pretence and vulgar convention, such as Whitwell’s low,
unpainted cottage at the foot of the hill did not give, nor the little
red school-house, on the other hand, showing through the naked trees.
There should have been really no human habitation visible except a
wigwam in the shelter of the pines, here and there; and when he saw
Whitwell making his way up the hill-side road, Westover felt that if
there must be any human presence it should be some savage clad in skins,
instead of the philosopher in his rubber boots and his clothing-store
ulster. He preferred the small, wiry shape of Jombateeste, in his blue
woollen cap and his Canadian footgear, as he ran round the corner of the
house toward the barn, and left the breath of his pipe in the fine air
behind him.

The light began to deepen from the pale pink to a crimson which stained
the tops and steeps of snow, and deepened the dark of the woods massed
on the mountain slopes between the irregular fields of white. The
burnished brown of the hard-wood trees, the dull carbon shadows of the
evergreens, seemed to wither to one black as the red strengthened in the
sky. Westover realized that he had lost the best of any possible picture
in letting that first delicate color escape him. This crimson was harsh
and vulgar in comparison; it would have almost a chromo quality; he
censured his pleasure in it as something gross and material, like that
of eating; and on a sudden he felt hungry. He wondered what time they
would give him supper, and he took slight account of the fact that a
caprice of the wind had torn its hood of snow from the mountain summit,
and that the profile of the Lion’s Head showed almost as distinctly as
in summer. He stood before the picture which for that day at least
was lost to him, and questioned whether there would be a hearty meal,
something like a dinner, or whether there would be something like a
farmhouse supper, mainly of doughnuts and tea.

He pulled up his window and was going to lie down again, when some one
knocked, and Frank Whitwell stood at the door. “Do you want we should
bring your supper to you here, Mr. Westover, or will you--”

“Oh, let me join you all!” cried the painter, eagerly. “Is it
ready--shall I come now?”

“Well, in about five minutes or so.” Frank went away, after setting
down in the room the lamp he had brought. It was a lamp which Westover
thought he remembered from the farm-house period, and on his way down he
realized as he had somehow not done in his summer sojourns, the entirety
of the old house in the hotel which had encompassed it. The primitive
cold of its stairways and passages struck upon him as soon as he left
his own room, and he found the parlor door closed against the chill.
There was a hot stove-fire within, and a kerosene-lamp turned low, but
there was no one there, and he had the photograph of his first picture
of Lion’s Head to himself in the dim light. The voices of Mrs. Durgin
and Cynthia came to him from the dining-room, and from the kitchen
beyond, with the occasional clash of crockery, and the clang of iron
upon iron about the stove, and the quick tread of women’s feet upon the
bare floor. With these pleasant noises came the smell of cooking, and
later there was an opening and shutting of doors, with a thrill of the
freezing air from without, and the dull thumping of Whitwell’s rubber
boots, and the quicker flapping of Jombateeste’s soft leathern soles.
Then there was the sweep of skirted feet at the parlor door, and Cynthia
Whitwell came in without perceiving him. She went to the table by the
darkening window, and quickly turned up the light of the lamp. In her
ignorance of his presence, he saw her as if she had been alone, almost
as if she were out of the body; he received from her unconsciousness
the impression of something rarely pure and fine, and he had a sudden
compassion for her, as for something precious that is fated to be wasted
or misprized. At a little movement which he made to relieve himself from
a sense of eavesdropping, she gave a start, and shut her lips upon the
little cry that would have escaped from another sort of woman.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said; and she flushed with the
shyness of him which she always showed at first. She had met him already
with the rest, but they had scarcely spoken together; and he knew of the
struggle she must now be making with herself when she went on: “I didn’t
know you had been called. I thought you were still sleeping.”

“Yes. I seemed to sleep for centuries,” said West over, “and I woke up
feeling coeval with Lion’s Head. But I hope to grow younger again.”

She faltered, and then she asked: “Did you see the light on it when the
sun went down?”

“I wish I hadn’t. I could never get that light--even if it ever came
again.”

“It’s there every afternoon, when it’s clear.”

“I’m sorry for that; I shall have to try for it, then.”

“Wasn’t that what you came for?” she asked, by one of the efforts she
was making with everything she said. He could have believed he saw the
pulse throbbing in her neck. But she held herself stone-still, and he
divined her resolution to conquer herself, if she should die for it.

“Yes, I came for that,” said Westover. “That’s what makes it so
dismaying. If I had only happened on it, I shouldn’t have been
responsible for the failure I shall make of it.”

She smiled, as if she liked his lightness, but doubted if she ought. “We
don’t often get Lion’s Head clear of snow.”

“Yes; that’s another hardship,” said the painter. “Everything is against
me! If we don’t have a snow overnight, and a cloudy day to-morrow, I
shall be in despair.”

She played with the little wheel of the wick; she looked down, and then,
with a glance flashed at him, she gasped: “I shall have to take your
lamp for the table tea is ready.”

“Oh, well, if you will only take me with it. I’m frightfully hungry.”

Apparently she could not say anything to that. He tried to get the lamp
to carry it out for her, but she would not let him. “It isn’t heavy,”
 she said, and hurried out before him.

It was all nothing, but it was all very charming, and Westover was
richly content with it; and yet not content, for he felt that the
pleasure of it was not truly his, but was a moment of merely borrowed
happiness.

The table was laid in the old farm-house sitting-room where he had been
served alone when he first came to Lion’s Head. But now he sat down with
the whole family, even to Jombateeste, who brought in a faint odor of
the barn with him.

They had each been in contact with the finer world which revisits
nature in the summer-time, and they must all have known something of its
usages, but they had reverted in form and substance to the rustic living
of their neighbors. They had steak for Westover, and baked potatoes; but
for themselves they had such farm fare as Mrs. Durgin had given him the
first time he supped there. They made their meal chiefly of doughnuts
and tea, and hot biscuit, with some sweet dishes of a festive sort added
in recognition of his presence; and there was mince-pie for all. Mrs.
Durgin and Whitwell ate with their knives, and Jombateeste filled
himself so soon with every implement at hand that he was able to ask
excuse of the others if he left them for the horses before they had
half finished. Frank Whitwell fed with a kind of official or functional
conformity to the ways of summer folks; but Cynthia, at whom Westover
glanced with anxiety, only drank some tea and ate a little bread and
butter. He was ashamed of his anxiety, for he had owned that it ought
not to have mattered if she had used her knife like her father; and it
seemed to him as if he had prompted Mrs. Durgin by his curious glance
to say: “We don’t know half the time how the child lives. Cynthy! Take
something to eat!”

Cynthia pleaded that she was not hungry; Mrs. Durgin declared that she
would die if she kept on as she was going; and then the girl escaped
to the kitchen on one of the errands which she made from time to time
between the stove and the table.

“I presume it’s your coming, Mr. Westover,” Mrs. Durgin went on, with
the comfortable superiority of elderly people to all the trials of the
young. “I don’t know why she should make a stranger of you, every time.
You’ve known her pretty much all her life.”

“Ever since you give Jeff what he deserved for scaring her and Frank
with his dog,” said Whitwell.

“Poor Fox!” Mrs. Durgin sighed. “He did have the least sense for a dog I
ever saw. And Jeff used to be so fond of him! Well, I guess he got tired
of him, too, toward the last.”

“He’s gone to the happy hunting-grounds now. Colorady didn’t agree
with him-or old age,” said Whitwell. “I don’t see why the Injuns wa’n’t
right,” he pursued, thoughtfully. “If they’ve got souls, why ha’n’t
their dogs? I suppose Mr. Westover here would say there wa’n’t any
certainty about the Injuns themselves!”

“You know my weak point, Mr. Whitwell,” the painter confessed. “But I
can’t prove they haven’t.”

“Nor dogs, neither, I guess,” said Whitwell, tolerantly. “It’s
curious, though, if animals have got souls, that we ha’n’t ever had any
communications from ‘em. You might say that ag’in’ the idea.”

“No, I’ll let you say it,” returned Westover. “But a good many of the
communications seem to come from the lower intelligences, if not the
lower animals.”

Whitwell laughed out his delight in the thrust. “Well, I guess that’s
something so. And them old Egyptian devils, over there, that you say
discovered the doctrine of immortality, seemed to think a cat was about
as good as a man. What’s that,” he appealed to Mrs. Durgin, “Jackson
said in his last letter about their cat mummies?”

“Well, I guess I’ll finish my supper first,” said Mrs. Durgin, whose
nerves Westover would not otherwise have suspected of faintness.
“But Jackson’s letters,” she continued, loyally, “are about the best
letters!”

“Know they’d got some of ‘em in the papers?” Whitwell asked; and at the
surprise that Westover showed he told him how a fellow who was trying to
make a paper go over at the Huddle, had heard of Jackson’s letters and
teased for some of them, and had printed them as neighborhood news in
that side of his paper which he did not buy ready printed in Boston.

Mrs. Durgin studied with modest deprecation the effect of the fact
upon Westover, and seemed satisfied with it. “Well, of course, it’s
interestin’ to Jackson’s old friends in the country, here. They know
he’d look at things, over there, pretty much as they would. Well, I had
to lend the letters round so much, anyway, it was a kind of a relief to
have ‘em in the paper, where everybody could see ‘em, and be done with
it. Mr. Whit’ell here, he fixes ‘em up so’s to leave out the family
part, and I guess they’re pretty well thought of.”

Westover said he had no doubt they were, and he should want to see all
the letters they could show him, in print and out of print.

“If Jackson only had Jeff’s health and opportunities--” the mother
began, with a suppressed passion in her regret.

Frank Whitwell pushed back his chair. “I guess I’ll ask to be excused,”
 he said to the head of table.

“There! I a’n’t goin’ to say any more about that, if that’s what you’re
afraid of, Frank,” said Mrs. Durgin. “Well, I presume I do talk a good
deal about Jackson when I get goin’, and I presume it’s natural Cynthy
shouldn’t want I should talk about Jeff before folks. Frank, a’n’t you
goin’ to wait for that plate of hot biscuit?--if she ever gits it here!”

“I guess I don’t care for anything more,” said Frank, and he got himself
out of the room more inarticulately than he need, Westover thought.

His, father followed his retreat with an eye of humorous intelligence.
“I guess Frank don’t want to keep the young ladies waitin’ a great
while. There’s a church sociable over ‘t the Huddle,” he explained to
Westover.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” Mrs. Durgin put in. “Why didn’t he say so.”

“Well, the young folks don’t any of ‘em seem to want to talk about
such things nowadays, and I don’t know as they ever did.” Whitwell took
Westover into his confidence with a wink.

The biscuit that Cynthia brought in were burned a little on top, and
Mrs. Durgin recognized the fact with the question, “Did you get to
studyin’, out there? Take one, do, Mr. Westover! You ha’n’t made half a
meal! If I didn’t keep round after her, I don’t know what would become
of us all. The young ladies down at Boston, any of ‘em, try to keep up
with the fellows in college?”

“I suppose they do in the Harvard Annex,” said Westover, simply, in
spite of the glance with which Mrs. Durgin tried to convey a
covert meaning. He understood it afterward, but for the present his
single-mindedness spared the girl.

She remained to clear away the table, when the rest left it, and
Westover followed Mrs. Durgin into the parlor, where she indemnified
herself for refraining from any explicit allusion to Jeff before
Cynthia. “The boy,” she explained, when she had made him ransack his
memory for every scrap of fact concerning her son, “don’t hardly ever
write to me, and I guess he don’t give Cynthy very much news. I presume
he’s workin’ harder than ever this year. And I’m glad he’s goin’ about a
little, from what you say. I guess he’s got to feelin’ a little better.
It did worry me for him to feel so what you may call meechin’ about
folks. You see anything that made you think he wa’n’t appreciated?”

After Westover got back into his own room, some one knocked at his door,
and he found Whitwell outside. He scarcely asked him to come in, but
Whitwell scarcely needed the invitation. “Got everything you want? I
told Cynthy I’d come up and see after you; Frank won’t be back in time.”
 He sat down and put his feet on top of the stove, and struck the heels
of his boots on its edge, from the habit of knocking the caked snow off
them in that way on stove-tops. He did not wait to find out that there
was no responsive sizzling before he asked, with a long nasal sigh,
“Well, how is Jeff gettin’ along?”

He looked across at Westover, who had provisionally seated himself on
his bed.

“Why, in the old way.” Whitwell kept his eye on him, and he added: “I
suppose we don’t any of us change; we develop.”

Whitwell smiled with pleasure in the loosely philosophic suggestion.
“You mean that he’s the same kind of a man that he was a boy? Well, I
guess that’s so. The question is, what kind of a boy was he? I’ve been
mullin’ over that consid’able since Cynthy and him fixed it up together.
Of course, I know it’s their business, and all that; but I presume I’ve
got a right to spee’late about it?”

He referred the point to Westover, who knew an inner earnestness in it,
in spite of Whitwell’s habit of outside jocosity. “Every right in the
world, I should say, Mr. Whitwell,” he answered, seriously.

“Well, I’m glad you feel that way,” said Whitwell, with a little
apparent surprise. “I don’t want to meddle, any; but I know what Cynthy
is--I no need to brag her up--and I don’t feel so over and above certain
‘t I know what he is. He’s a good deal of a mixture, if you want to know
how he strikes me. I don’t mean I don’t like him; I do; the fellow’s
got a way with him that makes me kind of like him when I see him. He’s
good-natured and clever; and he’s willin’ to take any amount of trouble
for you; but you can’t tell where to have him.” Westover denied the
appeal for explicit assent in Whitwell’s eye, and he went on: “If I’d
done that fellow a good turn, in spite of him, or if I’d held him up to
something that he allowed was right, and consented to, I should want to
keep a sharp lookout that he didn’t play me some ugly trick for it. He’s
a comical devil,” Whitwell ended, rather inadequately. “How d’s it look
to you? Seen anything lately that seemed to tally with my idee?”

“No, no; I can’t say that I have,” said Westover, reluctantly. He wished
to be franker than he now meant to be, but he consulted a scruple
that he did not wholly respect; a mere convention it seemed to him,
presently. He said: “I’ve always felt that charm in him, too, and I’ve
seen the other traits, though not so clearly as you seem to have done.
He has a powerful will, yes--”

He stopped, and Whitwell asked: “Been up to any deviltry lately?”

“I can’t say he has. Nothing that I can call intentional.”

“No,” said Whitwell. “What’s he done, though?”

“Really, Mr. Whitwell, I don’t know that you have any right to expect me
to talk him over, when I’m here as his mother’s guest--his own guest--?”

“No. I ha’n’t,” said Whitwell. “What about the father of the girl he’s
goin’ to marry?”

Westover could not deny the force of this. “You’d be anxious if I didn’t
tell you what I had in mind, I dare say, more than if I did.” He told
him of Jeff’s behavior with Alan Lynde, and of his talk with him about
it. “And I think he was honest. It was something that happened, that
wasn’t meant.”

Whitwell did not assent directly, somewhat to Westover’s surprise. He
asked: “Fellow ever done anything to Jeff?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t know that they ever met before.”

Whitwell kicked his heels on the edge of the stove again. “Then it might
been an accident,” he said, dryly.

Westover had to break the silence that followed, and he found himself
defending Jeff, though somehow not for Jeff’s sake. He urged that if he
had the strong will they both recognized in him, he would never commit
the errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest.

“How do you know that a strong-willed man a’n’t a weak one?” Whitwell
astonished him by asking. “A’n’t what we call a strong will just a kind
of a bull-dog clinch that the dog himself can’t unloose? I take it a man
that has a good will is a strong man. If Jeff done a right thing against
his will, he wouldn’t rest easy till he’d showed that he wa’n’t obliged
to, by some mischief worse ‘n what he was kept out of. I tell you, Mr.
Westover, if I’d made that fellow toe the mark any way, I’d be afraid of
him.” Whitwell looked at Westover with eyes of significance, if not of
confidence. Then he rose with a prolonged “M--wel-l-l! We’re all born,
but we a’n’t all buried. This world is a queer place. But I guess Jeff
‘ll come out right in the end.”

Westover said, “I’m sure he will!” and he shook hands warmly with the
father of the girl Jeff was going to marry.

Whitwell came back, after he had got some paces away, and said: “Of
course, this is between you and me, Mr. Westover.”

“Of course!”

“I don’t mean Mis’ Durgin. I shouldn’t care what she thought of my
talkin’ him over with you. I don’t know,” he continued, putting up his
hand against the door-frame, to give himself the comfort of its support
while he talked, “as you understood what she mean by the young ladies
at Boston keepin’ up with the fellows in college. Well, that’s what
Cynthy’s doin’ with Jeff, right along; and if he ever works off them
conditions of his, and gits his degree, it’ ll be because she helped him
to. I tell you, there’s more than one kind of telepathy in this world,
Mr. Westover. That’s all.”



XXXIX

Westover understood from Whitwell’s afterthought that it was Cynthia he
was anxious to keep ignorant of his misgivings, if they were so much as
misgivings. But the importance of this fact could not stay him against
the tide of sleep which was bearing him down. When his head touched
the pillow it swept over him, and he rose from it in the morning with a
gayety of heart which he knew to be returning health. He jumped out of
bed, and stuffed some shavings into his stove from the wood-box beside
it, and laid some logs on them; he slid the damper open, and then lay
down again, listening to the fire that showed its red teeth through
the slats and roared and laughed to the day which sparkled on the white
world without. When he got out of bed a second time, he found the room
so hot that he had to pull down his window-sash, and he dressed in a
temperature of twenty degrees below zero without knowing that the dry
air was more than fresh. Mrs. Durgin called to him through the open door
of her parlor, as he entered the dining-room: “Cynthy will give you your
breakfast, Mr. Westover. We’re all done long ago, and I’m busy in here,”
 and the girl appeared with the coffee-pot and the dishes she had been
keeping hot for him at the kitchen stove. She seemed to be going to
leave him when she had put them down before him, but she faltered, and
then she asked: “Do you want I should pour your coffee for you?”

“Oh yes! Do!” he begged, and she sat down across the table from him.
“I’m ashamed to make this trouble for you,” he added. “I didn’t know it
was so late.”

“Oh, we have the whole day for our work,” she answered, tolerantly.

He laughed, and said: “How strange that seems! I suppose I shall get
used to it. But in town we seem never to have a whole day for a day’s
work; we always have to do part of it at night, or the next morning. Do
you ever have a day here that’s too large a size for its work?”

“You can nearly always find something to do about a house,” she
returned, evasively. “But the time doesn’t go the way it does in the
summer.”

“Oh, I know how the country is in the winter,” he said. “I was brought
up in the country.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said, and she gave him a stare of surprise
before her eyes fell.

“Yes. Out in Wisconsin. My people were emigrants, and I lived in the
woods, there, till I began to paint my way out. I began pretty early,
but I was in the woods till I was sixteen.”

“I didn’t know that,” she repeated. “I always thought that you were--”

“Summer folks, like the rest? No, I’m all-the-year-round folks
originally. But I haven’t been in the country in the winter since I was
a boy; and it’s all been coming back to me, here, like some one else’s
experience.”

She did not say anything, but the interest in her eyes, which she could
not keep from his face now, prompted him to go on.

“You can make a beginning in the West easier than you can in the East,
and some people who came to our lumber camp discovered me, and gave me a
chance to begin. I went to Milwaukee first, and they made me think I
was somebody. Then I came on to New York, and they made me think I was
nobody. I had to go to Europe to find out which I was; but after I had
been there long enough I didn’t care to know. What I was trying to do
was the important thing to me; not the fellow who was trying to do it.”

“Yes,” she said, with intelligence.

“I met some Boston people in Italy, and I thought I should like to live
where that kind of people lived. That’s the way I came to be in Boston.
It all seems very simple now, but I used to think it might look romantic
from the outside. I’ve had a happy life; and I’m glad it began in the
country. I shouldn’t care if it ended there. I don’t know why I’ve
bothered you with my autobiography, though. Perhaps because I thought
you knew it already.”

She looked as if she would have said something fitting if she could have
ruled herself to it; but she said nothing at all. Her failure seemed
to abash her, and she could only ask him if he would not have some more
coffee, and then excuse herself, and leave him to finish his breakfast
alone.

That day he tried for his picture from several points out-of-doors
before he found that his own window gave him the best. With the window
open, and the stove warm at his back, he worked there in great comfort
nearly every afternoon. The snows kept off, and the clear sunsets burned
behind the summit day after day. He painted frankly and faithfully, and
made a picture which, he said to himself, no one would believe in, with
that warm color tender upon the frozen hills. The soft suffusion of the
winter scene was improbable to him when he had it in, nature before
his eyes; when he looked at it as he got it on his canvas it was simply
impossible.

In the forenoons he had nothing to do, for he worked at his picture only
when the conditions renewed themselves with the sinking sun. He tried to
be in the open air, and get the good of it; but his strength for walking
had failed him, and he kept mostly to the paths broken around the house.
He went a good deal to the barn with Whitwell and Jombateeste to look
after the cattle and the horses, whose subdued stamping and champing
gave him a sort of animal pleasure. The blended odors of the hay-mows
and of the creatures’ breaths came to him with the faint warmth which
their bodies diffused through the cold obscurity.

When the wide doors were rolled back, and the full day was let in, he
liked the appeal of their startled eyes, and the calls they made to one
another from their stalls, while the men spoke back to them in terms
which they seemed to have in common with them, and with the poultry
that flew down from the barn lofts to the barn floor and out into the
brilliant day, with loud clamor and affected alarm.

In these simple experiences he could not imagine the summer life of the
place. It was nowhere more extinct than in the hollow verandas, where
the rocking-chairs swung in July and August, and where Westover’s steps
in his long tramps up and down woke no echo of the absent feet. In-doors
he kept to the few stove-heated rooms where he dwelt with the family,
and sent only now and then a vague conjecture into the hotel built round
the old farm-house. He meant, before he left, to ask Mrs. Durgin to
let him go through the hotel, but he put it off from day to day, with a
physical shrinking from its cold and solitude.

The days went by in the swiftness of monotony. His excursions to the
barn, his walks on the verandas, his work on his picture, filled up the
few hours of the light, and when the dark came he contentedly joined the
little group in Mrs. Durgin’s parlor. He had brought two or three books
with him, and sometimes he read from one of them; or he talked with
Whitwell on some of the questions of life and death that engaged his
speculative mind. Jombateeste preferred the kitchen for the naps he took
after supper before his early bedtime. Frank Whitwell sat with his
books there, where Westover sometimes saw his sister helping him at his
studies. He was loyally faithful and obedient to her in all things. He
helped her with the dishes, and was not ashamed to be seen at this work;
she had charge of his goings and comings in society; he submitted to
her taste in his dress, and accepted her counsel on many points which
he referred to her, and discussed with her in low-spoken conferences. He
seemed a formal, serious boy, shy like his sister; his father let fall
some hints of a religious cast of mind in him. He had an ambition beyond
the hotel; he wished to study for the ministry; and it was not alone
the chance of going home with the girls that made him constant at the
evening meetings. “I don’t know where he gits it,” said his father,
with a shake of the head that suggested doubt of the wisdom of the son’s
preference of theology to planchette.

Cynthia had the same care of her father as of her brother; she kept him
neat, and held him up from lapsing into the slovenliness to which he
would have tended if she had not, as Westover suspected, made constant
appeals to him for the respect due their guest. Mrs. Durgin, for her
part, left everything to Cynthia, with a contented acceptance of her
future rule and an abiding trust in her sense and strength, which
included the details of the light work that employed her rather
luxurious leisure. Jombateeste himself came to Cynthia with his mending,
and her needle kept him tight and firm against the winter which it
amused Westover to realize was the Canuck’s native element, insomuch
that there was now something incongruous in the notion of Jombateeste
and any other season.

The girl’s motherly care of all the household did not leave Westover
out. Buttons appeared on garments long used to shifty contrivances
for getting on without them; buttonholes were restored to their proper
limits; his overcoat pockets were searched for gloves, and the gloves
put back with their finger-tips drawn close as the petals of a flower
which had decided to shut and be a bud again.

He wondered how he could thank her for his share of the blessing that
her passion for motherly care was to all the house. It was pathetic,
and he used sometimes to forecast her self-devotion with a tender
indignation, which included a due sense of his own present demerit. He
was not reconciled to the sacrifice because it seemed the happiness, or
at least the will, of the nature which made it. All the same it seemed a
waste, in its relation to the man she was to marry.

Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia sat by the lamp and sewed at night, or listened
to the talk of the men. If Westover read aloud, they whispered together
from time to time about some matters remote from it, as women always do
where there is reading. It was quiet, but it was not dull for Westover,
who found himself in no hurry to get back to town.

Sometimes he thought of the town with repulsion; its unrest, its
vacuous, troubled life haunted him like a memory of sickness; but he
supposed that when he should be quite well again all that would change,
and be as it was before. He interested himself, with the sort of shrewd
ignorance of it that Cynthia showed in the questions she asked about
it now and then when they chanced to be left alone together. He
fancied that she was trying to form some intelligible image of Jeff’s
environment there, and was piecing together from his talk of it the
impressions she had got from summer folks. He did his best to help her,
and to construct for her a veritable likeness of the world as far as he
knew it.

A time came when he spoke frankly of Jeff in something they were saying,
and she showed no such shrinking as he had expected she would; he
reflected that she might have made stricter conditions with Mrs. Durgin
than she expected to keep herself in mentioning him. This might well
have been necessary with the mother’s pride in her son, which knew no
stop when it once began to indulge itself. What struck Westover more
than the girl’s self-possession when they talked of Jeff was a certain
austerity in her with regard to him. She seemed to hold herself tense
against any praise of him, as if she should fail him somehow if she
relaxed at all in his favor.

This, at least, was the rather mystifying impression which Westover got
from her evident wish to criticise and understand exactly all that he
reported, rather than to flatter herself from it. Whatever her motive
was, he was aware that through it all she permitted herself a closer and
fuller trust of himself. At times it was almost too implicit; he would
have liked to deserve it better by laying open all that had been in his
heart against Jeff. But he forbore, of course, and he took refuge, as
well as he could, in the respect by which she held herself at a reverent
distance from him when he could not wholly respect himself.



XL.

One morning Westover got leave from Mrs. Durgin to help Cynthia open
the dim rooms and cold corridors at the hotel to the sun and air. She
promised him he should take his death, but he said he would wrap up
warm, and when he came to join the girl in his overcoat and fur cap, he
found Cynthia equipped with a woollen cloud tied around her head, and a
little shawl pinned across her breast.

“Is that all?” he reproached her. “I ought to have put on a single
wreath of artificial flowers and some sort of a blazer for this
expedition. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Durgin?”

“I believe women can stand about twice as much cold as you can, the best
of you,” she answered, grimly.

“Then I must try to keep myself as warm as I can with work,” he said.
“You must let me do all the rough work of airing out, won’t you,
Cynthia?”

“There isn’t any rough work about it,” she answered, in a sort of
motherly toleration of his mood, without losing anything of her filial
reverence.

She took care of him, he perceived, as she took care of her brother and
her father, but with a delicate respect for his superiority, which was
no longer shyness.

They began with the office and the parlor, where they flung up the
windows, and opened the doors, and then they opened the dining-room,
where the tables stood in long rows, with the chairs piled on them legs
upward. Cynthia went about with many sighs for the dust on everything,
though to Westover’s eyes it all seemed frigidly clean. “If it goes on
as it has for the past two years,” she said, “we shall have to add on a
new dining-room. I don’t know as I like to have it get so large!”

“I never wanted it to go beyond the original farmhouse,” said Westover.
“I’ve been jealous of every boarder but the first. I should have liked
to keep it for myself, and let the world know Lion’s Head from my
pictures.”

“I guess Mrs. Durgin thinks it was your picture that began to send
people here.”

“And do you blame me, too? What if the thing I’m doing now should make
it a winter resort? Nothing could save you, then, but a fire. I believe
that’s Jeff’s ambition. Only he would want to put another hotel in place
of this; something that would be more popular. Then the ruin I began
would be complete, and I shouldn’t come any more; I couldn’t bear the
sight.”

“I guess Mrs. Durgin wouldn’t think it was lion’s Head if you stopped
coming,” said Cynthia.

“But you would know better than that,” said Westover; and then he
was sorry he had said it, for it seemed to ask something of different
quality from her honest wish to make him know their regard for him.

She did not answer, but went down a long corridor to which they had
mounted, to raise the window at the end, while he raised another at the
opposite extremity. When they met at the stairway again to climb to the
story above, he said: “I am always ashamed when I try to make a person
of sense say anything silly,” and she flushed, still without answering,
as if she understood him, and his meaning pleased her. “But fortunately
a person of sense is usually equal to the temptation. One ought to be
serious when he tries it with a person of the other sort; but I don’t
know that one is!”

“Do you feel any draught between these windows?” asked Cynthia,
abruptly. “I don’t want you should take cold.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” said Westover.

She went into the rooms on one side of the corridor, and put up their
windows, and flung the blinds back. He did the same on the other side.
He got a peculiar effect of desolation from the mattresses pulled down
over the foot of the bedsteads, and the dismantled interiors reflected
in the mirrors of the dressing-cases; and he was going to speak of it
when he rejoined Cynthia at the stairway leading to the third story,
when she said, “Those were Mrs. Vostrand’s rooms I came out of the
last.” She nodded her head over her shoulder toward the floor they were
leaving.

“Were they indeed! And do you remember people’s rooms so long?”

“Yes; I always think of rooms by the name of people that have them, if
they’re any way peculiar.”

He thought this bit of uncandor charming, and accepted it as if it were
the whole truth. “And Mrs. Vostrand was certainly peculiar. Tell me,
Cynthia, what did you think of her?”

“She was only here a little while.”

“But you wouldn’t have come to think of her rooms by her name if she
hadn’t made a strong impression on you!” She did not answer, and he
said, “I see you didn’t like her!”

The girl would not speak, and Mr. Westover went on: “She used to be very
good to me, and I think she used to be better to herself than she
is now.” He knew that Jeff must have told Cynthia of his affair with
Genevieve Vostrand, and he kept himself from speaking of her by a
resolution he thought creditable, as he mounted the stairs to the upper
story in the silence to which Cynthia left his last remark. At the top
she made a little pause in the obscurer light of the close-shuttered
corridor, while she said: “I liked her daughter the best.”

“Yes?” he returned. “I--never felt very well acquainted with her, I
believe. One couldn’t get far with her. Though, for the matter of that,
one didn’t get far with Mrs. Vostrand herself. Did you think Genevieve
was much influenced by her mother?”

“She didn’t seem a strong character.”

“No, that was it. She was what her mother wished her to be. I’ve often
wondered how much she was interested in the marriage she made.”

Cynthia let a rustic silence ensue, and Westover shrank again from the
inquisition he longed to make.

It was not Genevieve Vostrand’s marriage which really concerned him, but
Cynthia’s engagement, and it was her mind that he would have liked to
look into. It might well be supposed that she regarded it in a perfect
matter-of-fact way, and with no ambition beyond it. She was a country
girl, acquainted from childhood with facts of life which town-bred girls
would not have known without a blunting of the sensibilities, and why
should she be different from other country girls? She might be as
good and as fine as he saw her, and yet be insensible to the spiritual
toughness of Jeff, because of her love for him. Her very goodness might
make his badness unimaginable to her, and if her refinement were from
the conscience merely, and not from the tastes and experiences, too,
there was not so much to dread for her in her marriage with such a man.
Still, he would have liked, if he could, to tell her what he had told
her father of Durgin’s behavior with Lynde, and let her bring the test
of her self-devotion to the case with a clear understanding. He had
sometimes been afraid that Whitwell might not be able to keep it
to himself; but now he wished that the philosopher had not been so
discreet. He had all this so absorbingly in mind that he started
presently with the fear that she had said something and he had not
answered, but when he asked her he found that she had not spoken. They
were standing at an open window looking out upon Lion’s Head, when he
said: “I don’t know how I shall show my gratitude to Mrs. Durgin and you
for thinking of having me up here. I’ve done a picture of Lion’s Head
that might be ever so much worse; but I shouldn’t have dreamed of
getting at it if it hadn’t been for you, though I’ve so often dreamed
of doing it. Now I shall go home richer in every sort of way-thanks to
you.”

She answered, simply: “You needn’t thank anybody; but it was Jeff who
thought of it; we were ready enough to ask you.”

“That was very good of him,” said Westover, whom her words confirmed in
a suspicion he had had all along. But what did it matter that Jeff had
suggested their asking him, and then attributed the notion to them? It
was not so malign for him to use that means of ingratiating himself with
Westover, and of making him forget his behavior with Lynde, and it was
not unnatural. It was very characteristic; at the worst it merely proved
that Jeff was more ashamed of what he had done than he would allow, and
that was to his credit.

He heard Cynthia asking: “Mr. Westover, have you ever been at Class Day?
He wants us to come.”

“Class Day? Oh, Class Day!” He took a little time to gather himself
together. “Yes, I’ve been at a good many. If you care to see something
pretty, it’s the prettiest thing in the world. The students’ sisters
and mothers come from everywhere; and there’s fashion and feasting
and flirting, from ten in the morning till ten at night. I’m not sure
there’s so much happiness; but I can’t tell. The young people know about
that. I fancy there’s a good deal of defeat and disappointment in it
all. But if you like beautiful dresses, and music and dancing, and a
great flutter of gayety, you can get more of it at Class Day than
you can in any other way. The good time depends a great deal upon the
acquaintance a student has, and whether he is popular in college.”
 Westover found this road a little impassable, and he faltered.

Cynthia did not apparently notice his hesitation. “Do you think Mrs.
Durgin would like it?”

“Mrs. Durgin?” Westover found that he had been leaving her out of the
account, and had been thinking only of Cynthia’s pleasure or pain.
“Well, I don’t suppose--it would be rather fatiguing--Did Jeff want her
to come too?”

“He said so.”

“That’s very nice of him. If he could devote himself to her; but--And
would she like to go?”

“To please him, she would.” Westover was silent, and the girl surprised
him by the appeal she suddenly made to him. “Mr. Westover, do you
believe it would be very well for either of us to go? I think it would
be better for us to leave all that part of his life alone. It’s no use
in pretending that we’re like the kind of people he knows, or that we
know their ways, and I don’t believe--”

Westover felt his heart rise in indignant sympathy. “There isn’t any
one he knows to compare with you!” he said, and in this he was thinking
mainly of Bessie Lynde. “You’re worth a thousand--If I were--if he’s
half a man he would be proud--I beg your pardon! I don’t mean--but you
understand--”

Cynthia put her head far out of the window and looked along the steep
roof before them. “There is a blind off one of the windows. I heard it
clapping in the wind the other night. I must go and see the number of
the room.” She drew her head in quickly and ran away without letting him
see her face.

He followed her. “Let me help you put it on again!”

“No, no!” she called back. “Frank will do that, or Jombateeste, when
they come to shut up the house.”



XLI.

Westover, did not meet Durgin for several days after his return from
Lion’s Head. He brought messages for him from his mother and from
Whitwell, and he waited for him to come and get them so long that he had
to blame himself for not sending them to him. When Jeff appeared, at the
end of a week, Westover had a certain embarrassment in meeting him, and
the effort to overcome this carried him beyond his sincerity. He was
aware of feigning the cordiality he showed, and of having less real
liking for him than ever before. He suggested that he must be busier
every day, now, with his college work, and he resented the air of social
prosperity which Jeff put on in saying, Yes, there was that, and then he
had some engagements which kept him from coming in sooner.

He did not say what the engagements were, and they did not recur to the
things they had last spoken of. Westover could not do so without Jeff’s
leading, and he was rather glad that he gave none. He stayed only a
little time, which was spent mostly in a show of interest on both sides,
and the hollow hilarities which people use to mask their indifference
to one another’s being and doing. Jeff declared that he had never seen
Westover looking so well, and said he must go up to Lion’s Head again;
it had done him good. As for his picture, it was a corker; it made him
feel as if he were there! He asked about all the folks, and received
Westover’s replies with vague laughter, and an absence in his bold eye,
which made the painter wonder what his mind was on, without the wish to
find out. He was glad to have him go, though he pressed him to drop in
soon again, and said they would take in a play together.

Jeff said he would like to do that, and he asked at the door whether
Westover was going to the tea at Mrs. Bellingham’s. He said he had to
look in there, before he went out to Cambridge; and left Westover in
mute amaze at the length he had apparently gone in a road that had once
seemed no thoroughfare for him. Jeff’s social acceptance, even after the
Enderby ball, which was now some six or seven weeks past, had been slow;
but of late, for no reason that he or any one else could have given, it
had gained a sudden precipitance; and people who wondered why they met
him at other houses began to ask him to their own.

He did not care to go to their houses, and he went at first in the hope
of seeing Bessie Lynde again. But this did not happen for some time, and
it was a mid-Lenten tea that brought them together. As soon as he caught
sight of her he went up to her and began to talk as if they had been in
the habit of meeting constantly. She could not control a little start at
his approach, and he frankly recognized it.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh--the window!”

“It isn’t open,” he said, trying it. “Do you want to try it yourself?”

“I think I can trust you,” she answered, but she sank a little into the
shelter of the curtains, not to be seen talking with him, perhaps, or
not to be interrupted--she did not analyze her motive closely.

He remained talking to her until she went away, and then he contrived
to go with her. She did not try to escape him after that; each time
they met she had the pleasure of realizing that there had never been any
danger of what never happened. But beyond this she could perhaps have
given no better reason for her willingness to meet him again and again
than the bewildered witnesses of the fact. In her set people not only
never married outside of it, but they never flirted outside of it. For
one of themselves, even for a girl like Bessie, whom they had not quite
known from childhood, to be apparently amusing herself with a man like
that, so wholly alien in origin, in tradition, was something unheard of;
and it began to look as if Bessie Lynde was more than amused. It seemed
to Mary Enderby that wherever she went she saw that man talking to
Bessie. She could have believed that it was by some evil art that he
always contrived to reach Bessie’s side, if anything could have been
less like any kind of art than the bold push he made for her as soon
as he saw her in a room. But sometimes Miss Enderby feared that it was
Bessie who used such finesse as there was, and always put herself where
he could see her. She waited with trembling for her to give the affair
sanction by making her aunt ask him to something at her house. On the
other hand, she could not help feeling that Bessie’s flirtation was all
the more deplorable for the want of some such legitimation.

She did not even know certainly whether Jeff ever called upon Bessie at
her aunt’s house, till one day the man let him out at the same time he
let her in.

“Oh, come up, Molly!” Bessie sang out from the floor above, and met her
half-way down the stairs, where she kissed her and led her embraced into
the library.

“You don’t like my jay, do you, dear?” she asked, promptly.

Mary Enderby turned her face, the mirror of conscience, upon her, and
asked: “Is he your jay?”

“Well, no; not just in that sense, Molly. But suppose he was?”

“Then I should have nothing to say.”

“And suppose he wasn’t?”

Still Mary Enderby found herself with nothing of all she had a thousand
times thought she should say to Bessie if she had ever the slightest
chance. It always seemed so easy, till now, to take Bessie in her arms,
and appeal to her good sense, her self-respect, her regard for her
family and friends; and now it seemed so impossible.

She heard herself answering, very stiffly: “Perhaps I’d better apologize
for what I’ve said already. You must think I was very unjust the last
time we mentioned him.”

“Not at all!” cried Bessie, with a laugh that sounded very mocking and
very unworthy to her friend. “He’s all that you said, and worse. But
he’s more than you said, and better.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mary, coldly.

“He’s very interesting; he’s original; he’s different!”

“Oh, every one says that.”

“And he doesn’t flatter me, or pretend to think much of me. If he did,
I couldn’t bear him. You know how I am, Molly. He keeps me interested,
don’t you understand, and prowling about in the great unknown where he
has his weird being.”

Bessie put her hand to her mouth, and laughed at Mary Enderby with her
slanted eyes; a sort of Parisian version of a Chinese motive in eyes.

“I suppose,” her friend said, sadly, “you won’t tell me more than you
wish.”

“I won’t tell you more than I know--though I’d like to,” said Bessie.
She gave Mary a sudden hug. “You dear! There isn’t anything of it, if
that’s what you mean.”

“But isn’t there danger that there will be, Bessie?” her friend
entreated.

“Danger? I shouldn’t call it danger, exactly!”

“But if you don’t respect him, Bessie--”

“Why, how can I? He doesn’t respect me!”

“I know you’re teasing, now,” said Mary Enderby, getting up, “and you’re
quite right. I have no business to--”

Bessie pulled her down upon the seat again. “Yes, you have! Don’t I tell
you, over and over? He doesn’t respect me, because I don’t know how to
make him, and he wouldn’t like it if I did. But now I’ll try to make you
understand. I don’t believe I care for him the least; but mind, I’m not
certain, for I’ve never cared for any one, and I don’t know what it’s
like. You know I’m not sentimental; I think sentiment’s funny; and I’m
not dignified--”

“You’re divine,” murmured Mary Enderby, with reproachful adoration.

“Yes, but you see how my divinity could be improved,” said Bessie, with
a wild laugh. “I’m not sentimental, but I’m emotional, and he gives me
emotions. He’s a riddle, and I’m all the time guessing at him. You get
the answer to the kind of men we know easily; and it’s very nice, but it
doesn’t amuse you so much as trying. Now, Mr. Durgin--what a name! I can
see it makes you creep--is no more like one of us than a--bear is--and
his attitude toward us is that of a bear who’s gone so much with human
beings that he thinks he’s a human being. He’s delightful, that way.
And, do you know, he’s intellectual! He actually brings me books, and
wants to read passages to me out of them! He has brought me the plans of
the new hotel he’s going to build. It’s to be very aesthetic, and it’s
going to be called The Lion’s Head Inn. There’s to be a little theatre,
for amateur dramatics, which I could conduct, and for all sorts of
professional amusements. If you should ever come, Molly, I’m sure we
shall do our best to make you comfortable.”

Mary Enderby would not let Bessie laugh upon her shoulder after she said
this. “Bessie Lynde,” she said, severely, “if you have no regard for
yourself, you ought to have some regard for him. You may say you are not
encouraging him, and you may believe it--”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it,” Bessie broke in, with a
mock air of seriousness.

“I must be going,” said Mary, stiffly, and this time she succeeded in
getting to her feet.

Bessie laid hold of her again. “You think you’ve been trifled with,
don’t you, dear?”

“No--”

“Yes, you do! Don’t you try to be slippery, Molly. The plain pikestaff
is your style, morally speaking--if any one knows what a pikestaff is.
Well, now, listen! You’re anxious about me.”

“You know how I feel, Bessie,” said Mary Enderby, looking her in the
eyes.

“Yes, I do,” said Bessie. “The trouble is, I don’t know how I feel. But
if I ever do, Molly, I’ll tell you! Is that fair?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give you ample warning. At the least little consciousness in the
region of the pericardium, off will go a note by a district messenger,
and when you come I’ll do whatever you say. There!”

“Oh, Bessie!” cried her friend, and she threw her arms round her, “you
always were the most fascinating creature in the world!”

“Yes,” said Bessie, “that’s what I try to have him think.”



XLII.

Toward the end of April most people who had places at the Shore were
mostly in them, but they came up to town on frequent errands, and had
one effect of evanescence with people who still remained in their Boston
houses provisionally, and seemed more than half absent. The Enderbys
had been at the Shore for a fortnight, and the Lyndes were going to be a
fortnight longer in Boston, yet, as Bessie made her friend observe, when
Mary, ran in for lunch, or stopped for a moment on her way to the train,
every few days, they were both of the same transitory quality.

“It might as well be I as you,” Bessie said one day, “if we only think
so. It’s all very weird, dear, and I’m not sure but it is you who sit
day after day at my lonely casement and watch the sparrows examining the
fuzzy buds of the Jap ivy to see just how soon they can hope to build
in the vines. Do you object to the ivy buds looking so very much like
snipped woollen rags? If you do, I’m sure it’s you, here in my place,
for when I come up to town in your personality it sets my teeth on edge.
In fact, that’s the worst thing about Boston now--the fuzzy ivy buds;
there’s so much ivy! When you can forget the buds, there are a great
many things to make you happy. I feel quite as if we were spending the
summer in town and I feel very adventurous and very virtuous, like
some sort of self-righteous bohemian. You don’t know how I look down
on people who have gone out of town. I consider them very selfish
and heartless; I don’t know why, exactly. But when we have a good
marrow-freezing northeasterly storm, and the newspapers come out with
their ironical congratulations to the tax-dodgers at the Shore, I feel
that Providence is on my side, and I’m getting my reward, even in this
world.” Bessie suddenly laughed. “I see by your expression of fixed
inattention, Molly, that you’re thinking of Mr. Durgin!”

Mary gave a start of protest, but she was too honest to deny the fact
outright, and Bessie ran on:

“No, we don’t sit on a bench in the Common, or even in the Garden, or on
the walk in Commonwealth Avenue. If we come to it later, as the season
advances, I shall make him stay quite at the other end of the bench, and
not put his hand along the top. You needn’t be afraid, Molly; all the
proprieties shall be religiously observed. Perhaps I shall ask Aunt
Louisa to let us sit out on her front steps, when the evenings get
warmer; but I assure you it’s much more comfortable in-doors yet, even
in town, though you’ll hardly, believe it at the Shore. Shall you come
up to Class Day?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mary began, with a sigh of the baffled hope and the
inextinguishable expectation which the mention of Class Day stirs in the
heart of every Boston girl past twenty.

“Yes!” said Bessie, with a sigh burlesqued from Mary’s. “That is what
we all say, and it is certainly the most maddening of human festivals.
I suppose, if we were quite left to ourselves, we shouldn’t go; but
we seem never to be, quite. After every Class Day I say to myself that
nothing on earth could induce me to go to another; but when it comes
round again, I find myself grasping at any straw of a pretext. I’m
pretending now that I’ve a tender obligation to go because it’s his
Class Day.”

“Bessie!” cried Mary Enderby. “You don’t mean it!”

“Not if I say it, Mary dear. What did I promise you about the
pericardiac symptoms? But I feel--I feel that if he asks me I must go.
Shouldn’t you like to go and see a jay Class Day--be part of it? Think
of going once to the Pi Ute spread--or whatever it is! And dancing in
their tent! And being left out of the Gym, and Beck! Yes, I ought to go,
so that it can be brought home to me, and I can have a realizing sense
of what I am doing, and be stayed in my mad career.”

“Perhaps,” Mary Enderby suggested, colorlessly, “he will be devoted
to his own people.” She had a cold fascination in the picture Bessie’s
words had conjured up, and she was saying this less to Bessie than to
herself.

“And I should meet them--his mothers and sisters!” Bessie dramatized an
excess of anguish. “Oh, Mary, that is the very thorn I have been trying
not to press my heart against; and does your hand commend it to my
embrace? His folks! Yes, they would be folks; and what folks! I think
I am getting a realizing sense. Wait! Don’t speak don’t move, Molly!”
 Bessie dropped her chin into her hand, and stared straight forward,
gripping Mary Enderby’s hand.

Mary withdrew it. “I shall have to go, Bessie,” she said. “How is your
aunt?”

“Must you? Then I shall always say that it was your fault that I
couldn’t get a realizing sense--that you prevented me, just when I was
about to see myself as others see me--as you see me. She’s very well!”
 Bessie sighed in earnest, and her friend gave her hand a little pressure
of true sympathy. “But of course it’s rather dull here, now.”

“I hate to have you staying on. Couldn’t you come down to us for a
week?”

“No. We both think it’s best to be here when Alan gets back. We want him
to go down with us.” Bessie had seldom spoken openly with Mary Enderby
about her brother; but that was rather from Mary’s shrinking than her
own; she knew that everybody understood his case. She went so far now as
to say: “He’s ever so much better than he has been. We have such hopes
of him, if he can keep well, when he gets back this time.”

“Oh, I know he will,” said Mary, fervently. “I’m sure of it. Couldn’t we
do something for you, Bessie?”

“No, there isn’t anything. But--thank you. I know you always think of
me, and that’s worlds. When are you coming up again?”

“I don’t know. Next week, some time.”

“Come in and see me--and Alan, if he should be at home. He likes you,
and he will be so glad.”

Mary kissed Bessie for consent. “You know how much I admire Alan. He
could be anything.”

“Yes, he could. If he could!”

Bessie seldom put so much earnest in anything, and Mary loved (as she
would have said) the sad sincerity, the honest hopelessness of her tone.
“We must help him. I know we can.”

“We must try. But people who could--if they could--” Bessie stopped.

Her friend divined that she was no longer speaking wholly of her
brother, but she said: “There isn’t any if about it; and there are no
ifs about anything if we only think so. It’s a sin not to think so.”

The mixture of severity and of optimism in the nature of her friend had
often amused Bessie, and it did not escape her tacit notice in even
so serious a moment as this. Her theory was that she was shocked to
recognize it now, because of its relation to her brother, but her
theories did not always agree with the facts.

That evening, however, she was truly surprised when, after a rather
belated ring at the door, the card of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Durgin came
up to her from the reception-room. Her aunt had gone to bed, and she had
a luxurious moment in which she reaped all the reward of self-denial
by supposing herself to have foregone the pleasure of seeing him, and
sending down word that she was not at home. She did not wish, indeed, to
see him, but she wished to know how he felt warranted in calling in the
evening, and it was this unworthy, curiosity which she stifled for that
luxurious moment. The next, with undiminished dignity, she said, “Ask
him to come up, Andrew,” and she waited in the library for him to offer
a justification of the liberty he had taken.

He offered none whatever, but behaved at once as if he had always had
the habit of calling in the evening, or as if it was a general custom
which he need not account for in his own case. He brought her a book
which they had talked of at their last meeting, but he made no excuse or
pretext of it.

He said it was a beautiful night, and that he had found it rather warm
walking in from Cambridge. The exercise had moistened his whole rich,
red color, and fine drops of perspiration stood on his clean-shaven
upper lip and in the hollow between his under lip and his bold chin;
he pushed back the coarse, dark-yellow hair from his forehead with
his handkerchief, and let his eyes mock her from under his thick,
straw-colored eyebrows. She knew that he was enjoying his own impudence,
and he was so handsome that she could not refuse to enjoy it with him.
She asked him if he would not have a fan, and he allowed her to get it
for him from the mantel. “Will you have some tea?”

“No; but a glass of water, if you please,” he said, and Bessie rang and
sent for some apollinaris, which Jeff drank a great goblet of when it
came. Then he lay back in the deep chair he had taken, with the air of
being ready for any little amusing thing she had to say.

“Are you still a pessimist, Mr. Durgin?” she asked, tentatively, with
the effect of innocence that he knew meant mischief.

“No,” he said. “I’m a reformed optimist.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a man who can’t believe all the good he would like, but likes to
believe all the good he can.”

Bessie said it over, with burlesque thoughtfulness. “There was a
girl here to-day,” she said, solemnly, “who must have been a reformed
pessimist, then, for she said the same thing.”

“Oh! Miss Enderby,” said Jeff.

Bessie started. “You’re preternatural! But what a pity you should be
mistaken. How came you to think of her?”

“She doesn’t like me, and you always put me on trial after she’s been
here.”

“Am I putting you on trial now? It’s your guilty conscience! Why
shouldn’t Mary Enderby like you?”

“Because I’m not good enough.”

“Oh! And what has that to do with people’s liking you? If that was a
reason, how many friends do you think you would have?”

“I’m not sure that I should have any.”

“And doesn’t that make you feel badly?”

“Very.” Jeff’s confession was a smiling one.

“You don’t show it!”

“I don’t want to grieve you.”

“Oh, I’m not sure that would grieve me.”

“Well, I thought I wouldn’t risk it.”

“How considerate of you!”

They had come to a little barrier, up that way, and could go no further.
Jeff said: “I’ve just been interviewing another reformed pessimist.”

“Mr. Westover?”

“You’re preternatural, too. And you’re not mistaken, either. Do you ever
go to his studio?”

“No; I haven’t been there since he told me it would be of no use to come
as a student. He can be terribly frank.”

“Nobody knows that better than I do,” said Jeff, with a smile for the
notion of Westover’s frankness as he had repeatedly experienced it. “But
he means well.”

“Oh, that’s what they always say. But all the frankness can’t be well
meant. Why should uncandor be the only form of malevolence?”

“That’s a good idea. I believe I’ll put that up on Westover the next
time he’s frank.”

“And will you tell me what he says?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Jeff lay back in his chair at large ease
and chuckled. “I should like to tell you what he’s just been saying to
me, but I don’t believe I can.”

“Do!”

“You know he was up at Lion’s Head in February, and got a winter
impression of the mountain. Did you see it?”

“No. Was that what you were talking about?”

“We talked about something a great deal more interesting--the impression
he got of me.”

“Winter impression.”

“Cold enough. He had come to the conclusion that I was very selfish and
unworthy; that I used other people for my own advantage, or let them
use themselves; that I was treacherous and vindictive, and if I didn’t
betray a man I couldn’t be happy till I had beaten him. He said that if
I ever behaved well, it came after I had been successful one way or the
other.”

“How perfectly fascinating!” Bessie rested her elbow on the corner
of the table, and her chin in the palm of the hand whose thin fingers
tapped her red lips; the light sleeve fell down and showed her pretty,
lean little forearm. “Did it strike you as true, at all?”

“I could see how it might strike him as true.”

“Now you are candid. But go on! What did he expect you to do about it?”

“Nothing. He said he didn’t suppose I could help it.”

“This is immense,” said Bessie. “I hope I’m taking it all in. How came
he to give you this flattering little impression? So hopeful, too! Or,
perhaps your frankness doesn’t go any farther?”

“Oh, I don’t mind saying. He seemed to think it was a sort of abstract
duty he owed to my people.”

“Your-folks?” asked Bessie.

“Yes,” said Jeff, with a certain dryness. But as her face looked blankly
innocent, he must have decided that she meant nothing offensive. He
relaxed into a broad smile. “It’s a queer household up there, in the
winter. I wonder what you would think of it.”

“You might describe it to me, and perhaps we shall see.”

“You couldn’t realize it,” said Jeff, with a finality that piqued her.
He reached out for the bottle of apollinaris, with somehow the effect of
being in another student’s room, and poured himself a glass. This would
have amused her, nine times out of ten, but the tenth time had come when
she chose to resent it.

“I suppose,” she said, “you are all very much excited about Class Day at
Cambridge.”

“That sounds like a remark made to open the way to conversation.” Jeff
went on to burlesque a reply in the same spirit. “Oh, very much so
indeed, Miss Lynde! We are all looking forward to it so eagerly. Are you
coming?”

She rejected his lead with a slight sigh so skilfully drawn that it
deceived him when she said, gravely:

“I don’t know. It’s apt to be a very baffling time at the best. All the
men that you like are taken up with their own people, and even the men
that you don’t like overvalue themselves, and think they’re doing you
a favor if they give you a turn at the Gym or bring you a plate of
something.”

“Well, they are, aren’t they?”

“I suppose, yes, that’s what makes me hate it. One doesn’t like to have
such men do one a favor. And then, Juniors get younger every year! Even
a nice Junior is only a Junior,” she concluded, with a sad fall of her
mocking voice.

“I don’t believe there’s a Senior in Harvard that wouldn’t forsake his
family and come to the rescue if your feelings could be known,” said
Jeff. He lifted the bottle at his elbow and found it empty, and this
seemed to remind him to rise.

“Don’t make them known, please,” said Bessie. “I shouldn’t want an
ovation.” She sat, after he had risen, as if she wished to detain him,
but when he came up to take leave she had to put her hand in his. She
looked at it there, and so did he; it seemed very little and slim, about
one-third the size of his palm, and it seemed to go to nothing in his
grasp. “I should think,” she added, “that the jays would have the best
time on Class Day. I should like to dance at one of their spreads, and
do everything they did. It would be twice the fun, and there would be
some nature in it. I should like to see a jay Class Day.”

“If you’ll come out, I’ll show you one,” said Jeff, without wincing.

“Oh, will you?” she said, taking away her hand. “That would be
delightful. But what would become of your folks?” She caught a corner of
her mouth with her teeth, as if the word had slipped out.

“Do you call them folks?” asked Jeff, quietly:

“I--supposed--Don’t you?”

“Not in Boston. I do at Lion’s Head.”

“Oh! Well-people.”

“I don’t know as they’re coming.”

“How delightful! I don’t mean that; but if they’re not, and if you
really knew some jays, and could get me a little glimpse of their Class
Day--”

“I think I could manage it for you.” He spoke as before, but he looked
at her with a mockery in his lips and eyes as intelligent as her own,
and the latent change in his mood gave her the sense of being in the
presence of a vivid emotion. She rose in her excitement; she could
see that he admired her, and was enjoying her insolence too, in a way,
though in a way that she did not think she quite understood; and she had
the wish to make him admire her a little more.

She let a light of laughter come into her eyes, of harmless mischief
played to an end. “I don’t deserve your kindness, and I won’t come. I’ve
been very wicked, don’t you think?”

“Not very--for you,” said Jeff.

“Oh, how good!” she broke out. “But be frank now! I’ve offended you.”

“How? I know I’m a jay, and in the country I’ve got folks.”

“Ah, I see you’re hurt at my joking, and I’m awfully sorry. I wish there
was some way of making you forgive me. But it couldn’t be that alone,”
 she went on rather aimlessly as to her words, trusting to his answer
for some leading, and willing meanwhile to prolong the situation for the
effect in her nerves. It had been a very dull and tedious day, and she
was finding much more than she could have expected in the mingled fear
and slight which he inspired her with in such singular measure. These
feminine subtleties of motive are beyond any but the finest natures
in the other sex, and perhaps all that Jeff perceived was the note of
insincerity in her words.

“Couldn’t be what alone?” he asked.

“What I’ve said,” she ventured, letting her eyes fall; but they were not
eyes that fell effectively, and she instantly lifted them again to his.

“You haven’t said anything, and if you’ve thought anything, what have I
got to do with that? I think all sorts of things about people--or folks,
as you call them--”

“Oh, thank you! Now you are forgiving me!”

“I think them about you!”

“Oh, do sit down and tell me the kind of things you think about me!”
 Bessie implored, sinking back into her chair.

“You mightn’t like them.”

“But if they would do me good?”

“What should I want to do you good for?”

“That’s true,” sighed Bessie, thoughtfully.

“People--folks--”

“Thank you so much!”

“Don’t try to do each other good, unless they’re cranks like Lancaster,
or bores like Mrs. Bevidge--”

“You belong to the analytical school of Seniors! Go on!”

“That’s all,” said Jeff.

“And you don’t think I’ve tried to do you good?”

He laughed. Her comedy was delicious to him. He had never found, anybody
so amusing; he almost respected her for it.

“If that is your opinion of me, Mr. Durgin,” she said, very gravely, “I
am sorry. May I remark that I don’t see why you come, then?”

“I can tell you,” said Jeff, and he advanced upon her where she sat so
abruptly that she started and shrank back in her chair. “I come because
you’ve got brains, and you’re the only girl that has--here.” They were
Alan’s words, almost his words, and for an instant she thought of her
brother, end wondered what he would think of this jay’s praising her
in his terms. “Because,” Jeff went on, “you’ve got more sense and
nonsense--than all the women here put together. Because it’s better
than a play to hear you talk--and act; and because you’re graceful--and
fascinating, and chic, and--Good-night, Miss Lynde.”

He put out his hand, but she did not take it as she rose haughtily.
“We’ve said good-night once. I prefer to say good-bye this time. I’m
sure you will understand why after this I cannot see you again.” She
seemed to examine him for the effect of these words upon him before she
went on.

“No, I don’t understand,” he answered, coolly; “but it isn’t necessary
I should; and I’m quite willing to say good-bye, if you prefer. You
haven’t been so frank with me as I have with you; but that doesn’t make
any difference; perhaps you never meant to be, or couldn’t be, if you
meant. Good-bye.” He bowed and turned toward the door.

She fluttered between him and it. “I wish to know what you accuse me
of!”

“I? Nothing.”

“You imply that I have been unjust toward you.”

“Oh no!”

“And I can’t let you go till you prove it.”

“Prove to a woman that--Will you let me pass?”

“No!” She spread her slender arms across the doorway.

“Oh, very well!” Jeff took her hands and put them both in the hold of
one of his large, strong bands. Then, with the contact, it came to him,
from a varied experience of girls in his rustic past, that this young
lady, who was nothing but a girl after all, was playing her comedy with
a certain purpose, however little she might know it or own it. He put
his other large, strong hand upon her waist, and pulled her to him and
kissed her. Another sort of man, no matter what he had believed of her,
would have felt his act a sacrilege then and there. Jeff only knew
that she had not made the faintest straggle against him; she had even
trembled toward him, and he brutally exulted in the belief that he had
done what she wished, whether it was what she meant or not.

She, for her part, realized that she had been kissed as once she had
happened to see one of the maids kissed by the grocer’s boy at the
basement door. In an instant this man had abolished all her defences of
family, of society, of personality, and put himself on a level with her
in the most sacred things of life. Her mind grasped the fact and
she realized it intellectually, while as yet all her emotions seemed
paralyzed. She did not know whether she resented it as an abominable
outrage or not; whether she hated the man for it or not. But perhaps
he was in love with her, and his love overpowered him; in that case
she could forgive him, if she were in love with him. She asked herself
whether she was, and whether she had betrayed herself to him so that he
was somehow warranted in what he did. She wondered if another sort of
man would have done it, a gentleman, who believed she was in love with
him. She wondered if she were as much shocked as she was astonished.
She knew that there was everything in the situation to make the fact
shocking, but she got no distinct reply from her jarred consciousness.

It ought to be known, and known at once; she ought to tell her brother,
as soon as she saw him; she thought of telling her aunt, and she fancied
having to shout the affair into her ear, and having to repeat, “He
kissed me! Don’t you understand? Kissed me!” Then she reflected with a
start that she could never tell any one, that in the midst of her world
she was alone in relation to this; she was as helpless and friendless as
the poorest and lowliest girl could be. She was more so, for if she were
like the maid whom the grocer’s boy kissed she would be of an order of
things in which she could advise with some one else who had been kissed;
and she would know what to feel.

She asked herself whether she was at all moved at heart; till now it
seemed to her that it had not been different with her toward him from
what it had been toward all the other men whose meaning she would have
liked to find out. She had not in the least respected them, and she did
not respect him; but if it happened because he was overcome by his
love for her, and could not help it, then perhaps she must forgive him
whether she cared for him or not.

These ideas presented themselves with the simultaneity of things in a
dream in that instant when she lingered helplessly in his hold, and she
even wondered if by any chance Andrew had seen them; but she heard his
step on the floor below; and at the same time it appeared to her that
she must be in love with this man if she did not resent what he had
done.



XLIII

Westover was sitting at an open window of his studio smoking out into
the evening air, and looking down into the thinly foliaged tops of the
public garden, where the electrics fainted and flushed and hissed. Cars
trooped by in the troubled street, scraping the wires overhead that
screamed as if with pain at the touch of their trolleys, and kindling
now and again a soft planet, as the trolleys struck the batlike plates
that connected the crossing lines. The painter was getting almost as
much pleasure out of the planets as pain out of the screams, and he was
in an after-dinner languor in which he was very reluctant to recognize a
step, which he thought he knew, on his stairs and his stairs-landing. A
knock at his door followed the sound of the approaching steps. He lifted
himself, and called out, inhospitably, “Come in!” and, as he expected,
Jeff Durgin came in. Westover’s meetings with him had been an increasing
discomfort since his return from Lion’s Head. The uneasiness which he
commonly felt at the first moment of encounter with him yielded less
and less to the influence of Jeff’s cynical bonhomie, and it returned in
force as soon as they parted.

It was rather dim in the place, except for the light thrown up into
it from the turmoil of lights outside, but he could see that there was
nothing of the smiling mockery on Jeff’s face which habitually expressed
his inner hardihood. It was a frowning mockery.

“Hello!” said Westover.

“Hello!” answered Jeff. “Any commands for Lion’s Head?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going up there to-morrow. I’ve got to see Cynthia, and tell her
what I’ve been doing.”

Westover waited a moment before he asked: “Do you want me to ask what
you’ve been doing?”

“I shouldn’t mind it.”

The painter paused again. “I don’t know that I care to ask. Is it any
good?”

“No!” shouted Jeff. “It’s the worst thing yet, I guess you’ll think.
I couldn’t have believed it myself, if I hadn’t been through it. I
shouldn’t have supposed I was such a fool. I don’t care for the girl; I
never did.”

“Cynthia?”

“Cynthia? No! Miss Lynde. Oh, try to take it in!” Jeff cried, with a
laugh at the daze in Westover’s face. “You must have known about the
flirtation; if you haven’t, you’re the only one.” His vanity in the fact
betrayed itself in his voice. “It came to a crisis last week, and we
tried to make each other believe that we were in earnest. But there
won’t be any real love lost.”

Westover did not speak. He could not make out whether he was surprised
or whether he was shocked, and it seemed to him that he was neither
surprised nor shocked. He wondered whether he had really expected
something of the kind, sooner or later, or whether he was not always so
apprehensive of some deviltry in Durgin that nothing he did could quite
take him unawares. At last he said: “I suppose it’s true--even though
you say it. It’s probably the only truth in you.”

“That’s something like,” said Jeff, as if the contempt gave him a sort
of pleasure; and his heavy face lighted up and then darkened again.

“Well,” said Westover, “what are we going to do? You’ve come to tell
me.”

“I’m going to break with her. I don’t care for her--that!” He snapped
his fingers. “I told her I cared because she provoked me to. It happened
because she wanted it to and led up to it.”

“Ah!” said Westover. “You put it on her!” But he waited for Durgin’s
justification with a dread that he should find something in it.

“Pshaw! What’s the use? It’s been a game from the beginning, and a
question which should ruin. I won. She meant to throw me over, if the
time came for her, but it came for me first, and it’s only a question
now which shall break first; we’ve both been near it once or twice
already. I don’t mean she shall get the start of me.”

Westover had a glimpse of the innate enmity of the sexes in this game;
of its presence in passion that was lived and of its prevalence in
passion that was played. But the fate of neither gambler concerned him;
he was impatient of his interest in what Jeff now went on to tell him,
without scruple concerning her, or palliation of himself. He scarcely
realized that he was listening, but afterward he remembered it all, with
a little pity for Bessie and none for Jeff, but with more shame for her,
too. Love seems more sacredly confided to women than to men; it is and
must be a higher and finer as well as a holier thing with them; their
blame for its betrayal must always be the heavier. He had sometimes
suspected Bessie’s willingness to amuse herself with Jeff, as with any
other man who would let her play with him; and he would not have relied
upon anything in him to defeat her purpose, if it had been anything so
serious as a purpose.

At the end of Durgin’s story he merely asked: “And what are you going to
do about Cynthia?”

“I am going to tell her,” said Jeff. “That’s what I am going up there
for.”

Westover rose, but Jeff remained sitting where he had put himself
astride of a chair, with his face over the back. The painter walked
slowly up and down before him in the capricious play of the street
light. He turned a little sick, and he stopped a moment at the window
for a breath of air.

“Well?” asked Jeff.

“Oh! You want my advice?” Westover still felt physically incapable of
the indignation which he strongly imagined. “I don’t know what to say
to you, Durgin. You transcend my powers. Are you able to see this whole
thing yourself?”

“I guess so,” Jeff answered. “I don’t idealize it, though. I look at
facts; they’re bad enough. You don’t suppose that Miss Lynde is going to
break her heart over--”

“I don’t believe I care for Miss Lynde any more than I care for you. But
I believe I wish you were not going to break with her.”

“Why?”

“Because you and she are fit for each other. If you want my advice, I
advise you to be true to her--if you can.”

“And Cynthia?”

“Break with her.”

“Oh!” Jeff gave a snort of derision.

“You’re not fit for her. You couldn’t do a crueler thing for her than to
keep faith with her.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it. Stick to Miss Lynde--if she’ll let you.”

Jeff seemed puzzled by Westover’s attitude, which was either too sincere
or too ironical for him. He pushed his hat, which he had kept on, back
from his forehead. “Damned if I don’t believe she would,” he mused
aloud. The notion seemed to flatter him and repay him for what he must
have been suffering. He smiled, but he said: “She wouldn’t do, even if
she were any good. Cynthia is worth a million of her. If she wants to
give me up after she knows all about me, well and good. I shu’n’t blame
her. But I shall give her a fair chance, and I shu’n’t whitewash myself;
you needn’t be afraid of that, Mr. Westover.”

“Why should I care what you do?” asked the painter, scornfully.

“Well, you can’t, on my account,” Durgin allowed. “But you do care on
her account.”

“Yes, I do,” said Westover, sitting down again, and he did not say
anything more.

Durgin waited a long while for him to speak before he asked: “Then
that’s really your advice, is it?”

“Yes, break with her.”

“And stick to Miss Lynde.”

“If she’ll let you.”

Jeff was silent in his turn. He started from his silence with a laugh.
“She’d make a daisy landlady for Lion’s Head. I believe she would like
to try it awhile just for the fun. But after the ball was over--well,
it would be a good joke, if it was a joke. Cynthia is a woman--she a’n’t
any corpse-light. She understands me, and she don’t overrate me,
either. She knew just how much I was worth, and she took me at her own
valuation. I’ve got my way in life marked out, and she believes in it as
much as I do. If anybody can keep me level and make the best of me, she
can, and she’s going to have the chance, if she wants to. I’m going to
act square with her about the whole thing. I guess she’s the best judge
in a case like this, and I shall lay the whole case before her, don’t
you be afraid of that. And she’s got to have a free field. Why, even
if there wa’n’t any question of her,” he went on, falling more and more
into his vernacular, “I don’t believe I should care in the long run for
this other one. We couldn’t make it go for any time at all. She wants
excitement, and after the summer folks began to leave, and we’d been
to Florida for a winter, and then came back to Lion’s Head-well! This
planet hasn’t got excitement enough in it for that girl, and I doubt if
the solar system has. At any rate, I’m not going to act as advance-agent
for her.”

“I see,” said Westover, “that you’ve been reasoning it all out, and I’m
not surprised that you’ve kept your own advantage steadily in mind.
I don’t suppose you know what a savage you are, and I don’t suppose I
could teach you. I sha’n’t try, at any rate. I’ll take you on your own
ground, and I tell you again you had better break with Cynthia. I won’t
say that it’s what you owe her, for that won’t have any effect with you,
but it’s what you owe yourself. You can’t do a wrong thing and prosper
on it--”

“Oh yes, you can,” Jeff interrupted, with a sneering laugh. “How do you
suppose all the big fortunes were made? By keeping the Commandments?”

“No. But you’re an unlucky man if life hasn’t taught you that you must
pay in suffering of some kind, sooner or later, for every wrong thing
you do--”

“Now that’s one of your old-fashioned superstitions, Mr. Westover,” said
Jeff, with a growing kindliness in his tone, as if the pathetic delusion
of such a man really touched him. “You pay, or you don’t pay, just as
it happens. If you get hit soon after you’ve done wrong, you think it’s
retribution, and if it holds off till you’ve forgotten all about it, you
think it’s a strange Providence, and you puzzle over it, but you don’t
reform. You keep right along in the old way. Prosperity and adversity,
they’ve got nothing to do with conduct. If you’re a strong man, you get
there, and if you’re a weak man, all the righteousness in the universe
won’t help you. But I propose to do what’s right about Cynthia, and not
what’s wrong; and according to your own theory, of life--which won’t
hold water a minute--I ought to be blessed to the third and fourth
generation. I don’t look for that, though. I shall be blessed if I look
out for myself; and if I don’t, I shall suffer for my want of foresight.
But I sha’n’t suffer for anything else. Well, I’m going to cut some of
my recitations, and I’m going up to Lion’s Head, to-morrow, to settle
my business with Cynthia. I’ve got a little business to look after here
with some one else first, and I guess I shall have to be about it. I
don’t know which I shall like the best.” He rose, and went over to where
Westover was sitting, and held out his hand to him.

“What is it?” asked Westover.

“Any commands for Lion’s Head?” Jeff said, as at first.

“No,” said Westover, turning his face away.

“Oh, all right.” Durgin put his hand into his pocket unshaken.



XLIV

“What is it, Jeff?” asked Cynthia, the next night, as they started out
together after supper, and began to stroll down the hill toward her
father’s house. It lay looking very little and low in the nook at the
foot of the lane, on the verge of the woods that darkened away to the
northward from it, under the glassy night sky, lit with the spare young
moon. The peeping of the frogs in the marshy places filled the air; the
hoarse voice of the brook made itself heard at intervals through them.

“It’s not so warm here, quite, as it is in Boston,” he returned. “Are
you wrapped up enough? This air has an edge to it.”

“I’m all right,” said the girl. “What is it?”

“You think there’s something? You don’t believe I’ve come up for rest
over Sunday? I guess mother herself didn’t, and I could see your father
following up my little lies as if he wa’n’t going to let one escape him.
Well, you’re right. There is something. Think of the worst thing you
can, Cynthy!”

She pulled her hand out of his arm, which she had taken, and halted him
by her abrupt pause. “You’re not going to get through!”

“I’m all right on my conditions,” said Jeff, with forlorn derision.
“You’ll have to guess again.” He stood looking back over his shoulder at
her face, which showed white in the moonlight, swathed airily round in
the old-fashioned soft woollen cloud she wore.

“Is it some trouble you’ve got into? I shall stand by you!”

“Oh, you splendid girl! The trouble’s over, but it’s something you can’t
stand by me in, I guess. You know that girl I wrote to you about--the
one I met at the college tea, and--”

“Yes! Miss Lynde!”

“Come on! We can’t stay here talking. Let’s go down and sit on your
porch.” She mechanically obeyed him, and they started on together down
the hill again; but she did not offer to take his arm, and he kept the
width of the roadway from her.

“What about her?” she quietly asked.

“Last night I ended up the flirtation I’ve been carrying on with her
ever since.”

“I want to know just what you mean, Jeff.”

“I mean that last week I got engaged to her, and last night I broke with
her.” Cynthia seemed to stumble on something; he sprang over and caught.
her, and now she put her hand in his arm, and stayed herself by him as
they walked.

“Go on,” she said.

“That’s all there is of it.”

“No!” She stopped, and then she asked, with a kind of gentle
bewilderment: “What did you want to tell me for?”

“To let you break with me--if you wanted to.”

“Don’t you care for me any more?”

“Yes, more than ever I did. But I’m not fit for you, Cynthia. Mr.
Westover said I wasn’t. I told him about it--”

“What did he say?”

“That I ought to break with you.”

“But if you broke with her?”

“He told me to stick to her. He was right about you, Cynthy. I’m not fit
for you, and that’s a fact.”

“What was it about that girl? Tell me everything.” She spoke in a tone
of plaintive entreaty, very unlike the command she once used with Jeff
when she was urging him to be frank with her and true to himself. They
had come to her father’s house and she freed her hand from his arm
again, and sat down on the step before the side door with a little sigh
as of fatigue.

“You’ll take cold,” said Jeff, who remained on foot in front of her.

“No,” she said, briefly. “Go on.”

“Why,” Jeff began, harshly, and with a note of scorn for himself and his
theme in his voice, “there isn’t any more of it, but there’s no end
to her. I promised Mr. Westover I shouldn’t whitewash myself, and I
sha’n’t. I’ve been behaving badly, and it’s no excuse for me because she
wanted me to. I began to go for her as soon as I saw that she wanted me
to, and that she liked the excitement. The excitement is all that she
cared for; she didn’t care for me except for the excitement of it. She
thought she could have fun with me, and then throw me over; but I guess
she found her match. You couldn’t understand such a girl, and I don’t
brag of it. All she cared for was to flirt with me, and she liked it all
the more because I was a jay and she could get something new out of it.
I can’t explain it; but I could see it right along. She fooled herself
more than she fooled me.”

“Was she--very good-looking?” Cynthia asked, listlessly.

“No!” shouted Jeff. “She wasn’t good-looking at all. She was dark and
thin, and she had little slanting eyes; but she was graceful, and she
knew how to make herself go further than any girl I ever saw. If she
came into a room, she made you look at her, or you had to somehow. She
was bright, too; and she had more sense than all the other girls there
put together. But she was a fool, all the same.” Jeff paused. “Is that
enough?”

“It isn’t all.”

“No, it isn’t all. We didn’t meet much at first, but I got to walking
home with her from some teas; and then we met at a big ball. I
danced with her the whole while nearly, and--and I took her brother
home--Pshaw! He was drunk; and I--well, he had got drunk drinking with
me at the ball. The wine didn’t touch me, but it turned his head; and
I took him home; he’s a drunkard, anyway. She let us in when we got to
their house, and that kind of made a tie between us. She pretended to
think she was under obligations to me, and so I got to going to her
house.”

“Did she know how her brother got drunk?”

“She does now. I told her last night.”

“How came you to tell her?”

“I wanted to break with her. I wanted to stop it, once for all, and I
thought that would do it, if anything would.”

“Did that make her willing to give you up?”

Jeff checked himself in a sort of retrospective laugh. “I’m not so sure.
I guess she liked the excitement of that, too. You couldn’t understand
the kind of girl she--She wanted to flirt with me that night I brought
him home tipsy.”

“I don’t care to hear any more about her. Why did you give her up?”

“Because I didn’t care for her, and I did care for you, Cynthy.”

“I don’t believe it.” Cynthia rose from the step, where she had been
sitting, as if with renewed strength. “Go up and tell father to come
down here. I want to see him.” She turned and put her hand on the latch
of the door.

“You’re not going in there, Cynthia,” said Jeff. “It must be like death
in there.”

“It’s more like death out here. But if it’s the cold you mean, you
needn’t be troubled. We’ve had a fire to-day, airing out the house. Will
you go?”

“But what do you--what are you going to say to me?”

“I don’t know, yet. If I said anything now, I should tell you what Mr.
Westover did: go back to that girl, if she’ll let you. You’re fit for
each other, as he said. Did you tell her that you were engaged to some
one else?”

“I did, last night.”

“But before that she didn’t know how false you were. Well, you’re not
fit for her, then; you’re not good enough.”

She opened the door and went in, closing it after her. Jeff turned and
walked slowly away; then he came quickly back, as if he were going to
follow her within. But through the window he saw her as she stood by the
table with a lamp in her hand. She had turned up the light, which shone
full in her face and revealed its severe beauty broken and writhen with
the effort to repress her weeping. He might not have minded the severity
or the beauty, but the pathos was more than he could stand. “Oh, Lord!”
 he said, with a shrug, and he turned again and walked slowly up the
hill.

When Whitwell faced his daughter in the little sitting-room, whose low
ceiling his hat almost touched as he stood before her, the storm had
passed with her, and her tear-drenched visage wore its wonted look of
still patience.

“Did Jeff tell you why I sent for you, father?”

“No. But I knew it was trouble,” said Whitwell, with a dignity which-his
sympathy for her gave a countenance better adapted to the expression of
the lighter emotions.

“I guess you were right about him,” she resumed: She went on to tell
in brief the story that Jeff had told her. Her father did not interrupt
her, but at the end he said, inadequately: “He’s a comical devil. I knew
about his gittin’ that feller drunk. Mr. Westover told me when he was up
here.”

“Mr. Westover did!” said Cynthia, in a note of indignation.

“He didn’t offer to,” Whitwell explained. “I got it out of him in spite
of him, I guess.” He had sat down with his hat on, as his absent-minded
habit was, and he now braced his knees against the edge of the table.
Cynthia sat across it from him with her head drooped over it, drawing
vague figures on the board with her finger. “What are you goin’ to do?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“I guess you don’t quite realize it yet,” her father suggested,
tenderly. “Well, I don’t want to hurry you any. Take your time.”

“I guess I realize it,” said the girl.

“Well, it’s a pootty plain case, that’s a fact,” Whitwell conceded. She
was silent, and he asked: “How did he come to tell you?”

“It’s what he came up for. He began to tell me at once. I was certain
there was some trouble.”

“Was it his notion to come, I wonder, or Mr. Westover’s?”

“It was his. But Mr. Westover told him to break off with me, and keep on
with her, if she would let him.”

“I guess that was pootty good advice,” said Whitwell, letting his face
betray his humorous relish of it. “I guess there’s a pair of ‘em.”

“She was not playing any one else false,” said Cynthia, bitterly.

“Well, I guess that’s so, too,” her father assented. “‘Ta’n’t so much of
a muchness as you might think, in that light.” He took refuge from the
subject in an undirected whistle.

After a moment the girl asked, forlornly: “What should you do, father,
if you were in my place?”

“Well, there I guess you got me, Cynthy,” said her father. “I don’t
believe ‘t any man, I don’t care how old he is, or how much experience
he’s had, knows exactly how a girl feels about a thing like this, or has
got any call to advise her. Of course, the way I feel is like takin’ the
top of his head off. But I d’ know,” he added, “as that would do a great
deal of good, either. I presume a woman’s got rather of a chore to get
along with a man, anyway. We a’n’t any of us much to brag on. It’s out
o’ sight, out o’ mind, with the best of us, I guess.”

“It wouldn’t be with Jackson--it wouldn’t be with Mr. Westover.”

“There a’n’t many men like Mr. Westover--well, not a great many;
or Jackson, either. Time! I wish Jackson was home! He’d know how to
straighten this thing out, and he wouldn’t weaken over Jeff much--well,
not much. But he a’n’t here, and you’ve got to act for yourself. The way
I look at it is this: you took Jeff when you knowed what a comical
devil he was, and I presume you ha’n’t got quite the same right to be
disappointed in what he done as if you hadn’t knowed. Now mind, I a’n’t
excusin’ him. But if you knowed he was the feller to play the devil if
he got a chance, the question is whether--whether--”

“I know what you mean, father,” said the girl, “and I don’t want to
shirk my responsibility. It was everything to have him come right up and
tell me.”

“Well,” said Whitwell, impartially, “as far forth as that goes, I don’t
think he’s strained himself. He’d know you would hear of it sooner or
later anyway, and he ha’n’t just found out that he was goin’ wrong. Been
keepin’ it up for the last three months, and writin’ you all the while
them letters you was so crazy to get.”

“Yes,” sighed the girl. “But we’ve got to be just to his disposition as
well as his actions. I can see it in one light that can excuse it some.
He can’t bear to be put down, and I know he’s been left out a good
deal among the students, and it’s made him bitter. He told me about it;
that’s one reason why he wanted to leave Harvard this last year. He saw
other young men made much of, when he didn’t get any notice; and when
he had the chance to pay them back with a girl of their own set that was
trying to make a fool of him--”

“That was the time for him to remember you,” said Whitwell.

Cynthia broke under the defence she was trying to make. “Yes,” she said,
with an indrawn sigh, and she began to sob piteously.

The sight of her grief seemed to kindle her father’s wrath to a flame.
“Any way you look at him, he’s been a dumn blackguard; that’s what he’s
been. You’re a million times too good for him; and I--”

She sobbed herself quiet, and then she said: “Father, I don’t like to go
up there to-night. I want to stay here.”

“All right, Cynthia. I’ll come down and stay with you. You got
everything we want here?”

“Yes. And I’ll go up and get the breakfast for them in the morning.
There won’t be much to do.”

“Dumn ‘em! Let ‘em get their own breakfast!” said Whitwell, recklessly.

“And, father,” the girl went on as if he had not spoken, “don’t you talk
to Mrs. Durgin about it, will you?”

“No, no. I sha’n’t speak to her. I’ll just tell Frank you and me are
goin’ to stay down here to-night. She’ll suspicion something, but she
can figure it out for herself. Or she can make Jeff tell her. It can’t
be kept from her.”

“Well, let him be the one to tell her. Whatever happens, I shall never
speak of it to a soul besides you.”

“All right, Cynthy. You’ll have the night to think it over--I guess you
won’t sleep much--and I’ll trust you to do what’s the best thing about
it.”



XLV.

Cynthia found Mrs. Durgin in the old farm-house kitchen at work getting
breakfast when she came up to the hotel in the morning. She was early,
but the elder woman had been earlier still, and her heavy face showed
more of their common night-long trouble than the girl’s.

She demanded, at sight of her, “What’s the matter with you and Jeff,
Cynthy?”

Cynthia was unrolling the cloud from her hair. She said, as she tied on
her apron: “You must get him to tell you, Mrs. Durgin.”

“Then there is something?”

“Yes.”

“Has Jeff been using you wrong?”

Cynthia stooped to open the oven door, and to turn the pan of biscuit
she found inside. She shut the door sharply to, and said, as she rose:
“I don’t want to tell anything about it, and I sha’n’t, Mrs. Durgin. He
can do it, if he wants to. Shall I make the coffee?”

“Yes; you seem to make it better than I do. Do you think I shouldn’t
believe you was fair to him?”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. But it’s his secret. If he wants to keep it,
he can keep it, for all me.”

“You ha’n’t give each other up?”

“I don’t know.” Cynthia turned away with a trembling chin, and began to
beat the coffee up with an egg she had dropped into the pot. She put
the breakfast on the table when it was ready, but she would not sit down
with the rest. She said she did not want any breakfast, and she drank a
cup of coffee in the kitchen.

It fell to Jeff mainly to keep the talk going. He had been out at the
barn with Jombateeste since daybreak, looking after the cattle, and the
joy of the weather had got into his nerves and spirits. At first he
had lain awake after he went to bed, but he had fallen asleep about
midnight, and got a good night’s rest. He looked fresh and strong and
very handsome. He talked resolutely to every one at the table, but
Jombateeste was always preoccupied with eating at his meals, and Frank
Whitwell had on a Sunday silence, which was perhaps deepened by a
feeling that there was something wrong between his sister and Jeff,
and it would be rash to commit himself to an open friendliness until he
understood the case. His father met Jeff’s advances with philosophical
blandness and evasion, and Mrs. Durgin was provisionally dry and severe
both with the Whitwells and her son. After breakfast she went to the
parlor, and Jeff set about a tour of the hotel, inside and out. He
looked carefully to the details of its winter keeping. Then he came
back and boldly joined his mother where she sat before her stove, whose
subdued heat she found pleasant in the lingering cold of the early
spring.

He tossed his hat on the table beside her, and sat down on the other
side of the stove. “Well, I must say the place has been well looked
after. I don’t believe Jackson himself could have kept it in better
shape. When was the last you heard from him?”

“I hope,” said his mother, gravely, “you’ve been lookin’ after your end
at Boston, too.”

“Well, not as well as you have here, mother,” said Jeff, candidly. “Has
Cynthy told you?”

“I guess she expected you to tell me, if there was anything.”

“There’s a lot; but I guess I needn’t go over it all. I’ve been playing
the devil.”

“Jeff!”

“Yes, I have. I’ve been going with another girl down there, one the kind
you wanted me to make up to, and I went so far I--well, I made love to
her; and then I thought it over, and found out I didn’t really care for
her, and I had to tell her so, and then I came up to tell Cynthy. That’s
about the size of it. What do you think of it?”

“D’ you tell Cynthy?”

“Yes, I told her.”

“What ‘d she say?”

“She said I’d better go back to the other girl.” Jeff laughed hardily,
but his mother remained impassive.

“I guess she’s right; I guess you had.”

“That seems to be the general opinion. That’s what Mr. Westover advised.
I seem to be the only one against it. I suppose you mean that I’m not
fit for Cynthy. I don’t deny it. All I say is I want her, and I don’t
want the other one. What are you going to do in a case like that?”

“The way I should look at it,” said his mother, “is this: whatever you
are, Cynthy made you. You was a lazy, disobedient, worthless boy, and
it was her carin’ for you from the first that put any spirit and any
principle into you. It was her that helped you at school when you was
little things together; and she helped you at the academy, and she’s
helped you at college. I’ll bet she could take a degree, or whatever
it is, at Harvard better than you could now; and if you ever do take a
degree, you’ve got her to thank for it.”

“That’s so,” said Jeff. “And what’s the reason you didn’t want me to
marry her when I came in here last summer and told you I’d asked her
to?”

“You know well enough what the reason was. It was part of the same thing
as my wantin’ you to be a lawyer; but I might knowed that if you didn’t
have Cynthy to go into court with you, and put the words into your
mouth, you wouldn’t make a speech that would”--Mrs. Durgin paused for a
fitting figure--“save a flea from the gallows.”

Jeff burst into a laugh. “Well, I guess that’s so, mother. And now you
want me to throw away the only chance I’ve got of learning how to run
Lion’s Head in the right way by breaking with Cynthy.”

“Nobody wants you to run Lion’s Head for a while yet,” his mother
returned, scornfully. “Jackson is going to run Lion’s Head. He’ll be
home the end of June, and I’ll run Lion’s Head till he gets here. You
talk,” she went on, “as if it was in your hands to break with Cynthy, or
throw away the chance with her. The way I look at it, she’s broke with
you, and you ha’n’t got any chance with her. Oh, Jeff,” she suddenly
appealed to him, “tell me all about it! What have you been up to? If I
understood it once, I know I can make her see it in the right light.”

“The better you understand it, mother, the less you’ll like it; and I
guess Cynthy sees it in the right light already. What did she say?”

“Nothing. She said she’d leave it to you.”

“Well, that’s like Cynthy. I’ll tell you, then,” said Jeff; and he
told his mother his whole affair with Bessie Lynde. He had to be
very elemental, and he was aware, as he had never been before, of the
difference between Bessie’s world and his mother’s world, in trying to
make Bessie’s world conceivable to her.

He was patient in going over every obscure point, and illustrating from
the characters and condition of different summer folks the facts
of Bessie’s entourage. It is doubtful, however, if he succeeded in
conveying to his mother a clear and just notion of the purely chic
nature of the girl. In the end she seemed to conceive of her simply as
a hussy, and so pronounced her, without limit or qualification, in spite
of Jeff’s laughing attempt to palliate her behavior, and to inculpate
himself. She said she did not see what he had done that was so much out
of the way. That thing had led him on from the beginning; she had merely
got her come-uppings, when all was said. Mrs. Durgin believed Cynthia
would look at it as she did, if she could have it put before her
rightly. Jeff shook his head with persistent misgiving. His notion was
that Cynthia saw the affair only too clearly, and that there was no new
light to be thrown on it from her point of view. Mrs. Durgin would not
allow this; she was sure that she could bring Cynthia round; and she
asked Jeff whether it was his getting that fellow drunk that she seemed
to blame him for the most. He answered that he thought that was pretty
bad, but he did not believe that was the worst thing in Cynthia’s eyes.
He did not forbid his mother’s trying to do what she could with her,
and he went away for a walk, and left the house to the two women.
Jombateeste was in the barn, which he preferred to the house, and
Frank Whitwell had gone to church over at the Huddle. As Jeff passed
Whitwell’s cottage in setting out on his stroll he saw the philosopher
through the window, seated with his legs on the table, his hat pushed
back, and his spectacles fallen to the point of his nose, reading, and
moving his lips as he read.

The forenoon sun was soft, but the air was cool.

There was still plenty of snow on the upper slopes of the hills, and
there was a drift here and there in a corner of pasture wall in the
valley; but the springtime green was beginning to hover over the wet
places in the fields; the catkins silvered the golden tracery of the
willow branches by the brook; there was a buzz of bees about them, and
about the maples, blackened by the earlier flow of sap through the holes
in the bark made by the woodpeckers’ bills. Now and then the tremolo of
a bluebird shook in the tender light and the keen air. At one point in
the road where the sun fell upon some young pines in a sheltered spot a
balsamic odor exhaled from them.

These gentle sights and sounds and odors blended in the influence which
Jeff’s spirit felt more and more. He realized that he was a blot on the
loveliness of the morning. He had a longing to make atonement and to win
forgiveness. His heart was humbled toward Cynthia, and he went wondering
how his mother would make it out with her, and how, if she won him any
advantage, he should avail himself of it and regain the girl’s trust;
he had no doubt of her love. He perceived that there was nothing for
him hereafter but the most perfect constancy of thought and deed, and he
desired nothing better.

At a turn of his road where it branched toward the Huddle a group of
young girls stood joking and laughing; before Jeff came up with them
they separated, and all but one continued on the way beyond the turning.
She came toward Jeff, who gayly recognized her as she drew near.

She blushed and bridled at his bow and at his beauty and splendor, and
in her embarrassment pertly said that she did not suppose he would have
remembered her. She was very young, but at fifteen a country girl is not
so young as her town sister at eighteen in the ways of the other sex.

Jeff answered that he should have known her anywhere, in spite of her
looking so much older than she did in the summer when she had come with
berries to the hotel. He said she must be feeling herself quite a young
lady now, in her long dresses, and he praised the dress which she had
on. He said it became her style; and he found such relief from his heavy
thoughts in these harmless pleasantries that he kept on with them. He
had involuntarily turned with her to walk back to her house on the way
he had come, and he asked her if he might not carry her catkins for her.
She had a sheaf of them in the hollow of her slender arm, which seemed
to him very pretty, and after a little struggle she yielded them to him.
The struggle gave him still greater relief from his self-reproach,
and at her gate he begged her to let him keep one switch of the
pussywillows, and he stood a moment wondering whether he might not
ask her for something else. She chose one from the bundle, and drew it
lightly across his face before she put it in his hand. “You may have
this for Cynthy,” she said, and she ran laughingly up the pathway to her
door.



XLVI

Cynthia did not appear at dinner, and Jeff asked his mother when he saw
her alone if she had spoken to the girl. “Yes, but she said she did not
want to talk yet.”

“All right,” he returned. “I’m going to take a nap; I believe I feel as
if I hadn’t slept for a month.”

He slept the greater part of the afternoon, and came down rather dull to
the early tea. Cynthia was absent again, and his mother was silent and
wore a troubled look. Whitwell was full of a novel conception of the
agency of hypnotism in interpreting the life of the soul as it is
intimated in dreams. He had been reading a book that affirmed the
consubstantiality of the sleep-dream and the hypnotic illusion. He
wanted to know if Jeff, down at Boston, had seen anything of the
hypnotic doings that would throw light on this theory.

It was still full light when they rose from the table, and it was
scarcely twilight when Jeff heard Cynthia letting herself out at the
back door. He fancied her going down to her father’s house, and he went
out to the corner of the hotel to meet her. She faltered a moment at
sight of him, and then kept on with averted face.

He joined her, and walked beside her. “Well, Cynthy, what are you going
to say to me? I’m off for Cambridge again to-morrow morning, and I
suppose we’ve got to understand each other. I came up here to put myself
in your hands, to keep or to throw away, just as you please. Well? Have
you thought about it?”

“Every minute,” said the girl, quietly.

“Well?”

“If you had cared for me, it couldn’t have happened.”

“Oh yes, it could. Now that’s just where you’re mistaken. That’s where
a woman never can understand a man. I might carry on with half a dozen
girls, and yet never forget you, or think less of you, although I could
see all the time how pretty and bright every one of ‘em was. That’s the
way a man’s mind is built. It’s curious, but it’s true.”

“I don’t believe I care for any share in your mind, then,” said the
girl.

“Oh, come, now! You don’t mean that. You know I was just joking; you
know I don’t justify what I’ve done, and I don’t excuse it. But I think
I’ve acted pretty square with you about it--about telling you, I mean.
I don’t want to lay any claim, but you remember when you made me promise
that if there was anything shady I wanted to hide from you--Well, I
acted on that. You do remember?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, and she pulled the cloud over the side of her face
next to him, and walked a little faster.

He hastened his steps to keep up with her. “Cynthy, if you put your arms
round me, as you did then--”

“I can’t Jeff!”

“You don’t want to.”

“Yes, I do! But you don’t want me to, as you did then. Do you?” She
stopped abruptly and faced him full. “Tell me, honestly!”

Jeff dropped his bold eyes, and the smile left his handsome mouth.

“You don’t,” said the girl, “for you know that if you did, I would do
it.” She began to walk on again. “It wouldn’t be hard for me to forgive
you anything you’ve done against me--or against yourself; I should care
for you the same--if you were the same person; but you’re not the same,
and you know it. I told you then--that time that I didn’t want to make
you do what you knew was right, and I never shall try to do it again.
I’m sorry I did it then. I was wrong. And I should be afraid of you if I
did now. Some time you would make me suffer for it, just as you’ve made
me suffer for making you do then what was right.”

It struck Jeff as a very curious fact that Cynthia must always have
known him better than he knew himself in some ways, for he now perceived
the truth and accuracy of her words. He gave her mind credit for the
penetration due her heart; he did not understand that it is through
their love women divine the souls of men. What other witnesses of his
character had slowly and carefully reasoned out from their experience of
him she had known from the beginning, because he was dear to her.

He was silent, and then, with rare gravity, he said, “Cynthia, I believe
you’re right,” and he never knew how her heart leaped toward him at
his words. “I’m a pretty bad chap, I guess. But I want you to give me
another chance and I’ll try not to make you pay for it, either,” he
added, with a flicker of his saucy humor.

“I’ll give you a chance, then,” she said, and she shrank from the hand
he put out toward her. “Go back and tell that girl you’re free now, and
if she wants you she can have you.”

“Is that what you call a chance?” demanded Jeff, between anger and
injury. For an instant he imagined her deriding him and revenging
herself.

“It’s the only one I can give you. She’s never tried to make you do what
was right, and you’ll never be tempted to hurt her.”

“You’re pretty rough on me, Cynthy,” Jeff protested, almost plaintively.
He asked, more in character: “Ain’t you afraid of making me do right,
now?”

“I’m not making you. I don’t promise you anything, even if she won’t
have you.”

“Oh!”

“Did you suppose I didn’t mean that you were free? That I would put a
lie in your mouth for you to be true with?”

“I guess you’re too deep for me,” said Jeff, after a sulky silence.

“Then it’s all off between us? What do you say?”

“What do you say?”

“I say it’s just as it was before, if you care for me.”

“I care for you, but it can never be the same as it was before. What
you’ve done, you’ve done. I wish I could help it, but I can’t. I can’t
make myself over into what I was twenty-four hours ago. I seem another
person, in another world; it’s as if I died, and came to life somewhere
else. I’m sorry enough, if that could help, but it can’t. Go and tell
that girl the truth: that you came up here to me, and I sent you back to
her.”

A gleam of amusement visited Jeff in the gloom where he seemed to be
darkling. He fancied doing that very thing with Bessie Lynde, and the
wild joy she would snatch from an experience so unique, so impossible.
Then the gleam faded. “And what if I didn’t want her?” he demanded.

“Tell her that too,” said Cynthia.

“I suppose,” said Jeff, sulkily, “you’ll let me go away and do as I
please, if I’m free.”

“Oh yes. I don’t want you to do anything because I told you. I won’t
make that mistake again. Go and do what you are able to do of your own
free will. You know what you ought to do as well as I do; and you know a
great deal better what you can do.”

They had reached Cynthia’s house, and they were talking at the side
door, as they had the night before, when there had been hope for her in
the newness of her calamity, before she had yet fully imagined it.

Jeff made no answer to her last words. He asked, “Am I going to see you
again?”

“I guess not. I don’t believe I shall be up before you start.”

“All right. Good-bye, then.” He held out his hand, and she put hers in
it for the moment he chose to hold it. Then he turned and slowly climbed
the hill.

Cynthia was still lying with her face in her pillow when her father
came into the dark little house, and peered into her room with the newly
lighted lamp in his hand. She turned her face quickly over and looked at
him with dry and shining eyes.

“Well, it’s all over with Jeff and me, father.”

“Well, I’m satisfied,” said Whitwell. “If you could ha’ made it up, so
you could ha’ felt right about it, I shouldn’t ha’ had anything to say
against it, but I’m glad it’s turned out the way it has. He’s a comical
devil, and he always was, and I’m glad you a’n’t takin’ on about him any
more. You used to have so much spirit when you was little.”

“Oh,--spirit! You don’t know how much spirit I’ve had, now.”

“Well, I presume not,” Whitwell assented.

“I’ve been thinking,” said the girl, after a little pause, “that we
shall have to go away from here.”

“Well, I guess not,” her father began. “Not for no Jeff Dur--”

“Yes, yes. We must! Don’t make one talk about it. We’ll stay here till
Jackson gets back in June, and then--we must go somewhere else. We’ll go
down to Boston, and I’ll try to get a place to teach, or something, and
Frank can get a place.”

“I presume,” Whitwell mused, “that Mr. Westover could--”

“Father!” cried the girl, with an energy that startled him, as she
lifted herself on her elbow. “Don’t ever think of troubling Mr.
Westover! Oh,” she lamented, “I was thinking of troubling him myself!
But we mustn’t, we mustn’t! I should be so ashamed!”

“Well,” said Whitwell, “time enough to think about all that. We got two
good months yet to plan it out before Jackson gets back, and I guess we
can think of something before that. I presume,” he added, thoughtfully,
“that when Mrs. Durgin hears that you’ve give Jeff the sack, she’ll make
consid’able of a kick. She done it when you got engaged.”



XLVII.

After he went back to Cambridge, Jeff continued mechanically in the
direction given him by motives which had ceased for him. In the midst
of his divergence with Bessie Lynde he had still kept an inner fealty to
Cynthia, and tried to fulfil the purposes and ambition she had for him.
The operation of this habitual allegiance now kept him up to his work,
but the time must come when it could no longer operate, when his whole
consciousness should accept the fact known to his intelligence, and he
should recognize the close of that incident of his life as the bereaved
finally accept and recognize the fact of death.

The event brought him relief, and it brought him freedom. He was
sensible in his relaxation of having strained up to another’s ideal, of
having been hampered by another’s will. His pleasure in the relief was
tempered by a regret, not wholly unpleasant, for the girl whose aims,
since they were no longer his, must be disappointed. He was sorry for
Cynthia, and in his remorse he was fonder of her than he had ever been.
He felt her magnanimity and clemency; he began to question, in that
wordless deep of being where volition begins, whether it would not be
paying a kind of duty to her if he took her at her word and tried to go
back to Bessie Lynde. But for the present he did nothing but renounce
all notion of working at his conditions, or attempting to take a degree.
That was part of a thing that was past, and was no part of anything to
come, so far as Jeff now forecast his future.

He did not choose to report himself to Westover, and risk a scolding,
or a snubbing. He easily forgave Westover for the tone he had taken at
their last meeting, but he did not care to see him. He would have met
him half-way, however, in a friendly advance, and he was aware of much
good-will toward him, which he could not have been reluctant to show if
chance had brought them together.

Jeff missed Cynthia’s letters which used to come so regularly every
Tuesday, and he had a half-hour every Sunday which was at first rather
painfully vacant since he no longer wrote to her. But in this vacancy
he had at least no longer the pang of self-reproach which her letters
always brought him, and he was not obliged to put himself to the shame
of concealment in writing to her. He had never minded that tacit lying
on his own account, but he hated it in relation to her; it always hurt
him as something incongruous and unfit. He wrote to his mother now
on Sunday, and in his first letter, while the impression of Cynthia’s
dignity and generosity was still vivid, he urged her to make it clear to
the girl that he wished her and her family to remain at Lion’s Head as
if nothing had happened. He put a great deal of real feeling into this
request, and he offered to go and spend a year in Europe, if his mother
thought that Cynthia would be more reconciled to his coming back at the
end of that time.

His mother answered with a dryness to which his ear supplied the tones
of her voice, that she would try to get along in the management of
Lion’s Head till his brother got back, but that she had no objection to
his going to Europe for a year if he had the money to spare. Jeff could
not refuse her joke, as he felt it, a certain applause, but he thought
it pretty rough that his mother should take part so decidedly against
him as she seemed to be doing. He had expected her to be angry with him,
but before they parted she had seemed to find some excuse for him, and
yet here she was siding against her own son in what he might very well
consider an unnatural way. If Jackson had been at home he would have
laid it to his charge; but he knew that Cynthia would have scorned
even to speak of him with his mother, and he knew too well his mother’s
slight for Whitwell to suppose that he could have influenced her.
His mind turned in momentary suspicion to Westover. Had Westover,
he wondered, with a purpose to pay him up for it forming itself
simultaneously with his question, been setting his mother against him?
She might have written to Westover to get at the true inwardness of his
behavior, and Westover might have written her something that had made
her harden her heart against him. But upon reflection this seemed out of
character for both of them; and Jeff was thrown back upon his mother’s
sober second thought of his misconduct for an explanation of her
coldness. He could not deny that he had grievously disappointed her in
several ways. But he did not see why he should not take a certain hint
from her letter, or construct a hint from it, at one with a vague intent
prompted by his own restless and curious vanity. Since he had parted
with Bessie Lynde, on terms of humiliation for her which must have been
anguish for him if he had ever loved her, or loved anything but his
power over her, he had remained in absolute ignorance of her. He had
not heard where she was or how she was; but now, as the few weeks before
Class Day and Commencement crumbled away, he began to wonder why she
made no sign. He believed that since she had been willing to go so
far to get him, she would not be willing to give him up so easily. The
thought of Cynthia had always intruded more or less effectively between
them, but now that this thought began to fade into the past, the thought
of Bessie began to grow out of it with no interposing shadow.

However, Jeff was in no hurry. It was not passion that moved him, and
the mood in which he could play with the notion of getting back to his
flirtation with Bessie Lynde was pleasanter after the violence of recent
events than any renewal of strong sensations could be. He preferred to
loiter in this mood, and he was meantime much more comfortable than
he had been for a great while. He was rid of the disagreeable sense of
disloyalty to Cynthia, and he was rid of the stress of living up to her
conscience in various ways. He was rid of Bessie Lynde, too, and of the
trouble of forecasting and discounting her caprices. His thought turned
at times with a soft regret to hopes, disappointments, experiences
connected with neither, and now tinged with a tender melancholy,
unalloyed by shame or remorse. As he drew nearer to Class Day he had a
somewhat keener compunction for Cynthia and the hopes he had encouraged
her to build and had then dashed. But he was coming more and more to
regard it all as fatality; and if the chance that he counted upon to
bring him and Bessie together again had occurred he could have more
easily forgiven himself.

One of the jays, who was spreading on rather a large scale, wanted Jeff
to spread with him, but he refused, because, as he said, he meant to
keep out of it altogether; and for the same reason he declined to take
part in the spread of a rather jay society he belonged to. In his secret
heart he trusted that some friendly fortuity might throw an invitation
to Beck Hall in his way, or at least a card for the Gym, which, if no
longer the place it had been, was still by no means jay. He got neither;
but as he felt all the joy of the June day in his young blood he
consoled himself very well with the dancing at one of the halls, where
the company happened that year to be openly, almost recklessly jay. Jeff
had some distinction among the fellows who enviously knew of his social
success during the winter, and especially of his affair with Bessie
Lynde; and there were some girls very pretty and very well dressed among
the crowd of girls who were neither. They were from remote parts of the
country, and in the charge of chaperons ignorant of the differences so
poignant to local society. Jeff went about among them, and danced with
the sisters and cousins of several men who seemed superior to the lost
condition of their kinswomen; these were nice fellows enough, but doomed
by their grinding, or digging, or their want of worldly wisdom, to a
place among the jays, when they really had some qualifications for a
nobler standing. He had a very good time, and he was enjoying himself
in his devotion to a lively young brunette whom he was making laugh with
his jokes about some of the others, when his eye was caught by a group
of ladies who advanced among the jays with something of that collective
intrepidity and individual apprehension characteristic of people in
slumming. They had the air of not knowing what might happen to them,
but the adventurous young Boston matron in charge of the girls kept on a
bold front behind her lorgnette, and swept the strange company she
found herself in with an unshrinking eye as she led her band among the
promenaders, and past the couples seated along the walls. She hesitated
a moment as her glance fell upon Jeff, and then she yielded, at whatever
risk, to the comfort of finding a known face among so many aliens. “Why,
Mr. Durgin!” she called out. “Bessie, here’s Mr. Durgin,” and she turned
to the girl, who was in her train, as Jeff had perceived by something
finer than the senses from the first.

He rose from the side of his brunette, whose brother was standing near,
and shook hands with the adventurous young matron, who seemed suddenly
much better acquainted with him than he had ever thought her, and with
Bessie Lynde; the others were New York girls, and the matron presented
him. “Are you going on?” she asked, and the vague challenge with the
smile that accompanied it was sufficient invitation for him.

“Why, I believe so,” he said, and he turned to take leave of his pretty
brunette; but she had promptly vanished with her brother, and he was
spared the trouble of getting rid of her. He would have been equal to
much more for the sake of finding himself with Bessie Lynde again, whose
excitement he could see burning in her eyes, though her thick complexion
grew neither brighter nor paler. He did not know what quality of
excitement it might be, but he said, audaciously: “It’s a good while
since we met!” and he was sensible that his audacity availed.

“Is it?” she asked. He put himself at her side, and he did not leave her
again till he went to dress for the struggle around the Tree. He found
himself easily included in the adventurous young matron’s party. He
had not the elegance of some of the taller and slenderer men in the
scholar’s gown, but the cap became his handsome face. His affair with
Bessie Lynde had given him a certain note, and an adventurous young
matron, who was naturally a little indiscriminate, might very well have
been willing to let him go about with her party. She could not know how
impudent his mere presence was with reference to Bessie, and the girl
herself made no sign that could have enlightened her. She accepted
something more that her share of his general usefulness to the party;
she danced with him whenever he asked her, and she seemed not to scruple
to publish her affair with him in the openest manner. If he could have
stilled a certain shame for her which he felt, he would have thought he
was having the best kind of time. They made no account of by-gones in
their talk, but she had never been so brilliant, or prompted him to so
many of the effronteries which were the spirit of his humor. He thought
her awfully nice, with lots of sense; he liked her letting him come back
without any fooling or fuss, and he began to admire instead of despising
her for it. Decidedly it was, as she would have said, the chicquest sort
of thing. What was the use, anyway? He made up his mind.

When he said he must go and dress for the Tree, he took leave of her
first, and he was aware of a vivid emotion, which was like regret in
her at parting with him. She said, Must he? She seemed to want to say
something more to him; while he was dismissing himself from the others,
he noticed that once or twice she opened her lips as if she were going
to speak. In the end she did nothing more important than to ask if he
had seen her brother; but after he had left the party he turned and saw
her following him with eyes that he fancied anxious and even frightened
in their gaze.

The riot round the Tree roared itself through its wonted events. Class
after class of the undergraduates filed in and sank upon the grass below
the terraces and parterres of brilliantly dressed ladies within the
quadrangle of seats; the alumni pushed themselves together against the
wall of Holder Chapel; the men of the Senior class came last in their
grotesque variety of sweaters and second and third best clothes for the
scramble at the Tree. The regulation cheers tore from throats that grew
hoarser and hoarser, till every class and every favorite in the faculty
had been cheered. Then the signal-hat was flung into the air, and
the rush at the Tree was made, and the combat’ for the flowers that
garlanded its burly waist began.

Jeff’s size and shape forbade him to try for the flowers from the
shoulders of others. He was one of a group of jays who set their backs
to the Tree, and fought away all comers except their own; they pulled
down every man not of their sort, and put up a jay, who stripped the
Tree of its flowers and flung them to his fellows below. As he was let
drop to the ground, Jeff snatched a handful of his spoil from him, and
made off with it toward the place where he had seen Bessie Lynde and her
party. But when he reached the place, shouldering and elbowing his way
through the press, she was no longer there. He saw her hat at a distance
through the crowd, where he did not choose to follow, and he stuffed the
flowers into his breast to give to her later. He expected to meet her
somewhere in the evening; if not, he would try to find her at her aunt’s
house in town; failing that, he could send her the flowers, and trust
her for some sort of leading acknowledgment.

He went and had a bath and dressed himself freshly, and then he went for
a walk in the still evening air. He was very hot from the battle which
had been fought over him, and which he had shared with all his strength,
and it seemed to him as if he could not get cool. He strolled far out
along Concord Avenue, beyond the expanses and ice-horses of Fresh Pond,
into the country toward Belmont, with his hat off and his head down. He
was very well satisfied, and he was smiling to himself at the ease of
his return to Bessie, and securely speculating upon the outcome of their
renewed understanding.

He heard a vehicle behind him, rapidly driven, and he turned out for
it without looking around. Then suddenly he felt a fiery sting on his
forehead, and then a shower of stings swiftly following each other over
his head and face. He remembered stumbling, when he was a boy, into a
nest of yellow-jackets, that swarmed up around him and pierced him like
sparks of fire at every uncovered point. But he knew at the same time
that it was some one in the vehicle beside him who was lashing him over
the head with a whip. He bowed his head with his eyes shut and lunged
blindly out toward his assailant, hoping to seize him.

But the horse sprang aside, and tore past him down the road. Jeff opened
his eyes, and through the blood that dripped from the cuts above them he
saw the wicked face of Alan Lynde looking back at him from the dogcart
where he sat with his man beside him. He brandished his broken whip in
the air, and flung it into the bushes. Jeff walked on, and picked it up,
before he turned aside to the pools of the marsh stretching on either
hand, and tried to stanch his hurts, and get himself into shape for
returning to town and stealing back to his lodging. He had to wait till
after dark, and watch his chance to get into the house unnoticed.



XLVIII

The chum to whom Jeff confided the story of his encounter with a man he
left nameless inwardly thanked fortune that he was not that man; for
he knew him destined sooner or later to make such reparation for
the injuries he had inflicted as Jeff chose to exact. He tended him
carefully, and respected the reticence Jeff guarded concerning the whole
matter, even with the young doctor whom his friend called, and who kept
to himself his impressions of the nature of Jeff’s injuries.

Jeff lay in his darkened room, and burned with them, and with the
thoughts, guesses, purposes which flamed through his mind. Had she, that
girl, known what her brother meant to do? Had she wished him to think of
her in the moment of his punishment, and had she spoken of her brother
so that he might recall her, or had she had some ineffective impulse to
warn him against her brother when she spoke of him?

He lay and raged in vain with his conjectures, and he did a thousand
imagined murders upon Lynde in revenge of his shame.

Toward the end of the week, while his hurts were still too evident to
allow him to go out-of-doors before dark, he had a note from Westover
asking him to come in at once to see him.

“Your brother Jackson,” Westover wrote, “reached Boston by the New York
train this morning, and is with me here. I must tell you I think he is
not at all well, but he does not know how sick he is, and so I forewarn
you. He wants to get on home, but I do not feel easy about letting him
make the rest of the journey alone. Some one ought to go with him. I
write not knowing whether you are still in Cambridge or not; or whether,
if you are, you can get away at this time. But I think you ought, and I
wish, at any rate, that you would come in at once and see Jackson. Then
we can settle what had best be done.”

Jeff wrote back that he had been suffering with a severe attack of
erysipelas--he decided upon erysipelas for the time being, but he meant
to let Westover know later that he had been in a row--and the doctor
would not let him go out yet. He promised to come in as soon as he
possibly could. If Westover thought Jackson ought to be got home at
once, and was not fit to travel alone, he asked him to send a hospital
nurse with him.

Westover replied by Jeff’s messenger that it would worry and alarm
Jackson to be put in charge of a nurse; but that he would go home with
him, and they would start the next day. He urged Jeff to come and see
his brother if it was at all safe for him to do so. But if he could not,
Westover would give his mother a reassuring reason for his failure.

Mrs. Durgin did not waste any anxiety for the sickness which prevented
Jeff from coming home with his brother. She said ironically that it must
be very bad, and she gave all her thought and care to Jackson. The
sick man rallied, as he prophesied he should, in his native air, and
celebrated the sense and science of the last doctor he had seen in
Europe, who told him that he had made a great gain, but he had better
hurry home as fast as he could, for he had got all the advantage he
could expect to have from his stay abroad, and now home air was the best
thing for him.

It could not be known how much of this he believed; he had, at any rate,
the pathetic hopefulness of his malady; but his mother believed it all,
and she nursed him with a faith in his recovery which Whitwell confided
to Westover was about as much as he wanted to see, for one while. She
seemed to grow younger in the care of him, and to get back to herself,
more and more, from the facts of Jeff’s behavior, which had aged and
broken her. She had to tell Jackson about it all, but he took it with
that indifference to the things of this world which the approach of
death sometimes brings, and in the light of his passivity it no longer
seemed to her so very bad. It was a relief to have Jackson say, Well,
perhaps it was for the best; and it was a comfort to see how he and
Cynthia took to each other; it was almost as if that dreadful trouble
had not been. She told Jackson what hard work she had had to make
Cynthia stay with her, and how the girl had consented to stay only until
Jeff came home; but she guessed, now that Jackson had got back, he could
make Cynthia see it all in another light, and perhaps it would all come
right again. She consulted him about Jeff’s plan of going abroad, and
Jackson said it might be about as well; he should soon be around, and
he thought if Jeff went it would give Cynthia more of a chance to get
reconciled. After all, his mother suggested, a good many fellows behaved
worse than Jeff had done and still had made it up with the girls they
were engaged to; and Jackson gently assented.

He did not talk with Cynthia about Jeff, out of that delicacy, or that
coldness, common to them both. Perhaps it was not necessary for them to
speak of him; perhaps they understood him aright in their understanding
of each other.

Westover stayed on, day after day, thinking somehow that he ought to
wait till Jeff came. There were only a few other people in the hotel,
and these were of a quiet sort; they were not saddened by the presence
of a doomed man under the same roof, as gayer summer folks might have
been, and they were themselves no disturbance to him.

He sat about with them on the veranda, and he made friends among
them, and they did what they could to encourage and console him in his
impatience to take up his old cares in the management of the hotel. The
Whitwells easily looked after the welfare of the guests, and Jackson was
so much better to every one’s perception that Westover could honestly
write Jeff a good report of him.

The report may have been so good that Jeff took the affair too easily.
It was a fortnight after Jackson’s return to Lion’s Head when he began
to fail so suddenly and alarmingly that Westover decided upon his
own responsibility to telegraph Jeff of his condition. But he had the
satisfaction of Whitwell’s approval when he told him what he had done.

“Of course, Jackson a’n’t long for this world. Anybody but him and his
mother could see that; and now he’s just melting away, as you might say.
I ha’n’t liked his not carin’ to work plantchette since he got back;
looked to me from the start that he kind of knowed that it wa’n’t worth
while for him to trouble about a world that he’ll know all about so
soon, anyways; and d’ you notice he don’t seem to care about Mars,
either? I’ve tried to wake him up on it two-three times, but you can’t
git him to take an interest. I guess Jeff can’t git here any too soon
on Jackson’s account; but as far forth as I go, he couldn’t git here too
late. I should like to take the top of his head off.”

Westover had been in Whitwell’s confidence since their first chance of
speech together. He now said:

“I know it will be rather painful to you to have him here for some
reasons, but--”

“You mean Cynthy? Well! I guess when Cynthy can’t get along with the
sight of Jeff Durgin, she’ll be a different girl from what she’s ever
been before. If she’s got to see that skunk ag’in, I guess this is about
the best time to do it.”

It was Westover who drove to meet Jeff at the station, when he got his
despatch, naming the train he would take, and he found him looking very
well, and perhaps stouter than he had been.

They left the station in silence, after their greeting and Jeff’s
inquiries about Jackson. Jeff had taken the reins, and now he put them
with the whip in one hand, and pushed up his hat with the other, and
turned his face full upon Westover. “Notice anything in particular?” he
demanded.

“No; yes--some slight marks.”

“I guess that fellow fixed me up pretty well: paints black eyes, and
that kind of thing. I got to scrapping with a man, Class Day; we wanted
to settle a little business we began at the Tree, and he left his marks
on me. I meant to tell you the truth as soon as I could get at you; but
I had to say erysipelas in my letter. I guess, if you don’t mind, we’ll
let erysipelas stand, with the rest.”

“I shouldn’t have cared,” Westover said, “if you’d let it stand with
me.”

“Oh, thank you,” Jeff returned.

There could have been no show of affection at his meeting with Jackson
even if there had been any fact of it; that was not the law of their
life. But Jeff had always been a turbulent, rebellious, younger
brother, resentful of Jackson’s control, too much his junior to have the
associations of an equal companionship in the past, and yet too near him
in age to have anything like a filial regard for him. They shook hands,
and each asked the other how he was, and then they seemed to have
done with each other. Jeff’s mother kissed him in addition to the
handshaking, but made him feel her preoccupation with Jackson; she asked
him if he had hurried home on Jackson’s account, and he promptly lied
her out of this anxiety.

He shook hands with Cynthia, too, but it was across the barrier which
had not been lowered between them since they parted. He spoke to Jackson
about her, the day after he came home, when Jackson said he was feeling
unusually strong and well, and the two brothers had strolled out through
the orchard together. Now and then he gave the sick man his arm, and
when he wanted to sit down in a sunny place he spread the shawl he
carried for him.

“I suppose mother’s told you about Cynthy and me, Jackson?” he began.

Jackson answered, with lack-lustre eyes, “Yes.” Presently he asked:
“What’s become of the other girl?”

“Damn her! I don’t know what’s become of her, and I don’t care!” Jeff
exploded, furiously.

“Then you don’t care for her any more?” Jackson pursued, with the same
languid calm.

“I never cared for her.”

Jackson was silent, and the matter seemed to have faded out of his
mind. But it was keenly alive in Jeff’s mind, and he was in the strange
necessity which men in the flush of life and health often feel of
seeking counsel of those who stand in the presence of death, as if their
words should have something of the mystical authority of the unknown
wisdom they are about to penetrate.

“What I want to know is, what I am going to do about Cynthy?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson answered, vaguely, and he expressed by his
indirection the sense he must sometimes have had of his impending
fate--“I don’t know what she’s going to do, her or mother, either.”

“Yes,” Jeff assented, “that’s what I think of. And I’d do anything that
I could--that you thought was right.”

Jackson apparently concentrated his mind upon the question by an effort.
“Do you care as much for Cynthy as you used to?”

“Yes,” said Jeff, after a moment, “as much as I ever did; and more. But
I’ve been thinking, since the thing happened, that, if I’d cared for her
the way she did for me, it wouldn’t have happened. Look here, Jackson!
You know I’ve never pretended to be like some men--like Mr. Westover,
for example--always looking out for the right and the wrong, and all
that. I didn’t make myself, and I guess if the Almighty don’t make me
go right it’s because He don’t want me to. But I have got a conscience
about Cynthy, and I’d be willing to help out a little if I knew how,
about her. The devil of it is, I’ve got to being afraid. I don’t mean
that I’m not fit for her; any man’s fit for any woman if he wants her
bad enough; but I’m afraid I sha’n’t ever care for her in the right way.
That’s the point. I’ve cared for just one woman in this world, and it
a’n’t Cynthy, as far as I can make out. But she’s gone, and I guess I
could coax Cynthy round again, and I could be what she wants me to be,
after this.”

Jackson lay upon his shawl, looking up at the sky full of islands of
warm clouds in its sea of blue; he was silent so long that Jeff began to
think he had not been listening; he could not hear him breathe, and he
came forward to him quickly from the shadow of the tree where he sat.

“Well?” Jackson whispered, turning his eyes upon him.

“Well?” Jeff returned.

“I guess you’d better let it alone,” said Jackson.

“All right. That’s what I think, too.”



XLIX.

Jackson died a week later, and they buried him in the old family lot
in the farthest corner of the orchard. His mother and Cynthia put on
mourning for him, and they stood together by his open grave, Mrs. Durgin
leaning upon her son’s arm and the girl upon her father’s. The women
wept quietly, but Jeff’s eyes were dry, though his face was discharged
of all its prepotent impudence. Westover, standing across the grave
from him, noticed the marks on his forehead that he said were from his
scrapping, and wondered what really made them. He recognized the spot
where they were standing as that where the boy had obeyed the law of his
nature and revenged the stress put upon him for righteousness. Over the
stone of the nearest grave Jeff had shown a face of triumphant derision
when he pelted Westover with apples. The painter’s mind fell into a
chaos of conjecture and misgiving, so that he scarcely took in the words
of the composite service which the minister from the Union Chapel at the
Huddle read over the dead.

Some of the guests from the hotel came to the funeral, but others who
were not in good health remained away, and there was a general sense
among them, which imparted itself to Westover, that Jackson’s dying so,
at the beginning of the season, was not a fortunate incident. As he sat
talking with Jeff at a corner of the piazza late in the afternoon, Frank
Whitwell came up to them and said there were some people in the office
who had driven over from another hotel to see about board, but they had
heard there was sickness in the house, and wished to talk with him.

“I won’t come,” said Jeff.

“They’re not satisfied with what I’ve said,” the boy urged. “What shall
I tell them?”

“Tell them to-go to the devil,” said Jeff, and when Frank Whitwell made
off with this message for delivery in such decent terms as he could
imagine for it, Jeff said, rather to himself than to Westover, “I don’t
see how we’re going to run this hotel with that old family lot down
there in the orchard much longer.”

He assumed the air of full authority at Lion’s Head; and Westover
felt the stress of a painful conjecture in regard to the Whitwells
intensified upon him from the moment he turned away from Jackson’s
grave.

Cynthia and her father had gone back to their own house as soon as
Jeff returned, and though the girl came home with Mrs. Durgin after the
funeral, and helped her in their common duties through the afternoon and
evening, Westover saw her taking her way down the hill with her brother
when the long day’s work was over. Jeff saw her too; he was sitting
with Westover at the office door smoking, and he was talking of the
Whitwells.

“I suppose they won’t stay,” he said, “and I can’t expect it; but I
don’t know what mother will do, exactly.”

At the same moment Whitwell came round the corner of the hotel from the
barn, and approached them: “Jeff, I guess I better tell you straight off
that we’re goin’, the children and me.”

“All right, Mr. Whitwell,” said Jeff, with respectful gravity; “I was
afraid of it.”

Westover made a motion to rise, but Whitwell laid a detaining hand upon
his knee. “There ain’t anything so private about it, so far as I know.”

“Don’t go, Mr. Westover,” said Jeff, and Westover remained.

“We a’n’t a-goin’ to leave you in the lurch, and we want you should take
your time, especially Mis’ Durgin. But the sooner the better. Heigh?”

“Yes, I understand that, Mr. Whitwell; I guess mother will miss you,
but if you must go, you must.” The two men remained silent a moment, and
then Jeff broke out passionately, rising and flinging his cigar away:
“I wish I could go, instead! That would be the right way, and I guess
mother would like it full as well. Do you see any way to manage it?” He
put his foot up in his chair, and dropped his elbow on his knee, with
his chin propped in his hand. Westover could see that he meant what he
was saying. “If there was any way, I’d do it. I know what you think of
me, and I should be just like you, in your place. I don’t feel right to
turn you out here, I don’t, Mr. Whitwell, and yet if I stay, I’ve got to
do it. What’s the reason I can’t go?”

“You can’t,” said Whitwell, “and that’s all about it. We shouldn’t let
you, if you could. But I a’n’t surprised you feel the way you do,” he
added, unsparingly. “As you say, I should feel just so myself if I was
in your place. Well, goodnight, Mr. Westover.”

Whitwell turned and slouched down the hill, leaving the painter to the
most painful moment he had known with Jeff Durgin, and nearer sympathy.
“That’s all right, Mr. Westover,” Jeff said, “I don’t blame him.”

He remained in a constraint from which he presently broke with mocking
hilarity when Jombateeste came round the corner of the house, as if
he had been waiting for Whitwell to be gone, and told Jeff he must get
somebody else to look after the horses.

“Why don’t you wait and take the horses with you, Jombateeste?” he
inquired. “They’ll be handing in their resignation, the next thing. Why
not go altogether?”

The little Canuck paused, as if uncertain whether he was made the
object of unfriendly derision or not, and looked at Westover for help.
Apparently he decided to chance it in as bitter an answer as he could
invent. “The ‘oss can’t ‘elp ‘imself, Mr. Durgin. ‘E stay. But you don’
hown EVERYBODY.”

“That’s so, Jombateeste,” said Jeff. “That’s a good hit. It makes me
feel awfully. Have a cigar?” The Canuck declined with a dignified bow,
and Jeff said: “You don’t smoke any more? Oh, I see! It’s my tobacco
you’re down on. What’s the matter, Jombateeste? What are you going away
for?” Jeff lighted for himself the cigar the Canuck had refused, and
smoked down upon the little man.

“Mr. W’itwell goin’,” Jombateeste said, a little confused and daunted.

“What’s Mr. Whitwell going for?”

“You hask Mr. W’itwell.”

“All right. And if I can get him to stay will you stay too, Jombateeste?
I don’t like to see a rat leaving a ship; the ship’s sure to sink, if
he does. How do you suppose I’m going to run Lion’s Head without you to
throw down hay to the horses? It will be ruin to me, sure, Jombateeste.
All the guests know how you play on the pitchfork out there, and they’ll
leave in a body if they hear you’ve quit. Do say you’ll stay, and I’ll
reduce your wages one-half on the spot.”

Jombateeste waited to hear no more injuries. He said: “You’ll don’ got
money enough, Mr. Durgin, by gosh! to reduce my wages,” and he started
down the hill toward Whitwell’s house with as great loftiness as could
comport with a down-hill gait and his stature.

“Well, I seem to be getting it all round, Mr. Westover,” said Jeff.
“This must make you feel good. I don’t know but I begin to believe
there’s a God in Israel, myself.”

He walked away without saying good-night, and Westover went to bed
without the chance of setting himself right. In the morning, when he
came down to breakfast, and stopped at the desk to engage a conveyance
for the station from Frank Whitwell the boy forestalled him with a grave
face. “You don’t know about Mrs. Durgin?”

“No; what about her?”

“Well, we can’t tell exactly. Father thinks it’s a shock; Jombateeste
gone over to Lovewell for the doctor. Cynthia’s with her. It seemed to
come on in the night.”

He spoke softly, that no one else might hear; but by noon the fact that
Mrs. Durgin had been stricken with paralysis was all over the place. The
gloom cast upon the opening season by Jackson’s death was deepened among
the guests. Some who had talked of staying through July went away
that day. But under Cynthia’s management the housekeeping was really
unaffected by Mrs. Durgin’s calamity, and the people who stayed found
themselves as comfortable as ever. Jeff came fully into the hotel
management, and in their business relation Cynthia and he were
continually together; there was no longer a question of the Whitwells
leaving him; even Jombateeste persuaded himself to stay, and Westover
felt obliged to remain at least till the present danger in Mrs. Durgin’s
case was past.

With the first return of physical strength, Mrs. Durgin was impatient to
be seen about the house, and to retrieve the season that her affliction
had made so largely a loss. The people who had become accustomed to
it stayed on, and the house filled up as she grew better, but even the
sight of her in a wheeled chair did not bring back the prosperity of
other years. She lamented over it with a keen and full perception of the
fact, but in a cloudy association of it with the joint future of Jeff
and Cynthia.

One day, after Mrs. Durgin had declared that she did not know what they
were to do, if things kept on as they were going, Whitwell asked his
daughter:

“Do you suppose she thinks you and Jeff have made it up again?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl, with a troubled voice, “and I don’t know
what to do about it. It don’t seem as if I could tell her, and yet it’s
wrong to let her go on.”

“Why didn’t he tell her?” demanded her father. “‘Ta’n’t fair his leavin’
it to you. But it’s like him.”

The sick woman’s hold upon the fact weakened most when she was tired.
When she was better, she knew how it was with them. Commonly it was when
Cynthia had got her to bed for the night that she sent for Jeff, and
wished to ask him what he was going to do. “You can’t expect Cynthy to
stay here another winter helpin’ you, with Jackson away. You’ve got to
either take her with you, or else come here yourself. Give up your last
year in college, why don’t you? I don’t want you should stay, and I
don’t know who does. If I was in Cynthia’s place, I’d let you work off
your own conditions, now you’ve give up the law. She’ll kill herself,
tryin’ to keep you along.”

Sometimes her speech became so indistinct that no one but Cynthia could
make it out; and Jeff, listening with a face as nearly discharged as
might be of its laughing irony, had to turn to Cynthia for the word
which no one else could catch, and which the stricken woman remained
distressfully waiting for her to repeat to him, with her anxious eyes
upon the girl’s face. He was dutifully patient with all his mother’s
whims. He came whenever she sent for him, and sat quiet under the
severities with which she visited all his past unworthiness. “Who you
been hectorin’ now, I should like to know,” she began on him one evening
when he came at her summons. “Between you and Fox, I got no peace of my
life. Where is the dog?”

“Fox is all right, mother,” Jeff responded. “You’re feeling a little
better to-night, a’n’t you?”

“I don’t know; I can’t tell,” she returned, with a gleam of intelligence
in her eye. Then she said: “I don’t see why I’m left to strangers all
the time.”

“You don’t call Cynthia a stranger, do you, mother?” he asked,
coaxingly.

“Oh--Cynthy!” said Mrs. Durgin, with a glance as of surprise at seeing
her. “No, Cynthy’s all right. But where’s Jackson and your father? If
I’ve told them not to be out in the dew once, I’ve told ‘em a hundred
times. Cynthy’d better look after her housekeepin’ if she don’t want the
whole place to run behind, and not a soul left in the house. What time
o’ year is it now?” she suddenly asked, after a little weary pause.

“It’s the last of August, mother.”

“Oh,” she sighed, “I thought it was the beginnin’ of May. Didn’t you
come up here in May?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then--Or, mebbe that’s one o’ them tormentin’ dreams; they do
pester so! What did you come for?”

Jeff was sitting on one side of her bed and Cynthia on the other: She
was looking at the sufferer’s face, and she did not meet the glance of
amusement which Jeff turned upon her at being so fairly cornered. “Well,
I don’t know,” he said. “I thought you might like to see me.”

“What ‘d he come for?”--the sick woman turned to Cynthia.

“You’d better tell her,” said the girl, coldly, to Jeff. “She won’t be
satisfied till you do. She’ll keep coming back to it.”

“Well, mother,” said Jeff, still with something of his hardy amusement,
“I hadn’t been acting just right, and I thought I’d better tell Cynthy.”

“You better let the child alone. If I ever catch you teasin’ them
children again, I’ll make Jackson shoot Fox.”

“All right, mother,” said Jeff.

She moved herself restively in bed. “What’s this,” she demanded of her
son, “that Whitwell’s tellin’ about you and Cynthy breakin’ it off?”

“Well, there was talk of that,” said Jeff, passing his hand over his
lips to keep back the smile that was stealing to them.

“Who done it?”

Cynthia kept her eyes on Jeff, who dropped his to his mother’s face.
“Cynthy did it; but I guess I gave her good enough reason.”

“About that hussy in Boston? She was full more to blame than what you
was. I don’t see what Cynthy wanted to do it for on her account.”

“I guess Cynthy was right.”

Mrs. Durgin’s speech had been thickening more and more. She now said
something that Jeff could not understand. He looked involuntarily at
Cynthia.

“She says she thinks I was hasty with you,” the girl interpreted.

Jeff kept his eyes on hers, but he answered to his mother: “Not any more
than I deserved. I hadn’t any right to expect that she would stand it.”

Again the sick woman tried to say something. Jeff made out a few
syllables, and, after his mother had repeated her words, he had to look
to Cynthia for help.

“She wants to know if it’s all right now.”

“What shall I say?” asked Jeff, huskily.

“Tell her the truth.”

“What is the truth?”

“That we haven’t made it up.”

Jeff hesitated, and then said: “Well, not yet, mother,” and he bent an
entreating look upon Cynthia which she could not feel was wholly for
himself. “I--I guess we can fix it, somehow. I behaved very badly to
Cynthia.”

“No, not to me!” the girl protested in an indignant burst.

“Not to that little scalawag, then!” cried Jeff. “If the wrong wasn’t to
you, there wasn’t any wrong.”

“It was to you!” Cynthia retorted.

“Oh, I guess I can stand it,” said Jeff, and his smile now came to his
lips and eyes.

His mother had followed their quick parley with eager looks, as if she
were trying to keep her intelligence to its work concerning them. The
effort seemed to exhaust her, and when she spoke again her words were
so indistinct that even Cynthia could not understand them till she had
repeated them several times.

Then the girl was silent, while the invalid kept an eager look upon her.
She seemed to understand that Cynthia did not mean to speak; and the
tears came into her eyes.

“Do you want me to know what she said?” asked Jeff, respectfully,
reverently almost.

Cynthia said, gently: “She says that then you must show you didn’t mean
any harm to me, and that you cared for me, all through, and you didn’t
care for anybody else.”

“Thank you,” said Jeff, and he turned to his mother. “I’ll do everything
I can to make Cynthy believe that, mother.”

The girl broke into tears and went out of the room. She sent in the
night-watcher, and then Jeff took leave of his mother with an unwonted
kiss.

Into the shadow of a starlit night he saw the figure he had been waiting
for glide out of the glitter of the hotel lights. He followed it down
the road.

“Cynthia!” he called; and when he came up with her he asked: “What’s the
reason we can’t make it true? Why can’t you believe what mother wants me
to make you?”

Cynthia stopped, as her wont was when she wished to speak seriously. “Do
you ask that for my sake or hers?”

“For both your sakes.”

“I thought so. You ought to have asked it for your own sake, Jeff, and
then I might have been fool enough to believe you. But now--”

She started swiftly down the hill again, and this time he did not try to
follow her.



L.

Mrs. Durgin’s speech never regained the measure of clearness it had
before; no one but Cynthia could understand her, and often she could
not. The doctor from Lovewell surmised that she had sustained another
stroke, lighter, more obscure than the first, and it was that which had
rendered her almost inarticulate. The paralysis might have also affected
her brain, and silenced her thoughts as well as her words. Either she
believed that the reconciliation between Jeff and Cynthia had taken
place, or else she could no longer care. She did not question them
again, but peacefully weakened more and more. Near the end of September
she had a third stroke, and from this she died.

The day after the funeral Jeff had a talk with Whitwell, and opened his
mind to him.

“I’m going over to the other side, and I shan’t be back before spring,
or about time to start the season here. What I want to know is whether,
if I’m out of the house, and not likely to come back, you’ll stay here
and look after the place through the winter. It hasn’t been a good
season, but I guess I can afford to make it worth your while if you look
at it as a matter of business.”

Whitwell leaned forward and took a straw into his mouth from the golden
wall of oat sheaves in the barn where they were talking. A soft rustling
in the mow overhead marked the remote presence of Jombateeste, who was
getting forward the hay for the horses, pushing it toward the holes
where it should fall into their racks.

“I should want to think about it,” said Whitwell. “I do’ know as
Cynthy’d care much about stayin’--or Frank.”

“How long do you want to think about it?” Jeff demanded, ignoring the
possible wishes of Cynthia and Frank.

“I guess I could let you know by night.”

“All right,” said Jeff.

He was turning away, when Whitwell remarked:

“I don’t know as I should want to stay without I could have somebody I
could depend on, with me, to look after the hosses. Frank wouldn’t want
to.”

“Who’d you like?”

“Well--Jombateeste.”

“Ask him.”

Whitwell called to the Canuck, and he came forward to the edge of the
mow, and stood, fork in hand, looking down.

“Want to stay here this winter and look after the horses, Jombateeste?”
 Whitwell asked.

“Nosseh!” said the Canuck, with a misliking eye on Jeff.

“I mean, along with me,” Whitwell explained. “If I conclude to stay,
will you? Jeff’s goin’ abroad.”

“I guess I stay,” said Jombateeste.

“Don’t strain yourself, Jombateeste,” said Jeff, with malevolent
derision.

“Not for you, Jeff Dorrgin,” returned the Canuck. “I strain myself till
I bust, if I want.”

Jeff sneered to Whitwell: “Well, then, the most important point is
settled. Let me know about the minor details as soon as you can.”

“All right.”

Whitwell talked the matter over with his children at supper that
evening. Jeff had made him a good offer, and he had the winter before
him to provide for.

“I don’t know what deviltry he’s up to,” he said in conclusion.

Frank looked to his sister for their common decision. “I am going to try
for a school,” she said, quietly. “It’s pretty late, but I guess I can
get something. You and Frank had better stay.”

“And you don’t feel as if it was kind of meechin’, our takin’ up with
his offer, after what’s--” Whitwell delicately forbore to fill out his
sentence.

“You are doing the favor, father,” said the girl. “He knows that, and
I guess he wouldn’t know where to look if you refused. And, after all,
what’s happened now is as much my doing as his.”

“I guess that’s something so,” said Whitwell, with a long sigh of
relief. “Well, I’m glad you can look at it in that light, Cynthy. It’s
the way the feller’s built, I presume, as much as anything.”

His daughter waived the point. “I shouldn’t feel just right if none of
us stayed in the old place. I should feel as if we had turned our backs
on Mrs. Durgin.”

Her eyes shone, and her father said: “Well, I guess that’s so, come to
think of it. She’s been like a mother to you, this past year, ha’n’t
she? And it must have come pootty hard for her, sidin’ ag’in’ Jeff. But
she done it.”

The girl turned her head away. They were sitting in the little,
low keeping-room of Whitwell’s house, and her father had his hat on
provisionally. Through the window they could see the light of the
lantern at the office door of the hotel, whose mass was lost in the dark
above and behind the lamp. It was all very still outside.

“I declare,” Whitwell went on, musingly, “I wisht Mr. Westover was
here.”

Cynthia started, but it was to ask: “Do you want I should help you with
your Latin, Frank?”

Whitwell came back an hour later and found them still at their books. He
told them it was all arranged; Durgin was to give up the place to him
in a week, and he was to surrender it again when Jeff came back in the
spring. In the mean time things were to remain as they were; after he
was gone, they could all go and live at Lion’s Head if they chose.

“We’ll see,” said Cynthia. “I’ve been thinking that might be the best
way, after all. I might not get a school, it’s so late.”

“That’s so,” her father assented. “I declare,” he added, after a
moment’s muse, “I felt sorry for the feller settin’ up there alone, with
nobody to do for him but that old thing he’s got in. She can’t cook any
more than--” He desisted for want of a comparison, and said: “Such a
lookin’ table, too.”

“Do you think I better go and look after things a little?” Cynthia
asked.

“Well, you no need to,” said her father. He got down the planchette, and
labored with it, while his children returned to Frank’s lessons.

“Dumn ‘f I can make the thing work,” he said to himself at last. “I
can’t git any of ‘em up. If Jackson was here, now!”

Thrice a day Cynthia went up to the hotel and oversaw the preparation of
Jeff’s meals and kept taut the slack housekeeping of the old Irish woman
who had remained as a favor, after the hotel closed, and professed to
have lost the chance of a place for the winter by her complaisance.
She submitted to Cynthia’s authority, and tried to make interest for an
indefinite stay by sudden zeal and industry, and the last days of Jeff
in the hotel were more comfortable than he openly recognized. He left
the care of the building wholly to Whitwell, and shut himself up in the
old farm parlor with the plans for a new hotel which he said he meant to
put up some day, if he could ever get rid of the old one. He went once
to Lovewell, where he renewed the insurance, and somewhat increased it;
and he put a small mortgage on the property. He forestalled the slow
progress of the knowledge of others’ affairs, which, in the country, is
as sure as it is slow, and told Whitwell what he had done. He said he
wanted the mortgage money for his journey, and the insurance money, if
he could have the luck to cash up by a good fire, to rebuild with.

Cynthia seldom met him in her comings and goings, but if they met they
spoke on the terms of their boy and girl associations, and with no
approach through resentment or tenderness to the relation that was ended
between them. She saw him oftener than at any other time setting off
on the long tramps he took through the woods in the afternoons. He was
always alone, and, so far as any one knew, his wanderings had no object
but to kill the time which hung heavy on his hands during the fortnight
after his mother’s death, before he sailed. It might have seemed strange
that he should prefer to pass the days at Lion’s Head after he had
arranged for the care of the place with Whitwell, and Whitwell always
believed that he stayed in the hope of somehow making up with Cynthia.

One day, toward the very last, Durgin found himself pretty well fagged
in the old pulp-mill clearing on the side of Lion’s Head, which still
belonged to Whitwell, and he sat down on a mouldering log there to rest.
It had always been a favorite picnic ground, but the season just past
had known few picnics, and it was those of former years that had left
their traces in rusty sardine-cans and broken glass and crockery on the
border of the clearing, which was now almost covered with white moss.
Jeff thought of the day when he lurked in the hollow below with Fox,
while Westover remained talking with Whitwell. He thought of the picnic
that Mrs. Marven had embittered for him, and he thought of the last time
that he had been there with Westover, when they talked of the Vostrands.

Life had, so far, not been what he meant it, and just now it occurred to
him that he might not have wholly made it what it had been. It seemed to
him that a good many other people had come in and taken a hand in making
his own life what it had been; and if he had meddled with theirs more
than he was wanted, it was about an even thing. As far as he could make
out, he was a sort of ingredient in the general mixture. He had probably
done his share of the flavoring, but he had had very little to do with
the mixing. There were different ways of looking at the thing. Westover
had his way, but it struck Jeff that it put too much responsibility on
the ingredient, and too little on the power that chose it. He believed
that he could prove a clear case in his own favor, as far as the
question of final justice was concerned, but he had no complaints to
make. Things had fallen out very much to his mind. He was the Landlord
at Lion’s Head, at last, with the full right to do what he pleased with
the place, and with half a year’s leisure before him to think it over.
He did not mean to waste the time while he was abroad; if there was
anything to be learned anywhere about keeping a summer hotel, he
was going to learn it; and he thought the summer hotel could be
advantageously studied in its winter phases in the mild climates of
Southern Europe. He meant to strike for the class of Americans who
resorted to those climates; to divine their characters and to please
their tastes.

He unconsciously included Cynthia in his scheme of inquiry; he had been
used so long to trust to her instincts and opinions, and to rely upon
her help, and he realized that she was no longer in his life with
something like the shock a man experiences when the loss of a limb,
which continues a part of his inveterate consciousness, is brought to
his sense by some mechanical attempt to use it. But even in this pang he
did not regret that all was over between them. He knew now that he had
never cared for her as he had once thought, and on her account, if not
his own, he was glad their engagement was broken. A soft melancholy for
his own disappointment imparted itself to his thoughts of Cynthia. He
felt truly sorry for her, and he truly admired and respected her. He was
in a very lenient mood toward every one, and he went so far in thought
toward forgiving his enemies that he was willing at least to pardon all
those whom he had injured. A little rustling in the underbrush across
the clearing caught his quick ear, and he looked up to see Jombateeste
parting the boughs of the young pines on its edge and advancing into
the open with a gun on his shoulder. He called to him, cheerily: “Hello,
John! Any luck?”

Jombateeste shook his head. “Nawthing.” He hesitated.

“What are you after?”

“Partridge,” Jombateeste ventured back.

Jeff could not resist the desire to scoff which always came upon him at
sight of the Canuck. “Oh, pshaw! Why don’t you go for woodchucks? They
fly low, and you can hit them on the wing, if you can’t sneak on ‘em
sitting.”

Jombateeste received his raillery in dignified silence, and turned
back into the woods again. He left Durgin in heightened good-humor with
himself and with the world, which had finally so well adapted itself to
his desires and designs.

Jeff watched his resentful going with a grin, and then threw himself
back on the thick bed of dry moss where he had been sitting, and watched
the clouds drifting across the space of blue which the clearing opened
overhead. His own action reminded him of Jackson, lying in the orchard
and looking up at the sky. He felt strangely at one with him, and he
experienced a tenderness for his memory which he had not known before.
Jackson had been a good man; he realized that with a curious sense
of novelty in the reflection; he wondered what the incentives and the
objects of such men as Jackson and Westover were, anyway. Something
like grief for his brother came upon him; not such grief as he had felt,
passionately enough, though tacitly, for his mother, but a regret for
not having shown Jackson during his life that he could appreciate his
unselfishness, though he could not see the reason or the meaning of it.
He said to himself, in their safe remoteness from each other, that he
wished he could do something for Jackson. He wondered if in the course
of time he should get to be something like him. He imagined trying.

He heard sounds again in the edge of the clearing, but he decided that
it was that fool Jombateeste coming back; and when steps approached
softly and hesitantly across the moss, he did not trouble himself to
take his eyes from the clouds. He was only vexed to have his revery
broken in upon.

A voice that was not Jombateeste’s spoke: “I say! Can you tell me the
way to the Brooker Institute, or to the road down the mountain?”

Jeff sat suddenly bolt-upright; in another moment he jumped to his
feet. The Brooker Institute was a branch of the Keeley Cure recently
established near the Huddle, and this must be a patient who had wandered
from it, on one of the excursions the inmates made with their guardians,
and lost his way. This was the fact that Jeff realized at the first
glance he gave the man. The next he recognized that the man was Alan
Lynde.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, quite simply. He felt so cruelly the hardship
of his one unforgiven enemy’s coming upon him just when he had resolved
to be good that the tears came into his eyes. Then his rage seemed to
swell up in him like the rise of a volcanic flood. “I’m going to kill
you!” he, roared, and he launched himself upon Lynde, who stood dazed.

But the murder which Jeff meant was not to be so easily done. Lynde had
not grown up in dissolute idleness without acquiring some of the arts of
self-defence which are called manly. He met Jeff’s onset with remembered
skill and with the strength which he had gained in three months of the
wholesome regimen of the Brooker Institute. He had been sent there,
not by Dr. Lacy’s judgment, but by his despair, and so far the Cure had
cured. He felt strong and fresh, and the hate which filled Jeff at sight
of him steeled his shaken nerves and reinforced his feebler muscles,
too.

He made a desperate fight where he could not hope for mercy, and kept
himself free of his powerful foe, whom he fought round and foiled, if he
could not hurt him. Jeff never knew of the blows Lynde got in upon him;
he had his own science, too, but he would not employ it. He wanted to
crash through Lynde’s defence and lay hold of him and crush the life out
of him.

The contest could not have lasted long at the best; but before Lynde was
worn out he caught his heel in an old laurel root, and while he whirled
to recover his footing Jeff closed in upon him, caught him by the
middle, flung him down upon the moss, and was kneeling on his breast
with both hands at his throat.

He glared down into his enemy’s face, and suddenly it looked pitifully
little and weak, like a girl’s face, a child’s.

Sometimes, afterward, it seemed to him that he forbore because at that
instant he saw Jombateeste appear at the edge of the clearing and come
running upon them. At other times he had the fancy that his action was
purely voluntary, and that, against the logic of his hate and habit of
his life, he had mercy upon his enemy. He did not pride himself upon
it; he rather humbled himself before the fact, which was accomplished
through his will, and not by it, and remained a mystery he did not try
to solve.

He took his hands from Lynde’s throat and his knees off his breast.
“Get up,” he said; and when Lynde stood trembling on his feet he said to
Jombateeste: “Show this man the way to the Brooker Institute. I’ll take
your gun home for you,” and it was easy for him to detach the piece from
the bewildered Canuck’s grasp. “Go! And if you stop, or even let him
look back, I’ll shoot him. Quick!”



LI.

The day after Thanksgiving, when Westover was trying to feel well after
the turkey and cranberry and cider which a lady had given him at a
consciously old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner, but not making it out
sufficiently to be able to work, he was astonished to receive a visit
from Whitwell.

“Well, sir,” said the philosopher, without giving himself pause for the
exchange of reflections upon his presence in Boston, which might have
been agreeable to him on a less momentous occasion. “It’s all up with
Lion’s Head.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Westover, with his mind upon the mountain,
which he electrically figured in an incredible destruction.

“She’s burnt. Burnt down the day before yist’d’y aft’noon. A’n’t hardly
a stick of her left. Ketehed Lord knows how, from the kitchen chimney,
and a high northwest wind blowin’, that ca’d the sparks to the barn,
and set fire to that, too. Hasses gone; couldn’t get round to ‘em; only
three of us there, and mixed up so about the house till it was so late
the critters wouldn’t come out. Folks from over Huddle way see the
blaze, and helped all they could; but it wa’n’t no use. I guess all we
saved, about, was the flag-pole.”

“But you’re all right yourselves? Cynthia.”

“Well, there was our misfortune,” said Whitwell, while Westover’s heart
stopped in a mere wantonness of apprehension. “If she’d be’n there,
it might ha’ be’n diff’ent. We might ha’ had more sense; or she would,
anyway. But she was over to Lovewell stockin’ up for Thanksgivin’, and I
had to make out the best I could, with Frank and Jombateeste. Why,
that Canuck didn’t seem to have no more head on him than a hen. I was
disgusted; but Cynthy wouldn’t let me say anything to him, and I d’ know
as ‘t ‘ould done any good, myself. We’ve talked it all over in every
light, ever since; guess we’ve set up most the time talkin’, and nothin’
would do her but I should come down and see you before I took a single
step about it.”

“How--step about what?” asked Westover, with a remote sense of hardship
at being brought in, tempered by the fact that it was Cynthia who had
brought him in.

“Why, that devil,” said Whitwell, and Westover knew that he meant Jeff,
“went and piled on all the insurance he could pile on, before he left;
and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I should think the best thing was to collect the insurance,” Westover
suggested, distractedly.

“It a’n’t so easy as what that comes to,” said Whitwell. “I couldn’t
collect the insurance; and here’s the point, anyway. When a hotel’s made
a bad season, and she’s fully insured, she’s pootty certain to burn
up some time in the winter. Everybody knows that comical devil wanted
lion’s Head to burn up so ‘t he could build new, and I presume there
a’n’t a man, woman, or child anywhere round but what believes I set her
on fire. Hired to do it. Now, see? Jeff off in Europe; daytime; no lives
lost; prop’ty total loss ‘s a clear case. Heigh? I tell you, I’m afraid
I’ve got trouble ahead.”

Westover tried to protest, to say something in derision or defiance;
but he was shaken himself, and he ended by getting his hat and coat;
Whitwell had kept his own on, in the excitement. “We’ll go out and see
a lawyer. A friend of mine; it won’t cost you anything.” He added this
assurance at a certain look of reluctance that came into Whitwell’s
face, and that left it as soon as he had spoken. Whitwell glanced round
the studio even cheerily. “Who’d ha’ thought,” he said, fastening upon
the study which Westover had made of Lion’s head the winter before,
“that the old place would ‘a’ gone so soon?” He did not mean the
mountain which he was looking at, but the hotel that was present to his
mind’s eye; and Westover perceived as he had not before that to Whitwell
the hotel and not the mountain was Lion’s Head.

He remembered to ask now where Whitwell had left his family, and
Whitwell said that Frank and Cynthia were at home in his own house with
Jombateeste; but he presumed he could not get back to them now before
the next day. He refused to be interested in any of the aspects of
Boston which Westover casually pointed out, but when they had seen the
lawyer he came forth a new man, vividly interested in everything. The
lawyer had been able to tell them that though the insurance companies
would look sharply into the cause of the fire, there was no probability,
hardly a possibility, that they would inculpate him, and he need give
himself no anxiety about the affair.

“There’s one thing, though,” Whitwell said to Westover when they got out
upon the street. “Hadn’t I ought to let Jeff know?”

“Yes, at once. You’d better cable him. Have you got his address?”

Whitwell had it, and he tasted all the dramatic quality of sending
word to Jeff, which he would receive in Florence an hour after it left
Boston. “I did hope I could ha’ cabled once to Jackson while he was
gone,” he said, regretfully, “but, unless we can fix up a wire with the
other world, I guess I shan’t ever do it now. I suppose Jackson’s still
hangin’ round Mars, some’res.”

He had a sectarian pride in the beauty of the Spiritual Temple which
Westover walked him by on his way to see Trinity Church and the Fine
Arts Museum, and he sorrowed that he could not attend a service’
there. But he was consoled by the lunch which he had with Westover at
a restaurant where it was served in courses. “I presume this is what
Jeff’s goin’ to give ‘em at Lion’s Head when he gits it goin’ again.”

“How is it he’s in Florence?” it occurred to Westover to ask. “I thought
he was going to Nice for the winter.”

“I don’t know. That’s the address he give in his last letter,” said
Whitwell. “I’ll be glad when I’ve done with him for good and all. He’s
all kinds of a devil.”

It was in Westover’s mind to say that he wished the Whitwells had never
had anything to do with Durgin after his mother’s death. He had felt it
a want of delicacy in them that they had been willing to stay on in his
employ, and his ideal of Cynthia had suffered a kind of wound from
what must have been her decision in the matter. He would have expected
something altogether different from her pride, her self-respect. But
he now merely said: “Yes, I shall be glad, too. I’m afraid he’s a bad
fellow.”

His words seemed to appeal to Whitwell’s impartiality. “Well, I d’ know
as I should say bad, exactly. He’s a mixture.”

“He’s a bad mixture,” said Westover.

“Well, I guess you’re partly right there,” Whitwell admitted, with a
laugh. After a dreamy moment he asked: “Ever hear anything more about
that girl here in Boston?”

Westover knew that he meant Bessie Lynde. “She’s abroad somewhere, with
her aunt.”

Whitwell had not taken any wine; apparently he was afraid of forming
instantly the habit of drink if he touched it; but he tolerated
Westover’s pint of Zinfandel, and he seemed to warm sympathetically to a
greater confidence as the painter made away with it. “There’s one thing
I never told Cynthy yet; well, Jombateeste didn’t tell me himself till
after Jeff was gone; and then, thinks I, what’s the use? But I guess you
had better know.”

He leaned forward across the table, and gave Jombateeste’s story of the
encounter between Jeff and Alan Lynde in the clearing. “Now what do you
suppose was the reason Jeff let up on the feller? Of course, he meant
to choke the life out of him, and his just ketchin’ sight of
Jombateeste--do you believe that was enough to stop him, when he’d
started in for a thing like that? Or what was it done it?”

Westover listened with less thought of the fact itself than of another
fact that it threw light upon. It was clear to him now that the
Class-Day scrapping which had left its marks upon Jeff’s face was with
Lynde, and that when Jeff got him in his power he was in such a fury for
revenge that no mere motive of prudence could have arrested him. In both
events, it must have been Bessie Lynde that was the moving cause; but
what was it that stayed Jeff in his vengeance?

“Let him up, and let him walk away, you say?” he demanded of Whitwell.

Whitwell nodded. “That’s what Jombateeste said. Said Jeff said if he let
the feller look back he’d shoot him. But he didn’t haf to.”

“I can’t make it out,” Westover sighed.

“It’s been too much for me,” Whitwell said. “I told Jombateeste he’d
better keep it to himself, and I guess he done so. S’pose Jeff still had
a sneakin’ fondness for the girl?”

“I don’t know; perhaps,” Westover asserted.

Whitwell threw his head back in a sudden laugh that showed all the work
of his dentist. “Well, wouldn’t it be a joke if he was there in Florence
after her? Be just like Jeff.”

“It would be like Jeff; I don’t know whether it would be a joke or not.
I hope he won’t find it a joke, if it’s so,” said Westover, gloomily.
A fantastic apprehension seized him, which made him wish for the moment
that it might be so, and which then passed, leaving him simply sorry for
any chance that might bring Bessie Lynde into the fellow’s way again.

For the evening Whitwell’s preference would have been a lecture of
some sort, but there was none advertised, and he consented to go with
Westover to the theatre. He came back to the painter at dinner-time,
after a wary exploration of the city, which had resulted not only in
a personal acquaintance with its monuments, but an immunity from its
dangers and temptations which he prided himself hardly less upon. He had
seen Faneuil Hall, the old State House, Bunker Hill, the Public Library,
and the Old South Church, and he had not been sandbagged or buncoed
or led astray from the paths of propriety. In the comfortable sense
of escape, he was disposed, to moralize upon the civilization of great
cities, which he now witnessed at first hand for the first time; and
throughout the evening, between the acts of the “Old Homestead,”
 which he found a play of some merit, but of not so much novelty in its
characters as he had somehow led himself to expect, he recurred to the
difficulties and dangers that must beset a young man in coming to a
place like Boston. Westover found him less amusing than he had on his
own ground at Lion’s Head, and tasted a quality of commonplace in his
deliverances which made him question whether he had not, perhaps, always
owed more to this environment than he had suspected. But they parted
upon terms of mutual respect and in the common hope of meeting again.
Whitwell promised to let Westover know what he heard of Jeff, but, when
the painter had walked the philosopher home to his hotel, he found a
message awaiting him at his studio from Jeff direct:

   Whitwell’s despatch received. Wait letter.
                       “DURGIN.”

Westover raged at the intelligent thrift of this telegram, and at the
implication that he not only knew all about the business of Whitwell’s
despatch, but that he was in communication with him, and would be
sufficiently interested to convey Jeff’s message to him. Of course,
Durgin had at once divined that Whitwell must have come to him for
advice, and that he would hear from him, whether he was still in Boston
or not. By cabling to Westover, Jeff saved the cost of an elaborate
address to Whitwell at Lion’s Head, and had brought the painter in for
further consultation and assistance in his affairs. What vexed him still
more was his own consciousness that he could not defeat this impudent
expectation. He had, indeed, some difficulty with himself to keep from
going to Whitwell’s hotel with the despatch at once, and he slept badly,
in his fear that he might not get it to him in the morning before he
left town.

The sum of Jeff’s letter when it came, and it came to Westover and not
to Whitwell, was to request the painter to see a lawyer in his behalf,
and put his insurance policies in his hands, with full authority to
guard his interests in the matter. He told Westover where his policies
would be found, and enclosed the key of his box in the Safety Vaults,
with a due demand for Westover’s admission to it. He registered his
letter, and he jocosely promised Westover to do as much for him some
day, in pleading that there was really no one else he could turn to. He
put the whole business upon him, and Westover discharged himself of it
as briefly as he could by delivering the papers to the lawyer he had
already consulted for Whitwell.

“Is this another charity patient?” asked his friend, with a grin.

“No,” replied Westover. “You can charge this fellow along the whole
line.”

Before he parted with the lawyer he had his misgivings, and he said: “I
shouldn’t want the blackguard to think I had got a friend a fat job out
of him.”

The lawyer laughed intelligently. “I shall only make the usual charge.
Then he is a blackguard.”

“There ought to be a more blistering word.”

“One that would imply that he was capable of setting fire to his
property?”

“I don’t say that. But I’m glad he was away when it took fire,” said
Westover.

“You give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Yes, of every kind of doubt.”



LII.

Westover once more promised himself to have nothing to do with Jeff
Durgin or his affairs. But he did not promise this so confidently
as upon former occasions, and he instinctively waited for a new
complication. He could not understand why Jeff should not have come
home to look after his insurance, unless it was because he had become
interested in some woman even beyond his concern for his own advantage.
He believed him capable of throwing away advantages for disadvantages in
a thing of that kind, but he thought it more probable that he had fallen
in love with one whom he would lose nothing by winning. It did not seem
at all impossible that he should have again met Bessie Lynde, and that
they should have made up their quarrel, or whatever it was. Jeff would
consider that he had done his whole duty by Cynthia, and that he was
free to renew his suit with Bessie; and there was nothing in Bessie’s
character, as Westover understood it, to prevent her taking him back
upon a very small show of repentance if the needed emotions were in
prospect. He had decided pretty finally that it would be Bessie rather
than another when he received a letter from Mrs. Vostrand. It was dated
at Florence, and after some pretty palaver about their old friendship,
which she only hoped he remembered half as fondly as she did, the letter
ran:

   “I am turning to you now in a very strange difficulty, but I do not
   know that I should turn to you even now, and knowing all I do of
   your goodness, if I were not asked to do so by another.

   “I believe we have not heard from each other since the first days of
   my poor Genevieve’s marriage, when everything looked so bright and
   fair, and we little realized the clouds that were to overcast her
   happiness. It is a long story, and I will not go into it fully.
   The truth is that poor Gigi did not treat her very kindly, and that
   she has not lived with him since the birth of their little girl, now
   nearly two years old, and the sweetest little creature in the world;
   I wish you could see her; I am sure it would inspire your pencil
   with the idea of an angel-child. At first I hoped that the
   separation would be only temporary, and that when Genevieve had
   regained her strength she would be willing to go back to her
   husband; but nothing would induce her to do so. In fact, poor Gigi
   had spent all her money, and they would have had nothing to live
   upon but his pay, and you know that the pay of the Italian officers
   is very small.

   “Gigi made several attempts to see her, and he threatened to take
   the child from her, but he was always willing to compromise for
   money. I am afraid that he never really loved her and that we were
   both deceived by his fervent protestations. We managed to get away
   from Florence without his knowing it, and we have spent the last two
   years in Lausanne, very happily, though very quietly. Our dear
   Checco is in the university there, his father having given up the
   plan of sending him to Harvard, and we had him with us, while we
   were taking measures to secure the divorce. Even in the simple way
   we lived Genevieve attracted a great deal of attention, as she
   always has done, and she would have had several eligible offers if
   she had been divorced, or if her affections had not already been
   engaged, as I did not know at the time.

   “We were in this state of uncertainty up to the middle of last
   summer, when the news of poor Gigi’s sudden death came. I am sorry
   to say that his habits in some respects were not good, and that
   probably hastened it some; it had obliged him to leave the army.
   Genevieve did not feel that she could consistently put on black for
   him, and I did not urge her, under the peculiar circumstances;
   there is so much mere formality in those kind of things at the best;
   but we immediately returned to Florence to try and see if we could
   not get back some of her effects which his family had seized. I am
   opposed to lawsuits if they can possibly be avoided, and we arranged
   with poor Gigi’s family by agreeing to let them have Genevieve’s
   furniture if they would promise never to molest her with the child,
   and I must say they have behaved very well. We are on the best of
   terms with them, and they have let us have some of the things back
   which were endeared to her by old associations, at a very reasonable
   rate.

   “This brings me to the romantic part of my letter, and I will say at
   once that we found your friend Mr. Durgin in Florence, in the very
   hotel we went to. We all met in the dining-room, at the table
   d’hote one evening, and Genevieve and he took to each other at once.
   He spent the evening with us in our private drawing-room, and she
   said to me, after he went, that for the first time in years she felt
   rested. It seems that she had always secretly fancied him, and that
   she gave up to me in the matter of marrying poor Gigi, because she
   knew I had my heart set upon it, and she was not very certain of her
   own feelings when Mr. D. offered himself in Boston; but the
   conviction that she had made a mistake grew upon, her more and more
   after she had married Gigi.

   “Well, now, Mr. Westover, I suppose you have guessed by this time
   that Mr. Durgin has renewed his offer, and Genevieve has
   conditionally accepted him; we do not feel that she is like an
   ordinary widow, and that she has to fill up a certain season of
   mourning; she and Gigi have been dead to each other for years; and
   Mr. Durgin is as fond of our dear little Bice as her own father
   could be, and they are together all the time. Her name is Beatrice
   de’ Popolani Grassi. Isn’t it lovely? She has poor Gigi’s black
   eyes, with the most beautiful golden hair, which she gets from our
   aide. You remember Genevieve’s hair back in the dear old days,
   before any trouble had come, and we were all so happy together? And
   this brings me to what I wanted to say. You are the oldest friend
   we have, and by a singular coincidence you are the oldest friend of
   Mr. Durgin, too. I cannot bear to risk my child’s happiness a
   second time, and though Mr. Vostrand fully approves of the match,
   and has cabled his consent from Seattle, Washington, still, you
   know, a mother’s heart cannot be at rest without some positive
   assurance. I told Mr. Durgin quite frankly how I felt, and he
   agreed with me that after our experience with poor Gigi we could not
   be too careful, and he authorized me to write to you and find out
   all you knew about him. He said you had known him ever since he was
   a boy, and that if there was anything bad in his record you could
   tell it, and he did not want you to spire the truth. He knows you
   will be just, and he wants you to write out the facts as they struck
   you at the time.

   “I shall be on pins and needles, as the saying is, till we hear from
   you, and you know hew Genevieve and Mr. D. must be feeling. She is
   fully resolved not to have him without your endorsement, and he is
   quite willing to abide by what you say.

   “I could almost wish you to cable me just Good or Bad, but I know
   that this will not be wise, and I am going to wait for your letter,
   and get your opinion in full.

   “We all join in the kindest regards. Mr. D. is talking with
   Genevieve while I write, and has our darling Bice on his knees.
   You cannot imagine what a picture it makes, her childish delicacy
   contrasted with his stalwart strength. She says to send you a
   baciettino, and I wish you were here to receive it from her angel
   lips. Yours faithfully,

               “MEDORA VOSTRAND.

   “P. S.--Mr. D. says that he fell in love with Genevieve across the
   barrier between the first and second cabin when he came over with us
   on the Aquitaine four years ago, and that he has never ceased to
   love her, though at one time he persuaded himself that he cared for
   another because he felt that she was lost to him forever, and it was
   no use: He really did care for the lady he was engaged to, and had a
   true affection for her, which he mistook for a warmer feeling. He
   says that she was worthy of any man’s love and of the highest
   respect. I tell Genevieve that, she ought to honor him for it, and
   that she must never be jealous of a memory. We are very happy in
   Mr. Vostrand’s cordial approval of the match. He is so glad to
   think that Mr. D. is a business man. His cable from Seattle was
   most enthusiastic.

                  “M. D.”

Westover did not know whether to laugh or cry when he read this letter,
which covered several sheets of paper in lines that traversed each
other in different directions. His old, youthful ideal of Mrs. Vostrand
finally perished in its presence, though still he could not blame her
for wishing to see her daughter well married after having seen her
married so ill. He asked himself, without getting any very definite
response, whether Mrs. Vostrand had always been this kind of a woman, or
had grown into it by the use of arts which her peculiar plan of life had
rendered necessary to her. He remembered the intelligent toleration of
Cynthia in speaking of her, and his indignation in behalf of the girl
was also thrill of joy for her escape from the fate which Mrs. Vostrand
was so eagerly invoking for her daughter. But he thought of Genevieve
with something of the same tenderness, and with a compassion that was
for her alone. She seemed to him a victim who was to be sacrificed a
second time, and he had clearly a duty to her which he must not evade.
The only question could be how best to discharge it, and Westover took
some hours from his work to turn the question over in his mind. In the
end, when he was about to give the whole affair up for the present, and
lose a night’s sleep over it later, he had an inspiration, and he acted
upon it at once. He perceived that he owed no formal response to the
sentimental insincerities of Mrs. Vostrand’s letter, and he decided to
write to Durgin himself, and to put the case altogether in his hands. If
Durgin chose to show the Vostrands what he should write, very well; if
he chose not to show it, then Westover’s apparent silence would be a
sufficient reply to Mrs. Vostrand’s appeal.

   “I prefer to address you,” he began, “because I do not choose to let
   you think that I have any feeling to indulge against you, and
   because I do not think I have the right to take you out of your own
   keeping in any way. You would be in my keeping if I did, and I do
   not wish that, not only because it would be a bother to me, but
   because it would be a wrong to you.

   “Mrs. Vostrand, whose letter to me I will leave you to answer by
   showing her this, or in any other manner you choose, tells me you do
   not want me to spare the truth concerning you. I have never been
   quite certain what the truth was concerning you; you know that
   better than I do; and I do not propose to write your biography here.
   But I will remind you of a few things.

   “The first day I saw you, I caught you amusing yourself with the
   terror of two little children, and I had the pleasure of cuffing you
   for it. But you were only a boy then, and afterward you behaved so
   well that I decided you were not so much cruel as thoughtlessly
   mischievous. When you had done all you could to lead me to this
   favorable conclusion, you suddenly turned and avenged yourself on
   me, so far as you could, for the help I had given the little ones
   against you. I never greatly blamed you for that, for I decided
   that you had a vindictive temperament, and that you were not
   responsible for your temperament, but only for your character.

   “In your first year at Harvard your associations were bad, and your
   conduct generally was so bad that you were suspended. You were
   arrested with other rowdy students, and passed the night in a police
   station. I believe you were justly acquitted of any specific
   offence, and I always believed that if you had experienced greater
   kindness socially during your first year in college you would have
   been a better man.

   “You seem to have told Mrs. Vostrand of your engagement, and I will
   not speak of that. It was creditable to you that so wise and good a
   girl as your betrothed should have trusted you, and I do not know
   that it was against you that another girl who was neither wise nor
   good should have trusted you at the same time. You broke with the
   last, because you had to choose between the two; and, so far as I
   know, you accepted with a due sense of your faithlessness your
   dismissal by the first. In this connection I must remind you that
   while you were doing your best to make the party to your second
   engagement believe that you were in love with her, you got her
   brother, an habitual inebriate, drunk, and were, so far,
   instrumental in breaking down the weak will with which he was
   struggling against his propensity. It is only fair to you that I
   should add that you persuaded me you got him only a little drunker
   than he already got himself, and that you meant to have looked after
   him, but forgot him in your preoccupation with his sister.

   “I do not know what took place between you and these people after
   you broke your engagement with the sister, until your encounter with
   the brother in Whitwell’s Clearing, and I know of this only at
   second hand. I can well believe that you had some real or fancied
   injury to pay off; and I give you all the credit you may wish to
   claim for sparing him at last. For one of your vindictive
   temperament it must have been difficult.

   “I have told you the worst things I know of you, and I do not
   pretend to know them more than superficially. I am not asked to
   judge you, and I will not. You must be your own judge. You are to
   decide whether these and other acts of yours are the acts of a man
   good enough to be intrusted with the happiness of a woman who has
   already been very unhappy.

   “You have sometimes, however--oftener than I wished--come to me for
   advice, and I now offer you some advice voluntarily. Do not suppose
   that because you love this woman, as you believe, you are fit to be
   the keeper of her future. Ask yourself how you have dealt hitherto
   with those who have loved you, and whom in a sort you loved, and do
   not go further unless the answer is such as you can fully and
   faithfully report to the woman you wish to marry. What you have
   made yourself you will be to the end. You once called me an
   idealist, and perhaps you will call this idealism. I will only add,
   and I will give the last word in your defence, you alone know what
   you are.”



LIII.

As soon as Westover had posted his letter he began to blame himself for
it. He saw that the right and manly thing would have been to write
to Mrs. Vostrand, and tell her frankly what he thought of Durgin.
Her folly, her insincerity, her vulgarity, had nothing to do with the
affair, so far as he was concerned. If she had once been so kind to him
as to bind him to her in grateful friendship, she certainly had a claim
upon his best offices. His duty was to her, and not at all to Durgin. He
need not have said anything against him because it was against him,
but because it was true; and if he had written he must not have said
anything less than the truth.

He could have chosen not to write at all. He could have said that her
mawkish hypocrisy was a little too much; that she was really wanting him
to whitewash Durgin for her, and she had no right to put upon him the
responsibility for the step she clearly wished to take. He could have
made either of these decisions, and defended them to himself; but in
what he had done he had altogether shirked. While he was writing to
Durgin, and pretending that he could justly leave this affair to him, he
was simply indulging a bit of sentimental pose, far worse than anything
in Mrs. Vostrand’s sham appeal for his help.

He felt, as the time went by, that she had not written of her own
impulse, but at her daughter’s urgence, and that it was this poor
creature whose trust he had paltered with. He believed that Durgin
would not fail to make her unhappy, yet he had not done what he might
to deliver her out of his hand. He had satisfied a wretched
pseudo-magnanimity toward a faithless scoundrel, as he thought Durgin,
at the cost of a woman whose anxious hope of his aid had probably forced
her mother’s hand.

At first he thought his action irrevocable, and he bitterly upbraided
himself for not taking council with Cynthia upon Mrs. Vostrand’s letter.
He had thought of doing that, and then he had dismissed the thought as
involving pain that he had no right to inflict; but now he perceived
that the pain was such as she must suffer in the event, and that he had
stupidly refused himself the only means of finding out the right thing
to do. Her true heart and her clear mind would have been infallible in
the affair, and he had trusted to his own muddled impulse.

He began to write other letters: to Durgin, to Mrs. Vostrand, to
Genevieve; but none of them satisfied him, and he let the days go by
without doing anything to retrieve his error or fulfil his duty. At last
he did what he ought to have done at first: he enclosed Mrs. Vostrand’s
letter to Cynthia, and asked her what she thought he ought to have done.
While he was waiting Cynthia’s answer to his letter, a cable message
reached him from Florence:

   “Kind letter received. Married to-day. Written.

                         “Vostrand.”

The next mail brought Cynthia’s reply, which was very brief:

   “I am sorry you had to write at all; nothing could have prevented
   it. Perhaps if he cares for her he will be good to her.”

Since the matter was now irremediable, Westover crept less miserably
through the days than he could have believed he should, until the letter
which Mrs. Vostrand’s cable promised came to hand.

   “Dear friend,” she wrote, “your generous and satisfactory answer
   came yesterday. It was so delicate and high,-minded, and so like
   you, to write to Mr. Durgin, and leave the whole affair to him; and
   he did not lose a moment in showing us your beautiful letter. He
   said you were a man after his own heart, and I wish you could have
   heard how he praised you. It made Genevieve quite jealous, or would
   have, if it had been any one else. But she is so happy in your
   approval of her marriage, which is to take place before the
   ‘sindaco’ to-morrow, We shall only have the civil rite; she feels
   that it is more American, and we are all coming home to Lion’s Head
   in the spring to live and die true Americans. I wish you could
   spend the summer with us there, but, until Lion’s Head is rebuilt,
   we can’t ask you. I don’t know exactly how we shall do ourselves,
   but Mr. Durgin is full of plans, and we leave everything to him.
   He is here, making Genevieve laugh so that I can hardly write.
   He joins us in love and thanks, and our darling Bice sends you a
   little kiss.

        “MEDORA VOSTRAND.

   “P. S.  Mr. D. has told us all about the affairs you alluded to.
   With Miss L. we cannot feel that he was to blame; but he blames
   himself in regard to Miss W. He says his only excuse is that he was
   always in love with Genevieve; and I think that is quite excuse
   enough. M. V.”

From time to time during the winter Westover wrote to Cynthia, and had
letters from her in which he pleased himself fancying almost a personal
effect of that shyness which he thought a charming thing in her. But
no doubt this was something he read into them; on their face they were
plain, straightforward accounts of the life she led in the little old
house at Lion’s Head, under the shadow of the black ruin on the hill.
Westover had taken to sending her books and magazines, and in thanking
him for these she would sometimes speak of things she had read in them.
Her criticism related to the spirit rather than the manner of the things
she spoke of, and it pleased him that she seemed, with all her insight,
to have very little artistic sense of any kind; in the world where he
lived there were so many women with an artistic sense in every kind that
he was rather weary of it.

There never was anything about Durgin in the letters, and Westover
was both troubled and consoled by this silence. It might be from
consciousness, and it probably was; it might be from indifference. In
the worst event, it hid any pain she might have felt with a dignity from
which no intimation of his moved her. The nearest she came to speaking
of Jeff was when she said that Jombateeste was going to work at the
brick-yards in Cambridge as soon as the spring opened, and was not going
to stay any longer at Lion’s Head.

Her brother Frank, she reported, had got a place with part work in the
drug-and-book store at Lovewell, where he could keep on more easily with
his studies; he had now fully decided to study for the ministry; he had
always wanted to be an Episcopalian.

One day toward the end of April, when several weeks had passed without
bringing Westover any word from Cynthia, her father presented himself,
and enjoyed in the painter’s surprise the sensation of having dropped
upon him from the clouds. He gave due accounts of the health of each of
his household; ending with Jombateeste. “You know he’s out at the brick,
as he calls it, in Cambridge.”

“Cynthia said he was coming. I didn’t know he had come yet,” said
Westover. “I must go out and look him up, if you think I could find him
among all those Canucks.”

“Well, I don’t know but you’d better look us up at the same time,” said
Whitwell, with additional pleasure in the painter’s additional surprise.
“I guess we’re out in Cambridge, too,” he added, at Westover’s start
of question. “We’re out there, visitin’ one of our summer folks, as you
might say. Remember Mis’ Fredericks?”

“Why, what the deuce kept you from telling me so at once?” Westover
demanded, indignantly.

“Guess I hadn’t got round to it,” said Whitwell, with dry relish.

“Do you mean that Cynthia’s there?”

“Well, I guess they wouldn’t cared much for a visit from me.”

Whitwell took advantage of Westover’s moment of mystification to explain
that Jeff had written over to him from Italy, offering him a pretty good
rent for his house, which he wanted to occupy while he was rebuilding
Lion’s Head. He was going to push the work right through in the summer,
and be ready for the season the year after. That was what Whitwell
understood, and he understood that Jeff’s family was going to stay in
Lovewell, but Jeff himself wanted to be on the ground day and night.

“So that’s kind of turned us out of doors, as you may say, and Cynthia’s
always had this idee of comin’ down Boston way: and she didn’t know
anybody that could advise with her as well as Mis’ Fredericks, and she
wrote to her, and Mis’ Fredericks answered her to come right down and
talk it over.” Westover felt a pang of resentment that Cynthia, had not
turned to him for counsel, but he said nothing, and Whitwell went
on: “She said she was, ashamed to bother you, you’d had the whole
neighborhood on your hands so much, and so she wrote to Mis’
Fredericks.”

Westover had a vague discomfort in it all, which ultimately defined
itself as a discontent with the willingness of the Whitwells to let
Durgin occupy their house upon any terms, for any purpose, and a
lingering grudge that Cynthia should have asked help of any one but
himself, even from a motive of delicacy.

In the evening he went out to see the girl at the house of Mrs.
Fredericks, whom he found living in the Port. They had a first moment of
intolerable shyness on her part. He had been afraid to see her, with the
jealousy for her dignity he always felt, lest she should look as if she
had been unhappy about Durgin. But he found her looking, not only
very well, but very happy and full of peace, as soon as that moment of
shyness passed. It seemed to Westover as if she had begun to live on new
terms, and that a harassing element, which had always been in it, had
gone out of her life, and in its absence she was beginning to rejoice
in a lasting repose. He found himself rejoicing with her, and he found
himself on simpler and franker terms with her than ever before. Neither
of them spoke of Jeff, or made any approach to mention him, and Westover
believed that this was not from a morbid feeling in her, but from a
final and enduring indifference.

He saw her alone, for Mrs. Fredericks and her daughter had gone into
town to a concert, which he made her confess she would have gone to
herself if it had not been that her father said he was coming out to see
her. She would not let him joke about the sacrifice he pretended she had
made; he had a certain pain in fancying that his visit was the highest
and finest favor that life could do her. She told him of the ambition
she had that she might get a school somewhere in the neighborhood of
Boston, and then find something for her brother to do, while he began
his studies in the Theological School at Harvard. Frank was still at
Lovewell, it seemed.

At the end of the long call he made, he said, abruptly, when he had
risen to go, “I should like to paint you.”

“Who? Me?” she cried, as if it were the most incredible thing, while a
glad color rushed over her face.

“Yes. While you’re waiting to get your school, couldn’t you come in with
your father, now and then, and sit for me?”

“What’s he want me to come fer?” Whitwell demanded, when the plan was
laid before him. He was giving his unlimited leisure to the exploration
of Boston, and his tone expressed something of the injury, which he also
put into words, as a sole objection to the proposed interruption. “Can’t
you go alone, Cynthy?” Cynthia said she did not know, but when the
point was referred to Mrs. Fredericks, she was sure Cynthia could not
go alone, and she acquainted them both, as far as she could, with that
mystery of chaperonage which had never touched their lives before.
Whitwell seemed to think that his daughter would give the matter up;
and perhaps she might have done so, though she seemed reluctant, if
Mrs. Fredericks had not further instructed them that it was the highest
possible honor Mr. Westover was offering them, and that if he had
proposed to paint her daughter she would simply have gone and lived with
him while he was doing it.

Whitwell found some compensation for the time lost to his study of
Boston in the conversation of the painter, which he said was worth a
hundred cents on the dollar every time, though it dealt less with the
metaphysical aspect of the latest facts of science than the philosopher
could have wished. He did not, to be sure, take very much stock in the
picture as it advanced, somewhat fitfully, with a good many reversions
to its original state of sketch. It appeared to him always a slight and
feeble representation of Cynthia, though, of course, a native politeness
forbade him to express his disappointment. He avowed a faith in
Westover’s ability to get it right in the end, and always bade him go
on, and take as much time to it as he wanted.

He felt less uneasy than at first, because he had now found a little
furnished house in the woodenest outskirts of North Cambridge, which he
hired cheap from the recently widowed owner, and they were keeping house
there. Jombateeste lived with them, and worked in the brick-yards. Out
of hours he helped Cynthia, and kept the ugly little place looking trim
and neat, and left Whitwell free for the tramps home to nature, which he
began to take over the Belmont uplands as soon as the spring opened. He
was not homesick, as Cynthia was afraid he might be; his mind was
fully occupied by the vast and varied interests opened to it by the
intellectual and material activities of the neighboring city; and he
found ample scope for his physical energies in doing Cynthia’s errands,
as well as studying the strange flora of the region. He apparently
thought that he had made a distinct rise and advance in the world.
Sometimes, in the first days of his satisfaction with his establishment,
he expressed the wish that Jackson could only have seen how he was
fixed, once. In his preoccupation with other things, he no longer
attempted to explore the eternal mysteries with the help of planchette;
the ungrateful instrument gathered as much dust as Cynthia would suffer
on the what-not in the corner of the solemn parlor; and after two
or three visits to the First Spiritual Temple in Boston, he lapsed
altogether from an interest in the other world, which had, perhaps,
mainly flourished in the absence of pressing subjects of inquiry, in
this.

When at last Westover confessed that he had carried his picture
of Cynthia as far as he could, Whitwell did his best to hide his
disappointment. “Well, sir,” he said, tolerantly and even cheeringly, “I
presume we’re every one of us a different person to whoever looks at us.
They say that no two men see the same star.”

“You mean that she doesn’t look so to you,” suggested the painter, who
seemed not at all abashed.

“Well, you might say--Why, here! It’s like her; photograph couldn’t get
it any better; but it makes me think-well, of a bird that you’ve come on
sudden, and it stoops as if it was goin’ to fly--”

“Ah,” said Westover, “does it make you think of that?”



LIV.

The painter could not make out at first whether the girl herself was
pleased with the picture or not, and in his uncertainty he could not
give it her at once, as he had hoped and meant to do. It was by a kind
of accident he found afterward that she had always been passionately
proud of his having painted her. This was when he returned from the last
sojourn he had made in Paris, whither he went soon after the Whitwells
settled in North Cambridge. He left the picture behind him to be framed
and then sent to her with a letter he had written, begging her to give
it houseroom while he was gone. He got a short, stiff note in
reply after he reached Paris, and he had not tried to continue the
correspondence. But as soon as he returned he went out to see the
Whitwells in North Cambridge. They were still in their little house
there; the young widower had married again; but neither he nor his new
wife had cared to take up their joint life in his first home, and he had
found Whitwell such a good tenant that he had not tried to put up the
rent on him. Frank was at home, now, with an employment that gave him
part of his time for his theological studies; Cynthia had been teaching
school ever since the fall after Westover went away, and they were all,
as Whitwell said, in clover. He was the only member of the family at
home when Westover called on the afternoon of a warm summer day, and he
entertained him with a full account of a visit he had paid Lion’s Head
earlier in the season.

“Yes, sir,” he said, as if he had already stated the fact, “I’ve sold my
old place there to that devil.” He said devil without the least rancor;
with even a smile of good-will, and he enjoyed the astonishment Westover
expressed in his demand:

“Sold Durgin your house?”

“Yes; I see we never wanted to go back there to live, any of us, and I
went up to pass the papers and close the thing out. Well, I did have an
offer for it from a feller that wanted to open a boa’din’-house there
and get the advantage of Jeff’s improvements, and I couldn’t seem to
make up my mind till I’d looked the ground over. Fust off, you know, I
thought I’d sell to the other feller, because I could see in a minute
what a thorn it ‘d be in Jeff’s flesh. But, dumn it all! When I met the
comical devil I couldn’t seem to want to pester him. Why, here, thinks
I, if we’ve made an escape from him--and I guess we have, about the
biggest escape--what have I got ag’in’ him, anyway? I’d ought to feel
good to him; and I guess that’s the way I did feel, come to boil it
down. He’s got a way with him, you know, when you’re with him, that
makes you like him. He may have a knife in your ribs the whole while,
but so long’s he don’t turn it, you don’t seem to know it, and you can’t
help likin’ him. Why, I hadn’t been with Jeff five minutes before I made
up my mind to sell to him. I told him about the other offer--felt bound
to do it--and he was all on fire. ‘I want that place, Mr. Whitwell,’ s’d
he. ‘Name your price.’ Well, I wa’n’t goin’ to take an advantage of the
feller, and I guess he see it. ‘You’ve offered me three thousand,’ s’d
I, ‘n’ I don’t want to be no ways mean about it. Five thousand buys the
place.’ ‘It’s mine,’ s’d he; just like that. I guess he see he had a
gentleman to deal with, and we didn’t say a word more. Don’t you think I
done right to sell to him? I couldn’t ‘a’ got more’n thirty-five hundred
out the other feller, to save me, and before Jeff begun his improvements
I couldn’t ‘a’ realized a thousand dollars on the prop’ty.”

“I think you did right to sell to him,” said Westover, saddened somewhat
by the proof Whitwell alleged of his magnanimity.

“Well, Sir, I’m glad you do. I don’t believe in crowdin’ a man because
you got him in a corner, an’ I don’t believe in bearin’ malice. Never
did. All I wanted was what the place was wo’th--to him. ‘Twa’n’t wo’th
nothin’ to me! He’s got the house and the ten acres around it, and he’s
got the house on Lion’s Head, includin’ the Clearin’, that the poottiest
picnic-ground in the mountains. Think of goin’ up there this summer?”

“No,” said Westover, briefly.

“Well, I some wish you did. I sh’d like to know how Jeff’s improvements
struck you. Of course, I can’t judge of ‘em so well, but I guess he’s
made a pootty sightly thing of it. He told me he’d had one of the
leadin’ Boston architects to plan the thing out for him, and I tell you
he’s got something nice. ‘Tain’t so big as old Lion’s Head, and Jeff
wants to cater to a different style of custom, anyway. The buildin’s
longer’n what she is deep, and she spreads in front so’s to give as many
rooms a view of the mountain as she can. Know what ‘runnaysonce’ is?
Well, that’s the style Jeff said it was; it’s all pillars and pilasters;
and you ride up to the office through a double row of colyums, under a
kind of a portico. It’s all painted like them old Colonial houses down
on Brattle Street, buff and white. Well, it made me think of one of them
old pagan temples. He’s got her shoved along to the south’ard, and he’s
widened out a piece of level for her to stand on, so ‘t that piece o’
wood up the hill there is just behind her, and I tell you she looks
nice, backin’ up ag’inst the trees. I tell you, Jeff’s got a head on
him! I wish you could see that dinin’-room o’ his: all white colyums,
and frontin’ on the view. Why, that devil’s got a regular little
theatyre back o’ the dinin’-room for the young folks to act ammyture
plays in, and the shows that come along, and he’s got a dance-hall
besides; the parlors ain’t much--folks like to set in the office; and
a good many of the rooms are done off into soots, and got their own
parlors. I tell you, it’s swell, as they say. You can order what you
please for breakfast, but for lunch and dinner you got to take what Jeff
gives you; but he treats you well. He’s a Durgin, when it comes to that.
Served in cou’ses, and dinner at seven o’clock. I don’t know where he
got his money for ‘t all, but I guess he put in his insurance fust, and
then he put a mortgage on the buildin’; be as much as owned it; said
he’d had a splendid season last year, and if he done as well for a
copule of seasons more he’d have the whole prop’ty free o’ debt.”

Westover could see that the prosperity of the unjust man had corrupted
the imagination and confounded the conscience of this simple witness,
and he asked, in the hope of giving his praises pause: “What has he done
about the old family burying-ground in the orchard?”

“Well, there!” said Whitwell. “That got me more than any other one
thing: I naturally expected that Jeff ‘d had ‘em moved, for you know and
I know, Mr. Westover, that a place like that couldn’t be very pop’la’
with summer folks; they don’t want to have anything to kind of make ‘em
serious, as you may say. But that devil got his architect to treat
the place, as he calls it, and he put a high stone wall around it, and
planted it to bushes and evergreens so ‘t looks like a piece of old
garden, down there in the corner of the orchard, and if you didn’t
hunt for it you wouldn’t know it was there. Jeff said ‘t when folks
did happen to find it out, he believed they liked it; they think it’s
picturesque and ancient. Why, some on ‘em wanted him to put up a little
chapel alongside and have services there; and Jeff said he didn’t know
but he’d do it yet. He’s got dark-colored stones up for Mis’ Durgin and
Jackson, so ‘t they look as old as any of ‘em. I tell you, he knows how
to do things.”

“It seems so,” said Westover, with a bitterness apparently lost upon the
optimistic philosopher.

“Yes, sir. I guess it’s all worked out for the best. So long’s he didn’t
marry Cynthy, I don’t care who he married, and--I guess he’s made out
fust-rate, and he treats his wife well, and his mother-in-law, too. You
wouldn’t hardly know they was in the house, they’re so kind of quiet;
and if a guest wants to see Jeff, he’s got to send and ask for him;
clerk does everything, but I guess Jeff keeps an eye out and knows
what’s goin’ on. He’s got an elegant soot of appartments, and he lives
as private as if he was in his own house, him and his wife. But when
there’s anything goin’ on that needs a head, they’re both right on deck.

“He don’t let his wife worry about things a great deal; he’s got a
fust-rate of a housekeeper, but I guess old Mis’ Vostrand keeps the
housekeeper, as you may say. I hear some of the boa’ders talkin’ up
there, and one of ‘em said ‘t the great thing about Lion’s Head was ‘t
you could feel everywheres in it that it was a lady’s house. I guess
Jeff has a pootty good time, and a time ‘t suits him. He shows up on the
coachin’ parties, and he’s got himself a reg’lar English coachman’s rig,
with boots outside his trouse’s, and a long coat and a fuzzy plug-hat: I
tell you, he looks gay! He don’t spend his winters at Lion’s Head: he
is off to Europe about as soon as the house closes in the fall, and he
keeps bringin’ home new dodges. Guess you couldn’t get no boa’d there
for no seven dollars a week now! I tell you, Jeff’s the gentleman now,
and his wife’s about the nicest lady I ever saw. Do’ know as I care so
much about her mother; do’ know as I got anything ag’inst her, either,
very much. But that little girl, Beechy, as they call her, she’s a
beauty! And round with Jeff all the while! He seems full as fond of her
as her own mother does, and that devil, that couldn’t seem to get enough
of tormentin’ little children when he was a boy, is as good and gentle
with that little thing as-pie!”

Whitwell seemed to have come to an end of his celebration of Jeff’s
success, and Westover asked:

“And what do you make now, of planchette’s brokenshaft business? Or
don’t you believe in planchette any more?”

Whitwell’s beaming face clouded. “Well, sir, that’s a thing that’s
always puzzled me. If it wa’n’t that it was Jackson workin’ plantchette
that night, I shouldn’t placed much dependence on what she said; but
Jackson could get the truth out of her, if anybody could. Sence I b’en
up there I b’en figurin’ it out like this: the broken shaft is the old
Jeff that he’s left off bein’--”

Whitwell stopped midway in his suggestion, with an inquiring eye on the
painter, who asked: “You think he’s left off being the old Jeff?”

“Well, sir, you got me there,” the philosopher confessed. “I didn’t see
anything to the contrary, but come to think of it--”

“Why couldn’t the broken shaft be his unfulfilled destiny on the old
lines? What reason is there to believe he isn’t what he’s always been?”

“Well, come to think of it--”

“People don’t change in a day, or a year,” Westover went on, “or two or
three years, even. Sometimes I doubt if they ever change.”

“Well, all that I thought,” Whitwell urged, faintly, against the hard
scepticism of a man ordinarily so yielding, “is ‘t there must be a moral
government of the universe somewheres, and if a bad feller is to get
along and prosper hand over hand, that way, don’t it look kind of as
if--”

“There wasn’t any moral government of the universe? Not the way I see
it,” said Westover. “A tree brings forth of its kind. As a man sows he
reaps. It’s dead sure, pitilessly sure. Jeff Durgin sowed success, in
a certain way, and he’s reaping it. He once said to me, when I tried to
waken his conscience, that he should get where he was trying to go if he
was strong enough, and being good had nothing to do with it. I believe
now he was right. But he was wrong too, as such a man always is. That
kind of tree bears Dead Sea apples, after all. He sowed evil, and he
must reap evil. He may never know it, but he will reap what he has sown.
The dreadful thing is that others must share in his harvest. What do you
think?”

Whitwell scratched his head. “Well, sir, there’s something in what you
say, I guess. But here! What’s the use of thinkin’ a man can’t change?
Wa’n’t there ever anything in that old idee of a change of heart? What
do you s’pose made Jeff let up on that feller that Jombateeste see him
have down, that day, in my Clearin’? What Jeff would natch’ly done would
b’en to shake the life out of him; but he didn’t; he let him up, and he
let him go. What’s the reason that wa’n’t the beginnin’ of a new life
for him?”

“We don’t know all the ins and outs of that business,” said Westover,
after a moment. “I’ve puzzled over it a good deal. The man was the
brother of that girl that Jeff had jilted in Boston. I’ve found out that
much. I don’t know just the size and shape of the trouble between them,
but Jeff may have felt that he had got even with his enemy before that
day. Or he may have felt that if he was going in for full satisfaction,
there was Jombateeste looking on.”

“That’s true,” said Whitwell, greatly daunted. After a while he took
refuge in the reflection, “Well, he’s a comical devil.”

Westover said, in a sort of absence: “Perhaps we’re all broken shafts,
here. Perhaps that old hypothesis of another life, a world where
there is room enough and time enough for all the beginnings of this to
complete themselves--”

“Well, now you’re shoutin’,” said Whitwell. “And if plantchette--”
 Westover rose. “Why, a’n’t you goin’ to wait and see Cynthy? I’m
expectin’ her along every minute now; she’s just gone down to Harvard
Square. She’ll be awfully put out when she knows you’ve be’n here.”

“I’ll come out again soon,” said Westover. “Tell her--”

“Well, you must see your picture, anyway. We’ve got it in the parlor. I
don’t know what she’ll say to me, keepin’ you here in the settin’-room
all the time.”

Whitwell led him into the little dark front hall, and into the parlor,
less dim than it should have been because the afternoon sun was burning
full upon its shutters. The portrait hung over the mantel, in a bad
light, but the painter could feel everything in it that he could not
see.

“Yes, it had that look in it.”

“Well, she ha’n’t took wing yet, I’m thankful to think,” said Whitwell,
and he spoke from his own large mind to the sympathy of an old friend
who he felt could almost share his feelings as a father.



LV

When Westover turned out of the baking little street where the Whitwells
lived into an elm-shaded stretch of North Avenue, he took off his hat
and strolled bareheaded along in the cooler air. He was disappointed not
to have seen Cynthia, and yet he found himself hurrying away after his
failure, with a sense of escape, or at least of respite.

What he had come to say, to do, was the effect of long experience and
much meditation. The time had arrived when he could no longer feign to
himself that his feelings toward the girl were not those of a lover,
but he had his modest fears that she could never imagine him in that
character, and that if he should ask her to do so he should shock and
grieve her, and inflict upon himself an incurable wound.

During this last absence of his he had let his fancy dwell constantly
upon her, until life seemed worth having only if she would share it with
him. He was an artist, and he had always been a bohemian, but at heart
he was philistine and bourgeois. His ideal was a settlement, a fixed
habitation, a stated existence, a home where he could work constantly in
an air of affection, and unselfishly do his part to make his home happy.
It was a very simple-hearted ambition, and I do not quite know how to
keep it from appearing commonplace and almost sordid; but such as it
was, I must confess that it was his. He had not married his model,
because he was mainly a landscapist, perhaps; and he had not married any
of his pupils, because he had not been in love with them, charming
and good and lovely as he had thought some of them; and of late he had
realized more and more why his fancy had not turned in their direction.
He perceived that it was already fixed, and possibly had long been
fixed.

He did not blink the fact that there were many disparities, and
that there would be certain disadvantages which could never be quite
overcome. The fact had been brought rather strenuously home to him by
his interview with Cynthia’s father. He perceived, as indeed he had
always known, that with a certain imaginative lift in his thinking and
feeling, Whitwell was irreparably rustic, that he was and always must
be practically Yankee. Westover was not a Yankee, and he did not love or
honor the type, though its struggles against itself touched and amused
him. It made him a little sick to hear how Whitwell had profited by
Durgin’s necessity, and had taken advantage of him with conscientious
and self-applausive rapacity, while he admired his prosperity, and tried
to account for it by doubt of its injustice. For a moment this seemed
to him worse than Durgin’s conscientious toughness, which was the
antithesis of Whitwell’s remorseless self-interest. For the moment this
claimed Cynthia of its kind, and Westover beheld her rustic and Yankee
of her father’s type. If she was not that now, she would grow into
that through the lapse from the personal to the ancestral which we all
undergo in the process of the years.

The sight of her face as he had pictured it, and of the soul which he
had imagined for it, restored him to a better sense of her, but he felt
the need of escaping from the suggestion of her father’s presence, and
taking further thought. Perhaps he should never again reach the point
that he was aware of deflecting from now; he filled his lungs with
long breaths, which he exhaled in sighs of relief. It might have been a
mistake on the spiritual as well as the worldly side; it would certainly
not have promoted his career; it might have impeded it. These misgivings
flitted over the surface of thought that more profoundly was occupied
with a question of other things. In the time since he had seen her last
it might very well be that a young and pretty girl had met some one who
had taken her fancy; and he could not be sure that her fancy had ever
been his, even if this had not happened. He had no proof at all that she
had ever cared or could care for him except gratefully, respectfully,
almost reverentially, with that mingling of filial and maternal anxiety
which had hitherto been the warmest expression of her regard. He tried
to reason it out, and could not. He suddenly found himself bitterly
disappointed that he had missed seeing her, for if they had met, he
would have known by this time what to think, what to hope. He felt
old--he felt fully thirty-six years old--as he passed his hand over his
crown, whose gossamer growth opposed so little resistance to his touch.
He had begun to lose his hair early, but till then he had not much
regretted his baldness. He entered into a little question of their
comparative ages, which led him to the conclusion that Cynthia must now
be about twenty-five.

Almost at the same moment he saw her coming up the walk toward him from
far down the avenue. For a reason, or rather a motive, of his own he
pretended to himself that it was not she, but he knew instantly that it
was, and he put on his hat. He could see that she did not know him, and
it was a pretty thing to witness the recognition dawn on her. When it
had its full effect, he was aware of a flutter, a pause in her whole
figure before she came on toward him, and he hurried his steps for the
charm of her beautiful blushing face.

It was the spiritual effect of figure and face that he had carried in
his thought ever since he had arrived at that one-sided intimacy through
his study of her for the picture he had just seen. He had often had
to ask himself whether he had really perceived or only imagined the
character he had translated into it; but here, for the moment at least,
was what he had seen. He hurried forward and joyfully took the hand she
gave him. He thought he should speak of that at once, but it was not
possible, of course. There had to come first the unheeded questions
and answers about each other’s health, and many other commonplaces.
He turned and walked home with her, and at the gate of the little ugly
house she asked him if he would not come in and take tea with them.

Her father talked with him while she got the tea, and when it was ready
her brother came in from his walk home out of Old Cambridge and helped
her put it on the table. He had grown much taller than Westover, and
he was very ecclesiastical in his manner; more so than he would be,
probably, if he ever became a bishop, Westover decided. Jombateeste, in
an interval of suspended work at the brick yard, was paying a visit to
his people in Canada, and Westover did not see him.

All the time while they sat at table and talked together Westover
realized more and more that for him, at least, the separation of the
last two years had put that space between them which alone made it
possible for them to approach each other on new ground. A kind of
horror, of repulsion, for her engagement to Jeff Durgin had ceased from
his sense of her; it was as if she had been unhappily married, and the
man, who had been unworthy and unkind, was like a ghost who could never
come to trouble his joy. He was more her contemporary, he found, than
formerly; she had grown a great deal in the past two years, and a
certain affliction which her father’s fixity had given him concerning
her passed in the assurance of change which she herself gave him.

She had changed her world, and grown to it, but her nature had not
changed. Even her look had not changed, and he told her how he had seen
his picture in her at the moment of their meeting in the street. They
all went in to verify his impression from the painting. “Yes, that is
the way you looked.”

“It seems to me that is the way I felt,” she asserted.

Frank went about the house-work, and left her to their guest. When
Whitwell came back from the post-office, where he said he would only be
gone a minute, he did not rejoin Westover and Cynthia in the parlor.

The parlor door was shut; he had risked his fate, and they were talking
it over. Cynthia was not sure; she was sure of nothing but that there
was no one in the world she cared for so much; but she was not sure that
was enough. She did not pretend that she was surprised; she owned that
she had sometimes expected it; she blamed herself for not expecting it
then.

Westover said that he did not blame her for not knowing her mind; he had
been fifteen years learning his own fully. He asked her to take all the
time she wished. If she could not make sure after all, he should always
be sure that she was wise and good. She told him everything there was
to tell of her breaking with Jeff, and he thought the last episode a
supreme proof of her wisdom and goodness.

After a certain time they went for a walk in the warm summer moonlight
under the elms, where they had met on the avenue.

“I suppose,” she said, as they drew near her door again, “that people
don’t often talk it over as we’ve done.”

“We only know from the novels,” he answered. “Perhaps people do, oftener
than is ever known. I don’t see why they shouldn’t.”

“No.”

“I’ve never wished to be sure of you so much as since you’ve wished to
be sure of yourself.”

“And I’ve never been so sure as since you were willing to let me,” said
Cynthia.

“I am glad of that. Try to think of me, if that will help my cause, as
some one you might have always known in this way. We don’t really know
each other yet. I’m a great deal older than you, but still I’m not so
very old.”

“Oh, I don’t care for that. All I want to be certain of is that the
feeling I have is really--the feeling.”

“I know, dear,” said Westover, and his heart surged toward her in his
tenderness for her simple conscience, her wise question. “Take time.
Don’t hurry. Forget what I’ve said--or no; that’s absurd! Think of it;
but don’t let anything but the truth persuade you. Now, good-night,
Cynthia.”

“Good-night--Mr. Westover.”

“Mr. Westover!” he reproached her.

She stood thinking, as if the question were crucial. Then she said,
firmly, “I should always have to call you Mr. Westover.”

“Oh, well,” he returned, “if that’s all!”


PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

     Boldest man is commonly a little behind a timid woman
     Could not imagine the summer life of the place
     Crimson which stained the tops and steeps of snow
     Crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time
     Disposition to use his friends
     Errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest
     Exchanging inaudible banalities
     Fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little
     Government is best which governs least
     He might walk home with her if he would not seem to do so
     He’s the same kind of a man that he was a boy
     Hollow hilarities which people use to mask their indifference
     Honesty is difficult
     I don’t ever want to take the whip-hand
     I suppose they must feel it
     I sha’n’t forget this very soon
     If one must, it ought to be champagne
     Insensate pride that mothers have in their children’s faults
     Intent upon some point in the future
     Iron forks had two prongs
     Jefferson
     Joyful shame of children who have escaped punishment
     Man that could be your friend if he didn’t like you
     Married Man: after the first start-off he don’t try
     No two men see the same star
     Nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it
     Pathetic hopefulness
     People whom we think unequal to their good fortune
     Picture which, he said to himself, no one would believe in
     Quiet but rather dull look of people slightly deaf
     Society interested in a woman’s past, not her future
     Stupefied by a life of unalloyed prosperity and propriety
     The great trouble is for the man to be honest with her
     To be exemplary is as dangerous as to be complimentary
     W’at you want letter for? Always same thing
     Want something hard, don’t you know; but I want it to be easy
     We’re company enough for ourselves
     With all her insight, to have very little artistic sense
     Women talked their follies and men acted theirs
     World made up of two kinds of people
     World seems to always come out at the same hole it went in at





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