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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Landlord at Lion's Head, Volume 1
+by William Dean Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Landlord at Lion's Head, Volume 1
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3375]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LION'S HEAD, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Landlord at Lion's Head, Volume 1
+by William Dean Howells
+
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+
+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of
+this file, for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before
+making an entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+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 ail 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," be 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
+be 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.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time. . . . . . . . . . . .
+Disposition to use his friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little . . . . . . .
+Government is best which governs least . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Honesty is difficult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+I don't ever want to take the whip-hand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+I sha'n't forget this very soon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Insensate pride that mothers have in their children's faults . . . . . .
+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. . . . . . . . . . .
+Nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it. . . . . .
+People whom we think unequal to their good fortune . . . . . . . . . . .
+Society interested in a woman's past, not her future . . . . . . . . . .
+The great trouble is for the man to be honest with her . . . . . . . . .
+We're company enough for ourselves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+Women talked their follies and men acted theirs. . . . . . . . . . . . .
+World seems to always come out at the same hole it went in at! . . . . .
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Landlord At Lions Head, V1
+by William Dean Howells
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Landlord At Lions Head, by Howells, v1
+#22 in our series by William Dean Howells
+
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+Title: The Landlord At Lions Head, v1
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Release Date: August, 2002  [Etext #3375]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 03/27/01]
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+Edition: 11
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+an entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+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 ail 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
+be 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.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time
+Disposition to use his friends
+Fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little
+Government is best which governs least
+Honesty is difficult
+I don't ever want to take the whip-hand
+I sha'n't forget this very soon
+Insensate pride that mothers have in their children's faults
+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
+Nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it
+People whom we think unequal to their good fortune
+Society interested in a woman's past, not her future
+The great trouble is for the man to be honest with her
+We're company enough for ourselves
+Women talked their follies and men acted theirs
+World seems to always come out at the same hole it went in at
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Landlord At Lions Head, v1
+by William Dean Howells
+
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