THE LANDLORD AT LION'S HEAD

By William Dean Howells

Part I. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

In those dim recesses of the consciousness where things have theirbeginning, if ever things have a beginning, I suppose the origin of thisnovel may be traced to a fact of a fortnight's sojourn on the westernshore of lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in theState of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountainform 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 wasespecially definite; and when, in the course of some ten years, I foundthe scheme for a story about a summer hotel which I had long meant towrite, this image suggested the name of 'The Landlord at Lion's Head. ' Igave the title to my unwritten novel at once and never wished to changeit, but rejoiced in the certainty that, whatever the novel turned out tobe, the title could not be better. 

I began to write the story four years later, when we were settled forthe 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 andfrom Magnolia, Massachusetts, and Long Beach, Long Island, where I spentthe following summer. It was first serialized in Harper's Weekly and inthe London Illustrated News, as well as in an Australian newspaper--Iforget which one; and it was published as a completed book in 1896. 

I remember concerning it a very becoming despair when, at a certainmoment in it, I began to wonder what I was driving at. I have always hadsuch moments in my work, and if I cannot fitly boast of them, I can atleast own to them in freedom from the pride that goes before a fall. Myonly resource at such times was to keep working; keep beating harderand harder at the wall which seemed to close me in, till at last I brokethrough into the daylight beyond. In this case, I had really such a verygood grip of my characters that I need not have had the usual fear oftheir failure to work out their destiny. But even when the thing wasdone and I carried the completed manuscript to my dear old friend, thelate Henry Loomis Nelson, then editor of the Weekly, it was in morefear of his judgment than I cared to show. As often happened with mymanuscript in such exigencies, it seemed to go all to a handful ofshrivelled leaves. When we met again and he accepted it for the Weekly, with a handclasp of hearty welcome, I could scarcely gasp out myunfeigned relief. We had talked the scheme of it over together; he hadliked 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 worthiermen, perhaps because I thought I had achieved in him a true rusticNew England type in contact with urban life under entirely modernconditions. What seemed to me my esthetic success in him possiblysoftened me to his ethical shortcomings; but I do not expect others toshare my weakness for Jeff Durgin, whose strong, rough surname had beenwaiting for his personality ever since I had got it off the side of anice-cart many years before. 

At the time the story was imagined Harvard had been for four years muchin the direct knowledge of the author, and I pleased myself in realizingthe hero's experience there from even more intimacy with the universitymoods and manners than had supported me in the studies of an earlierfiction dealing with them. I had not lived twelve years in Cambridgewithout acquaintance such as even an elder man must make with theundergraduate life; but it is only from its own level that this canbe truly learned, and I have always been ready to stand corrected byundergraduate experience. Still, I have my belief that as a jay--theword 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 ofthe least important. What I most prize in him, if I may go to the bottomof the inkhorn, is the realization of that anti-Puritan quality whichwas always vexing the heart of Puritanism, and which I had constantlyfelt one of the most interesting facts in my observation of New England. 

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

I worked steadily if not rapidly at the story. Often I went back overit, and tore it to pieces and put it together again. It made me feel attimes as if I should never learn my trade, but so did every novel I havewritten; every novel, in fact, has been a new trade. In, the case ofthis one the publishers were hurrying me in the revision for copy togive the illustrator, who was hurrying his pictures for the English andAustralian 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 waswandering and uncertain, like that of most mountain-tops; but, seen fromthe east, the mass of granite showing above the dense forests of thelower slopes had the form of a sleeping lion. The flanks and hauncheswere vaguely distinguished from the mass; but the mighty head, restingwith its tossed mane upon the vast paws stretched before it, was boldlysculptured against the sky. The likeness could not have been moreperfect, when you had it in profile, if it had been a definite intentionof art; and you could travel far north and far south before the illusionvanished. In winter the head was blotted by the snows; and sometimesthe vagrant clouds caught upon it and deformed it, or hid it, at otherseasons; but commonly, after the last snow went in the spring untilthe first snow came in the fall, the Lion's Head was a part of thelandscape, as imperative and importunate as the Great Stone Face itself. 

Long after other parts of the hill country were opened to summersojourn, the region of Lion's Head remained almost primitively solitaryand savage. A stony mountain road followed the bed of the torrent thatbrawled through the valley at its base, and at a certain point a stillrougher lane climbed from the road along the side of the opposite heightto a lonely farm-house pushed back on a narrow shelf of land, with ameagre acreage of field and pasture broken out of the woods that clothedall the neighboring steeps. The farm-house level commanded the best viewof Lion's Head, and the visitors always mounted to it, whether theycame on foot, or arrived on buckboards or in buggies, or drove up in theConcord stages from the farther and nearer hotels. The drivers of thecoaches rested their horses there, and watered them from the spring thatdripped into the green log at the barn; the passengers scattered aboutthe door-yard to look at the Lion's Head, to wonder at it and mock atit, according to their several makes and moods. They could scarcely havefelt that they ever had a welcome from the stalwart, handsome woman whosold them milk, if they wanted it, and small cakes of maple sugar ifthey were very strenuous for something else. The ladies were not able tomake much of her from the first; but some of them asked her if it werenot rather lonely there, and she said that when you heard the catamountsscream at night, and the bears growl in the spring, it did seemlonesome. When one of them declared that if she should hear a catamountscream or a bear growl she should die, the woman answered, Well, shepresumed we must all die some time. But the ladies were not sure of acovert slant in her words, for they were spoken with the same look shewore when she told them that the milk was five cents a glass, and theblack maple sugar three cents a cake. She did not change when she ownedupon their urgence that the gaunt man whom they glimpsed around thecorners of the house was her husband, and the three lank boys with himwere her sons; that the children whose faces watched them through thewrithing window panes were her two little girls; that the urchin whostood shyly twisted, all but his white head and sunburned face, into herdress and glanced at them with a mocking blue eye, was her youngest, andthat he was three years old. With like coldness of voice and face, sheassented to their conjecture that the space walled off in the farthercorner of the orchard was the family burial ground; and she said, withno more feeling that the ladies could see than she had shown concerningthe other facts, that the graves they saw were those of her husband'sfamily and of the children she had lost there had been ten children, andshe had lost four. She did not visibly shrink from the pursuit of thesympathy which expressed itself in curiosity as to the sickness theyhad died of; the ladies left her with the belief that they had met acharacter, and she remained with the conviction, briefly imparted to herhusband, that they were tonguey. 

The summer folks came more and more, every year, with little variance inthe impression on either side. When they told her that her maple sugarwould 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 seeit on all the sugar she made. But the next year the cakes bore a rudeeffigy of Lion's Head, and she said that one of her boys had cut thestamp out with his knife; she now charged five cents a cake for thesugar, but her manner remained the same. It did not change when theexcursionists drove away, and the deep silence native to the placefell after their chatter. When a cock crew, or a cow lowed, or a horseneighed, or one of the boys shouted to the cattle, an echo retortedfrom the granite base of Lion's Head, and then she had all the noise shewanted, or, at any rate, all the noise there was most of the time. Nowand 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, butthere was scarcely another break from the silence except when thecoaching-parties came. 

The continuous clash and rush of the brook was like a part of thesilence, as the red of the farm-house and the barn was like a part ofthe green of the fields and woods all round them: the black-green ofpines and spruces, the yellow-green of maples and birches, dense tothe tops of the dreary hills, and breaking like a bated sea around theLion's Head. The farmer stooped at his work, with a thin, inward-curvingchest, but his wife stood straight at hers; and she had a massive beautyof figure and a heavily moulded regularity of feature that impressedsuch as had eyes to see her grandeur among the summer folks. She wasforty when they began to come, and an ashen gray was creeping over thereddish heaps of her hair, like the pallor that overlies the crimson ofthe autumnal oak. She showed her age earlier than most fair people, butsince her marriage at eighteen she had lived long in the deaths of thechildren she had lost. They were born with the taint of their father'sfamily, 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'sbrothers and sisters cough, and then she waited in hapless patience thefulfilment of their doom. The two little girls whose faces the ladiesof the first coaching-party saw at the farm-house windows had died awayfrom them; two of the lank boys had escaped, and in the perpetual exileof California and Colorado had saved themselves alive. Their fathertalked of going, too, but ten years later he still dragged himselfspectrally about the labors of the farm, with the same cough at sixtywhich made his oldest son at twenty-nine look scarcely younger thanhimself. 

II. 

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

The long, loose cough took him, and another cough answered it like anecho from the barn, where his son was giving the horses their feed. The mild, wan-eyed young man came round the corner presently toward theporch where his father and mother were sitting, and at the same momenta boy came up the lane to the other corner; there were sixteen yearsbetween the ages of the brothers, who alone were left of the childrenborn into and borne out of the house. The young man waited till theywere within whispering distance of each other, and then he gasped:"Where you been?"

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

His father made no answer; his mother looked at the boy's hands andface, all of much the same earthen cast, up to the eaves of his thatchof yellow hair, and said: "You go and wash yourself. " At a certain lightin his mother's eye, which he caught as he passed into the house withhis dog, the boy turned and cut a defiant caper. The oldest son sat downon the bench beside his father, and they all looked in silence at themountain before them. They heard the boy whistling behind the house, with sputtering and blubbering noises, as if he were washing his facewhile he whistled; and then they heard him singing, with a muffledsound, and sharp breaks from the muffled sound, as if he were singinginto the towel; he shouted to his dog and threatened him, and thescuffling 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 coughedvaguely, 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 itbefore. If it's come to the pinch, now, it's come. But you want to besure. "

The man did not answer directly. "If we could sell off now and get outto 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 hadhoped he might not find in his way this time. 

His wife laughed grimly. "I guess, if the truth was known, we're toopoor 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 fetchsomething. "

"Enough to get us out there, and then we should be on Jim's hands, " saidthe woman. 

"We should till spring, maybe. I d'know as I want to face another winterhere, and I d'know as Jackson does. "

The young man gasped back, courageously: "I guess I can get along herewell enough. "

"It's made Jim ten years younger. That's what he said, " urged thefather. 

The mother smiled as grimly as she had laughed. "I don't believe it 'llmake you ten years richer, and that's what you want. "

"I don't believe but what we should ha' done something with the place byspring. Or the State would, " the father said, lifelessly. 

The voice of the boy broke in upon them from behind. "Say, mother, a'n'tyou never goin' to have dinner?" He was standing in the doorway, with astartling cleanness of the hands and face, and a strange, wet sleeknessof the hair. His clothes were bedrabbled down the front with soap andwater. 

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

"Say, " the boy called again to his mother, "there comes a peddler. " Hepointed down the road at the figure of a man briskly ascending the lanetoward the house, with a pack on his back and some strange appendagesdangling from it. 

The woman did not look round; neither of the men looked round; they allkept on in-doors, and she said to the boy, as she passed him: "I got notime 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 figureof a young man, who slung his burden lightly from his shoulders when hearrived, and then stood looking at the boy, with his foot planted on thelowermost tread of the steps climbing from the ground to the porch. 

III. 

The boy must have permitted these advances that he might inflict thegreater 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 tellyour mother, and then show me where I can wash my hands. "

The bold ease of the stranger seemed to daunt the boy, and he stoodirresolute. His dog came round the corner of the house at the first wordof 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, andshowed his teeth with a snarl. The stranger promptly kicked him in thejaw, and the dog ran off howling. "Come here, sir!" the boy called tohim, 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 athim, slowly taking in the facts of his costume, with eyes that climbedfrom the heavy shoes up the legs of his thick-ribbed stockings and hisknickerbockers, past the pleats and belt of his Norfolk jacket, to thered 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, tothe top of his braidless, bandless slouch hat of soft felt. It was oneof the earliest costumes of the kind that had shown itself in the hillcountry, and it was altogether new to the boy. "Come, " said the wearerof it, "don't stand on the order of your going, but go at once, " and hesat down on the steps with his back to the boy, who heard these strangeterms of command with a face of vague envy. 

The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of themountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms ofthe Lion's Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky. Through the silvery veil there burned here and there on the denselywooded acclivities the crimson torch of a maple, kindled before itstime, but everywhere else there was the unbroken green of the forest, subdued to one tone of gray. The boy heard the stranger fetch his breathdeeply, and then expel it in a long sigh, before he could bringhimself to obey an order that seemed to leave him without the choice ofdisobedience. 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 andlooked at him. 

"What's your name?" he asked. 

"Thomas Jefferson Durgin. "

"Well, Thomas Jefferson Durgin, will you show me the way to the pump andbring 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 wayindoors; the stranger arrested him. 

"Here. Take hold of this and put it out of the rush of travelsomewhere. " He lifted his burden from where he had dropped it in theroad and swung it toward the boy, who ran down the steps and embracedit. As he carried it toward a corner of the porch he felt of the variousshapes and materials in it. 

Then he said, "Come on!" again, and went before the guest through thedim hall running midway of the house to the door at the rear. He lefthim on a narrow space of stone flagging there, and ran with a tin basinto the spring at the barn and brought it back to him full of the coldwater. 

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

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

The room was square, with two north windows that looked down the lane hehad climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in anell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor or aground-floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the lower sashby green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern of brownroses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size pencil-drawingof two little girls, one slightly older and slightly larger than theother, each with round eyes and precise ringlets, and with her handclasped in the other's hand. 

The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallenback 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 thoseyour children?"

"Yes, " said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in herhand. "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 yearbefore they died. It's a good likeness. They say they don't change agreat deal at first. "

She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment, but he answeredwide 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 takeit away. " A spare glimmer lighted up her face. 

The painter rejoined in kind: "The town might have something to say, Isuppose. "

"Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it. We'vegot 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 thefear 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 theypay 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 hersuggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence. "I'min the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stay severalweeks. 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 downbefore 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 triedan open space in the orchard, where he backed against the wall enclosingthe little burial-ground. He looked round at it without seeming to seeit, and then went back to the level where the house stood. "This is theplace, " he said to himself. But the boy, who had been lurking afterhim, with the dog lurking at, his own heels in turn, took the words as aproffer of conversation. 

"I thought you'd come to it, " he sneered. 

"Did you?" asked the painter, with a smile for the unsatisfied grudge inthe boy's tone. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

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

"Why, yes, " said the painter, with a glance of surprise. "I shall bemuch obliged for a lift. " He started toward the porch where his burdenlay, and the boy ran before him. They jointly separated the knapsackfrom the things tied to it, and the painter let the boy carry the easeland 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 thename 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 resolvingsilently to bide his time and watch for another chance. 

Westover forgot him in the fidget he fell into, trying this and thateffect, with his head slanted one way and then slanted the other, hishand held up to shut out the mountain below the granite mass of Lion'sHead, and then changed to cut off the sky above; and then both handslifted in parallel to confine the picture. He made some tentativescrawls on his canvas in charcoal, and he wasted so much time that thelight on the mountain-side began to take the rich tone of the afternoondeepening to evening. A soft flush stole into it; the sun dipped behindthe top south of the mountain, and Lion's Head stood out against theintense clearness of the west, which began to be flushed with exquisitesuggestions of violet and crimson. 

"Good Lord!" said Westover; and he flew at his colors and began topaint. He had got his canvas into such a state that he alone could havefound it much more intelligible than his palette, when he heard the boysaying, over his shoulder: "I don't think that looks very much likeit. " He had last been aware of the boy sitting at the grassy edge of thelane, tossing small bits of earth and pebble across to his dog, whichsat at the other edge and snapped at them. Then he lost consciousness ofhim. He answered, dreamily, while he found a tint he was trying for withhis brush: "Perhaps you don't know. " He was so sure of his effect thatthe popular censure speaking in the boy's opinion only made him happierin it. 

"I know what I see, " said the boy. 

"I doubt it, " said Westover, and then he lost consciousness of himagain. He was rapt deep and far into the joy of his work, and had nothought but for that, and for the dim question whether it would be suchanother day to-morrow, with that light again on Lion's Head, when he wasat last sensible of a noise that he felt he must have been hearing sometime without noting it. It was a lamentable, sound of screaming, as ofsome 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 theechoes, to make out where the cries came from. Then, down at the pointwhere the lane joined the road to the southward and the road lost itselfin the shadow of a woodland, he saw the boy leaping back and forthacross the track, with his dog beside him; he was shouting and his dogbarking furiously; those screams and entreaties came from within theshadow. Westover plunged down the lane headlong, with a speed thatgathered at each bound, and that almost flung him on his face when hereached the level where the boy and the dog were dancing back and forthacross the road. Then he saw, crouching in the edge of the wood, alittle girl, who was uttering the appeals he had heard, and clinging toher, 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 theyfollowed one another. They were really in no danger, for the boy heldhis dog tight by his collar, and was merely delighting himself withtheir terror. 

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

"You infernal little ruffian!" he roared at him; and the sound of hisvoice was enough for the dog; he began to scale the hill-side toward thehouse without a moment's stay. 

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

"Great, mean, ugly thing! I'll tell the teacher on him, that's what Iwill, as soon as ever school begins. I'll see if he can come round withthat dog of his scaring folks! I wouldn't 'a' been a bit afraid if ithadn't 'a' been for Franky. Don't cry any more, Franky. Don't you seethey're gone? I presume he thinks it smart to scare a little boy and agirl. If I was a boy once, I'd show him!"

She made no sign of gratitude to Westover: as far as any recognitionfrom her was concerned, his intervention was something as impersonal asif 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 mewhere you live. "

She looked up at him in a daze, and Westover heard the Durgin boysaying: "She lives right there in that little wood-colored house at theother 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 ofbushes, 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 cando, Jeff Durgin!"

The boy did not answer. 

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

"Let me have your other hand, " said Westover, and, with the little boybetween them, they set off toward the point where the lane joined theroad on the northward. They had to pass the bushes where Jeff Durgin wascrouching, and the little girl turned and made a face at him. "Oh, oh! Idon't think I should have done that, " said Westover. 

"I don't care!" said the little girl. But she said, in explanation andpartial excuse: "He tries to scare all the girls. I'll let him know 'the can't scare one!"

Westover looked up toward the Durgin house with a return of interest inthe canvas he had left in the lane on the easel. Nothing had happenedto it. At the door of the barn he saw the farmer and his eldest sonslanting forward and staring down the hill at the point he had comefrom. Mrs. Durgin was looking out from the shelter of the porch, and sheturned and went in with Jeff's dog at her skirts when Westover came insight with the children. 

V. 

Westover had his tea with the family, but nothing was said or done toshow that any of them resented or even knew of what had happened to theboy from him. Jeff himself seemed to have no grudge. He went out withWestover, when the meal was ended, and sat on the steps of the porchwith him, watching the painter watch the light darken on the lonelyheights and in the lonely depths around. Westover smoked a pipe, and thefire 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 athim. 

They were both silent till the painter asked: "What do you do here whenyou're not trying to scare little children to death?"

The boy hung his head and said, with the effect of excusing a longarrears of uselessness: "I'm goin' to school as soon as it commences. "

"There's one branch of your education that I should like to undertakeif I ever saw you at a thing like that again. Don't you feel ashamed ofyourself?"

The boy pulled so hard at the dog's ear that the dog gave a faint yelpof protest. 

"They might 'a' seen that I had him by the collar. I wa'n't a-goin' tolet 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 heimagined a superfluity, and he made some haste to ask: "who are they?"

"Whitwell is their name. They live in that little house where youtook them. Their father's got a piece of land on Zion's Head that he'sclearin' off for the timber. Their mother's dead, and Cynthy keepshouse. She's always makin' up names and faces, " added the boy. "Shethinks herself awful smart. That Franky's a perfect cry-baby. "

"Well, upon my word! You are a little ruffian, " said Westover, and heknocked the ashes out of his pipe. "The next time you meet that poorlittle creature you tell her that I think you're about the shabbiestchap I know, and that I hope the teacher will begin where I left offwith you and not leave blackguard enough in you to--"

He stopped for want of a fitting figure, and the boy said: "I guess theteacher 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, vanishinginto the dark of the interior, and presently appeared with a lightedhand-lamp. He led the way upstairs to a front room looking down upon theporch roof and over toward Zion's Head, which Westover could see dimlyoutlined against the night sky, when he lifted the edge of the papershade and peered out. 

The room was neat, with greater comfort in its appointments than hehoped for. He tried the bed, and found it hard, but of straw, and notthe feathers he had dreaded; while the boy looked into the water-pitcherto 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 asthey were, he found at hand here, and a surprise which he had felt ata certain touch in the cooking renewed itself at the intelligentarrangements for his comfort. A secondary quilt was laid across the footof his bed; his window-shade was pulled down, and, though the windowwas shut and the air stuffy within, there was a sense of cleanliness ineverything which was not at variance with the closeness. 

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

VI. 

The men folks had finished their breakfast and gone to their farm-workhours before Westover came down to his breakfast, but the boy seemedto be of as much early leisure as himself, and was lounging on thethreshold of the back door, with his dog in waiting upon him. He gavethe effect of yesterday's cleanliness freshened up with more recentsoap and water. At the moment Westover caught sight of him, he heard hismother calling to him from the kitchen, "Well, now, come in and get yourbreakfast, Jeff, " and the boy called to Westover, in turn, "I'll tellher you're here, " as he rose and came in-doors. "I guess she's got yourbreakfast for you. "

Mrs. Durgin brought the breakfast almost as soon as Westover had foundhis way to the table, and she lingered as if for some expression of hisopinion upon it. The biscuit and the butter were very good, and he saidso; the eggs were fresh, and the hash from yesterday's corned-beef couldnot have been better, and he praised them; but he was silent about thecoffee. 

"It a'n't very good, " she suggested. 

"Why, I'm used to making my own coffee; I lived so long in a countrywhere it's nearly the whole of breakfast that I got into the habit ofit, and I always carry my little machine with me; but I don't like tobring it out, unless--"

"Unless you can't stand the other folks's, " said the woman, with ahumorous gleam. "Well, you needn't mind me. I want you should have goodcoffee, 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 outof the way of it. But at home we had to have it. " She explained, to hisinquiring glance. 

"My father kept the tavern on the old road to St. Albans, on the otherside 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 accountfor a quality which she hoped he had noticed in her cooking. He thoughtshe might be going to tell him something more of herself, but she onlysaid, "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 againwatching the light outside, when he saw her come into the hallway witha large shade-lamp in her hand. She stopped at the door of a room he hadnot 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; theyounger was sleepily putting away some school-books, and the elderseemed to have been helping him with his lessons. 

"He's got to begin school next week, " she said to Westover; and at thepreparations the other now began to make with a piece of paper anda planchette which he had on the table before him, she asked, in thehalf-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 sorough as they might have been, across her middle and watching her sonwhile the machine pushed about under his palm, and he bent his wan eyesupon one of the oval-framed photographs on the wall, as if rapt in asupernal vision. The boy stared drowsily at the planchette, jerking thisway and that, and making abrupt starts and stops. At last the young manlifted his palm from it, and put it aside to study the hieroglyphics ithad 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 Igot to take a little time to it, " he added, leaning back wearily in hischair. "Ever seen much of the manifestations?" he gasped at Westover. 

"Never any, before, " said the painter, with a leniency for the invalidwhich 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 candevelop into a writin' medium. " He seemed to refer the fact as a sort ofquestion to Westover, who could think of nothing to say but that it mustbe very interesting to feel that one had such a power. 

"I guess he don't know he's got it yet, " his mother interposed. "Andplanchette 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 themother 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 bycommon consent. 

Mrs. Durgin took up her lamp again and looked round on the appointmentsof the room, as if she wished Westover to note them, too: the drabwallpaper, the stiff chairs, the long, hard sofa in haircloth, the highbureau 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 thehabit, havin' it open for funerals. "

VII. 

Four or five days of perfect weather followed one another, and Westoverworked hard at his picture in the late afternoon light he had chosen forit. In the morning he tramped through the woods and climbed the hillswith Jeff Durgin, who seemed never to do anything about the farm, andhad a leisure unbroken by anything except a rare call from his mother tohelp her in the house. He built the kitchen fire, and got the wood forit; he picked the belated pease and the early beans in the garden, andshelled them; on the Monday when the school opened he did a share ofthe family wash, which seemed to have been begun before daylight, andWestover saw him hanging out the clothes before he started off withhis books. He suffered no apparent loss of self-respect in theseemployments, and, while he still had his days free, he put himselfat Westover's disposal with an effect of unimpaired equality. He hadexpected, evidently, that Westover would want to fish or shoot, or atleast join him in the hunt for woodchucks, which he still carried onwith abated zeal for lack of his company when the painter sat down tosketch certain bits that struck him. When he found that Westover caredfor nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it, hedid 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 followhis teaching in eating the toadstools, as his mother called them, whenthey brought them home to be cooked. 

If it could not be said that he shared the affection which began to growup in Westover from their companionship, there could be no doubt ofthe interest he took in him, though it often seemed the same criticalcuriosity which appeared in the eye of his dog when it dwelt upon thepainter. Fox had divined in his way that Westover was not only not to bemolested, but was to be respectfully tolerated, yet no gleam of kindnessever lighted up his face at sight of the painter; he never wagged histail in recognition of him; he simply recognized him and no more, and heremained passive under Westover's advances, which he had the effect ofcovertly referring to Jeff, when the boy was by, for his approval ordisapproval; when he was not by, the dog's manner implied a reservationof 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 theunexpected levels on the mountain slopes, and had come to a standstillin a place which the boy pretended not to know his way out of. Westoverdoubted him, for he had found that Jeff liked to give himself creditfor woodcraft by discovering an escape from the depths of tracklesswildernesses. 

"I guess you know where we are, " he suggested. 

"No, honestly, " said the boy; but he grinned, and Westover still doubtedhim. 

"Hark! What's that?" he said, hushing further speech from him with amotion of his hand. It was the sound of an axe. 

"Oh, I know where we are, " said Jeff. "It's that Canuck chopping inWhitwell's clearing. Come along. "

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

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

"Good-morning, " said Westover. 

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

As he advanced he held out his hand. "Oh, you're the one that stoppedthat fellow that day when he was tryin' to scare my children. Well, I thought I should run across you some time. " He shook hands withWestover, in token of the gratitude which did not express itself inwords. "How are you? Treat you pretty well up at the Durgins'? I guessso. The old woman knows how to cook, anyway. Jackson's about the besto' the lot above ground, though I don't know as I know very much againstthe 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 ona high stump, which suited his length of leg, and courteously wavedWestover to a place on the log in front of him. A long, ragged beard ofbrown, with lines of gray in it, hung from his chin and mounted well upon his thin cheeks toward his friendly eyes. His mustache lay sunken onhis lip, which had fallen in with the loss of his upper teeth. From thelower 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, butwithout having anything immediately to offer himself. 

Westover said, "Thank you, " as he dropped on the log, and Whitwelladded, relentingly: "I don't suppose a fellow's so much to blame, ifhe'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 beoriginal sin with the fellow himself. "

"Well, that's something so, " said Whitwell, with pleasure in thedistinction rather than assent. "But I guess it ain't original sin inthe 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 muchcussedness gits statted. "

"His father's father?" asked Westover, willing to humor Whitwell'sevident 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 theold times when the stages stopped with him. Ever noticed how a man onthe mean side in politics always knows how to keep a hotel? Well, it'ssomething curious. If there was ever a mean side to any question, oldMason was on it. My folks used to live around there, and I can rememberwhen I was a boy hangin' around the bar-room nights hearin' himargue that colored folks had no souls; and along about the time thefugitive-slave law was passed the folks pootty near run him out o' townfor puttin' the United States marshal on the scent of a fellow thatwas breakin' for Canada. Well, it was just so when the war come. It wasknown for a fact that he was in with them Secesh devils up over the linethat was plannin' a raid into Vermont in '63. He'd got pootty low downby that time; railroads took off all the travel; tavern 'd got to bea regular doggery; old man always drank some, I guess. That was a goodwhile after his girl had married Durgin. He was dead against it, and itbroke him up consid'able when she would have him: Well, one night theold stand burnt up and him in it, and neither of 'em insured. "

Whitwell laughed with a pleasure in his satire which gave the monumentsin his lower jaw a rather sinister action. But, as if he felt a rebukein 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 hardknocks. If she was tough, to sta't with, she's had blows enough tomeller her. But that's the way I account for the boy. I s'pose--I'doughtn't to feel the way I do about him, but he's such a pest to thewhole neighborhood that he'd have the most pop'la' fune'l. Well, I guessI've said enough. I'm much obliged to you, though, Mr. --"

"Westover, " the painter suggested. "But the boy isn't so bad all thetime. "

"Couldn't be, " said Whitwell, with a cackle of humorous enjoyment. "Hehas his spells of bein' decent, and he's pootty smart, too. But when theother 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 alongback, and that little girl you see him tormentin', she's a regularlittle mother to her brother; and whenever Jeff Durgin sees her withhim, seems as if the Old Scratch got into him. Well, I'm glad I didn'tcome across him that day. How you gittin' along with Lion's Head? Setsquiet enough for you?" Whitwell rose from the stump and brushed theclinging 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 hisaxe. "I should like to see you workin' some day. Do' know as I ever sawan 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 inagain with a force that made a wide, square chip leap out. He lookedover his shoulder at Westover, who was moving away. "Say, stop in sometime you're passin'. I live in that wood-colored house at the foot ofthe Durgins' lane. "

VIII. 

In a little sunken place, behind a rock, some rods away, Westover foundJeff 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'tfind it alone. "

"Oh, why didn't you say you'd wait?" The boy grinned. "I shouldn't thinka fellow like you would want to be afraid of any man, even for the funof 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. "Butperhaps you like to be afraid. "

"I don't know as I do, " said the boy, and Westover left him to thequestion a great part of the way home. He did not express any regret orpromise any reparation. But a few days after that, when he had begunto convoy parties of children up to see Westover at work, in the lateafternoon, on their way home from school, and to show the painter off tothem 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 largerchildren hindered the little boy's view of the picture, Jeff, in hisquality of host, lifted him under his arms and held him up so that hecould look as long as he liked. 

The girl seemed ashamed of the good understanding before Westover. Jeffoffered to make a place for her among the other children who had lookedlong enough, but she pulled the front of her bonnet across her face andsaid that she did not want to look, and caught her brother by the handand ran away with him. Westover thought this charming, somewhat; heliked the intense shyness which the child's intense passion had hiddenfrom him before. 

Jeff acted as host to the neighbors who came to inspect the picture, andthey all came, within a circuit of several miles around, and gavehim their opinions freely or scantily, according to their severaltemperaments. They were mainly favorable, though there was some frankcriticism, too, spoken over the painter's shoulder as openly as if hewere not by. There was no question but of likeness; all finer facts werefar from them; they wished to see how good a portrait Westover had made, and some of them consoled him with the suggestion that the likenesswould 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 thepicture. He said he presumed you could not always get a thing like thatjust right the first time, and that you had to keep trying till you didget it; but it paid in the end. Jeff had stolen down from the house withhis dog, drawn by the fascination which one we have injured always hasfor us; when Whitwell suddenly turned upon him and asked, jocularly, "What do you think, Jeff?" the boy could only kick his dog and drive ithome, as a means of hiding his feelings. 

He brought the teacher to see the picture the last Friday before thepainter went away. She was a cold-looking, austere girl, pretty enough, with eyes that wandered away from the young man, although Jeff used allhis arts to make her feel at home in his presence. She pretended to havemerely stopped on her way up to see Mrs. Durgin, and she did not ventureany comment on the painting; but, when Westover asked something abouther school, she answered him promptly enough as to the number and agesand sexes of the school-children. He ventured so far toward a joke withher 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 getover his teasing, she said, with the air of reading him a lecture, shewould not have anything to complain of; and Jeff looked ashamed, butrather of the praise than the blame. His humiliation seemed completewhen she said, finally: "He's a good scholar. "

On the Tuesday following, Westover meant to go. It was the end of histhird week, and it had brought him into September. The weather since hehad begun to paint Lion's Head was perfect for his work; but, with thelong drought, it had grown very warm. Many trees now had flamed intocrimson on the hill-slopes; the yellowing corn in the fields gave outa thin, dry sound as the delicate wind stirred the blades; but only thesounds and sights were autumnal. The heat was oppressive at midday, andat night the cold had lost its edge. There was no dew, and Mrs. Durginsat 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 shecalled to her boy, "You go to bed, Jeff, " as if she wished to be alonewith Westover; the men folks were already in bed; he could hear themcough now and then. 

"Mr. Westover, " the woman began, even as she swept her skirts forwardbefore she sat down, "I want to ask you whether you would let thatpicture of yours go on part board? I'll give you back just as much asyou say of this money. "

He looked round and saw that she had in the hand dropped in her lap thebills 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 thatpicture; I don't know when I've ever wanted a thing more. It's justlike Lion's Head, the way I've seen it, day in and day out, every summersince 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 tosay--"

"Why don't you let me have it, then? If we ever had to go away fromhere--if anything happened to us--it's the one thing I should want tokeep and take with me. There! That's the way I feel about it. I can'texplain; but I do wish you'd let me have it. "

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

"Mrs. Durgin, I suppose I shall have to be frank with you, and youmustn't feel hurt. I have to live by my work, and I have to get as muchas I can for it--"

"That's what I say. I don't want to beat you down on it. I'll give youwhatever you think is right. It's my money, and my husband feels just asI do about it, " she urged. 

"You don't quite understand, " he said, gently. "I expect to have anexhibition of my pictures in Boston this fall, and I hope to get two orthree hundred dollars for Lion's Head. "

"I've been a proper fool, " cried the woman, and she drew in a longbreath. 

"Oh, don't mind, " he begged; "it's all right. I've never had any offerfor a picture that I'd rather take than yours. I know the thing can't bealtogether bad after what you've said. And I'll tell you what! I'll haveit photographed when I get to Boston, and I'll send you a photograph ofit. "

"How much will that be?" Mrs. Durgin asked, as if taught caution by heroffer for the painting. 

"Nothing. And if you'll accept it and hang it up here somewhere I shallbe very glad. "

"Thank you, " said Mrs. Durgin, and the meekness, the wounded pride, hefancied in her, touched him. 

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

"You spoke, just now, about taking it with you. Of course, you don'tthink of leaving Lion's Head?"

She did not answer for so long a time that he thought she had notperhaps 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 toleave. "

"Oh!"

"But I've been thinkin' of something since you've been here that Idon't know but you'll say is about as wild as wantin' to buy athree-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 prompther. 

"Well?"

"Well, it's this; and I wanted to ask you, anyway. You think there'd beany chance of my gettin' summer folks to come here and board if I wasto 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 thehotels, 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 wellenough; and I ain't afraid but what I can do for boarders as well assome, 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 farmany more, and we got to do somethin'. If there was anything else I coulddo! But I've thought it out and thought it out, and I guess there ain'tanything I can do but take boarders--if I can get them. "

"I should think you'd find it rather pleasant on some accounts. Yourboarders would be company for you, " said Westover. 

"We're company enough for ourselves, " said Mrs. Durgin. "I ain't everbeen lonesome here, from the first minute. I guess I had company enoughwhen I was a girl to last me the sort that hotel folks are. I presumeMr. 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. ButI know how my mother used to slave, and how I used to slave myself; andI always said I'd rather do anything than wait on boarders; and now Iguess I got to come to it. The sight of summer folks makes me sick! Iguess I could 'a' had 'em long ago if I'd wanted to. There! I've saidenough. " She rose, with a sudden lift of her powerful frame, and stood amoment as if expecting Westover to say something. 

He said: "Well, when you've made your mind up, send your advertisementto 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 hispreparations he had the zealous and even affectionate help of JeffDurgin. The boy seemed to wish him to carry away the best impressionof him, or, at least, to make him forget all that had been sinister orunpleasant in his behavior. They had been good comrades since the firstevil day; they had become good friends even; and Westover was touchedby the boy's devotion at parting. He helped the painter get his packtogether in good shape, and he took pride in strapping it on Westover'sshoulders, adjusting and readjusting it with care, and fastening it sothat all should be safe and snug. He lingered about at the risk of beinglate for school, as if to see the last of the painter, and he waved hishat to him when Westover looked back at the house from half down thelane. Then he vanished, and Westover went slowly on till he reachedthat corner of the orchard where the slanting gravestones of the familyburial-ground showed above the low wall. There, suddenly, a storm burstupon 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 skilfulmarksmen, whose missiles all told. 

When he could lift his face to look round he heard a shrill, accusingvoice, "Oh, Jeff Durgin!" and he saw another storm of apples fly throughthe air toward the little Whitwell girl, who dodged and ran along theroad below and escaped in the direction of the schoolhouse. Then theboy's face showed itself over the top of one of the gravestones, allagrin with joy. He waited and watched Westover keep slowly on, as ifnothing had happened, and presently he let some apples fall from hishands 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 woodsnear Whitwell's house, he unstrapped his load to see how much harm hadbeen done to his picture. He found it unhurt, and before he had got theburden back again he saw Jeff Durgin leaping along the road toward theschool-house, whirling his satchel of books about his head and shoutinggayly to the girl, now hidden by the bushes at the other end of thelane: "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 saidthat her son Jackson had written it out, and Westover found it so wellwritten that he had scarcely to change the wording. It offered the bestof farm-board, with plenty of milk and eggs, berries and fruit, forfive dollars a week at Lion's Head Farm, and it claimed for the farm themerit of the finest view of the celebrated Lion's Head Mountain. Itwas signed, as her letter was signed, "Mrs. J. M. Durgin, " with herpost-office address, and it gave Westover as a reference. 

The letter was in the same handwriting as the advertisement, which hetook to be that of Jackson Durgin. It enclosed a dollar note to pay forthree insertions of the advertisement in the evening Transcript, andit ended, almost casually: "I do not know as you have heard that myhusband, James Monroe Durgin, passed to spirit life this spring. My sonwill help me to run the house. "

This death could not move Westover more than it had apparently movedthe widow. During the three weeks he had passed under his roof, he hadscarcely exchanged three words with James Monroe Durgin, who remained tohim an impression of large, round, dull-blue eyes, a stubbly upperlip, and cheeks and chin tagged with coarse, hay-colored beard. Theimpression was so largely the impression that he had kept of thedull-blue eyes and the gaunt, slanted figure of Andrew Jackson Durginthat he could not be very distinct in his sense of which was now thepresence and which the absence. He remembered, with an effort, that theson's beard was straw-colored, but he had to make no effort to recallthe robust effect of Mrs. Durgin and her youngest son. He wondered now, as he had often wondered before, whether she knew of the final violencewhich had avenged the boy for the prolonged strain of repression Jeffhad inflicted upon himself during Westover's stay at the farm. Afterseveral impulses to go back and beat him, to follow him to school andexpose him to the teacher, to write to his mother and tell her of hismisbehavior, Westover had decided to do nothing. As he had come offunhurt in person and property, he could afford to be more generouslyamused than if he had suffered damage in either. The more he thought ofthe 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 andvirtue in perhaps intolerable measure. He could not quite make outthat it was an act of bad faith; there was no reason to think that thegood-natured things the fellow had done, the constant little offices ofzeal and friendliness, were less sincere than this violent outbreak. 

The letter from Lion's Head Farm brought back his three weeks there veryvividly, and made Westover wish he was going there for the summer. Buthe was going over to France for an indefinite period of work in the onlyair where he believed modern men were doing good things in the rightway. He W a sale in the winter, and he had sold pictures enough toprovide the means for this sojourn abroad; though his lion's HeadMountain had not brought the two hundred and fifty or three hundreddollars he had hoped for. It brought only a hundred and sixty; but thetime had almost come already when Westover thought it brought too much. Now, the letter from Mrs. Durgin reminded him that he had never sent herthe photograph of the picture which he had promised her. He encased thephotograph at once, and wrote to her with many avowals of contrition forhis neglect, and strong regret that he was not soon to see the originalof the painting again. He paid a decent reverence to the bereavementshe had suffered, and he sent his regards to all, especially his comradeJeff, whom he advised to keep out of the apple-orchard. 

Five years later Westover came home in the first week of a gaspingAugust, whose hot breath thickened round the Cunarder before she gothalf-way up the harbor. He waited only to see his pictures through thecustom-house, and then he left for the mountains. The mountains meantLion's Head for him, and eight hours after he was dismounting from thetrain at a station on the road which had been pushed through on a newline 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 theplatform, and he knew at a glance that it was Jeff Durgin who was comingforward 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 andbrother, but Jeff Durgin's stalwart frame was notable for strengthrather than height. He could not have been taller than his mother, whosestature was above the standard of her sex, but he was massive withoutbeing bulky. His chest was deep, his square shoulders broad, hispowerful legs bore him with a backward bulge of the calves that showedthrough his shapely trousers; he caught up the trunks and threw theminto the baggage-wagon with a swelling of the muscles on his short, thick arms which pulled his coat-sleeves from his heavy wrists andbroad, short hands. 

He had given one of these to Westover to shake when they met, but withsomething conditional in his welcome, and with a look which was not somuch furtive as latent. The thatch of yellow hair he used to wear wasnow cropped close to his skull, which was a sort of dun-color; and ithad some drops of sweat along the lighter edge where his hat had shadedhis forehead. He put his hat on the seat between himself and Westover, and drove away from the station bareheaded, to cool himself after hisbout 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 placebeside Jeff to let them have the other two seats to themselves, andto have a chance of talking; but the ladies had to be quieted intheir several anxieties concerning their baggage, and the letters andtelegrams they had sent about their rooms, before they settled down toan exchange of apprehensions among themselves, and left Jeff Durgin freeto 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 thehotel 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 couldchange 'em. "

"Is that so?" asked Westover, with a liking for being liked, which histone 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, andwalking 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 alook round at Westover. 

"Yes; I'm twenty-nine now, and I wear a heavier beard. " Westover noticedthat Jeff was clean shaved of any sign of an approaching beard, andartistically he rejoiced in the fellow's young, manly beauty, which wasvery 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 itat home. He keeps all the books, and helps mother run the house. Shecouldn't very well get along without him. "

"And where do you come in?"

"Well, I look after the transportation, " said Jeff, with a nod towardhis horses--"when I'm at home, that is. I've been at the Academy inLovewell the last three winters, and that means a good piece of thesummer, too, first and last. But I guess I'll let mother talk to youabout that. "

"All right, " said Westover. "What I don't know about education isn'tworth knowing. "

Jeff laughed, and said to the off horse, which seemed to know that hewas meant: "Get up, there!"

"And Cynthia? Is Cynthia at home?" Westover asked. 

"Yes; they're all down in the little wood-colored house yet. Cynthiateaches winters, and summers she helps mother. She has charge of thedining-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 'emmountain-climbing. I guess we couldn't get along without Mr. Whitwell. He talks religion to 'em. " He cast a mocking glance at Westover over hisshoulder. "Women seem to like religion, whether they belong to church ornot. "

Westover laughed and asked: "And Fox? How's Fox?"

"Well, " said Jeff, "we had to give Fox away. He was always cross withthe boarders' children. My brother was on from Colorado, and he took Foxback with him. "

"I didn't suppose, " said Westover, "that I should have been sorry tomiss 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 largeadditions, tasteless and characterless, but giving the rooms that wereneeded. There was a vulgar modernity in the new parts, expressed with afinal intensity in the four-light windows, which are esteemed the lastword of domestic architecture in the country. Jeff said nothing asthey approached the house, but Westover said: "Well, you've certainlyprospered. You're quite magnificent. "

They reached the old level in front of the house, artificially widenedout of his remembrance, with a white flag-pole planted at its edge, andhe looked up at the front of the house, which was unchanged, except thatit had been built a story higher back of the old front, and discoveredthe window of his old room. He could hardly wait to get his greetingsover with Mrs. Durgin and Jackson, who both showed a decorous pleasureand 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 firstsojourn 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 offriends. 

It was toward the close of the afternoon that he arrived, and he wentin promptly to the meal that was served shortly after. He found that thefarm-house had not evolved so far in the direction of a hotel as to havereached 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 toa catalogue of the cold meats, the spectacled waitress behind his chairdemanded, 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 inthe distinction it conferred upon him, on the older guests, who wereserved with cold ham, tongue, and corned-beef. He had expected tobe appointed his place by Cynthia Whitwell, but Jeff came to thedining-room with him and showed him to the table he occupied, with aneffect 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 therecould be no question but the Durgins knew how to keep a hotel; and hisfurther acquaintance with the house and its appointments confirmed himin his belief. All was very simple, but sufficient; and no guest couldhave truthfully claimed that he was stinted in towels, in water, inlamp-light, in the quantity or quality of bedding, in hooks for clothes, or wardrobe or bureau room. Westover made Mrs. Durgin his sincerecompliments on her success as they sat in the old parlor, which she hadkept for herself much in its former state, and she accepted them withsimple satisfaction. 

"But I don't know as I should ever had the courage to try it if ithadn'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'returnin' folks away. I guess they can't say that at the big hotels theyused 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 humanendeavor the efforts of the most selfish ambition have something of thisinterest; and the struggle of the Durgins had the grace of the wish tokeep their home. 

"And is Jeff as well satisfied as the rest?" Westover asked, after othertalk and comment on the facts. 

"Too much so, " said Mrs. Durgin. "I should like to talk with you aboutJeff, 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 somethingbesides keep a hotel. "

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

"We did think that before we got through the improvements last spring ayear ago we should have to get the savings-bank to put a mortgage on theplace; but we had just enough to start the season with, and we thoughtwe 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 anymore, and I want to give Jeff a chance in the world. I want he should goto college. "

Westover felt all the boldness of the aspiration, but it was at leastnot in the direction of art. "Wouldn't you rather miss him in themanagement?"

"We should, some. But he would be here the best part of the summer, inhis vacations, and Jackson and I are full able to run the house withouthim. "

"Jackson seems very well, " said Westover, evasively. 

"He's better. He's only thirty-four years old. His father lived to besixty, and he had the same kind. Jeff tell you he had been at LovewellAcademy?"

"Yes; he did. "

"He done well there. All his teachers that he ever had, " Mrs. Durginwent on, with the mother-pride that soon makes itself tiresome to thelistener, "said Jeff done well at school when he had a mind to, and atthe Academy he studied real hard. I guess, " said Mrs. Durgin, with herchuckle, "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 seenCynthy 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'sthe 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 wellwherever you put her. She went to the Academy the first two winters Jeffdid. 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 ladyboarders. " Mrs. Durgin laughed, and Westover laughed with her. "Yes, Iwant 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 hesaid: "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 evidentlyso proud of it that he reserved for the moment the truth as to theprice he had got for the painting. "I was surprised when you sent me aphotograph full as big. I don't let every one in here, but a good manyof the ladies are artists themselves-amateurs, I guess--and first andlast 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 thehouse. 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 whenI wanted you to give me a three-hundred-dollar picture for a week'sboard. "

"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 myboarders. My, if I've told that story once, I guess I've told it fiftytimes!"

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

"Well, there, " she said, "the long and the short of it is, I want Jeffshould 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 roundand saw the elder son like a gaunt shadow in the doorway. "I've just gotwhere I've told Mr. Westover where I want Jeff should go. It don't seemto have ca'd him off his feet any, either. "

"I presume, " said Jackson, coming in and sitting lankly down in thefeather-cushioned rocking-chair which his mother pushed toward him withher foot, "that the expense would be more at Harvard than it would atthe 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 atBoston 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 thatit's largely talk. I have a friend whose son went through Harvard for athousand 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 wecould. It's more of a question with me what sort of influence Jeff wouldcome 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 ofa man. I can't enter into what you say, and it isn't my affair; but inregard to influence at Harvard, it depends upon the set Jeff is thrownwith or throws himself with. So, at least, I infer from what I've heardmy friend say of his son there. There are hard-working sets, loafingsets, and fast sets; and I suppose it isn't different at Harvard in suchmatters from other colleges. "

Mrs. Durgin looked a little grave. "Of course, " she said, "we don'tknow anybody at Cambridge, except some ladies that boarded with us onesummer, and I shouldn't want to ask any favor of them. The trouble wouldbe to get Jeff started right. "

Westover surmised a good many things, but in the absence of anyconfidences from the Durgins he could not tell just how much Jacksonmeant in saying that Jeff was pretty much spoiled, or how little. Atfirst, from Mrs. Durgin's prompt protest, he fancied that Jackson meantthat the boy had been over-indulged by his mother: "I understand, " hesaid, in default of something else to say, "that the requirements atHarvard are pretty severe. "

"He's passed his preliminary examinations, " said Jackson, with a touchof 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 toHarvard, I should say. It's our great university and our oldest. I'mnot a college man myself; but, if I were, I should wish to have been aHarvard man. If Jeff has any nonsense in him, it will take it out; andI don't believe there's anything in Harvard, as Harvard, to make himworse. "

"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 termsthat he gets on in the world. He has to be a man, and he'd better be agentleman. "

Mrs. Durgin still looked serious. "Have you come back to Boston for goodnow? Do you expect to be there right along?"

"I've taken a studio there. Yes, I expect to be in Boston now. I'vetaken to teaching, and I fancy I can make a living. If Jeff comes toCambridge, and I can be of any use--"

"We should be ever so much obliged to you, " said his mother, with an airof 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 asleepbefore I get upstairs. Oh, I can find the way, I guess; this part ofthe house seems the same. " He got away from them, and with the lamp thatJackson gave him found his way to his room. A few moments later someone knocked at his door, and a boy stood there with a pitcher. "Someice-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 littlefellow of distinctly dignified presence, and Westover was aware at oncethat here was not a subject for patronage. "Is there anything else youwant, Mr. Westover? Matches, or soap, or anything?" He put the pitcherdown 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 closingthe door after him. 

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

In the old porch under his window Westover heard whispering. Then, "Youbehave yourself, Jeff Durgin!" came in a voice which could be no otherthan Cynthia Whitwell's, and Jeff Durgin's laugh followed. 

He saw the girl in the morning. She met him at the door of thedining-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 mouthof the same sweetness which looked from her still, gray eyes; her hair, of the average brown, had a rough effect of being quickly tossed intoform, which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him toplace him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily, unwillingly graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of ahermit-thrush; but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion inCynthia's looks, her acts were of plain and honest prose, such as givingWestover the pleasantest place and the most intelligent waitress in theroom. 

He would have liked to keep her in talk a moment, but she madebusiness-like despatch of all his allusions to the past, and got herselfquickly away. Afterward she came back to him, with the effect of havingforced herself to come, and the color deepened in her cheeks while shestayed. 

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

"Perhaps the boys have reformed?" Westover suggested. 

"I presume, " she said, stiffly, "that there's room for improvementin every one, " and then, as if she were afraid he might take thispersonally, she looked unhappy and tried to speak of other things. Sheasked him if he did not see a great many changes at Lion's Head; heanswered, gravely, that he wished he could have found it just as he leftit, and then she must have thought she had gone wrong again, for sheleft him in an embarrassment that was pathetic, but which was charming. 

XI. 

After breakfast Westover walked out and saw Whitwell standing on thegrass in front of the house, beside the flagstaff. He suffered Westoverto make the first advances toward the renewal of their acquaintance, butwhen he was sure of his friendly intention he responded with a cordialopenness which the painter had fancied wanting in his children. Whitwellhad not changed much. The most noticeable difference was the compactphalanx of new teeth which had replaced the staggering veterans offormer days, and which displayed themselves in his smile of relenting. There was some novelty of effect also in an arrangement of things in hishat-band. At first Westover thought they were fishhooks and artificialflies, such as the guides wear in the Adirondacks to advertise theircalling about the hotel offices and the piazzas. But another glanceshowd him that they were sprays and wild flowers of various sorts, withgay mosses and fungi and some stems of Indian-pipe. 

Whitwell seemed pleased that these things should have caught Westover'seye. He said, almost immediately: "Lookin' at my almanac? This is oneof our field-days; we have 'em once a week; and I like to let the ladiessee beforehand what nature's got on the bill for 'em, in the woods andpastur'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 walksand 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 thetime. Even the children are mostly all girls. When the husbands come upSaturday nights, they don't want to go on a tramp Sundays. They wantto lay off and rest. That's about how it is. Well, you see some changesabout Lion's Head, I presume?" he asked, with what seemed an impersonalpleasure in them. 

"I should rather have found the old farm. But I must say I'm glad tofind such a good hotel. "

"Jeff and his mother made their brags to you?" said Whitwell, with akind of amiable scorn. "I guess if it wa'n't for Cynthy she wouldn'tknow where she was standin', half the time. It don't matter where Jeffstands, I guess. Jackson's the best o' the lot, now the old man'sgone. " There was no one by at the moment to hear these injuries exceptWestover, but Whitwell called them out with a frankness which wasperhaps more carefully adapted to the situation than it seemed. Westovermade no attempt to parry them formally; but he offered some generalitiesin extenuation of the unworthiness of the Durgins, which Whitwell didnot altogether refuse. 

"Oh, it's all right. Old woman talk to you about Jeff's going tocollege? I thought so. Wants to make another Dan'el Webster of him. Guess she can's far forth as Dan'el's graduatin' went. " Westovertried to remember how this had been with the statesman, but could not. Whitwell added, with intensifying irony so of look and tone: "Guessthe second Dan'el won't have a chance to tear his degree up; guess hewouldn'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 areprepared 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 ofhis studyin' for him at the Academy. "

This hint was not so darkling but Westover could understand thatWhitwell attributed Jeff's scholarship to the help of Cynthia, buthe would not press him to an open assertion of the fact. There wassomething painful in it to him; it had the pathos which perhaps most ofthe 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 exceptFrance, very well. "

"What's their republic like, over there? Ours? See anything of it, howit works?"

"Well, you know, " said Westover, "I was working so hard myself all thetime--"

"Good!" Whitwell slapped his leg. Westover saw that he had on longIndia-rubber boots, which came up to his knees, and he gave a waywardthought to the misery they would be on an August day to another man; butWhitwell was probably insensible to any discomfort from them. "When aman's mindin' his own business any government's good, I guess. But Ishould like to prowl round some them places where they had the worstscenes 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 Communethat 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 alwayscome out at the same hole it went in at!" He paused, with his mouthopen, 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 oftenenough, but I'm satisfied where I am. It's quiet down there, and, whenI get through for the day, I can read. And I like to keep my familytogether. Cynthy and Frank always sleep at home, and Jombateeste eatswith 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 hadhelpin' 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 sometimesJackson 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 muchwithout the plantchette. We've had up some of them old philosopherslately. We've had up Socrates. "

"Is that so? It must be very interesting. "

Whitwell did not answer, and Westover saw his eye wander. He lookedround. Several ladies were coming across the grass toward him from thehotel, lifting their skirts and tiptoeing through the dew. They calledto him, "Good-morning, Mr. Whitwell!" and "Are you going up Lion'sHead to-day?" and "Don't you think it will rain?"--"Guess not, " saidWhitwell, with a fatherly urbanity and an air of amusement at theanxieties of the sex which seemed habitual to him. He waited tranquillyfor them to come up, and then asked, with a wave of his hand towardWestover: "Acquainted with Mr. Westover, the attist?" He named each ofthem, and it would have been no great vanity in Westover to think theyhad made their little movement across the grass quite as much in thehope of an introduction to him as in the wish to consult Whitwell abouthis plans. 

The painter found himself the centre of an agreeable excitement with allthe 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 ofsuperfluity. 

He liked finding himself in the simple and innocent Americancircumstance again, and he was not sorry to be confronted at once withone of the most characteristic aspects of our summer. He could readin the present development of Lion's Head House all the history of itsevolution from the first conception of farm-board, which sufficed theearliest comers, to its growth in the comforts and conveniences whichmore fastidious tastes and larger purses demanded. Before this point wasreached, the boarders would be of a good and wholesome sort, but theywould be people of no social advantages, and not of much cultivation, though they might be intelligent; they would certainly not befashionable; five dollars a week implied all that, except in the caseof some wandering artist or the family of some poor young professor. Butwhen the farm became a boarding-house and called itself a hotel, as atpresent with Lion's Head House, and people paid ten dollars a week, ortwelve for transients, a moment of its character was reached which couldnot be surpassed when its prosperity became greater and its inmates morepretentious. In fact, the people who can afford to pay ten dollars aweek for summer board, and not much more, are often the best of theAmerican people, or, at least, of the New England people. They may notknow it, and those who are richer may not imagine it. They are apt to bemiddle-aged maiden ladies from university towns, living upon carefullyguarded investments; young married ladies with a scant child or two, and needing rest and change of air; college professors with nothing buttheir modest salaries; literary men or women in the beginning of theirtempered success; clergymen and their wives away from their churches inthe larger country towns or the smaller suburbs of the cities; hereand there an agreeable bachelor in middle life, fond of literature andnature; hosts of young and pretty girls with distinct tastes in art, and devoted to the clever young painter who leads them to the sourcesof inspiration in the fields and woods. Such people are refined, humane, appreciative, sympathetic; and Westover, fresh from the life abroadwhere life is seldom so free as ours without some stain, was glad tofind himself in the midst of this unrestraint, which was so sweet andpure. He had seen enough of rich people to know that riches seldombought the highest qualities, even among his fellow-countrymen whosuppose that riches can do everything, and the first aspects of societyat Lion's Head seemed to him Arcadian. There really proved to be ashepherd or two among all that troop of shepherdesses, old and young;though it was in the middle of the week, remote alike from the Saturdayof arrivals and the Monday of departures. To be sure, there was nonequite so young as himself, except Jeff Durgin, who was officiallyexterior 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 hadtaken great pains to secure him for herself, and who worked him to fargreater advantage in his profession than he could possibly have workedhimself: she got him orders; sold his pictures, even in Boston, wherethey never buy American pictures; found him pupils, and kept the boldestof 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 hehad not heard from so directly in ten years. After the first inevitablemoment of jealousy, his wife forgave Westover when she found that he didnot want pupils, and she took a leading part in the movement to havehim read Browning at a picnic, organized by the ladies shortly after hecame. 

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 amongthe tall, thin grass which overran the space opened by the axe, andcrept to the verge of the low pines growing in the shelter of theloftier woods. It was the end of one of Whitwell's "Tramps Home toNature, " as he called his walks and talks with the ladies, and on thisday Westover's fellow-painter had added to his lessons in woodlore theclaims of art, intending that his class should make studies of variousbits in the clearing, and should try to catch something of its peculiarcharm. He asked Westover what he thought of the notion, and Westovergave it his approval, which became enthusiastic when he saw the place. He found in it the melancholy grace, the poignant sentiment of ruinwhich expresses itself in some measure wherever man has invaded natureand then left his conquest to her again. In Whitwell's Clearing theeffect was intensified by the approach on the fading wood road, whichthe wagons had made in former days when they hauled the fallen timberto the pulp-mill. In places it was so vague and faint as to be hardly atrail; in others, where the wheel-tracks remained visible, the treeshad sent out a new growth of lower branches in the place of those loppedaway, and almost forbade the advance of foot-passengers. The ladies saidthey 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 seemedonly too well grounded. 

But Whitwell, who was leading them on, said: "You let a Durgin alone todo a thing when he's made up his mind to it. I guess you'll have yourlunch all right;" and by the time that they had got enough of Browningthey heard the welcome sound of wheels crashing upon dead boughs andswishing through the underbrush, and, in the pauses of these pleasantnoises, the voice of Jeff Durgin encouraging his horses. The children ofthe party broke away to meet him, and then he came in sight ahead of histeam, looking strong and handsome in his keeping with the scene: Beforehe got within hearing, the ladies murmured a hymn of praise to his typeof beauty; they said he looked like a young Hercules, and Westover ownedwith an inward smile that Jeff had certainly made the best of himselffor the time being. He had taken a leaf from the book of the summerfolks; his stalwart calves revealed themselves in thick, ribbedstockings; he wore knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket of corduroy; hehad style as well as beauty, and he had the courage of his clothes andlooks. 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 playof the life, which Westover was rather proud to find so charming, thequestion would solve itself rationally and gracefully. 

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

"Oh, right here, Jeff!" The nimblest of the nymphs sprang to her feetfrom the lounging and crouching circle about Westover. She was a youngnymph no longer, but with a daughter not so much younger than herself asto make the contrast of her sixteen years painful. Westover recognizedthe officious, self-approving kind of the woman, but he admired thebrisk efficiency with which she had taken possession of the affair fromthe beginning and inspired every one to help, in strict subordination toherself. 

When the cloths were laid on the smooth, elastic moss, and the mealwas spread, she heaped a plate without suffering any interval in heractivities. 

"I suppose you've got to go back to your horses, Jeff, and you shall bethe first served, " she said, and she offered him the plate with a brightsmile and friendly grace, which were meant to keep him from the hurt ofher intention. 

Jeff did not offer to take the plate which she raised to him from whereshe was kneeling, but looked down at her with perfect intelligence. "Iguess I don't want anything, " he said, and turned and walked away intothe woods. 

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

The others ate, too, though their appetites might well have beenaffected by the diplomatic behavior of Whitwell. He would not takeanything, just at present, he said, and got his long length up from theroot of a tree where he had folded it down. "I don't seem to care muchfor anything in the middle of the day; breakfast's my best meal, " and hefollowed Jeff off into the woods. 

"Really, " said the lady, "what did they expect?" But the question was sodifficult that no one seemed able to make the simple answer. 

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

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

The heroine of the unhappy affair of the picnic could not forbearauthorizing herself to invoke his opinion at a certain point of thedebate, and "Mr. Whitwell, " she called to him, "won't you please comehere a moment?"

Whitwell slowly pulled himself across the grass to the group, and atthe 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 usedto 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 littlebefore 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! Idon't understand you. I've taken my rooms for the whole of August, andthey 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 abargain, and I have your agreement--"

"If you're not out of your rooms by two o'clock, your things will beput out; and after dinner to-day you will not eat another bite under myroof. "

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

The incident of her expulsion was brutal, but it was clearly meant to beso. 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 behaviorwas an outrage, and they ought all to resent it by going straight totheir own rooms and packing their things and leaving on the same stagewith Mrs. Marven. None of them did so, and their talk veered around tosomething extenuating, if not justifying, Mrs. Durgin's action. 

"I suppose, " one of them said, "that she felt more indignant about itbecause 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, firstone and then the other, and she looked after them and did for them likea 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 heshould have been treated as a guest. He was there, purely and simply, tobring the things and take them away. And, besides, if there is anythingin distinctions, in differences, if we are to choose who is to associatewith us--or our daughters--"

"That is true, " the ladies said, in one form or another, with the toneof conviction; but they were not so deeply convinced that they did notwant 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 oneperson believes himself or herself socially better than another, it mustalways be a fresh problem what to do in every given case. "

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

Westover went away from them in a perplexed mind which was notsimplified by the contempt he had at the bottom of all for somethingunmanly in Jeff, who had carried his grievance to his mother like aslighted boy, and provoked her to take up arms for him. 

The sympathy for Mrs. Marven mounted again when it was seen that she didnot come to dinner, or permit her daughter to do so, and when it becameknown later that she had refused for both the dishes sent to theirrooms. Her farewells to the other ladies, when they gathered to seeher off on the stage, were airy rather than cheery; there was almosta demonstration in her behalf, but Westover was oppressed by a kind ofinherent squalor in the incident. 

At night he responded to a knock which he supposed that of FrankWhitwell with ice-water, and Mrs. Durgin came into his room and sat downin one of his two chairs. "Mr. Westover, " she said, "if you knew all Ihad done for that woman and her daughter, and how much she had pretendedto 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 saida 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 cameinto her eyes. "I got the tray ready with my own hands that was sent toher room; but she wouldn't touch it. I presume she didn't like having aplate prepared for her! But I did feel sorry for her. She a'n't over andabove strong, and I'm afraid she'll be sick; there a'n't any rest'rantat our depot. "

Westover fancied this a fit mood in Mrs. Durgin for her furtherinstruction, and he said: "And if you'll excuse me, Mrs. Durgin, I don'tthink what you did was quite the way to keep a hotel. "

More tears flashed into Mrs. Durgin's eyes, but they were tears of wrathnow. "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 thathas the first word to say against me, any other way. It wa'n't that Icared 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 thepicnic, and he a'n't one to put himself forward. If she didn't want himto stay, all she had to do was to do nothin'. But to make him up a platebefore everybody, and hand it to him to eat with the horses, like atramp or a dog--" Mrs. Durgin filled to the throat with her wrath, andthe sight of her made Westover keenly unhappy. 

"Yes, yes, " he said, "it was a miserable business. " He could not helpadding: "If Jeff could have kept it to himself--but perhaps that wasn'tpossible. "

"Mr. Westover!" said Mrs. Durgin, sternly. "Do you think Jeff would cometo me, like a great crybaby, and complain of my lady boarders and theway they used him? It was Mr. Whit'ell that let it out, or I don't knowas I should ever known about it. "

"I'm glad Jeff didn't tell you, " said Westover, with a revulsion of goodfeeling toward him. 

"He'd 'a' died first, " said his mother. "But Mr. Whit'ell done justright all through, and I sha'n't soon forget it. Jeff's give me a propergoin' 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 justwhat you was blamin' me for--"

"I don't know that I blame you. I only wish you could have helpedit--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 withthe boarders, and takin' the lead as usual, I just waited till she gotWhit'ell across, and nearly everybody was there that saw what she doneto Jeff, and then I flew out on her. "

Westover could not suppress a laugh. "Well, Mrs. Durgin, yourretaliation was complete; it was dramatic. "

"I don't know what you mean by that, " said Mrs. Durgin, rising andresuming her self-control; she did not refuse herself a grim smile. "ButI guess she thought it was pretty perfect herself--or she will, whenshe's able to give her mind to it. I'm sorry for her daughter; I neverhad anything against her; or her mother, either, for that matter, before. Franky look after you pretty well? I'll send him up with yourice-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 foryou. Well, good-night, Mr. Westover. "

"Good'-night, Mrs. Durgin. "

XIII. 

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

None who formed personal relations with him at that time conjecturedthat 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, heseemed painfully out of his element, and unamiably aware of it. For thetime, at least, he had lost the jovial humor, not too kindly always, which largely characterized him, and expressed itself in sallies ofirony which were not so unkindly, either. The painter perceived that hewas on his guard against his own friendly interest; Jeff made haste toexplain that he came because he had told his mother that he would doso. He scarcely invited a return of his visit, and he left Westoverwondering at the sort of vague rebellion against his new life which heseemed to be in. The painter went out to see him in Cambridge, not longafter, and was rather glad to find him rooming with some other rusticFreshman 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 foundthere, apparently; he said at once that he expected to get a room in theYard the next year, and eat at Memorial Hall. He spoke scornfully of hisboarding-house as a place where they were all a lot of jays together;and Westover thought him still more at odds with his environment thanhe had before. But Jeff consented to come in and dine with him at hisrestaurant, and afterward go to the theatre with him. 

When he came, Westover did not quite like his despatch of thehalf-bottle of California claret served each of them with the Italiantable d'hote. He did not like his having already seen the play heproposed; and he found some difficulty in choosing a play which Jeff hadnot seen. It appeared then that he had been at the theatre two or threetimes a week for the last month, and that it was almost as great apassion with him as with Westover himself. He had become already acritic 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 anadmission ticket when he went to the theatre; but, though he could notblame Jeff for showing his own fondness for it, he wished that he hadnot 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 todinner. They did it to oblige Westover, against their own judgment andknowledge, for they said it was always the same with Freshmen; a singleact of hospitality finished the acquaintance. Jeff came, and he behavedwith as great indifference to the kindness meant him as if he weredining out every night; he excused himself very early in the eveningon the ground that he had to go into Boston, and he never paid hisdinner-call. After that Westover tried to consider his whole duty to himfulfilled, and not to trouble himself further. Now and then, however, Jeff disappointed the expectation Westover had formed of him, by comingto see him, and being apparently glad of the privilege. But he did notmake the painter think that he was growing in grace or wisdom, though heapparently felt an increasing confidence in his own knowledge of life. 

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

Westover tried to make him see how impossible his fallacies were; buthe could perceive that Jeff thought him either wilfully ignorant orhelplessly innocent, and of far less authority than a barber who had theentree of all these swell families as hair-dresser, and who corroboratedthe witness of a hotel night-clerk (Jeff would not give their names)to the depravity of the upper classes. He had to content himself withsaying: "I hope you will be ashamed some day of having believed suchrot. But I suppose it's something you've got to go through. You may takemy word for it, though? that it isn't going to do you any good. It'sgoing to do you harm, and that's why I hate to have you think it, foryour own sake. It can't hurt any one else. "

What disgusted the painter most was that, with all his belief inthe wickedness of the fine world, it was clear that Jeff wouldhave willingly been of it; and he divined that if he had any strongaspirations they were for society and for social acceptance. He hadfancied, when the fellow seemed to care so little for the studies of theuniversity, that he might come forward in its sports. Jeff gave more andmore the effect of tremendous strength in his peculiar physique, thoughthere was always the disappointment of not finding him tall. He was ofthe middle height, but he was hewn out and squared upward massively. Hefelt like stone to any accidental contact, and the painter brought awaya bruise from the mere brunt of his shoulders. He learned that Jeff wasa 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 whowent in for athletics. If Jeff had even this, the sort of standing incollege which he failed of would easily have been won, too. But hehad been falsely placed at the start, or some quality of his natureneutralized other qualities that would have made him a leader incollege, and he remained one of the least forward men in it. Other jayswon favor and liking, and ceased to be jays; Jeff continued a jay. Hewas not chosen into any of the nicer societies; those that he joinedwhen he thought they were swell he could not care for when he found theywere not. 

Westover came into a knowledge of the facts through his casual andscarcely voluntary confidences, and he pitied him somewhat while heblamed 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 ignorancethan perversity, and that it was a stubbornness of spirit rather than abadness of heart that kept him from going right. He sometimes wonderedwhether it was not more a baffled wish to be justified in his own esteemthan anything else that made him overvalue the things he missed. He knewhow such an experience as that with Mrs. Marven rankles in the heart ofyouth, and will not cease to smart till some triumph in kind brines itease; but between the man of thirty and the boy of twenty there is agulf fixed, and he could not ask. He did not know that a college manoften goes wrong in his first year, out of no impulse that he can veryclearly account for himself, and then when he ceases to be merely of histype and becomes more of his character, he pulls up and goes right. Hedid not know how much Jeff had been with a set that was fast withoutbeing 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 hiscollege work, Jeff made brief answers, which gave the notion that he wasnot neglecting it. 

Toward the end of his first year he sent to Westover one night from astation-house, where he had been locked up for breaking a street-lampin Boston. By his own showing he had not broken the lamp, or assisted, except through his presence, at the misdeed of the tipsy students whohad done it. His breath betrayed that he had been drinking, too; butotherwise he seemed as sober as Westover himself, who did not knowwhether to augur well or ill for him from the proofs he had given beforeof his ability to carry off a bottle of wine with a perfectly levelhead. Jeff seemed to believe Westover a person of such influence thathe could secure his release at once, and he was abashed to find thathe must pass the night in the cell, where he conferred with Westoverthrough 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 universityauthorities did not take the same view as the civil authorities. Hewas suspended, and for the time he passed out of Westover's sight andknowledge. 

He expected to find him at Lion's Head, where he went to pass the monthof August--in painting those pictures of the mountain which had in somesort, almost in spite of him, become his specialty. But Mrs. Durginemployed the first free moments after their meeting in explaining thatJeff had got a chance to work his way to London on a cattle-steamer, andhad been abroad the whole summer. He had written home that the voyagehad been glorious, with plenty to eat and little to do; and he had madefavor 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 aweek in Paris. His mother read some passages from his letters aloud toshow Westover how Jeff was keeping his eyes open. His accounts of histravel were a mixture of crude sensations in the presence of famousscenes and objects of interest, hard-headed observation of the facts oflife, narrow-minded misconception of conditions, and wholly intelligentand adequate study of the art of inn-keeping in city and country. 

Mrs. Durgin seemed to feel that there was some excuse due for therelative quantity of the last. "He knows that's what I'd care for themost; and Jeff a'n't one to forget his mother. " As if the word remindedher, she added, after a moment: "We sha'n't any of us soon forget whatyou done for Jeff--that time. "

"I didn't do anything for him, Mrs. Durgin; I couldn't, " Westoverprotested. 

"You done what you could, and I know that you saw the thing in the rightlight, or you wouldn't 'a' tried to do anything. Jeff told me every wordabout it. I know he was with a pretty harum-scarum crowd. But it wasa lesson to him; and I wa'n't goin' to have him come back here, rightaway, and have folks talkin' about what they couldn't understand, afterthe way the paper had it. "

"Did it get into the papers?"

"Mm. " Mrs. Durgin nodded. "And some dirty, sneakin' thing, here, wrote aletter 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 theygot 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 hischance for private conference with Westover came. "What was the rightsof that scrape he got into?"

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

"Well, where there's smoke there's some fire. Cou't discharged him andcollege suspended him. That's about where it is? I guess he'll keep outo' harm's way next time. Read you what he said about them scenes of theRevolution 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 upwith him. Jeff's kep' his eyes open, that's a fact. He's got a head onhim, 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 witnesseseven. There were many new boarders, but most of those whom he hadalready met were again at Lion's Head. They said there was no air likeit, and no place so comfortable. If they had sold their birthright for amess 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 beenMrs. Durgin's cook, under her personal surveillance and direction, she had now a man cook, whom she boldly called a chef and paid eightydollars 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 thestablemen as they exchanged hilarities across the space between thebasement and the barn-door. "Yes, " Mrs. Durgin admitted, "he's anAmerican; 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 theend. The meanyous? Oh, Franky Whitwell prints then. He's got an amateurprinting-office in the stable-loft. "

XIV. 

One morning toward the end of August, Whitwell, who was startinghomeward, after leaving his ladies, burdened with their wishes andcharges for the morrow, met Westover coming up the hill with hispainting-gear in his hand. "Say!" he hailed him. "Why don't you comedown to the house to-night? Jackson's goin' to come, and, if you ha'n'tseen him work the plantchette for a spell, you'll be surprised. Therea'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 ofall, was the quality of the air in the little house; it was close andstuffy, mixed with an odor of mould and an ancient smell of rats. Thekerosene-lamp set in the centre of the table, where Jackson afterwardplaced his planchette, devoured the little life that was left in it. At the gasps which Westover gave, with some despairing glances at theclosed 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 guessI can fix it for you. " He went out into the ell, and Westover heard himraising a window. He came back and asked, "That do? It 'll get around inhere directly, " and Westover had to profess relief. 

Jackson came in presently with the little Canuck, whom Whitwellpresented to Westover: "Know Jombateeste?"

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

Jackson put his planchette on the table, and sat down before it with asigh; the Canuck remained standing, and on foot he was scarcely a headhigher than the seated Yankees. "Well, " Jackson said, "I suppose heknows 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 asmuch 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 theagnosticism so common among men in towns that he had confessed it quitesimply and unconsciously. He perceived that faith in the soul and lifeeverlasting was as quick as ever in the hills, whatever grotesque orunwonted form it wore. Jackson sat with closed eyes and his head fallenback; Whitwell stared at the painter, with open mouth; the little Canuckbegan to walk up and down impatiently; Westover felt a reproach, almostan 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 thestubbornest mind on any other point. But it's very strange about allthat. It doesn't convince anybody but the witnesses. If a man tellsme he's seen a disembodied spirit, I can't believe him. I must see thedisembodied 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 merelydreaming. "

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

The Canuck felt perhaps the simpler joy that the average man has inany strange notion that he is able to grasp. He stopped in his walk andsaid: "Yes, and if you was dead and went to heaven, and stayed so longyou 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, withpleasure 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 aboutplantchette?"

"Oh yes, I do, " said the painter. "We never know when we may be upon thepoint of revelation. I wouldn't miss any chance. "

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

Jackson brought to the floor the forefeet of his chair, which he hadtilted from it in leaning back, and without other answer put his handon the planchette. It began to fly over the large sheet of paper spreadupon the table, in curves and angles and eccentrics. 

"Feels pootty lively to-night, " said Whitwell, with a glance atWestover. 

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 amoment'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 shapethemselves into something like characters. Jackson's wasted face gave notoken of interest; Whitwell laid half his gaunt length across the tablein the endeavor to make out some meaning in them; the Canuck, with hishands crossed on his stomach, smoked on, with the same gleam in his pipeand 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 towardhimself and Westover, who sat next him. "You've got to look for theletters everywhere. Sometimes she'll give you fair and square writin', and then again she'll slat the letters down every which way, and you'vegot to hunt 'em out for yourself. Here's a B I've got. That begins alongpretty 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'san 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, " saidWestover. 

"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'sthree. "

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 theletters 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 otherword-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 deathcomes. It rests upon the earth, but you got to look for the top of itin 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 suggestsa beautiful hope. "

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

"Feel that tinglin'?" asked. Whitwell, and Jackson made yes with silentlips. "After he's been workin' the plantchette for a spell, and thenleaves off, and she wants to say something more, " Whitwell explained toWestover, "he seems to feel a kind of tinglin' in his arm, as if it wasasleep, and then he's got to tackle her again. Writin' steady enoughnow, Jackson!" he cried, joyously. "Let's see. " He leaned over and read, "Thomas Jefferson--" The planchette stopped, "My, I didn't go todo that, " said Whitwell, apologetically. "You much acquainted withJefferson's writin's?" he asked of Westover. 

The painter had to own his ignorance of all except the diction that thegovernment is best which governs least; but he was not in a position todeny 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!" criedWhitwell. He leaned over the table so as to get every letter as itwas formed. "D--Yes! Death. Death is the Broken Shaft. Go on!" After amoment 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 notresist the fear that suddenly rose among them. But he made the firststruggle 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. Andhow could he send any message unless he was--"

"Easily!" cried Westover. "It's simply an instance of mentalimpression-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 adisembodied spirit can communicate with you, why not an embodied spirit?If anything has happened to your brother's ship, his mind would bestrongly 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, whichseemed to be coming nearer, and he listened with the rest. He made outFrank Whitwell's voice, and his sister's; and then another voice, louderand gayer, rose boisterously above them. Whitwell flung the door openand plunged out into the night. He came back, hauling Jeff Durgin in bythe shoulder. 

"Here, now, " he shouted to Jackson, "you just let this feller andplantchette fight it out together!"

"What's the matter with plantchette?" said Jeff, before he said to hisbrother, "Hello, Jackson!" and to the Canuck, "Hello, Jombateeste!" Heshook 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 afortnight 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 Istarted back on a French boat. Thought I'd try it. They live well. But Ihoped I should astonish you a little, too. I might as well waited. "

Whitwell laughed. "We heard from you--plantchette kept right round afteryou. "

"That so?" asked Jeff, carelessly. 

"Fact. Have a good voyage?" Whitwell had the air of putting a casualquestion. 

"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 mixeda little. Got the wrong ship. "

After a moment of chop-fallenness, Whitwell said:

"Then somebody's been makin' free with your name. Curious how themdevils cut up oftentimes. "

He explained, and Jeff laughed uproariously when he understood the wholecase. "Plantchette's been havin' fun with you. "

Whitwell gave himself time for reflection. "No, sir, I don't look atit that way. I guess the wires got crossed some way. If there's such athing 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 beingso near that got control of her and made her sign his name to somebodyelse's words. It shows there's something in it. "

"Well, I'm glad to come back alive, anyway, " said Jeff, with a jovialitynew to Westover. "I tell you, there a'n't many places finer than oldLion's Head, after all. Don't you think so, Mr. Westover? I want toget the daylight on it, but it does well by moonlight, even. " He lookedround at the tall girl, who had been lingering to hear the talk ofplanchette; 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 theroom; the boy had already gone, and was making himself heard in the lowroom overhead. 

"There's a lot of folks here this summer, mother says, " he appealed fromthe 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 overthere. We're not so smart as we think we are. The Swiss can teach us athing 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 theWhite Hills, after all?"

"Well, I don't know about all of 'em, " said Jeff. "There may be somethat would compare with our hills, but I should say that you could takeMount Washington up and set it in the lap of almost any one of the AlpsI saw, and it would look like a baby on its mother's knee. "

"I want to know!" said Whitwell again. His tone expresseddisappointment, but impartiality; he would do justice to foreignsuperiority 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 wavesmuch higher than Lion's Head. " Jeff laughed to find Whitwell taking himseriously. "Won't that satisfy you?"

"Oh, it satisfies me. Truth always does. But, now, about London. Youdidn't seem to say so much about London in your letters, now. Is it sobig 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 viewof 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 populationof New England, outside of Massachusetts, and not feel as if it had morethan a comfortable meal. "

Whitwell laughed for joy in the bold figure. 

"I'll tell you. When you've landed and crossed up from Liverpool, andstruck London, you feel as if you'd gone to sea again. It's an ocean--awhole 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 Chicagogrowing?"

"Yes. "

"Well, London grows a whole Chicago every night. "

"Good!" said Whitwell. "That suits me. And about Paris, now. Parisstrike 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, andI 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 thanyou 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 youstrike Paris. And they're proud of it, too. Every man acts as if heowned it. They've had the statue of Alsace in that Place de la Concordeof yours, Mr. Whitwell, where they had the guillotine all draped inblack 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 listeningand 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 HunitedState. "

"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 inquirythey had entered upon. "It must have made this country look pretty slimwhen you got back. How'd New York look, after Paris?"

"Like a pigpen, " said Jeff. He left his chair and walked round thetable toward a door opening into the adjoining room. For the first timeWestover noticed a figure in white seated there, and apparently rapt inthe talk which had been going on. At the approach of Jeff, and beforehe could have made himself seen at the doorway, a tremor seemed to passover the figure; it fluttered to its feet, and then it vanished intothe farther dark of the room. When Jeff disappeared within, there was asound of rustling skirts and skurrying feet and the crash of a closingdoor, and then the free rise of laughing voices without. After adiscreet interval, Westover said: "Mr. Whitwell, I must say good-night. I've got another day's work before me. It's been a most interestingevening. "

"You must try it again, " said Whitwell, hospitably. "We ha'n't got tothe bottom of that broken shaft yet. You'll see 't plantchette 'll havesomething more to say about it: Heigh, Jackson?" He rose to receiveWestover's goodnight; the others nodded to him. 

As the painter climbed the hill to the hotel he saw two figures onthe road below; the one in white drapery looked severed by a darkline slanting across it at the waist. In the country, he knew, suchan appearance might mark the earliest stages of love-making, ormere youthful tenderness, in which there was nothing more implied orexpected. But whatever the fact was, Westover felt a vague distaste forit, which, as it related itself to a more serious possibility, deepenedto something like pain. It was probable that it should come to thisbetween those two, but Westover rebelled against the event with a senseof 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-wreathtrying to lift itself from the summit of Lion's Head. In the effort itthinned away to transparency in places; in others, it tore its frailtexture asunder and let parts of the mountain show through; then thefragments knitted themselves loosely together, and the vapor lay againin 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 thatin another light she would have looked scarcely the elder. It was thecandor of the morning which confessed the fine vertical lines runningup and down to her lips, only a shade paler than the girl's, and thatshowed her hair a trifle thinner in its coppery brown, her blue eyesa little dimmer. They were both very graceful, and they had soft, caressing voices; they now began to talk very politely to each other, asif they were strangers, or as if strangers were by. They talked of thelandscape, and of the strange cloud effect before them. They said thatthey supposed they should see the Lion's Head when the cloud lifted, andthey were both sure they had never been quite so near a cloud before. They agreed that this was because in Switzerland the mountains were somuch higher and farther off. Then the daughter said, without changingthe direction of her eyes or the tone of her voice, "The gentleman whocame over from the station with us last night, " and the mother was awareof Jeff Durgin advancing toward the corner of the veranda where theysat. 

"I hope you have got rested, " he said, with the jovial bluntness whichwas characteristic of him with women. 

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

"No; I've been up ever since daylight, driving round, " said Jeff. "I'mglad you like the air, " he said, after a certain hesitation. "We alwayswant 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 atthe 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 ladycontinued her question in a look, and he went on: "I've been scouringthe country for butter and eggs this morning. We shall get all oursupplies from Boston next year, I hope, but we depend on the neighbors alittle yet. "

"How very interesting!" said the lady. "You must have a great many queeradventures, " she suggested in a provisional tone. 

"Well, nothing's queer to me in the hill country. But you see somecharacters here. " He nodded over his shoulder to where Whitwell stood bythe flag-staff, waiting the morning impulse of the ladies. "There's oneof the greatest of them now. "

The lady put up a lorgnette and inspected Whitwell. "What are thosestrange things he has got in his hatband?"

"The flowers and the fungi of the season, " said Jeff. "He takesparties of the ladies walking, and that collection is what he calls hisalmanac. "

"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 youafter 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 herhappiness. 

But Jeff did not. "Mr. Whitwell!" he called out, and Whitwell cameacross the grass to the edge of the veranda. "I want to introduce you toMrs. 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'sHead, I presume?" Mrs. Vostrand owned as much; and he added: "Well, Iguess 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. "Infact, 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, asif 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 anotherwoman. " He added, as if he had perhaps made his remarks too personal tothe girl, "Both of you. "

"Oh yes, " the mother assented, fervently. "We shall count upon yourshowing us all their-mysteries. "

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

"Aquitaine, " said Jeff, briefly. 

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

"Oh, I came second-cabin, " said Jeff. "I worked my way over on acattle-ship to London, and, when I decided not to work my way back, Ifound I hadn't enough money for a first-cabin passage. I was in ahurry to get back in time to get settled at Harvard, and so I camesecond-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 fromit with a slight movement. "Breakfast? How impatient you are, Genevieve!Well!" She smiled the sweetest parting to Whitwell, and suffered herselfto be led away by Jeff. 

"And you're at Harvard? I'm so interested! My own boy will be goingthere soon. "

"Well, there's no place like Harvard, " said Jeff. "I'm in my Sophomoreyear now. "

"Oh, a Sophomore! Fancy!" cried Mrs. Vostrand, as if nothing could giveher more pleasure. "My son is going to prepare at St. Mark's. Did youprepare there?"

"No, I prepared at Lovewell Academy, over here. " Jeff nodded in asoutherly direction. 

"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Vostrand, as if she knew where Lovewell was, andinstantly recognized the name of the ancient school. 

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

He leaned over between them, when they were seated, to get sight of themountain, and, "There!" he said. "That cloud's gone at last. " Then, asif it would be modester in the proprietor of the view to leave themto their flattering raptures in it, he moved away and stood talkinga moment with Cynthia Whitwell near the door of the serving-room. Hetalked gayly, with many tosses of the head and turns about, while shelistened 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 overthe room where the waitresses stood ranged against the wall with theirhands folded at their waists. "They have better faces than figures, butshe 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 changehere 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 thiscorn-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 abouteverything. 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 shewas leaning, as if she thought they had spoken to her. 

"Oh, we were speaking--the young lady to whom Mr. Durgin wastalking--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 thinkshe's about ri-i-ght. " She smiled tolerantly upon the misgiving ofthe stranger, if it was that, and then retreated when the mother anddaughter began talking together again. 

They had praised the mountain with the cloud off, to Jeff, verypolitely, and now the mother said, a little more intimately, butstill with the deference of a society acquaintance: "He seems verygentlemanly, and I am sure he is very kind. I don't quite know what todo 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 inthe 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. " Thedaughter said nothing, and the mother added: "I wonder if he was tryingto conceal that he had come second-cabin, and was not going to let usknow 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 acattle-steamer?" the mother observed. 

"Oh, but that's very chic, I've heard, " the daughter replied. "I'veheard that the young men like it and think it a great chance. They havegreat 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 inrather late to breakfast; he had been making a study of Lion's Head inthe morning light after the cloud lifted from it. He was always doingLion's Heads, it seemed to him; but he loved the mountain, and he wasalways finding something new in it. 

He was now seeing it inwardly with so exclusive a vision that he had noeyes for these extremely pretty women till they were out of sight. Thenhe 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, whomWestover had know ten years before in Italy. Mrs. Vostrand had thenlately come abroad for the education of her children, and was pausingin doubt at Florence whether she should educate them in Germany orSwitzerland. Her husband had apparently abandoned this question to her, and he did not contribute his presence to her moral support during herstruggle with a problem which Westover remembered as having a tendencyto solution in the direction of a permanent stay in Florence. 

In those days he liked Mrs. Vostrand very much, and at twenty heconsidered her at thirty distinctly middle-aged. For one winter she hada friendly little salon, which was the most attractive place in Florenceto him, then a cub painter sufficiently unlicked. He was aware of herchildren being a good deal in the salon: a girl of eight, who was likeher mother, and quite a savage little boy of five, who may have beenlike his father. If he was, and the absent Mr. Vostrand had the samehabit of sulking and kicking at people's shins, Westover could partlyunderstand why Mrs. Vostrand had come to Europe for the education of herchildren. It all came vividly back to him, while he went about lookingfor 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 theirrooms when he came upon Jeff Durgin figuring about the office in a freshLondon 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 thinksit's a little too rowdy-looking. Her idea is black broadcloth frock-coatand doeskin trousers for a gentleman, you know. " He laughed with a youngjoyousness, and then became serious. "Couple of ladies here, somewhere, I'd like to introduce you to. Came over with me from the depot lastnight. Very nice people, and I'd like to make it pleasant for them--getup something--go somewhere--and when you see their style you can judgewhat it had better be. Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter. "

"Thank you, " said Westover. "I think I know them already at least one ofthem. 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 themon the ship, but we met in the train coming up last night. Said they hadheard of Lion's Head on the other side from friends. But it was quitea coincidence, don't you think? I'd like to have them see what thisneighborhood really is; and I wish, Mr. Westover, you'd find out, if youcan, what they'd like. If they're for walking, we could get Whitwell topersonally conduct a party, and if they're for driving, I'd like to showthem 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 exactlyhow I could bring the question into a first interview. "

"Well, perhaps it would be rather rushing it. But, if I get upsomething, you'll come, Mr. Westover?"

"I will, with great pleasure, " said Westover, and he went to make hiscall. 

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 soundof angry voices came out to him. Then the voice of Mrs. Durgin defineditself in the words: "I'm not goin' to have to ask any more folks fortheir 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 stickbetween his hands and knees, confronting his mother, who was rockingexcitedly 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'scrazy 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 manyyears ago, and I've just been calling on her and her daughter, who was alittle 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 particularattention?"

"I don't know if I quite understand--"

"Why, it's just this. Jeff, here, wants to make a picnic for them, orsomething, and I can't see the sense of it. You remember what happenedat that other picnic, with that Mrs. Marven"--Jeff tapped the floor withhis stick impatiently, and Westover felt sorry for him--"and I don'twant it to happen again, and I've told Jeff so. I presume he thinksit 'll set him right with them, if they're thinkin' demeaning of himbecause 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 tohim:

"They're not the kind of people to take such a thing shabbily, " saidWestover. "They didn't happen to mention it, but Mrs. Vostrand must havegot used to seeing young fellows in straits of all kinds during her lifeabroad. I know that I sometimes made the cup of tea and biscuit she usedto 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 doanything for them on that account. And I've made up my mind about onething: 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 littlethe part of old family friend which he seemed, whether he liked it ornot, 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 hismother; "I'm not the hotel, and you never want me to be. I can do thison 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 onmy conditions. "

"Just as you please about that, " said Mrs. Durgin, with the sameimpassioned quiet that showed in her son's handsome face and made it oneangry red to his yellow hair. "We've got along without you so far, thissummer, and I guess we can the rest of the time. And the sooner you workoff your conditions the better, I presume. "

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

"Why, are you really going?" he asked. "I was in hopes it might haveblown over. "

"No, things don't blow over so easy with mother, " said Jeff, with anembarrassed laugh, but no resentment. "She generally means what shesays. "

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

"Oh, I guess so, " said Jeff, pulling up a long blade of grass and takingit between his teeth. "Anyway, it comes to the same thing as far as I'mconcerned. It's for her to say what shall be done and what sha'n't bedone in her own house, even if it is a hotel. That's what I shall do inmine. We're used to these little differences; but we talk it out, andthat's the end of it. I shouldn't really go, though, if I didn't thinkI ought to get in some work on those conditions before the thing beginsregularly. I should have liked to help here a little, for I've had agood time and I ought to be willing to pay for it. But she's in goodhands. Jackson's well--for him--and she's got Cynthia. "

The easy security of tone with which Jeff pronounced the name vexedWestover. "I suppose your mother would hardly know how to do withouther, even if you were at home, " he said, dryly. 

"Well, that's a fact, " Jeff assented, with a laugh for the hit. "AndJackson thinks the world of her. I believe he trusts her judgment morethan he does mother's about the hotel. Well, I must be going. You don'tknow where Mrs. Vostrand is going to be this winter, I suppose?"

"No, I don't, " said Westover. He could not help a sort of blindresentment in the situation. If he could not feel that Jeff was the bestthat could be for Cynthia, he had certainly no reason to regret that histhoughts could be so lightly turned from her. But the fact anomalouslyincensed him as a slight to the girl, who might have been still moresacrificed 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 fora parting handshake, reluctantly. 

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

Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter were at breakfast when Westover came inafter the early light had been gone some time. They entreated him tojoin them at their table, and the mother said: "I suppose you were upsoon enough to see young Mr. Durgin off. Isn't it too bad he has to goback to college when it's so pleasant in the country?"

"Not bad for him, " said Westover. "He's a young man who can stand agreat 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 ofhis 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 hadleft school. They spent their winters in Italy and their summersin Switzerland, where it seemed her son was still at his studies inLausanne. She wished him to go to Harvard, she said, and she supposed hewould have to finish his preparation at one of the American schools; butshe had left the choice entirely to Mr. Vostrand. 

This seemed a strange event after twelve years' stay in Europe for theeducation of her children, but Westover did not feel authorized to makeany comment upon it. He fell rather to thinking how very pleasant bothmother and daughter were, and to wondering how much wisdom they hadbetween them. He reflected that men had very little wisdom, as far ashe knew them, and he questioned whether, after all, the main differencebetween men and women might not be that women talked their follies andmen acted theirs. Probably Mrs. Vostrand, with all her babble, haddone fewer foolish things than her husband, but here Westover felt hisjudgment disabled by the fact that he had never met her husband; and hismind began to wander to a question of her daughter, whom he had therebefore him. He found himself bent upon knowing more of the girl, andtrying to eliminate her mother from the talk, or, at least, to makeGenevieve lead in it. But apparently she was not one of the naturesthat like to lead; at any rate, she remained discreetly in abeyance, andWestover fancied she even respected her mother's opinions and ideas. Hethought this very well for both of them, whether it was the effect ofMrs. Vostrand's merit or Miss Vostrand's training. They seemed bothof one exquisite gentleness, and of one sweet manner, which was ratherelaborate and formal in expression. They deferred to each other aspolitely as they deferred to him, but, if anything, the daughterdeferred most. 

XVII. 

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

Early in October the painter received Mrs. Vostrand's card at his studioin Boston, and learned from the scribble which covered it that she waswith her daughter at the Hotel Vendome. He went at once to see themthere, and was met, almost before the greetings were past, with a prayerfor his opinion. 

"Favorable opinion?" he asked. 

"Favorable? Oh yes; of course. It's simply this. When I sent you mycard, we were merely birds of passage, and now I don't know but weare--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, thismorning, and we saw the sign of an apartment to let, in a window, and wethought, 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 ofstaying in Boston; we'd quite made up our minds on New York; but thisapartment is a temptation. "

"Why not yield, then?" said Westover. "That's the easiest way with atemptation. 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 everypossible use of me. Mrs. Vostrand, I can't tell you how very glad I amyou're going to stay, " said the painter, with a fervor that made herimpulsively 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 thosedays, " and at that she gave his hand a quick pressure. "If I can doanything at all for you, you will let me, won't you. I'm afraid you'llbe so well provided for that there won't be anything. Ask them to slightyou, 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 studioto implore your protection?"

"The sooner the better. " Westover got himself away with a very sweetfriendship in his heart for this rather anomalous lady, who, more thanhalf her daughter's life, had lived away from her daughter's father, upon apparently perfectly good terms with him, and so discreetly andself-respectfully that no breath of reproach had touched her. Until now, however, her position had not really concerned Westover, and it wouldnot have concerned him now, if it had not been for a design that formeditself in his mind as soon as he knew that Mrs. Vostrand meant to passthe winter in Boston. He felt at once that he could not do thingsby halves for a woman who had once done them for him by wholes andsomething over, and he had instantly decided that he must not onlybe very pleasant to her himself, but he must get his friends to bepleasant, too. His friends were some of the nicest people in Boston;nice in both the personal and the social sense; he knew they would nothesitate to sacrifice themselves for him in a good cause, and that madehim 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 upand to such as they chose to let enter it. These were not all chosenfor wealth or family; there were some whose gifts gave the classdistinction, and the ladies were glad to have them. It would be easy toexplain Mrs. Vostrand to these, but the others might be more difficult;they might have their anxieties, and Westover meant to ask the leader ofthe class to help him receive at the studio tea he had at once imaginedfor the Vostrands, and that would make her doubly responsible. 

He found himself drawing a very deep and long breath before he beganto 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 hewere of a slacker conscience and could wear his gratitude more lightly. But there was some relief in thinking that he could do nothing for amonth yet. He gained a degree of courage by telling the ladies, when hewent to find them in their new apartment, that he should want them tomeet a few of his friends at tea as soon as people began to get backto town; and he made the most of their instant joy in accepting hisinvitation. 

His pleasure was somehow dashed a little, before he left them, by theannouncement of Jeff Durgin's name. 

"I felt bound to send him my card, " said Mrs. Vostrand, while Jeff wasfollowing his up in the elevator. "He was so very kind to us the daywe arrived at Zion's Head; and I didn't know but he might be feeling alittle sensitive about coming over second-cabin in our ship; and--"

"How like you, Mrs. Vostrand!" cried Westover, and he was now distinctlyglad he had not tried to sneak out of doing something for her. "Yourkindness won't be worse wasted on Durgin than it was on me, in the olddays, when I supposed I had taken a second-cabin passage for the voyageof life. There's a great deal of good in him; I don't mean to say he gotthrough 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, Isuppose. "

Later, the ladies brought Jeff with them when they came to Westover'sstudio, and the painter perceived that they were very good friends, asif they must have met several times since he had seen them together. Heinterested himself in the growing correctness of Jeff's personal effect. During his Freshman year, while the rigor of the unwritten Harvard lawyet 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 rathera taste for clothes, but in this first year he did not get beyond aderby-hat and a sack-coat, varied toward the end by a cutaway. In theouting dress he wore at home he was always effective, but there wassomething in Jeff's figure which did not lend itself to more formalfashion; something of herculean proportion which would have marked himof a classic beauty perhaps if he had not been in clothes at all, orof a yeomanly vigor and force if he had been clad for work, but whichseemed to threaten the more worldly conceptions of the tailor withdanger. It was as if he were about to burst out of his clothes, notbecause he wore them tight, but because there was somehow more of theman than the citizen in him; something native, primitive, something thatWestover could not find quite a word for, characterized him physicallyand spiritually. When he came into the studio after these delicateladies, the robust Jeff Durgin wore a long frockcoat, with a flower inhis button-hole, and in his left hand he carried a silk hat turnedover his forearm as he must have noticed people whom he thought stylishcarrying their hats. He had on dark-gray trousers and sharp-pointedenamelled-leather shoes; and Westover grotesquely reflected that he wasdressed, as he stood, to lead Genevieve Vostrand to the altar. 

Westover saw at once that when he made his studio tea for the Vostrandshe 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. Vostrandwas taking him on the right ground, as a Harvard student, and nobodyneed take him on any other. Possibly people would ask him to teas attheir own houses, from Westover's studio, but he could not feel that hewas concerned in that. Society is interested in a man's future, not hispast, 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 broughtpeople together in their autumnal freshness before the winter had begunto wither their resolutions to be amiable to one another, to dull theirwits, to stale their stories, or to give so wide a currency to theirsayings that they could not freely risk them with every one. 

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

He protested in vain that Mrs. Vostrand was not the type; she laughedagain, and said, Oh, types were never typical. But she was hospitablygracious both to her and to Miss Genevieve; she would not allow that themother was not the type when Westover challenged her experience, but shesaid they were charming, and made haste to get rid of the question withthe vivid demand: "But who was your young friend who ought to have worna lion-skin and carried a club?"

Westover by this time disdained palliation. He said that Jeff was theson of the landlady at Lion's Head Mountain, which he had painted somuch, and he was now in his second year at Harvard, where he was goingto make a lawyer of himself; and this interested the lady. She askedif he had talent, and a number of other things about him and about hismother; and Westover permitted himself to be rather graphic in tellingof his acquaintance with Mrs. Durgin. 

XVIII. 

After all, it was rather a simple-hearted thing of Westover to haveeither hoped or feared very much for the Vostrands. Society, in thesense of good society, can always take care of itself, and does soperfectly. In the case of Mrs. Vostrand some ladies who liked Westoverand wished to be civil to him asked her and her daughter to otherafternoon teas, shook hands with them at their coming, and said, whenthey went, they were sorry they must be going so soon. In the crowdspeople recognized them now and then, both of those who had met themat Westover's studio, and of those who had met them at Florence andLausanne. But if these were merely people of fashion they were readily, rid of the Vostrands, whom the dullest among them quickly perceived notto be of their own sort, somehow. Many of the ladies of Westover's classmade Genevieve promise to let them paint her; and her beauty and hergrace availed for several large dances at the houses of more daringspirits, where the daughters made a duty of getting partners for her, and discharged it conscientiously. But there never was an approach tomore intimate hospitalities, and toward the end of February, when goodsociety in Boston goes southward to indulge a Lenten grief at Old PointComfort, Genevieve had so many vacant afternoons and evenings ather disposal that she could not have truthfully pleaded a previousengagement to the invitations Jeff Durgin made her. They were chieflyfor the theatre, and Westover saw him with her and her mother atdifferent plays; he wondered how Jeff had caught on to the notion ofasking Mrs. Vostrand to come with them. 

Jeff's introductions at Westover's tea had not been many, and they hadnot availed him at all. He had been asked to no Boston houses, and whenother students, whom he knew, were going in to dances, the whole winterhe was socially as quiet, but for the Vostrands, as at the Mid-yearExaminations. Westover could not resent the neglect of society in hiscase, and he could not find that he quite regretted it; but he thoughtit characteristically nice of Mrs. Vostrand to make as much of thefriendless fellow as she fitly could. He had no doubt but her tact wouldbe equal to his management in every way, and that she could easily seeto 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 theice-fields of Labrador against the New England coast, and the buds onthe trees along the mall between the lawns of the avenue were venturingforth in a hardy experiment of the Boston May, Mrs. Vostrand askedWestover if she had told him that Mr. Vostrand was actually coming on toBoston. He rejoiced with her in this prospect, and he reciprocatedthe wish which she said Mr. Vostrand had always had for a meeting withhimself. 

A fortnight later, when the leaves had so far inured themselves to theweather as to have fully expanded, she announced another letter fromMr. Vostrand, saying that, after all, he should not be able to come toBoston, 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 Ihad told you!"

"No--"

"Why, yes. We must go out to poor Checco, now; Mr. Vostrand insistsupon that. If ever we are a united family again, Mr. Westover--ifMr. Vostrand can arrange his business, when Checco is ready to enterHarvard--I mean to take a house in Boston. I'm sure I should becontented to live nowhere else in America. The place has quite bewitchedme--dear old, sober, charming Boston! I'm sure I should like to livehere all the rest of my life. But why in the world do people go out oftown so early? Those houses over there have been shut for a whole monthpast!"

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

Westover answered: "Some go because they have such pleasant houses atthe shore, and some because they want to dodge their taxes. "

"To dodge their taxes?" she repeated, and he had to explain how ifpeople were in their country-houses before the 1st of May they wouldnot have to pay the high personal tax of the city; and she said that shewould write that to Mr. Vostrand; it would be another point in favor ofBoston. Women, she declared, would never have thought of such athing; she denounced them as culpably ignorant of so many matters thatconcerned them, especially legal matters. "And you think, " she asked, "that Mr. Durgin will be a good lawyer? That he will-distinguishhimself?"

Westover thought it rather a short-cut to Jeff from the things they hadbeen talking of, but if she wished to speak of him he had no reason tooppose her wish. "I've heard it's all changed a good deal. There arestill distinguished lawyers, and lawyers who get on, but they don'tdistinguish themselves in the old way so much, and they get on best bybecoming 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 cando what he likes within certain limits, and the limits are not all onthe side I used to fancy. He baffles me. But of late I fancy you've seenrather more of him than I have. "

"I have urged him to go more to you. But, " said Mrs. Vostrand, with aburst 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 beenso 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 answereddirectly enough. "He's rather old for a Sophomore, I believe. He'stwenty-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 foreignmarriage. It seems to be his one great dread. And, of course, she's verymuch exposed to it, living abroad so much with me, and I feel doublybound on that account to respect her father's opinions, or evenprejudices. Before we left Florence--in fact, last winter--there was amost delightful young officer wished to marry her. I don't know thatshe cared anything for him, though he was everything that I could havewished: handsome, brilliant, accomplished, good family; everythingbut rich, and that was what Mr. Vostrand objected to; or, rather, heobjected to putting up, as he called it, the sum that Captain Grassiwould have had to deposit with the government before he was allowed tomarry. 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 likesixty thousand francs, I believe; and poor Gigi hadn't it: I alwayscalled him Gigi, but his name is Count Luigi de' Popolani Grassi; and heis descended from one of the old republican families of Florence. He isso nice! Mr. Vostrand was opposed to him from the beginning, and as soonas he heard of the sixty thousand francs, he utterly refused. He calledit buying a son-in-law, but I don't see why he need have looked at it inthat light. However, it was broken off, and we left Florence--morefor poor Gigi's sake than for Genevieve's, I must say. He was quiteheart-broken; I pitied him. "

Her voice had a tender fall in the closing words, and Westover couldfancy how sweet she would make her compassion to the young man. Shebegan several sentences aimlessly, and he suggested, to supply thebroken thread of her discourse rather than to offer consolation, whileher eyes seemed to wander with her mind, and ranged the avenue up anddown: "Those foreign marriages are not always successful. "

"No, they are not, " she assented. "But don't you think they're betterwith 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 purelyAmerican marriage for happiness. "

Westover wondered how she really regarded her own marriage, but shenever betrayed any consciousness of its variance from the type. 

XIX. 

A young couple came strolling down the avenue who to Westover's artisticeye first typified grace and strength, and then to his more personalperception identified themselves as Genevieve Vostrand and Jeff Durgin. 

They faltered before one of the benches beside the mall, and he seemedto be begging her to sit down. She cast her eyes round till they musthave caught the window of her mother's apartment; then, as if she feltsafe 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 notifytheir happiness by the embraces and hand-clasps everywhere evident inour parks and gardens; and a Boston pair of social tradition would nothave 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; andWestover sympathized with their bohemian impulse. 

Mrs. Vostrand and he watched them awhile, in talk that straggled awayfrom them, and became more and more distraught in view of them. Jeffleaned forward, and drew on the ground with the point of his stick;Genevieve held her head motionless at a pensive droop. It was only theirbacks that Westover could see, and he could not, of course, make outa syllable of what was effectively their silence; but all the same hebegan to feel as if he were peeping and eavesdropping. Mrs. Vostrandseemed not to share his feeling, and there was no reason why he shouldhave it if she had not. He offered to go, but she said, No, no; he mustnot think of it till Genevieve came in; and she added some banalitiesabout her always scolding when she had missed one of his calls; theywould 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 watchingthe young people intently. Jeff had turned his face up toward Genevieve, without lifting his person, and was saying something she suddenly shrankback from. She made a start as if to rise, but he put out his hand infront of her, beseechingly or compellingly, and she sank down again. But she slowly shook her head at what he was saying, and turned her facetoward him so that it gave her profile to the spectators. In that lightand at that distance it was impossible to do more than fancy anythingfateful in the words which she seemed to be uttering; but Westover choseto fancy this. Jeff waited a moment in apparent silence, after she hadspoken. He sat erect and faced her, and this gave his profile, too. Hemust have spoken, for she shook her head again; and then, at other wordsfrom him, nodded assentingly. Then she listened motionlessly while hepoured a rapid stream of visible but inaudible words. He put out hishand, as if to take hers, but she put it behind her; Westover could seeit white there against the belt of her dark dress. 

Jeff went on more vehemently, but she remained steadfast, slowly shakingher 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. Shestood a moment, and with a gentle and almost entreating movement she putout her hand to him. He stood looking down, with both his hands restingon the top of his stick, as if ignoring her proffer. Then he suddenlycaught her hand, held it a moment; dropped it, and walked quickly awaywithout looking back. Genevieve ran across the lawn and roadway towardthe house. 

"Oh, must, you go?" Mrs. Vostrand said to Westover. He found that he hadprobably risen in sympathy with Jeff's action. He was not aware ofan 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 publicstairs of the house, but he saw that she did not recognize him in thedim light. 

Late that night he was startled by steps that seemed to be seeking theirway 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 dooropen, and then holding onto it a moment, as if he hoped that, havingcome in, Jeff might instantly go out again. 

His reluctance was lost upon Jeff, who said, unconscious of keeping hishat 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 putit 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 thatyou want bail for. "

"Yes, " Westover prompted. 

"I don't know whether you've noticed--and if you haven't it don'tmake any difference--that I've seemed to--care a good deal for MissVostrand?"

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 toolittle. " He laughed in a joyless, helpless way, and looked deprecatinglyat 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 someone else, " said Westover, oracularly. 

"Yes, " said Jeff, apparently finding nothing more definite in the oraclethan people commonly find in oracles. "But I think, " he went on, witha touch of bitterness, "that her mother might have told me that she wasengaged--or the same as engaged. "

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

Westover defended Mrs. Vostrand, but he did not feel strong in herdefence; he was not sure that Durgin was quite wrong, absurd as he hadbeen. 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 oldfriend of Mrs. Vostrand's that I thought she'd be pretty sure totell you about it; and I wanted to ask--to ask--that you wouldn't sayanything to mother. "

"You are a boy! I shouldn't think of meddling with your affairs, " saidWestover; he got up again, and Jeff rose, too. 

Before noon the next day a district messenger brought Westover a letterwhich he easily knew, from, the now belated tall, angular hand, to befrom Mrs. Vostrand. It announced on a much criss-crossed little sheetthat 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 mentionedlast night, he withdraws his objections (we have had an overnighttelegram), and so I suppose all will go well. I cannot tell you howsorry we both are not to see you again; you have been such a dear, goodfriend to us; and if you don't hear from us again at New York, you willfrom the other side. Genevieve had some very strange news when she camein, and we both feel very sorry for the poor young fellow. You mustconsole him from us all you can. I did not know before how much she wasattached to Gigi: but it turned out very fortunately that she could sayshe considered herself bound to him, and did everything to save Mr. D. 'sfeelings. "

XX. 

Westover was not at Lion's Head again till the summer before Jeff'sgraduation. In the mean time the hotel had grown like a living thing. Hecould not have imagined wings in connection with the main edifice, but it had put forth wings--one that sheltered a new and enlargeddining-room, with two stories of chambers above, and another thathovered a parlor and ball-room under a like provision of chambers. Anell had been pushed back on the level behind the house; the barn hadbeen moved farther to the southward, and on its old site a laundrybuilt, with quarters for the help over it. All had been carefully, frugally, yet sufficiently done, and Westover was not surprised to learnthat 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 hadcautiously felt his way to the needs of their public in the enlargementand rearrangement of the hotel, the two housewives had watchfullystudied, not merely the demands, but the half-conscious instincts oftheir guests, and had responded to them simply and adequately, in thespirit of Jackson's exterior and structural improvements. The walls ofthe new rooms were left unpapered and their floors uncarpeted; therewere thin rugs put down; the wood-work was merely stained. Westoverfound 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 atone o'clock. 

Mrs. Durgin asked him the first day if he would not like to go into theserving-room and see it while they were serving dinner. She tried toconceal her pride in the busy scene--the waitresses pushing in throughone valve of the double-hinged doors with their empty trays, and outthrough the other with the trays full laden; delivering their disheswith the broken victual at the wicket, where the untouched portions wereput aside and the rest poured into the waste; following in processionalong the reeking steamtable, with its great tanks of soup andvegetables, where, the carvers stood with the joints and the trussedfowls smoking before them, which they sliced with quick sweeps of theirblades, or waiting their turn at the board where the little plates withportions of fruit and dessert stood ready. All went regularly on amid aclatter of knives and voices and dishes; and the clashing rise and fallof 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 picturesquein it, so that he did not respond quite in kind to Jeff'ssuggestion--"Scene for a painter, Mr. Westover. "

The young fellow followed satirically at his mother's elbow, and made amock of her pride in it, trying to catch Westover's eye when she led himthrough the kitchen with its immense range, and introduced him to a newchef, 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 sonjeered at a final air of absent-mindedness in her, and she defiantlyaccepted his challenge. 

"Jeff's mad because he wasn't consulted, " she explained, "and because wedon'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 asmuch a passenger as you are. The only difference is that I'm allowed towork my passage. "

"Well, one thing, " said his mother, "is that we've got a higher class ofboarders than we ever had before. You'll see, Mr. Westover, if you stayon here till August. There's a class that boards all the year round, andthat 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 godown to Floridy or Georgy for February and March; and they get up toFortress Monroe in April, and work along north about the middle of Mayto them family hotels in the suburbs around Boston; and they stay theretill it's time to go to the shore. They stay at the shore throughJuly, 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 highestclass, I guess. It's a round of gayety with 'em the whole year through. "

Jeff, from the vantage of his greater worldly experience, was tryingto exchange looks of intelligence with Westover concerning thosehotel-dwellers whom his mother revered as aristocrats; but he did notopenly question her conceptions. "They've told me how they do, some ofthe ladies have, " she went on. "They've got the money for it, and theyknow how to get the most for their money. Why, Mr. Westover, we've gotrooms in this house, now, that we let for thirty-five to fifty dollarsa week for two persons, and folks like that take 'em right along throughAugust and September, and want a room apiece. It's different now, I cantell you, from what it was when folks thought we was killin' 'em if wewanted 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, afterparting with his mother. "Jackson's done it, and he can't imagineanything else. I don't say it isn't well done in its way, but the way'swrong; it's stupid and clumsy. " When they were got so far from the hotelas to command a prospect of its ungainly mass sprawled upon the plateau, his smouldering disgust burst out: "Look at it! Did you ever seeanything like it? I wish the damned thing would burn up--or down!"

Westover was aware in more ways than one of Jeff's exclusion fromauthority in the place, where he was constantly set aside from themanagement as if his future were so definitely dedicated to anothercalling that not even his advice was desired or permitted; and he couldnot 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 theaverage of Harvard's Seniors in some essentials. He had been sobered, apparently, by experience; his unfortunate love-affair seemed to haveimproved him, as the phrase is. 

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

"Well, now you know enough about me, Mr. Westover, to know that drinkisn'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 touchit now. There isn't any more reason why I should take to drink because Ikeep a hotel than Jackson; but just that one time has set mother againstit, 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'tdo anything else in these days. If I was left to choose betweenhotel-keeping and any other life that I know of, I'd choose it everytime, " Jeff went on, after a moment of silence. "I like a hotel. You canbe your own man from the start; the start's made here, and I've helpedto make it. All you've got to do is to have common-sense in the hotelbusiness, 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 greatsuccess. The reason that most people fail in the hotel business is thatthey waste so much, and the landlord that wastes on his guests can'ttreat them well. It's got so now that in the big city houses they can'tmake anything on feeding people, and so they try to make it up on therooms. I should feed them well--I believe I know how--and I should makemoney 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 ifmother gets to talking about me with you that you'd let her know how Ifeel. 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 quitea fool. She thinks I've gone crazy from seeing the way they do things inEurope; that I'm conceited and unpatriotic, and I don't know whatall. " Jeff laughed as if with an inner fondness for his mother'swrong-headedness. 

"And would you be willing to settle down here in the country forthe rest of your life, and throw away your Harvard training onhotel-keeping?"

"What do the other fellows do with their Harvard training when they gointo business, as nine-tenths of them do? Business is business, whetheryou keep a hotel or import dry-goods or manufacture cotton or run arailroad or help a big trust to cheat legally. Harvard has got to takea back seat when you get out of Harvard. But you don't suppose thatkeeping 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 forthe hotel, even. If I had such a place as Lion's Head, I should put aman and his family into it for the winter to look after it, and I shouldgo to town myself--to Boston or New York, or I might go to London orParis. They're not so far off, and it's so easy to get to them that youcan hardly keep away. " Jeff laughed, and looked up at Westover from thelog where he sat, whittling a pine stick; Westover sat on the stump fromwhich 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 haveLion's Head very long before I had another hotel--in Florida, or theGeorgia uplands, or North Carolina, somewhere. I should take my helpback and forth; it would be as easy to run two hotels as one-easier! Itwould keep my hand in. But if you want to know, I'd rather stick herein the country, year in and year out, and run Lion's Head, than to be alawyer and hang round trying to get a case for nine or ten years. Who'sgoing to support me? Do you suppose I want to live on mother till I'mforty? She don't think of that. She thinks I can go right into court andbegin distinguishing myself, if I can fight the people off from sendingme to Congress. I'd rather live in the country, anyway. I think town'sthe place for winter, or two-three months of it, and after that Ihaven't got any use for it. But mother, she's got this old-fashionedambition to have me go to a city and set up there. She thinks that ifI was a lawyer in Boston I should be at the top of the heap. But I knowbetter than that, and so do you; and I want you to give her some littlehint of how it really is: how it takes family and money and a lot ofinfluence to get to the top in any city. "

It occurred to Westover, and not for the first time, that the frankestthing in Jeff Durgin was his disposition to use his friends. It seemedto him that Jeff was always asking something of him, and it did notchange the fact that in this case he thought him altogether in theright. He said that if Mrs. Durgin spoke to him of the matter he wouldnot keep the light from her. He looked behind him, now, for the firsttime, in recognition of the place where they had stopped. "Why, this isWhitwell'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 hisheedless words:

"The woods have crowded back upon it so. It can't be more than half itsold size. "

"No, " Jeff assented. He struck his heel against a fragment of the pinebough he had been whittling, and drove it into the soft ground besidethe log, and said, without looking up from it: "I met that woman at adance last winter. It wasn't her dance, but she was running it as if itwere, just the way she did with the picnic. She seemed to want to letbygones 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. "Shecouldn't help it, but it wasn't the thing to do. A hotel is a publichouse, and you can't act as if it wasn't. If mother hadn't known how tokeep a hotel so well in other ways, she might have ruined the house bynot knowing in a thing like that. But we've got some of the people withus 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 thepeople 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 mypride in him risk doing him mischief. And if you've a mind to let herunderstand 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 youtell her yourself?"

"She won't believe me, " said Jeff, with a laugh. "She thinks I don'tknow my mind. And I don't like the way we differ when we differ. Wediffer 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 knewGenevieve was married?"

"Yes, I knew that, " said Jeff, steadily. 

"I don't quite make it all out. Mr. Vostrand was very much opposed toit, Mrs. Vostrand told me; but he must have given way at last; andhe must have put up the money. " Jeff looked puzzled, and Westoverexplained. "You know the officers in the Italian army--and all the otherarmies in Europe, for that matter--have to deposit a certain sum withthe 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 fathersdidn't put up the money. "

"Well, I don't see why they shouldn't spend their money that way as wellas any other, " said Jeff, and this proof of his impartiality suggestedto Westover that he was not only indifferent to the mercenaryinternational 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 cameto your room that night, I wanted to complain of Mrs. Vostrand fornot letting me know about the engagement; and I wasn't man enough toacknowledge that what you said would account for their letting me make afool 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 littlefranker with you without being less kind. She was kind, but she wasn'tquite frank. "

"Well, it's all over now, " said Jeff, and he rose up and brushed thewhittlings from his knees. "And I guess it's just as well. "

XXI. 

That afternoon Westover saw Jeff helping Cynthia Whitwell into hisbuckboard, and then, after his lively horse had made some paces of astart, spring to the seat beside her, and bring it to a stand. "Can Ido anything for you over at Lovewell, Mr. Westover?" he called, and hesmiled toward the painter. Then he lightened the reins on the mare'sback; she squared herself for a start in earnest, and flashed down thesloping hotel road to the highway below, and was lost to sight in theclump of woods to the southward. 

"That's a good friend of yours, Cynthy, " he said, leaning toward thegirl with a simple comfort in her proximity. She was dressed in apale-pink color, with a hat of yet paler pink; without having a greatdeal of fashion, she had a good deal of style. She looked bright andfresh; there was a dash of pink in her cheeks, which suggested the colorof the sweetbrier, its purity and sweetness, and if there was somethingin Cynthia's character and temperament that suggested its thorns too, one still could not deny that she was like that flower. She liked toshop, and she liked to ride after a good horse, as the neighbors wouldhave 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 hispeculiar property. She smiled upon him without the usual reservationsshe 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 sawhim. "

Jeff laughed with shameless pleasure in the reminiscence her wordssuggested. "Well, I did get my come-uppings that time. And I don't knowbut 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 likeyou. "

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

"Nothing!" said Jeff, with a shout of laughter in his conviction. "I'vedone a lot of things to make him despise me from the start. But if youlike a person yourself, you want him to like you whether you deserve itor not. "

"I don't know as I do. "

"You say that because you always deserve it. You can't tell how it iswith a fellow like me. I should want you to like me, Cynthy, whateveryou thought of me. " He looked round into her face, but she turned itaway. 

They had struck the level, long for the hill country, at the foot ofthe hotel road, and the mare, that found herself neither mounting nordescending a steep, dropped from the trot proper for an acclivity into arapid walk. 

"This mare can walk like a Kentucky horse, " said Jeff. "I believe Icould 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 pinewoods were deep on either side. They whispered in the thin, sweet wind, and gave out their odor in the high, westering sun. They covered withtheir shadows the road that ran velvety between them. 

"This is nice, " said Jeff, letting himself rest against the back of theseat. He stretched his left arm along the top, and presently it droppedand 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 alittle aside and looked round at him. "You wouldn't put it round a towngirl if you were riding with her. "

"I shouldn't be riding with her: Girls don't go buggy-riding in town anymore, " 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 armaway, " said Cynthia. 

"Oh, all right. But I shouldn't object to your putting your arm aroundme. "

"You will never have the chance. "

"Why are you so hard on me, Cynthy?" asked Jeff. "You didn't used to beso. "

"People change. "

"Do I?"

"Not for the better. "

Jeff was dumb. She was pleased with her hit, and laughed. But her laughdid not encourage him to put his arm round her again. He let the marewalk on, and left her to resume the conversation at whatever point shewould. 

She made no haste to resume it. At last she said, with sufficientapparent remoteness from the subject they had dropped: "Jeff, I don'tknow whether you want me to talk about it. But I guess I ought to, evenif it isn't my place exactly. I don't think Jackson's very well, thissummer. "

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 amorousresentment all gone from his voice. "Sometimes folks outside noticethe signs more--I don't mean that you're an outsider, as far as we'reconcerned--"

She put by that point. "Father's noticed it, too; and he's with Jacksona 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 tohave 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 usepretending that he's simply worked down. I believe he's worn out. Do youthink 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 herabout. I don't know what she would do. " He did not say, "If she lostJackson, " but Cynthia knew he meant that, and they were both silent. "Ofcourse, " he went on, "I know that she places a great deal of dependenceupon you, but Jackson's her main stay. He's a good man, and he's a goodson. I wish I'd always been half as good. "

Cynthia did not protest against his self-reproach as he possibly hopedshe would. She said: "I think Jackson's got a very good mind. He reads agreat 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, wewere 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 toshowing me Mars. He thinks it's inhabited, and he's read all that theastronomers say about it, and the seas and the canals that they've foundon it. He spoke very beautifully about the other life, and then he spokeabout death. " Cynthia's voice broke, and she pulled her handkerchief outof her belt, and put it to her eyes. Jeff's heart melted in him at thesight; he felt a tender affection for her, very unlike the gross contenthe had enjoyed in her presence before, and he put his arm round heragain, but this time almost unconsciously, and drew her toward him. Shedid not repel him; she even allowed her head to rest a moment on hisshoulder; though she quickly lifted it, and drew herself away, notresentfully, it seemed, but for her greater freedom in talking. 

"I don't believe he's going to die, " Jeff said, consolingly, more as ifit 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 passanother winter here. He must go to California, or Colorado; they'd beglad to have him there, either of them; or he can go to Florida, or overto 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 youto say anything till I've got through. I guess I could help mother runthe 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 goingto be a lawyer. I don't want to go back to Harvard. I'm going to keep ahotel, and, if I don't keep one here at Lion's Head, I'm going to keepit 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 onething first. Cynthia, you know how I feel about you. It's been so eversince we were boy and girl here. I want you to promise to marry me. Willyou?"

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

"What do you say, Cynthia?" Jeff pursued, with more injury thanmisgiving in his voice at her delay in answering. "Don't you-care forme?"

"Oh yes, I presume I've always done that--ever since we were boy andgirl, 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 histhroat before he asked: "Has Mr. Westover been saying anything aboutme?"

"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 thatgirl, for Miss Vostrand, and I told her so. It's like something thatnever 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 hadbeen 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 ofhis head once. "

"You wouldn't find many men that hadn't, " said Jeff, with a laugh thatwas rather scornful of her ignorance. 

"No, I presume not, " she sighed. "She was beautiful, and I believe shewas 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 thatyou 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 itall. But if you want time to think--of course you do--I've taken timeenough--"

He was about to lift the reins on the mare's back as a sign to her thatthe talk was over for the present, and to quicken her pace, when Cynthiaput out her hand and laid it on his, and said with a certain effectof authority: "I shouldn't want you should give up your last year inHarvard. "

"Just as you say, Cynthy;" and in token of intelligence he wound his armround 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 sealeda solemn troth between them, and that a common life began for them withit. 

XXII. 

Cynthia came back in time to go into the dining-room and see that allwas in order there for supper before the door opened. The waitressesknew 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 angleof the hotel listening to one who read a novel aloud, and skipped allbut the most exciting love parts. They conjectured that the pair hadgone to Lovewell, but they knew nothing more, and the subtlest ofthem would not have found reason for further conjecture in Cynthia'sbehavior, when she came in and scanned the tables and the girls' dressesand hair, where they stood ranged against the wall. She was neitherwhiter nor redder than usual, and her nerves and her tones were under asgood control as a girl's ever are after she has been out riding with afellow. 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 withhim, 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 thelight of the fire kindled on the hearth to break the evening chill, Jeffjoined Cynthia in her inspection of the dining-room. She always gave ita last look, to see that it was in perfect order for breakfast, beforeshe went home for the night. Jeff went home with her; he was impatientof her duties, but he was in no hurry when they stole out of the sidedoor together under the stars, and began to stray sidelong down the hillover the dewless grass. 

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

"Now, Jeff, " she said, after a certain number of partings, in which shehad apparently kept his duty clearly in mind, "you had better go homeand 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 Ididn'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 makeme!"

"Well, I won't, then. But what are you in such a hurry to have motherknow 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 singleday with your mother hiding this from her, I should begin to hate you. Icouldn'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 shouldhave to tell him, all the same. Now, good-night. Well, there, then; andthere! 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 thesitting-room, where she found her father pulled up to the table, withhis hat on, and poring over a sheet of hieroglyphics, which representedthe 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 somuch 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. Helaughed, and said: "I guess I must 'a' forgot it. We've had the mostinterestin' 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 thanplantchette has, " said Cynthia, and she pulled the sheet away from underher 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 theexpression of strong emotion, and the best that Whitwell found himselfable to do in view of the fact was to pucker his mouth for a whistlewhich did not come. 

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

"Well, you don't seem over and above excited about it. Did--didyour--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 thephilosopher. "I always meant to take it out of him, somehow, if he gotto 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'vealways 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 oneof his philosophic poses. "I have sometimes believed that Jeff Durginwas goin' to turn out a blackguard. He's got it in him. He's as like hisgran'father as two peas, and he was an old devil. But you got to accountin all these here heredity cases for counteractin' influences. TheDurgins 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'sall right, too, if she has got a will of her own. " Whitwell returnedfrom 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 seeher 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 tosomething of real importance, "was down here to-night tryin' to ringup some them spirits from the planet Mars. Martians, he calls 'em. Hismind's got to runnin' a good deal on Mars lately. I guess it's thisapposition that they talk about that does it. Mars comin' so much nearerthe earth by a million of miles or so, it stands to reason that heshould 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 atit 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; wecouldn't either of us; but she has her spells when you can't make heador tail of her. But mebbe she's just leadin' up to something, the wayshe did about that broken shaft when Jeff come home. We ha'n't ever madeout exactly what she meant by that yet. "

Whitwell paused, and Cynthia seized the advantage of his getting roundto 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 sheever 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 hewants to keep a hotel. I thought that I'd ought to tell him how we feltabout Jackson's having a rest and going off somewhere; and he wantedto begin at once. But I said if he left off the last year at Harvard Iwouldn't have anything to do with him. "

Whitwell put his hand in his pocket for his knife, and mechanicallylooked down for a stick to whittle. In default of any, he scratched hishead. "I guess she'll make it warm for him. She's had her mind set onhis studyin' law so long, 't she won't give up in a hurry. She can't seethat Jackson ain't fit to help her run the hotel any more--till he's hada rest, anyway--and I believe she thinks her and Frank could run it--andyou. She'll make an awful kick, " said Whitwell, solemnly. "I hope youdidn't encourage him, Cynthy?"

"I should encourage him, " said the girl. "He's got the right to shapehis own life, and nobody else has got the right to do it; and I shouldtell 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 ahotel, and I can see that they're the right ones. He's been out in theworld, and he's kept his eyes open. He will make Lion's Head the besthotel 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 outyou 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 mendingby the kerosene-lamp which she had kept through all the householdchanges, and pushed enough of her work aside from the corner of thetable to rest his arm upon it. 

"Mother, I want you to listen to me, and to wait till I get done. Willyou?"

She looked up at him over her spectacles from the stocking she wasdarning; the china egg gleamed through the frayed place. "What notionhave you got in your head, now?"

"It's about Jackson. He isn't well. He's got to leave off work and goaway. "

The mother's hand dropped at the end of the yarn she had drawn throughthe stocking heel, and she stared at Jeff. Then she resumed her workwith the decision expressed in her tone. "Your father lived to be sixtyyears old, and Jackson a'n't forty! The doctor said there wa'n't anyreason 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 tostay another winter here, " Jeff said, decisively. 

Mrs. Durgin was silent for a time, and then she said. "Jeff, is thatyour notion about Jackson, or whose is it?"

"It's mine, now. "

Mrs. Durgin waited a moment. Then she began, with a feeling quite atvariance 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 herwords, "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, ifthere was any change, than what I should. What did she say?"

Jeff told, as nearly as he could remember, and he told what Cynthia andhe had afterward jointly worked out as to the best thing for Jacksonto do. Mrs. Durgin listened frowningly, but not disapprovingly, as itseemed; though at the end she asked: "And what am I going to do, withJackson gone?"

Jeff laughed, with his head down. "Well, I guess you and Cynthy couldrun it, with Frank and Mr. Whitwell. "

"Mr. Whit'ell!" said Mrs. Durgin, concentrating in her accent of hisname 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 youcould bring yourself to let me off this last year at Harvard. "

"Jeff!" said his mother, reproachfully. "You know you don't mean thatyou'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. Isuggested it to Cynthy, when we got to talking it over, and she saw itwouldn'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 Iguess it was my fault. "

"What do you mean?"

"Why, this afternoon I asked her to marry me some time, and she said shewould. " 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 withthis confession for the declaration of his intention not to study law, and to make his engagement to Cynthia serve him in reconciling hismother 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 feetand 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 beenthe best girl to you in the world, and you know it. She's been as trueto you as Jackson has himself. She hasn't got a selfish bone in herbody, and she's so honest she couldn't design anything against you orany one, unless she told you first. Now you take that back! Take itback! She's no more designing than--than you are!"

Mrs. Durgin was not moved by his storming, but she was inwardlyconvinced of error. "I do take it back. Cynthy is all right. She's allyou say and more. It's your fault, then, and you've got yourself tothank, for whosever fault it is, she'll pack--"

"If Cynthy packs, I pack!" said Jeff. "Understand that. The moment sheleaves this house I leave it, too, and I'll marry her anyway. Frank 'dleave and--and--Pshaw! What do you care for that? But I don't know whatyou mean! I always thought you liked Cynthy and respected her. I didn'tbelieve I could tell you a thing that would please you better than thatshe 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 withdazed eyes, under the spectacles lifted above her forehead. She felta change of mood in his unchanged tone of defiance, and she met himhalf-way. "I tell you I take back what I called Cynthia, and I told youso. 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 withher. She's got more sense than all of 'em. I've known her ever since Ican 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, theywouldn'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 thesethings, 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! Whoremembers him, or cares for him, or ever did? You don't believe it? Youthink 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 ajay. "

His mother looked at him without speaking. She would not confess theambition he taxed her with, and perhaps she had nothing so definitein her mind. Perhaps it was only her pride in him, and her faith in asplendid future for him, that made her averse to his marriage in the lotshe 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 notsay anything more about this to-night. "

"All right, " Jeff returned. There never were any formal good-nightsbetween the Durgins, and he went away now without further words. 

His mother remained sitting where he left her. Two or three times shedrew her empty darning-needle through the heel of the stocking she wasmending. 

She was still sitting there when Jackson passed on his way to bed, afterleaving the office in charge of the night porter. He faltered, as hewent by, and as he stood on the threshold she told him what Jeff hadtold 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 quickresentment 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 howto 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 inHarvard, so 's to let you go off on a vacation. He thinks you've workedyourself down. "

Jackson made no recognition of Jeff's professed self-sacrifice. "I don'twant any vacation. I'm feeling first-rate now. I guess that stuff I hadfrom the writin' medium has begun to take hold of me. I don't know whenI'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 brotherdawned upon the sick man's wasted face, which was blotched with largefreckles, and stared with dim, large eyes from out a framework ofgrayish 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 nextmorning. The course of their work brought them together, but it was nottill after they had transacted several household affairs of pressingimportance that Mrs. Durgin asked: "What's this about you and Jeff?"

"Has he been telling you?" asked Cynthia, in her turn, though she knewhe had. 

"Yes, " said Mrs. Durgin, with a certain dryness, which was halfhumorous. "I presume, if you two are satisfied, it's all right. "

"I guess we're satisfied, " said the girl, with a tremor of relief whichshe tried to hide. 

Nothing more was said, and there was no physical demonstration ofaffection or rejoicing between the women. They knew that the time wouldcome 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 fortalking arrive when it would. "I guess, " said Mrs. Durgin, "you'd bettergo over to the helps' house and see how that youngest Miller girl'sgittin' along. She'd ought to give up and go home if she a'n't fit forher work. "

"I'll go and see her, " said Cynthia. "I don't believe she's strongenough for a waitress, and I have got to tell her so. "

"Well, " returned Mrs. Durgin, glumly, after a moment's reflection, "Ishouldn't want you should hurry her. Wait till she's out of bed, andgive her another chance. "

"All right. "

Jeff had been lurking about for the event of the interview, and hewaylaid 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 justright, didn't she? You can't always count on her; but I hadn't muchanxiety in this case. She likes you, Cynthia. "

"I guess so, " said the girl, demurely; and she looked away from him tosmile her pleasure in the fact. 

"But I believe if she hadn't known you were with her about my last yearin Harvard--it would have been different. I could see, when I brought itin 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 wantsomething from her you mustn't ask it straight out. You must proposesomething very disagreeable. Then when she refuses that, you can come infor what you were really after and get it. "

"I don't know, " said Cynthia, "as I should like to think that yourmother 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. Ihope 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. "Ididn'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 motherthinks I'm with her in that, she'll think I'm with her in the other. AndI'm not. I'm with you. " She let her hand find his, as they walked sideby side, and gave it a little pressure. 

"It's the greatest thing, Cynthy, " he said, breathlessly, "to have youwith 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 Ibelieved you were wrong, I shouldn't say it. You have a right to makeyour life what you want it; and your mother hasn't. Only she must knowit, 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 tellher!"

"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 thatthe brunt of it will come on ME. She'll think you're all right, but I'mall wrong because I agree with you. "

"Something like that. "

"Well, now, I'm not afraid of anything she can say; and what could shedo? 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 onand 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 troublethat 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 thebetter. "

"Yes!"

He had another moment of faltering. "You don't want I should talk itover 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 itrun on till after you're out of college, and then you've got to tellher. Suppose she asked you how long you had made up your mind againstthe law, how should you feel? And if she asked me whether I'd known itall along, and I had to say I had, and that I'd supported and encouragedyou in it, how should I feel?"

"She mightn't ask any such question, " said Jeff, gloomily. Cynthia gavea little impatient "Oh!" and he hastened to add: "But you're right; I'vegot 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 Millergirl. " They had reached the helps' house now, and Cynthia said: "Youwait outside here, and I'll go right back with you. Oh, I hope it isn'tdoing wrong to put it off till I've seen that girl!" She disappearedthrough the door, and Jeff waited by the steps outside, plucking up onelong grass stem after another and biting it in two. When Cynthia cameout she said: "I guess she'll be all right. Now come, and don't-loseanother 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 keepup 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 thegreatest thing to have you go with me!"

"Why, don't you SEE?" she lamented. "If you went alone, and told yourmother that I approved of it, you would look as if you were afraid, andwanted to get behind me; and I'm not going to have that. "

They found. Mrs. Durgin in the dark entry of the old farmhouse, andCynthia 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'squestion, "Has that Miller girl--"

"It isn't about her, " said Cynthy, pushing the door to. "It's about meand 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 shethinks I ought to have told you last night--she expected me to--that I'mnot going to study law. "

"And I approve of his not doing it, " Cynthia promptly followed, andshe put herself beside Jeff where he stood in front of his mother'srocking-chair. 

She looked from one to the other of the faces before her. "I'm sorry ason of mine, " she said, with dignity, "had to be told how to act withhis mother. But, if he had, I don't know as anybody had a better rightto 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 wishI could say Jeff had. "

There was an uncomfortable moment before Cynthia said: "He expected totell you. "

"Oh Yes! I know, " said his mother, sadly. She added, sharply: "And didhe 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 inMrs. Durgin's heart, and she looked at him with the eyes, that usedto condone his mischief. But she said: "I guess you'll find out thatthere'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 enoughto 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 outlawyers and doctors and professors? Some of 'em are mighty glad to sweepout banks in hopes of a clerkship; and some take any sort of a place ina mill or a business house, to work up; and some bum round out West 'oncattle 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 anybodycan know too much to keep a hotel. It won't hurt Jeff if he's been toHarvard, or to Europe, either. "

"I guess there's a pair of you, " said Mrs. Durgin, with superficialcontempt. She was silent for a time, and they waited. "Well, there!" shebroke 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 yourmother, Jeff, don't you come in lookin' round anybody's petticoats! I'llsee you later about all this. "

They went away with the joyful shame of children who have escapedpunishment. 

"That's the last of it, Cynthy, " said Jeff. 

"I guess so, " the girl assented, with a certain grief in her voice. "Iwish you had told her first!"

"Oh, never mind that now!" cried Jeff, and in the dim passageway he tookher in his arms and kissed her. 

He would have released her, but she lingered in his embrace. "Will youpromise that if there's ever anything like it again, you won't wait forme 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 longheld, as if the mere strain of the tenacity had wearied and weakenedit. When it finally appeared that her ambition for her son was not hisambition for himself and would never be, she abandoned it. Perhaps itwas the easier for her to forego her hopes of his distinction in theworld, because she had learned before that she must forego her hopes ofhim in other ways. She had vaguely fancied that with the acquaintancehis career at Harvard would open to him Jeff would make a splendidmarriage. She had followed darkling and stumbling his course in societyas far as he would report it to her, and when he would not suffer her toglory in it, she believed that he was forbidding her from a pride thatwould not recognize anything out of the common in it. She exulted inhis pride, and she took all his snubbing reserves tenderly, as so manyproofs of his success. 

At the bottom of her heart she had both fear and contempt of alltowns-people, whom she generalized from her experience of them as summerfolks of a greater or lesser silliness. She often found herself unableto cope with them, even when she felt that she had twice their sense;she perceived that they had something from their training that withall her undisciplined force she could never hope to win from her ownenvironment. But she believed that her son would have the advantageswhich baffled her in them, for he would have their environment; and shehad wished him to rivet his hold upon those advantages by taking a wifefrom among them, and by living the life of their world. Her wishes, ofcourse, had no such distinct formulation, and the feeling she had towardCynthia as a possible barrier to her ambition had no more definition. There had been times when the fitness of her marriage with Jeff hadmoved the mother's heart to a jealousy that she always kept silent, while she hoped for the accident or the providence which should annulthe danger. But Genevieve Vostrand had not been the kind of accidentor the providence that she would have invoked, and when she saw Jeff'sfancy turning toward her, Mrs. Durgin had veered round to Cynthia. Allthe same she kept a keen eye upon the young ladies among the summerfolks who came to Lion's Head, and tacitly canvassed their merits andinclinations with respect to Jeff in the often-imagined event ofhis caring for any one of them. She found that her artfully casualreferences to her son's being in Harvard scarcely affected their mothersin the right way. The fact made them think of the head waiters whomthey had met at other hotels, and who were working their way throughDartmouth or Williams or Yale, and it required all the force of Jeff'srobust personality to dissipate their erroneous impressions of him. Hetook their daughters out of their arms and from under their noses onlong drives upon his buckboard, and it became a convention with themto treat his attentions somewhat like those of a powerful but faithfulvassal. 

Whether he was indifferent, or whether the young ladies were coy, noneof these official flirtations came to anything. He seemed not to carefor one more than another; he laughed and joked with them all, and hadan official manner with each which served somewhat like a disparity ofyears in putting them at their ease with him. They agreed that he wasvery handsome, and some thought him very talented; but they questionedwhether he was quite what you would call a gentleman. It is true thatthis misgiving attacked them mostly in the mass; singly, they werelittle or not at all troubled by it, and they severally behaved in anunprincipled indifference to it. 

Mrs. Durgin had the courage of her own purposes, but she had the fearof Jeff's. After the first pang of the disappointment which took finalshape from his declaration that he was going to marry Cynthia, she didnot 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 eachother from their earliest days; Jeff had persecuted Cynthia throughouthis 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 hiswife should be brave enough to stand up against him. 

She formulated this feeling no more than the others, but she said toWestover, whom Jeff bade her tell of the engagement: "It a'n't exactlyas I could 'a' wished it to be. But I don't know as mothers are everquite suited with their children's marriages. I presume it's from alwayskind of havin' had her round under my feet ever since she was born, asyou may say, and seein' her family always so shiftless. Well, I can'tsay 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 asa biscuit. She's masterful, too! she NEED to have a will of her own withJeff. "

Something of the insensate pride that mothers have in their children'sfaults, as their quick tempers, or their wastefulness, or theirrevengefulness, expressed itself in her tone; and it was perhaps thisthat irritated Westover. 

"I hope he'll never let her know it. I don't think a strong will is athing to be prized, and I shouldn't consider it one of Cynthia's goodpoints. The happiest life for her would be one that never forced her touse it. "

"I don't know as I understand you exactly, " said Mrs. Durgin, with somedryness. "I know Jeff's got rather of a domineering disposition, butI don't believe but she can manage him without meetin' him on his ownground, 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'smother, 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'sadvantage as she could. "You know I was always afraid he would make afool of himself, but I guess he's kept his eyes pretty well open allthe while. Well!" She closed the subject with this exclamation. "Him andCynthy's been at me about Jackson, " she added, abruptly. "They've cookedit 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'tlooking so well this summer. He ought to go away somewhere. "

"That's what they thought, " said Mrs. Durgin, smiling in her pleasureat having their opinion confirmed by the old and valued friend of thefamily. 

"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 tosome of them old Bible countries, " said Mrs. Durgin. "We've got to havea fight to get him off, make the best of it, and I've thought it oversince the children spoke about it, and I couldn't seem to see Jacksonwillin' 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--hiscomplaint?"

She entered eagerly into the question, and Westover promised to writeto a Boston doctor, whom he knew very well, and report Jackson's case tohim, and get his views of Egypt. 

"Tell him how it is, " said Mrs. Durgin, "and the tussle we shall have tohave anyway to make Jackson believe he'd ought to have a rest. He'll goto Egypt if he'll go anywheres, because his mind keeps runnin' on Biblequestions, and it 'll interest him to go out there; and we can make himbelieve it's just to bang around for the winter. He's terrible hopeful. "Now that she began to speak, all her long-repressed anxiety poureditself out, and she hitched her chair nearer to Westover and wistfullyclutched his sleeve. "That's the worst of Jackson. You can't make himbelieve anything's the matter. Sometimes I can't bear to hear him go onabout himself as if he was a well young man. He expects that medium'sstuff 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, doask that doctor to answer as quick as he can!"

XXVI. 

Westover had a difficulty in congratulating Jeff which he could scarcelydefine to himself, but which was like that obscure resentment we feeltoward people whom we think unequal to their good fortune. He wasashamed of his grudge, whatever it was, and this may have madehim overdo his expressions of pleasure. He was sensible of a falsecordiality in them, and he checked himself in a flow of forced sentimentto say, more honestly: "I wish you'd speak to Cynthia for me. You knowhow much I think of her, and how much I want to see her happy. You oughtto be a very good fellow, Jeff!"

"I'll tell her that; she'll like that, " said Jeff. "She thinks the worldof you. "

"Does she? Well!"

"And I guess she'll be glad you sent word. She's been wondering what youwould say; she's always so afraid of you. "

"Is she? You're not afraid of me, are you? But perhaps you don't thinkso much of me. "

"I guess Cynthia and I think alike on that point, " said Jeff, withoutabating 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 ofOctober, within a week of the time when Jackson was to sail. It had notbeen so hard to make him consent when he knew where the doctor wishedhim to go, and he had willingly profited by Westover's suggestions aboutgetting to Egypt. His interest in the matter, which he tried to hide atfirst under a mask of decorous indifference, mounted with the fire ofWhitwell's enthusiasm, and they held nightly councils together, studyinghis course on the map, and consulting planchette upon the points atvariance that rose between them, while Jombateeste sat with his chairtilted against the wall, and pulled steadily at his pipe, which mixedits strong fumes with the smell of the kerosene-lamp and the perennialodor of potatoes in the cellar under the low room where the companionsforgathered. 

Toward the end of September Westover spent the night before he went backto town with them. After a season with planchette, their host pushedhimself back with his knees from the table till his chair reared uponits hind legs, and shoved his hat up from his forehead in token ofphilosophical mood. 

"I tell you, Jackson, " he said, "you'd ought to get hold o' some themoccult devils out there, and squeeze their science out of 'em. AnyBuddhists in Egypt, Mr. Westover?"

"I don't think there are, " said Westover. "Unless Jackson should comeacross some wandering Hindu. Or he might push on, and come home by theway 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 Blavetskyfellers 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 reasonIndia wouldn't be as good for him as Egypt, anyway?" Whitwell demandedof Westover. 

"I suppose the climate's rather too moist; the heat would be rathertrying 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 hatto one side, so as to scratch the northeast corner of his beadthoughtfully. 

"But as far as that is concerned, " said Westover, "and the doctrine ofimmortality generally is concerned, Jackson will have his hands full ifhe studies the Egyptian monuments. "

"What they got to do with it?"

"Everything. Egypt is the home of the belief in a future life; it wascarried from Egypt to Greece. He might come home by way of Athens. "

"Why, man!" cried Whitwell. "Do you mean to say that them old Hebrewsaints, Joseph's brethren, that went down into Egypt after corn, didn'tknow about immortality, and them Egyptian devils did?"

"There's very little proof in the Old Testament that the Israelites knewof it. "

Whitwell looked at Jackson. "That the idee you got?"

"I guess he's right, " said Jackson. "There's something a little about itin 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 controversialmanner, put it back again. 

Westover added, "But there's no question but the Egyptians believed inthe life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments for the deedsdone 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. Theyknow--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'tstand to reason that folks without any alphabet, as you may say, andonly a lot of pictures for words, like Injuns, could figure out theimmortality of the soul. They got the idee by inspiration somehow. Why, here! It's like this. Them Pharaohs must have always been clawin' outfor the Hebrews before they got a hold of Joseph, and when they foundout the true doctrine, they hushed up where they got it, and theirpriests 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 fraileffort to straighten himself, to which his sunken chest would notrespond, "is this: no man ever did figure that out for himself. A mansees folks die, and as far as his senses go, they don't live again. Butsomehow 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-sidetogether. At one of the thank-you-marms in the road the sick manstopped, like a weary horse, to breathe. He took off his hat and wipedthe sweat of weakness that had gathered upon his forehead, and lookedround the sky, powdered with the constellations and the planets. "It'ssightly, " he whispered. 

"Yes, it is fine, " Westover assented. "But the stars of our Northernnights 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 Isuppose they have their own troubles, same as we do. They must get sickand 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 nodoubt of it. "

Jackson seemed pleased. "I've read everything I can lay my hands onabout it. I've got a notion that if there's any choosin', after we getthrough here, I should like to go to Mars for a while, or as long as Iwas a little homesick still, and wanted to keep as near the earth as Icould, " 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; andtelegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martiansperfect their signal code. "

Perhaps the invalid's fancy flagged. He drew a long, ragged breath. "Idon'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 youthink 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 behere. "

"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 orthat. If he a'n't goin' to be the right kind of a man himself, he a'n'tbecause his wife's a good woman. Sometimes I think that a man's wife isthe last person in the world that can change his disposition. She caninfluence 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 firststart-off he don't try. "

"That's true, " Westover assented. "We're terribly inflexible. Nothingbut something like a change of heart, as they used to call it, can makeus different, and even then we're apt to go back to our old shape. Whenyou look at it in that light, marriage seems impossible. Yet it takesplace every day!"

"It's a great risk for a woman, " said Jackson, putting on his hat andstirring for an onward movement. "But I presume that if the man ishonest with her it's the best thing she can have. The great trouble isfor 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 totake the Mediterranean steamer at New York. When they met he yielded toan impulse which the invalid's forlornness inspired, and went on to seehim off. He was glad that he did that, for, though Jackson was not sadat parting, he was visibly touched by Westover's kindness. 

Of course he talked away from it. "I guess I've left 'em in pretty goodshape for the winter at Lion's Head, " he said. "I've got Whitwell toagree to come up and live in the house with mother, and she'll haveCynthy with her, anyway; and Frank and Jombateeste can look after thebosses easy enough. "

He had said something like this before, but Westover could see that itcomforted him to repeat it, and he encouraged him to do so in full. Hemade him talk about getting home in the spring, after the frost wasout of the ground, but he questioned involuntarily, while the sick manspoke, whether he might not then be lying under the sands that hadnever known a frost since the glacial epoch. When the last warning forvisitors to go ashore came, Jackson said, with a wan smile, while heheld Westover's hand: "I sha'n't forget this very soon. "

"Write to me, " said Westover. 

Part II. 

XXVII. 

Jackson kept his promise to write to Westover, but he was better thanhis word to his mother, and wrote to her every week that winter. 

"I seem just to live from letter to letter. It's ridic'lous, " she saidto Cynthia once when the girl brought the mail in from the barn, wherethe men folks kept it till they had put away their horses after drivingover from Lovewell with it. The trains on the branch road were taken offin the winter, and the post-office at the hotel was discontinued. Themen had to go to the town by cutter, over a highway that the windssifted half full of snow after it had been broken out by the ox-teams inthe morning. But Mrs. Durgin had studied the steamer days and calculatedthe time it would take letters to come from New York to Lovewell; and, unless a blizzard was raging, some one had to go for the mail when theday came. It was usually Jombateeste, who reverted in winter to the typeof habitant from which he had sprung. He wore a blue woollen cap, like alarge sock, pulled over his ears and close to his eyes, and below it hisclean-shaven brown face showed. He had blue woollen mittens, and bootsof russet leather, without heels, came to his knees; he got a pair everytime he went home on St. John's day. His lean little body was swathed inseveral short jackets, and he brought the letters buttoned into oneof the innermost pockets. He produced the letter from Jackson promptlyenough when Cynthia came out to the barn for it, and then he made ashow of getting his horse out of the cutter shafts, and shoutinginternational reproaches at it, till she was forced to ask, "Haven't yougot something for me, Jombateeste?"

"You expec' some letter?" he said, unbuckling a strap and shoutinglouder. 

"You know whether I do. Give it to me. "

"I don' know. I think I drop something on the road. I saw somethingwhite; maybe snow; good deal of snow. "

"Don't plague! Give it here!"

"Wait I finish unhitch. I can't find any letter till I get some time tolook. "

"Oh, now, Jombateeste! Give me my letter!"

"W'at you want letter for? Always same thing. Well! 'Old the 'oss; Igoin' to feel. "

Jombateeste felt in one pocket after another, while Cynthia clung tothe colt's bridle, and he was uncertain till the last whether he had anyletter for her. When it appeared she made a flying snatch at it and ran;and the comedy was over, to be repeated in some form the next week. 

The girl somehow always possessed herself of what was in her lettersbefore she reached the room where Mrs. Durgin was waiting for hers. Shehad to read that aloud to Jackson's mother, and in the evening she hadto read it again to Mrs. Durgin and Whitwell and Jombateeste and Frank, after they had done their chores, and they had gathered in the oldfarm-house parlor, around the air-tight sheet-iron stove, in a heat ofeighty degrees. Whitwell listened, with planchette ready on the tablebefore him, and he consulted it for telepathic impressions of Jackson'sactual mental state when the reading was over. 

He got very little out of the perverse instrument. "I can't seem to workher. If Jackson was here--"

"We shouldn't need to ask planchette about him, " Cynthia once suggested, with the spare sense of humor that sometimes revealed itself in her. 

"Well, I guess that's something so, " her father candidly admitted. But the next time he consulted the helpless planchette as hopefully asbefore. "You can't tell, you can't tell, " he urged. 

"The trouble seems to be that planchette can't tell, " said Mrs. Durgin, and they all laughed. They were not people who laughed a great deal, andthey were each intent upon some point in the future that kept them frompleasure in the present. The little Canuck was the only one who sufferedhimself a contemporaneous consolation. His early faith had so farlapsed from him that he could hospitably entertain the wild psychicalconjectures of Whitwell without an accusing sense of heresy, and hefound the winter of northern New England so mild after that of LowerCanada that he experienced a high degree of animal comfort in it, andlooked forward to nothing better. To be well fed, well housed, and wellheated; to smoke successive pipes while the others talked, and to catchthrough his smoke-wreaths vague glimpses of their meanings, was enough. He felt that in being promoted to the care of the stables in Jackson'sabsence he occupied a dignified and responsible position, with aconfidential relation to the exile which justified him in sendingspecial messages to him, and attaching peculiar value to Jackson'sremembrances. 

The exile's letters said very little about his health, which in thesense of no news his mother held to be good news, but they were fullconcerning the monuments and the ethnological interest of life in Egypt. 

They were largely rescripts of each day's observations and experiences, close and full, as his mother liked them in regard to fact, andgenerously philosophized on the side of politics and religion forWhitwell. The Eastern question became in the snow-choked hills of NewEngland the engrossing concern of this speculative mind, and he wasapt to spring it upon Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia at mealtimes and otherdefenceless moments. He tried to debate it with Jombateeste, whoconceived of it as a form of spiritualistic inquiry, and answeredfrom the hay-loft, where he was throwing down fodder for the cattleto Whitwell, volubly receiving it on the barn floor below, that hebelieved, him, everybody got a hastral body, English same as Mormons. 

"Guess you mean Moslems, " said Whitwell, and Jombateeste asked thedifference, defiantly. 

The letters which came to Cynthia could not be made as much a generalinterest, and, in fact, no one else cared so much for them as forJackson's letters, not even Jeff's mother. After Cynthia got one ofthem, she would ask, perfunctorily, what Jeff said, but when she wastold there was no news she did not press her question. 

"If Jackson don't get back in time next summer, " Mrs. Durgin said, inone of the talks she had with the girl, "I guess I shall have to letJeff and you run the house alone. "

"I guess we shall want a little help from you, " said Cynthia, demurely. She did not refuse the implication of Mrs. Durgin's words, but she wouldnot assume that there was more in them than they expressed. 

When Jeff came home for the three days' vacation at Thanksgiving, hewished again to relinquish his last year at Harvard, and Cynthia had tosummon all her forces to keep him to his promise of staying. He broughthome the books with which he was working off his conditions, witha half-hearted intention of study, and she took hold with him, andtogether they fought forward over the ground he had to gain. His motherwas almost willing at last that he should give up his last year incollege. 

"What is the use?" she asked. "He's give up the law, and he might aswell commence here first as last, if he's goin' to. "

The girl had no reason to urge against this; she could only urge herfeeling that he ought to go back and take his degree with the rest ofhis class. 

"If you're going to keep Lion's Head the way you pretend you are, " shesaid to him, as she could not say to his mother, "you want to keep allyour Harvard friends, don't you, and have them remember you? Go back, Jeff, and don't you come here again till after you've got your degree. Never mind the Christmas vacation, nor the Easter. Stay in Cambridgeand work off your conditions. You can do it, if you try. Oh, don't yousuppose I should like to have you here?" she reproached him. 

He went back, with a kind of grudge in his heart, which he confessed inhis first letter home to her, when he told her that she was right and hewas wrong. He was sure now, with the impulse which their work on themin common had given him, that he should get his conditions off, and hewanted her and his mother to begin preparing their minds to come to hisClass Day. He planned how they could both be away from the hotel forthat day. The house was to be opened on the 20th of June, but it was notlikely that there would be so many people at once that they could notgive the 21st to Class Day; Frank and his father could run Lion's Headsomehow, or, if they could not, then the opening could be postponed tillthe 24th. At all events, they must not fail to come. Cynthia showed thewhole letter to his mother, who refused to think of such a thing, andthen asked, as if the fact had not been fully set before her: "When isit to be?"

"The 21st of June. "

"Well, he's early enough with his invitation, " she grumbled. 

"Yes, he is, " said Cynthia; and she laughed for shame and pleasure asshe confessed, "I was thinking he was rather late. "

She hung her head and turned her face away. But Mrs. Durgin understood. "You be'n expectin' it all along, then. "

"I guess so. "

"I presume, " said the elder woman, "that he's talked to you about it. He never tells me much. I don't see why you should want to go. What's itlike?"

"Oh, I don't know. But it's the day the graduating class have tothemselves, and all their friends come. "

"Well, I don't know why anybody should want to go, " said Mrs. Durgin. "I sha'n't. Tell him he won't want to own me when he sees me. What am Igoin' to wear, I should like to know? What you goin' to wear, Cynthy?"

XXVIII. 

Jeff's place at Harvard had been too long fixed among the jays to allowthe hope of wholly retrieving his condition now. It was too late forhim to be chosen in any of the nicer clubs or societies, but he was notbeyond the mounting sentiment of comradery, which begins to tell inthe last year among college men, and which had its due effect with hisclass. One of the men, who had always had a foible for humanity, tookadvantage of the prevailing mood in another man, and wrought upon himto ask, among the fellows he was asking to a tea at his rooms, severalfellows who were distinctly and almost typically jay. The tea was forthe aunt of the man who gave it, a very pretty woman from New York, andit was so richly qualified by young people of fashion from Boston thatthe infusion of the jay flavor could not spoil it, if it would notrather add an agreeable piquancy. This college mood coincided that yearwith a benevolent emotion in the larger world, from which fashion wasnot exempt. Society had just been stirred by the reading of a certainbook, which had then a very great vogue, and several people hadbeen down among the wretched at the North End doing good in aconscience-stricken effort to avert the millennium which the book inquestion seemed to threaten. The lady who matronized the tea was saidto have done more good than you could imagine at the North End, and shecaught at the chance to meet the college jays in a spirit of Christiancharity. When the man who was going to give the tea rather sheepishlyconfessed what the altruistic man had got him in for, she praised himso much that he went away feeling like the hero of a holy cause. Shepromised the assistance and sympathy of several brave girls, who wouldnot be afraid of all the jays in college. 

After all, only one of the jays came. Not many, in fact, had been asked, and when Jeff Durgin actually appeared, it was not known that he wasboth the first and the last of his kind. The lady who was matronizingthe tea recognized him, with a throe of her quickened conscience, as theyoung fellow whom she had met two winters before at the studio tea whichMr. Westover had given to those queer Florentine friends of his, andwhom she had never thought of since, though she had then promisedherself to do something for him. She had then even given him somevague hints of a prospective hospitality, and she confessed her sin ofomission in a swift but graphic retrospect to one of her brave girls, while Jeff stood blocking out a space for his stalwart bulk amid thealien elegance just within the doorway, and the host was making his waytoward him, with an outstretched hand of hardy welcome. 

At an earlier period of his neglect and exclusion, Jeff would not haveresponded to the belated overture which had now been made him, for noreason that he could divine. But he had nothing to lose by acceptingthe invitation, and he had promised the altruistic man, whom he ratherliked; he did not dislike the giver of the tea so much as some othermen, and so he came. 

The brave girl whom the matron was preparing to devote to him stoodshrinking with a trepidation which she could not conceal at sight ofhis strange massiveness, with his rust-gold hair coming down toward histhick yellow brows and mocking blue eyes in a dense bang, and his jawsquaring itself under the rather insolent smile of his full mouth. Thematron felt that her victim teas perhaps going to fail her, when a voiceat her ear said, as if the question were extorted, "Who in the world isthat?"

She instantly turned, and flashed out in a few inspired syllablesthe fact she had just imparted to her treacherous heroine. "Do let meintroduce him, Miss Lynde. I must do something for him, when he gets upto me, if he ever does. "

"By all means, " said the girl, who had an impulse to laugh at the rudeforce of Jeff's face and figure, so disproportioned to the occasion, andshe vented it at the matron's tribulation. The matron was shaking handswith people right and left, and exchanging inaudible banalities withthem. She did not know what the girl said in answer, but she was awarethat she remained near her. She had professed her joy at seeing Jeffagain, when he reached her, and she turned with him and said, "Let mepresent you to Miss Lynde, Mr. Durgin, " and so abandoned them to eachother. 

As Jeff had none of the anxiety for social success which he would havefelt at an earlier period, he now left it to Miss Lynde to begin thetalk, or not, as she chose. He bore himself with so much indifferencethat she was piqued to an effort to hold his eyes, that wandered fromher to this face and that in the crowd. 

"Do you find many people you know, Mr. Durgin?"

"I don't find any. "

"I supposed you didn't from the way you looked at them. "

"How did I look at them?"

"As if you wanted to eat them, and one never wants to eat one'sfriends. "

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. They wouldn't agree with one. "

Jeff laughed, and he now took fuller note of the slender girl who stoodbefore him, and swayed a little backward, in a graceful curve. He sawthat she had a dull, thick complexion, with liquid eyes, set wide apartand slanted upward slightly, and a nose that was deflected inward fromthe straight line; but her mouth was beautiful and vividly red like acrimson blossom. 

"Couldn't you find me some place to sit down, Mr. Durgin?" she asked. 

He had it on his tongue to say, "Well, not unless you want to sit downon some enemy, " but he did not venture this: when it comes to daring ofthat sort, the boldest man is commonly a little behind a timid woman. 

Several of the fellows had clubbed their rooms, and lent them to the manwho was giving the tea; he used one of the apartments for a cloak-room, and he meant the other for the social overflow from his own. But peoplealways prefer to remain dammed-up together in the room where they arereceived, and Miss Lynde looked between the neighboring heads, and overthe neighboring shoulders, and saw the borrowed apartment quite empty. At the moment of this discovery the host came fighting his way up tomake sure that Jeff had been provided for in the way of introductions. He promptly introduced him to Miss Lynde. She said: "Oh, that's beendone! Can't you think of something new?" Jeff liked the style of this. "I don't mind it, but I'm afraid Mr. Durgin must find it monotonous. "

"Oh, well, do something original yourself, then, Miss Lynde!" said thehost. "Start a movement for that room across the passage; that's mine, too, for the occasion; and save some of these people's lives. It'ssuffocating in here. "

"I don't mind saving Mr. Durgin's, " said the girl, "if he wants itsaved. "

"Oh, I know he's just dying to have you save it, " said the host, and heleft them, to inspire other people to follow their example. But such asglanced across the passage into the overflow room seemed to think it nowthe possession solely of the pioneers of the movement. At any rate, theymade no show of joining them; and after Miss Lynde and Jeff had lookedat the pictures on the walls and the photographs on the mantel of theroom where they found themselves, they sat down on chairs fronting theopen door and the door of the room they had left. The window-seat wouldhave been more to Jeff's mind, and he had proposed it, but the girlseemed not to have heard him; she took the deep easy-chair in full viewof the company opposite, and left him to pull up a chair beside her. 

"I always like to see the pictures in a man's room, " she said, with alittle sigh of relief from their inspection and a partial yielding ofher figure to the luxury of the chair. "Then I know what the man is. This man--I don't know whose room it is--seems to have spent a good dealof his time at the theatre. "

"Isn't that where most of them spend their time?" asked Jeff. 

"I'm sure I don't know. Is that where you spend yours?"

"It used to be. I'm not spending my time anywhere just now. " She lookedquestioningly, and he added, "I haven't got any to spend. "

"Oh, indeed! Is that a reason? Why don't you spend somebody else's?"

"Nobody has any, that I know. "

"You're all working off conditions, you mean?"

"That's what I'm doing, or trying to. "

"Then it's never certain whether you can do it, after all?"

"Not so certain as to be free from excitement, " said Jeff, smiling. 

"And are you consumed with the melancholy that seems to be balling upall the men at the prospect of having to leave Harvard and go out intothe hard, cold world?"

"I don't look it, do I? Jeff asked:

"No, you don't. And you don't feel it? You're not trying concealment, and so forth?"

"No; if I'd had my own way, I'd have left Harvard before this. " He couldsee that his bold assumption of difference, or indifference, told uponher. "I couldn't get out into the hard, cold world too soon. "

"How fearless! Most of them don't know what they're going to do in it. "

"I do. "

"And what are you going to do? Or perhaps you think that's asking!"

"Oh no. I'm going to keep a hotel. "

He had hoped to startle her, but she asked, rather quietly, "What doyou mean?" and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her:"I've heard that it requires gifts for that. Isn't there some proverb?"

"Yes. But I'm going to try to do it on experience. " He laughed, andhe did not mind her trying to hit him, for he saw that he had made hercurious. 

"Do you mean that you have kept a hotel?"

"For three generations, " he returned, with a gravity that mocked herfrom his bold eyes. 

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, " she said, indifferently. "Whereis your hotel? In Boston--New York--Chicago?"

"It's in the country--it's a summer hotel, " he said, as before. 

She looked away from him toward the other room. "There's my brother. Ididn't know he was coming. "

"Shall I go and tell him where you are?" Jeff asked, following thedirection of her eyes. 

"No, no; he can find me, " said the girl, sinking back in her chairagain. He left her to resume the talk where she chose, and she said: "Ifit's something ancestral, of course--"

"I don't know as it's that, exactly. My grandfather used to keep acountry tavern, and so it's in the blood, but the hotel I mean issomething that we've worked up into from a farm boarding-house. "

"You don't talk like a country person, " the girl broke in, abruptly. 

"Not in Cambridge. I do in the country. "

"And so, " she prompted, "you're going to turn it into a hotel whenyou've got out of Harvard. "

"It's a hotel already, and a pretty big one; but I'm going to make theright kind of hotel of it when I take hold of it. "

"And what is the right kind of a hotel?"

"That's a long story. It would make you tired. "

"It might, but we've got to spend the time somehow. You could begin, andthen if I couldn't stand it you could stop. "

"It's easier to stop first and begin some other time. I guess I'll letyou imagine my hotel, Miss Lynde. "

"Oh, I understand now, " said the girl. "The table will be the greatthing. You will stuff people. "

"Do you mean that I'm trying to stuff you?"

"How do I know? You never can tell what men really mean. "

Jeff laughed with mounting pleasure in her audacity, that imparted asense of tolerance for him such as he had experienced very seldom fromthe Boston girls he had met; after all, he had met but few. It flatteredhim to have her doubt what he had told her in his reckless indifference;it implied that he was fit for better things than hotel-keeping. 

"You never can tell how much a woman believes, " he retorted. 

"And you keep trying to find out?"

"No, but I think that they might believe the truth. "

"You'd better try them with it!"

"Well, I will. Do you really want to know what I'm going to do when Iget through?"

"Let me see!" Miss Lynde leaned forward, with her elbow on her knee andher chin in her hand, and softly kicked the edge of her skirt with thetoe of her shoe, as if in deep thought. Jeff waited for her to play hercomedy through. "Yes, " she said, "I think I did wish to know--at onetime. "

"But you don't now?"

"Now? How can I tell? It was a great while ago!"

"I see you don't. "

Miss Lynde did not make any reply. She asked, "Do you know my aunt, Durgin?"

"I didn't know you had one. "

"Yes, everybody has an aunt--even when they haven't a mother, if you canbelieve the Gilbert operas. I ask because I happen to live with my aunt, and if you knew her she might--ask you to call. " Miss Lynde scannedJeff's face for the effect of this. 

He said, gravely: "If you'll introduce me to her, I'll ask her to letme. "

"Would you, really?" said the girl. "I've half a mind to try. I wonderif you'd really have the courage. "

"I don't think I'm easily rattled. "

"You mean that I'm trying to rattle you. "

"No--"

"I'm not. My aunt is just what I've said. "

"You haven't said what she was. Is she here?"

"No; that's the worst of it. If she were, I should introduce you, justto see if you'd dare. Well, some other time I will. "

"You think there'll be some other time?" Jeff asked. 

"I don't know. There are all kinds of times. By-the-way, what time isit?"

Jeff looked at his watch. "Quarter after six. "

"Then I must go. " She jumped to her feet, and faced about for a glimpseof herself in the little glass on the mantel, and put her hand on thelarge pink roses massed at her waist. One heavy bud dropped from itsstem to the floor, where, while she stood, the edge of her skirt pulledand pushed it. She moved a little aside to peer over at a photograph. Jeff stooped and picked up the flower, which he offered her. 

"You dropped it, " he said, bowing over it. 

"Did I?" She looked at it with an effect of surprise and doubt. 

"I thought so, but if you don't, I shall keep it. "

The girl removed her careless eyes from it. "When they break off soshort, they won't go back. "

"If I were a rose, I should want to go back, " said Jeff. 

She stopped in one of her many aversions and reversions, and looked athim steadily across her shoulder. "You won't have to keep a poet, Mr. Durgin. "

"Thank you. I always expected to write the circulars myself. I'll sendyou one. "

"Do. "

"With this rose pressed between the leaves, so you'll know. "

"That would, be very pretty. But you must take me to Mrs. Bevidge, now, if you can. "

"I guess I can, " said Jeff; and in a minute or two they stood before thematronizing hostess, after a passage through the babbling and laughinggroups that looked as impossible after they had made it as it lookedbefore. 

Mrs. Bevidge gave the girl's hand a pressure distinct from the officialtouch of parting, and contrived to say, for her hearing alone: "Thankyou so much, Bessie. You've done missionary work. "

"I shouldn't call it that. "

"It will do for you to say so! He wasn't really so bad, then? Thank youagain, dear!"

Jeff had waited his turn. But now, after the girl had turned away, as ifshe had forgotten him, his eyes followed her, and he did not know thatMrs. Bevidge was speaking to him. Miss Lynde had slimly lost herself inthe mass, till she was only a graceful tilt of hat, before she turnedwith a distraught air. When her eyes met Jeff's they lighted up witha look that comes into the face when one remembers what one has beentrying to think of. She gave him a brilliant smile that seemed toillumine him from head to foot, and before it was quenched he felt as ifshe had kissed her hand to him from her rich mouth. 

Then he heard Mrs. Bevidge asking something about a hall, and he wasaware of her bending upon him a look of the daring humanity that hadcarried her triumphantly through her good works at the North End. 

"Oh, I'm not in the Yard, " said Jeff, with belated intelligence. 

"Then will just Cambridge reach you?"

He gave his number and street, and she thanked him with the benevolencethat availed so much with the lower classes. He went away thrilling andtingling, with that girl's tones in his ear, her motions in his nerves, and the colors of her face filling his sight, which he printed on theair whenever he turned, as one does with a vivid light after looking atit. 

XXIX

When Jeff reached his room he felt the need of writing to Cynthia, withwhatever obscure intention of atonement. He told her of the college teahe had just come from, and made fun of it, and the kind of people he hadmet, especially the affected girl who had tried to rattle him; he saidhe guessed she did not think she had rattled him a great deal. 

While he wrote he kept thinking how this Miss Lynde was nearer his earlyideal of fashion, of high life, which Westover had pretty well snubbedout of him, than any woman he had seen yet; she seemed a girl who woulddo what she pleased, and would not be afraid if it did not pleaseother people. He liked her having tried to rattle him, and he smiled tohimself in recalling her failure. It was as if she had laid hold of himwith her little hands to shake him, and had shaken herself. He laughedout in the dark when this image came into his mind; its intimacyflattered him; and he believed that it was upon some hint from her thatMrs. Bevidge had asked his address. She must be going to ask him to herhouse, and very soon, for it was part of Jeff's meagre social experiencethat this was the way swells did; they might never ask you twice, butthey would ask you promptly. 

The thing that Mrs. Bevidge asked Jeff to, when her note reached him thesecond day after the tea, was a meeting to interest young people inthe work at the North End, and Jeff swore under his breath at thedisappointment and indignity put upon him. He had reckoned upon anafternoon tea, at least, or even, in the flights of fancy which he nowdisowned to himself, a dance after the Mid-Years, or possibly anearlier reception of some sort. He burned with shame to think of atheatre-party, which he had fondly specialized, with a seat next MissLynde. 

He tore Mrs. Bevidge's note to pieces, and decided not to answer it atall, as the best way of showing how he had taken her invitation. ButMrs. Bevidge's benevolence was not wanting in courage; she believed thatJeff should pay his footing in society, such as it was, and should allowhimself to be made use of, the first thing; when she had no reply fromhim, she wrote him again, asking him to an adjourned meeting of thefirst convocation, which had been so successful in everything butnumbers. This time she baited her hook, in hoping that the young menwould feel something of the interest the young ladies had already shownin the matter. She expressed the fear that Mr. Durgin had not got herearlier letter, and she sent this second to the care of the man who hadgiven the tea. 

Jeff's resentment was now so far past that he would have civillydeclined to go to the woman's house; but all his hopes of seeing thatgirl, as he always called Miss Lynde in his thought, were revived by themention of the young ladies interested in the cause. He accepted, thoughall the way into Boston he laid wagers with himself that she would notbe there; and up to the moment of taking her hand he refused himself anyhope of winning. 

There was not much business before the meeting; that had really been alltransacted before; it was mainly to make sure of the young men, who werepresent in the proportion of one to five young ladies at least. Mrs. Bevidge explained that she had seen the wastefulness of amateur effortamong the poor, and announced that hereafter she was going to work withthe established charities. These were very much in want of visitors, especially young men, to go about among the applicants for relief, andinquire into their real necessities, and get work for them. She was hersself going to act as secretary for the meetings during the coming month, and apparently she wished to signalize her accession to the regularforces of charity by bringing into camp as large a body of recruits asshe could. 

But Jeff had not come to be made use of, or as a jay who was willing towork for his footing in society. He had come in the hope of meeting MissLynde, and now that he had met her he had no gratitude to Mrs. Bevidgeas a means, and no regret for the defeat of her good purposes so far asshe intended their fulfilment in him. He was so cool and self-possessedin excusing himself, for reasons that he took no pains to make seemunselfish, that the altruistic man who had got him asked to the collegetea as a friendless jay felt it laid upon him to apologize for Mrs. Bevidge's want of tact. 

"She means well, and she's very much in earnest, in this work; but Imust say she can make herself very offensive--when she doesn't try! Shehas a right to ask our help, but not to parade us as the captives of herbow and spear. "

"Oh, that's all right, " said Jeff. He perceived that the amiable fellowwas claiming for all an effect that Jeff knew really implicated himselfalone. "I couldn't load up with anything of that sort, if I'm to workoff my conditions, you know. "

"Are you in that boat?" said the altruist, as if he were, too; and heput his hand compassionately on Jeff's iron shoulder, and left him toMiss Lynde, whose side he had not stirred from since he had found her. 

"It seems to me, " she said, "that where there are so many of you in thesame boat, you might manage to get ashore somehow. "

"Yes, or all go down together. " Jeff laughed, and ate Mrs. Bevidge'sbread-and-butter, and drank her tea, with a relish unaffected by hisrefusal to do what she asked him. He was right, perhaps, and perhaps shedeserved nothing better at his hands, but the altruist, when he glancedat him from the other side of the room, thought that he had possiblywasted his excuses upon Jeff's self-complacence. 

He went away in a halo of young ladies; several of the other girlsgrouped themselves in their departure; and it happened that MissLynde and Jeff took leave together. Mrs. Bevidge said to her, with thecaressing tenderness of one in the same set, "Good-bye, dear!" To Jeffshe said, with the cold conscience of those whom their nobility obliges, "I am always at home on Thursdays, Mr. Durgin. "

"Oh, thank you, " said Jeff. He understood what the words and the mannermeant together, but both were instantly indifferent to him when he gotoutside and found that Miss Lynde was not driving. Something, which wasneither look, nor smile, nor word, of course, but nothing more at mostthan a certain pull and tilt of the shoulder, as she turned to walk awayfrom Mrs. Bevidge's door, told him from her that he might walk home withher if he would not seem to do so. 

It was one of the pink evenings, dry and clear, that come in the BostonDecember, and they walked down the sidehill street, under the delicatetracery of the elm boughs in the face of the metallic sunset. In thesection of the Charles that the perspective of the street blocked out, the wrinkled current showed as if glazed with the hard color. Jeff'sstrong frame rejoiced in the cold with a hale pleasure when he lookedround into the face of the girl beside him, with the gray film of herveil pressed softly against her red mouth by her swift advance. Theirfaces were nearly on a level, as they looked into each other's eyes, and he kept seeing the play of the veil's edge against her lips as theytalked. 

"Why sha'n't you go to Mrs. Bevidge's Thursdays?" she asked. "They'revery nice. "

"How do you know I'm not going?" he retorted. 

"By the way you thanked her. "

"Do you advise me to go?"

"I haven't got anything to do with it. What do mean by that?"

"I don't know. Curiosity, I suppose. "

"Well, I do advise you to go, " said the girl. "Shall you be there nextThursday?"

"I? I never go to Mrs. Bevidge's Thursdays!"

"Touche, " said Jeff, and they both laughed. "Can you always get in at anenemy that way?"

"Enemy?"

"Well, friend. It's the same thing. "

"I see, " said the girl. "You belong to the pessimistic school ofSeniors. "

"Why don't you try to make an optimist of me?"

"Would it be worth while?"

"That isn't for me to say. "

"Don't be diffident! That's staler yet. "

"I'll be anything you like. "

"I'm not sure you could. " For an instant Jeff did not feel the point, and he had not the magnanimity, when he did, to own himself touchedagain. Apparently, if this girl could not rattle him, she could beat himat fence, and the will to dominate her began to stir in him. If he couldhave thought of any sarcasm, no matter how crushing, he would have comeback at her with it. He could not think of anything, and he walked ather side, inwardly chafing for the chance which would not come. 

When they reached her door there was a young man at the lock with alatch-key, which he was not making work, for, after a bated blasphemy ofhis failure, he turned and twitched the bell impatiently. 

Miss Lynde laughed provokingly, and he looked over his shoulder at herand at Jeff, who felt his injury increased by the disadvantage thisyoung man put him at. Jeff was as correctly dressed; he wore a silk hatof the last shape, and a long frock-coat; he was properly gloved andshod; his clothes fitted him, and were from the best tailor; butat sight of this young man in clothes of the same design he feltill-dressed. He was in like sort aware of being rudely blocked outphysically, and coarsely colored as to his blond tints of hair andeye and cheek. Even the sinister something in the young man's look haddistinction, and there was style in the signs of dissipation in hishandsome face which Jeff saw with a hunger to outdo him. 

Miss Lynde said to Jeff, "My brother, Mr. Durgin, " and then she addedto the other, "You ought to ring first, Arthur, and try your keyafterward. "

"The key's all right, " said the young man, without paying any attentionto Jeff beyond a glance of recognition; he turned his back, and waitedfor the door to be opened. 

His sister suggested, with an amiability which Jeff felt was meant inreparation to him, "Perhaps a night latch never works before dark--orvery well before midnight. " The door was opened, and she said to Jeff, with winning entreaty, "Won't you come in, Mr. Durgin?"

Jeff excused himself, for he perceived that her politeness was not somuch an invitation to him as a defiance to her brother; he gave hercredit for no more than it was worth, and he did not wish any the lessto get even with her because of it. 

XXX. 

At dinner, in the absence of the butler, Alan Lynde attacked his sisteracross the table for letting herself be seen with a jay, who was notonly a jay, but a cad, and personally so offensive to most of thecollege men that he had never got into a decent club or society; he hadbeen suspended the first year, and if he had not had the densest kindof cheek he would never have come back. Lynde said he would like to knowwhere she had picked the fellow up. 

She answered that she had picked him up, if that was the phrase heliked, at Mrs. Bevidge's; and then Alan swore a little, so as not to beheard by their aunt, who sat at the head of the table, and looked downits length between them, serenely ignorant, in her slight deafness, of what was going on between them. To her perception Alan was no morevehement than usual, and Bessie no more smilingly self-contained. Hesaid he supposed that it was some more of Lancaster's damned missionarywork, then, and he wondered that a gentleman like Morland had ever letLancaster work such a jay in on him; he had seen her 'afficher' herselfwith the fellow at Morland's tea; he commanded her to stop it; and heprofessed to speak for her good. 

Bessie returned that she knew how strongly he felt from the way he hadmisbehaved when she introduced him to Mr. Durgin, but that she supposedhe had been at the club and his nerves were unstrung. Was that thereason, perhaps, why he could not make his latchkey work? Mr. Durginmight be a cad, and she would not say he was not a jay, but so far hehad not sworn at her; and, if he had been suspended and come back, therewere some people who had not been suspended or come back, either, thoughthat might have been for want of cheek. 

She ended by declaring she was used to going into society without herbrother's protection, or even his company, and she would do her best toget on without his advice. Or was it his conduct he wished her to profitby?

It had come to the fish going out by this time, and Alan, who had eatenwith no appetite, and drunken feverishly of apollinaris, flung down hisnapkin and went out, too. 

"What is the matter?" asked his aunt, looking after him. 

Bessie shrugged, but she said, presently, with her lips more than hervoice: "I don't think he feels very well. "

"Do you think he--"

The girl frowned assent, and the meal went on to its end. Then sheand her aunt went into the large, dull library, where they passed theevenings which Bessie did not spend in some social function. Theseevenings were growing rather more frequent, with her advancing years, for she was now nearly twenty-five, and there were few Seniors so old. She was not the kind of girl to renew her youth with the Sophomores andFreshmen in the classes succeeding the class with which she had dancedthrough college; so far as she had kept up the old relation withstudents, she continued it with the men who had gone into thelaw-school. But she saw less and less of these without seeing more ofother men, and perhaps in the last analysis she was not a favorite. Shewas allowed to be fascinating, but she was not felt to be flattering, and people would rather be flattered than fascinated. In fact, the menwere mostly afraid of her; and it has been observed of girls of thiskind that the men who are not afraid of them are such as they would dowell to be afraid of. Whether that was quite the case with Bessie Lyndeor not, it was certain that she who was always the cleverest girl inthe room, and if not the prettiest, then the most effective, had not thebest men about her. Her men were apt to be those whom the other girlscalled stupid or horrid, and whom it would not be easy, though it mightbe more just, to classify otherwise. The other girls wondered what shecould see in them; but perhaps it was not necessary that she should seeanything in them, if they could see all she wished them to see, and nomore, in her. 

The room where tea was now brought and put before her was volumed roundby the collections of her grandfather, except for the spaces filled byhis portrait and that of earlier ancestors, going back to the time whenCopley made masterpieces of his fellow-Bostonians. Her aunt herselflooked a family portrait of the middle period, a little anterior to herfather's, but subsequent to her great-grandfather's. She had a comelyface, with large, smooth cheeks and prominent eyes; the edges of herdecorous brown wig were combed rather near their corners, and a fittingcap palliated but did not deny the wig. She had the quiet but ratherdull look of people slightly deaf, and she had perhaps been stupefied bya life of unalloyed prosperity and propriety. She had grown an old maidnaturally, but not involuntarily, and she was without the sadness orthe harshness of disappointment. She had never known much of the world, though she had always lived in it. She knew that it was made up of twokinds of people--people who were like her and people who were not likeher; and she had lived solely in the society of people who were likeher, and in the shelter of their opinions and ideals. She did notcontemn or exclude the people who were unlike her, but she had neverhad any more contact with them than she now had with the weather of thestreets, as she sat, filling her large arm-chair full of her ladylikecorrectness, in the library of the handsome house her father had lefther. The irruption of her brother's son and daughter into its cloisteredquiet had scarcely broken its invulnerable order. It was right and fitthey should be there after his death, and it was not strange that inthe course of time they should both show certain unregulated tendencieswhich, since they were not known to be Lynde tendencies, must have beenderived from the Southwestern woman her brother had married during hissocial and financial periclitations in a region wholly inconceivable toher. Their mother was dead, too, and their aunt's life closed about themwith full acceptance, if not complacence, as part of her world. They hadgrown to manhood and womanhood without materially discomposing herfaith in the old-fashioned Unitarian deity, whose service she had alwaysattended. 

When Alan left college in his Freshman year, and did not go back, butwent rather to Europe and Egypt and Japan, it appeared to her myopicoptimism that his escapades had been pretty well hushed up by time anddistance. After he came home and devoted himself to his club, she couldhave wished that he had taken up some profession or business; but sincethere was money enough, she waited in no great disquiet until he showedas decided a taste for something else as he seemed for the present tohave only for horses. In the mean while, from time to time, it came toher doctor's advising his going to a certain retreat. But he came outthe first time so much better and remained well so long that his auntfelt a kind of security in his going again and again, whenever he becameat all worse. He always came back better. As she took the cup of teathat Bessie poured out for her, she recurred to the question that shehad partly asked already:

"Do you think Alan is getting worse again?"

"Not so very much, " said the girl, candidly. "He's been at the club, Isuppose, but he left the table partly because I vexed him. "

"Because you what?"

"Because I vexed him. He was scolding me, and I wouldn't stand it. "

Her aunt tasted her tea, and found it so quite what she liked that shesaid, from a natural satisfaction with Bessie, "I don't see what he hadto scold you about. "

"Well, " returned Bessie, and she got her pretty voice to the level ofher aunt's hearing, with some straining, and kept it there, "when he isin that state, he has to scold some one; and I had been rather annoying, I suppose. "

"What had you been doing?" asked her aunt, making out her words morefrom the sight than from the sound, after all. 

"I had been walking home with a jay, and we found Alan trying to get inat the front door with his key, and I introduced him to the jay. "

Miss Louisa Lynde had heard the word so often from her niece and nephew, that she imagined herself in full possession of its meaning. She asked:"Where had you met him?"

"I met him first, " said the girl, "at Willie Morland's tea, last week, and to-day I found him at Mrs. Bevidge's altruistic toot. "

"I didn't know, " said her aunt, after a momentary attention to her tea, "that jays were interested in that sort of thing. "

The girl laughed. "I believe they're not. It hasn't quite reached them, yet; and I don't think it will ever reach my jay. Mrs. Bevidge triedto work him into the cause, but he refused so promptly, andso-intelligently, don't you know--and so almost brutally, that poorFreddy Lancaster had to come and apologize to him for her want of tact. "Bessie enjoyed the fact, which she had colored a little, in anotherlaugh, but she had apparently not possessed her aunt of the humor of it. She remained seriously-attentive, and the girl went on: "He was not theleast abashed at having refused; he stayed till the last, and as we cameout together and he was going my way, I let him walk home with me. He'sa jay, but he isn't a common jay. " Bessie leaned forward and tried toimplant some notion of Jeff's character and personality in her aunt'smind. 

Miss Lynde listened attentively enough, but she merely asked, when allwas said: "And why was Alan vexed with you about him?"

"Well, " said the girl, falling back into her chair, "generally becausethis man's a jay, and particularly because he's been rather a baddishjay, I believe. He was suspended in his first year for something orother, and you know poor Alan's very particular! But Molly Enderby saysFreddy Lancaster gives him the best of characters now. " Bessie pulleddown her mouth, with an effect befitting the notion of repentance andatonement. Then she flashed out: "Perhaps he had been drinking when hegot into trouble. Alan could never forgive him for that. "

"I think, " said her aunt, "it is to your brother's credit that he isanxious about your associations. "

"Oh, very much!" shouted Bessie, with a burst of laughter. "And as heisn't practically so, I ought to have been more patient with his theory. But when he began to scold me I lost my temper, and I gave him a fewwholesome truths in the guise of taunts. That was what made him go away, I suppose. "

"But I don't really see, " her aunt pursued, --"what occasion he had to beangry with you in this instance. "

"Oh, I do!" said Bessie. "Mr. Durgin isn't one to inspire the casualbeholder with the notion of his spiritual distinction. His face is sorude and strong, and he has such a primitive effect in his clothes, thatyou feel as if you were coming down the street with a prehistoric manthat the barbers and tailors had put a 'fin de siecle' surface on. " Atthe mystification which appeared in her aunt's face the girl laughedagain. "I should have been quite as anxious, if I had been in Alan'splace, and I shall tell him so, sometime. If I had not been sointerested in the situation I don't believe I could have kept mycourage. Whenever I looked round, and found that prehistoric man at myelbow, it gave me the creeps, a little, as if he were really carrying meoff to his cave. I shall try to express that to Alan. "

XXXI. 

The ladies finished their tea, and the butler came and took thecups away. Miss Lynde remained silent in her chair at her end of thelibrary-table, and by-and-by Bessie got a book and began to read. Whenher aunt woke up it was half past nine. "Was that Alan coming in?" sheasked. 

"I don't think he's been out, " said the girl. "It isn't late enough forhim to come in--or early enough. "

"I believe I'll go to bed, " Miss Lynde returned. "I feel rather drowsy. "

Bessie did not smile at a comedy which was apt to be repeated everyevening that she and her aunt spent at home together; they parted forthe night with the decencies of family affection, and Bessie deliveredthe elder lady over to her maid. Then the girl sank down again, andlay musing in her deep chair before the fire with her book shut on herthumb. She looked rather old and worn in her reverie; her face lostthe air of gay banter which, after the beauty of her queer eyes and hervivid mouth, was its charm. The eyes were rather dull now, and the mouthwas a little withered. 

She was waiting for her brother to come down, as he was apt to do if hewas in the house, after their aunt went to bed, to smoke a cigar in thelibrary. He was in his house shoes when he shuffled into the room, buther ear had detected his presence before a hiccough announced it. Shedid not look up, but let him make several failures to light his cigar, and damn the matches under his breath, before she pushed the drop-lightto him in silent suggestion. As he leaned over her chair-back to reachits chimney with his cigar in his mouth, she said, "You're all right, Alan. "

He waited till he got round to his aunt's easy-chair and dropped into itbefore he answered, "So are you, Bess. "

"I'm not so sure of that, " said the girl, "as I should be if you werestill scolding me. I knew that he was a jay, well enough, and I'd justseen him behaving very like a cad to Mrs. Bevidge. "

"Then I don't understand how you came to be with him. "

"Oh yes, you do, Alan. You mustn't be logical! You might as well sayyou can't understand how you came to be more serious than sober. " Thebrother laughed helplessly. "It was the excitement. "

"But you can't give way to that sort of thing, Bess, " said her brother, with the gravity of a man feeling the consequences of his own errors. 

"I know I can't, but I do, " she returned. "I know it's bad for me, if itisn't for other people. Come! I'll swear off if you will!"

"I'm always ready, to swear off, " said the young man, gloomily. Headded, "But you've got brains, Bess, and I hate to see you playing thefool. "

"Do you really, Alan?" asked the girl, pleased perhaps as much by hisreproach as by his praise. "Do you think I've got brains?"

"You're the only girl that has. "

"Oh, I didn't mean to ask so much as that! But what's the reason I can'tdo anything with them? Other girls draw, and play, and write. I don'tdo anything but go in for the excitement that's bad for me. I wish you'dexplain it. "

Alan Lynde did not try. The question seemed to turn his thoughts backupon himself to dispiriting effect. "I've got brains, too, I believe, "he began. 

"Lots of them!" cried his sister, generously. "There isn't any of themen to compare with you. If I had you to talk with all the time, Ishouldn't want jays. I don't mean to flatter. You're a constant feast ofreason; I don't care for flows of soul. You always take right views ofthings when you're yourself, and even when you're somebody else you'renot stupid. You could be anything you chose. "

"The devil of it is I can't choose, " he replied. 

"Yes, I suppose that's the devil of it, " said the girl. 

"You oughtn't to use such language as that, Bess, " said her brother, severely. 

"Oh, I don't with everybody, " she returned. "Never with ladies!"

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye with a smile at oncerueful and comic. 

"You got me, I guess, that time, " he owned. 

"'Touche', ' Mr. Durgin says. He fences, it seems, and he speaks French. It was like an animal speaking French; you always expect them to speakEnglish. But I don't mind your swearing before me; I know that it helpsto carry off the electricity. " She laughed, and made him laugh with her. 

"Is there anything to him?" he growled, when they stopped laughing. 

"Yes, a good deal, " said Bessie, with an air of thoughtfulness; andthen she went on to tell all that Jeff had told her of himself, andshe described his aplomb in dealing with the benevolent Bevidge, as shecalled her, and sketched his character, as it seemed to her. The sketchwas full of shrewd guesses, and she made it amusing to her brother, whofrom the vantage of his own baddishness no doubt judged the originalmore intelligently. 

"Well, you'd better let him alone, after this, " he said, at the end. 

"Yes, " she pensively assented. "I suppose it's as if you took to somevery common kind of whiskey, isn't it? I see what you mean. If one must, it ought to be champagne. "

She turned upon him a look of that keen but limited knowledge whichrenders women's conjectures of evil always so amusing, or so pathetic, to men. 

"Better let the champagne alone, too, " said her brother, darkly. 

"Yes, I know that, " she admitted, and she lay back in her chair, lookingdreamily into the fire. After a while she asked, abruptly: "Will yougive it up if I will?"

"I am afraid I couldn't. "

"You could try. "

"Oh, I'm used to that. "

"Then it's a bargain, " she said. She jumped from her chair and went overto him, and smoothed his hair over his forehead and kissed the place shehad smoothed, though it was unpleasantly damp to her lips. "Poor boy, poor boy! Now, remember! No more jays for me, and no more jags for you. Goodnight. "

Her brother broke into a wild laugh at her slanging, which had such abizarre effect in relation to her physical delicacy. 

XXXII. 

Jeff did not know whether Miss Bessie Lynde meant to go to Mrs. Bevidge's Thursdays or not. He thought she might have been bantering himby what she said, and he decided that he would risk going to the firstof them on the chance of meeting her. She was not there, and there wasno one there whom he knew. Mrs. Bevidge made no effort to enlarge hisacquaintance, and after he had drunk a cup of her tea he went away withrage against society in his heart, which he promised himself to vent atthe first chance of refusing its favors. But the chance seemed not tocome. The world which had opened its gates to him was fast shut again, and he had to make what he could of renouncing it. He worked prettyhard, and he renewed himself in his fealty to Cynthia, while his mindstrayed curiously to that other girl. But he had almost abandoned thehope of meeting her again, when a large party was given on the eve ofthe Harvard Mid-Year Examinations, which end the younger gayeties ofBoston, for a fortnight at least, in January. The party was so largethat the invitations overflowed the strict bounds of society at somepoints. In the case of Jeff Durgin the excess was intentional beyond thevague benevolence which prompted the giver of the party to ask certainother outsiders. She was a lady of a soul several sizes larger than thesouls of some other society leaders; she was not afraid to do as sheliked; for instance, she had not only met the Vostrands at Westover'stea, several years before, but she had afterward offered somehospitalities to those ladies which had discharged her whole duty towardthem without involving her in any disadvantages. Jeff had been presentedto her at Westover's, but she disliked him so promptly and decidedlythat she had left him out of even the things that she asked some otherjays to, like lectures and parlor readings for good objects. It was notuntil one of her daughters met him, first at Willie Morland's tea andthen at Mrs. Bevidge's meeting, that her social conscience concerneditself with him. At the first her daughter had not spoken to him, asmight very well have happened, since Bessie Lynde had kept him away withher nearly all the time; but at the last she had bowed pleasantly to himacross the room, and Jeff had responded with a stiff obeisance, whosecoldness she felt the more for having been somewhat softened herself inMrs. Bevidge's altruistic atmosphere. 

"I think he was hurt, mamma, " the girl explained to her mother, "thatyou've never had him to anything. I suppose they must feel it. "

"Oh, well, send him a card, then, " said her mother; and when Jeff gotthe card, rather near the eleventh hour, he made haste to accept, notbecause he cared to go to Mrs. Enderby's house, but because he hoped heshould meet Miss Lynde there. 

Bessie was the first person he met after he turned from paying hisduty to the hostess. She was with her aunt, and she presented him, andpromised him a dance, which she let him write on her card. She sat outanother dance with him, and he took her to supper. 

To Westover, who had gone with the increasing forlornness a man feels insuch pleasures after thirty-five, it seemed as if the two were in eachother's company the whole evening. The impression was so strong with himthat when Jeff restored Bessie to her aunt for the dance that was to befor some one else, and came back to the supper-room, the painter triedto satisfy a certain uneasiness by making talk with him. But Jeff wouldnot talk; he got away with a bottle of champagne, which he had captured, and a plate heaped with croquettes and pease, and galantine and salad. There were no ladies left in the room by that time, and few young men;but the oldsters crowded the place, with their bald heads devoutly bowedover their victual, or their frosty mustaches bathed in their drink, singly or in groups; the noise of their talk and laughter mixed withthe sound of their eating and drinking, and the clash of the knives anddishes. Over their stooped shoulders and past their rounded stomachsWestover saw Alan Lynde vaguely making his way with a glass in his hand, and looking vaguely about for wine; he saw Jeff catch his wanderingeye, and make offer of his bottle, and then saw Lynde, after a moment ofhaughty pause, unbend and accept it. His thin face was flushed, and hishair tossed over his forehead, but Jeff seemed not to take note of that. He laughed boisterously at something Lynde said, and kept filling hisglass for him. His own color remained clear and cool. It was as if hispowerful physique absorbed the wine before it could reach his brain. 

Westover wanted to interfere, and so far as Jeff was concerned he wouldnot have hesitated; but Lynde was concerned, too, and you cannot savesuch a man from himself without offence. He made his way to the youngman, hoping he might somehow have the courage he wanted. 

Jeff held up the bottle, and called to him, "Get yourself a glass, Mr. Westover. " He put on the air of a host, and would hardly be denied. "Know Mr. Westover, Mr. Lynde? Just talking about you, " he explained toWestover. 

Alan had to look twice at the painter. "Oh yes. Mr. Durgin, here--telling me about his place in the mountains. Says you've beenthere. Going--going myself in the summer. See his--horses. " He madepauses between his words as some people do when they, try to keep fromstammering. 

Westover believed Lynde understood Jeff to be a country gentlemanof sporting tastes, and he would not let that pass. "Yes, it's thepleasantest little hotel in the mountains. "

"Strictly-temperance, I suppose?" said Alan, trying to smile with lipsthat obeyed him stiffly. He appeared not to care who or what Jeff was;the champagne had washed away all difference between them. He went on tosay that he had heard of Jeff's intention of running the hotel himselfwhen he got out of Harvard. He held it to be damned good stuff. 

Jeff laughed. "Your sister wouldn't believe me when I told her. "

"I think I didn't mention Miss Lynde, " said Alan, haughtily. 

Jeff filled his glass; Alan looked at it, faltered, and then drank itoff. The talk began again between the young men, but it left Westoverout, and he had to go away. Whether Jeff was getting Lynde beyondhimself from the love of mischief, such as had prompted him to teaselittle children in his boyhood, or was trying to ingratiate himself withthe young fellow through his weakness, or doing him harm out of merethoughtlessness, Westover came away very unhappy at what he had seen. His unhappiness connected itself so distinctly with Lynde's familythat he went and sat down beside Miss Lynde from an obscure impulse ofcompassion, and tried to talk with her. It would not have been sohard if she were merely deaf, for she had the skill of deaf people inarranging the conversation so that a nodded yes or no would be all thatwas needed to carry it forward. But to Westover she was terribly dull, and he was gasping, as in an exhausted receiver, when Bessie came upwith a smile of radiant recognition for his extremity. She got rid ofher partner, and devoted herself at once to Westover. "How good of you!"she said, without giving him the pain of an awkward disclaimer. 

He could counter in equal sincerity and ambiguity, "How beautiful ofyou. "

"Yes, " she said, "I am looking rather well, tonight; but don't you thinkeffective would have been a better word?" She smiled across her aunt athim out of a cloud of pink, from which her thin shoulders and slenderneck emerged, and her arms, gloved to the top, fell into her lap; one ofthem seemed to terminate naturally in the fan which sensitively sharedthe inquiescence of her person. 

"I will say effective, too, if you insist, " said Westover. "But at thesame time you're the most beautiful person here. "

"How lovely of you, even if you don't mean it, " she sighed. "If girlscould have more of those things said to them, they would be better, don't you think? Or at least feel better. "

Westover laughed. "We might organize a society--they have them fornearly everything now--for saying pleasant things to young ladies with aview to the moral effect. "

"Oh, do I. "

"But it ought to be done conscientiously, and you couldn't go roundtelling every one that she was the most beautiful girl in the room. "

"Why not? She'd believe it!"

"Yes; but the effect on the members of the society?"

"Oh yes; that! But you could vary it so as to save your conscience. Youcould say, 'How divinely you're looking!' or 'How angelic!' or 'You'rethe very poetry of motion, ' or 'You are grace itself, ' or 'Your gown isa perfect dream, or any little commonplace, and every one would take itfor praise of her personal appearance, and feel herself a great beauty, just as I do now, though I know very well that I'm all out of drawing, and just chicqued together. "

"I couldn't allow any one but you to say that, Miss Bessie; and I onlylet it pass because you say it so well. "

"Yes; you're always so good! You wouldn't contradict me even when youturned me out of your class. "

"Did I turn you out of my class?"

"Not just in so many words, but when I said I couldn't do anything inart, you didn't insist that it was because I wouldn't, and of coursethen I had to go. I've never forgiven you, Mr. Westover, never! Do keepon talking very excitedly; there's a man coming up to us that I don'twant to think I see him, or he'll stop. There! He's veered off! Wherewere you, Mr. Westover?"

"Ah, Miss Bessie, " said the painter; delighted at her drama, "thereisn't anything you couldn't do if you would. "

"You mean parlor entertainments; impersonations; impressions; that sortof thing? I have thought of it. But it would be too easy. I want to trysomething difficult. "

"For instance. "

"Well, being very, very good. I want something that would really tax mypowers. I should like to be an example. I tried it the other night justbefore I went to sleep, and it was fine. I became an example to others. But when I woke up--I went on in the old way. I want something hard, don't you know; but I want it to be easy!"

She laughed, and Westover said: "I am glad you're not serious. No oneought to be an example to others. To be exemplary is as dangerous as tobe complimentary. 

"It certainly isn't so agreeable to the object, " said the girl. "Butit's fine for the subject as long as it lasts. How metaphysical we'regetting! The objective and the subjective. It's quite what I shouldexpect of talk at a Boston dance if I were a New-Yorker. Have you seenanything of my brother, within the last hour or so, Mr. Westover?"

"Yes; I just left him in the supper-room. Shall I go get him for you?"When he had said this, with the notion of rescuing him from Jeff, Westover was sorry, for he doubted if Alan Lynde were any longer in thestate to be brought away from the supper-room, and he was glad to haveBessie say:

"No, no. He'll look us up in the course of the evening--or the morning. "A young fellow came to claim her for a dance, and Westover had not theface to leave Miss Lynde, all the less because she told him he must notthink of staying. He stayed till the dance was over, and Bessie cameback to him. 

"What time is it, Mr. Westover? I see my aunt beginning to nod on herperch. "

Westover looked at his watch. "It's ten minutes past two. "

"How early!" sighed the girl. "I'm tired of it, aren't you?"

"Very, " said Westover. "I was tired an hour ago. "

Bessie sank back in her chair with an air of nervous collapse, and didnot say anything. Westover saw her watching the young couples who passedin and out of the room where the dancing was, or found corners onsofas, or window-seats, or sheltered spaces beside the doors and thechimney-piece, the girls panting and the men leaning forward to fanthem. She looked very tired of it; and when a young fellow came up andasked her to dance, she told him that she was provisionally engaged. "Come back and get me, if you can't do better, " she said, and heanswered there was no use trying to do better, and said he would waittill the other man turned up, or didn't, if she would let him. He satdown beside her, and some young talk began between them. 

In the midst of it Jeff appeared. He looked at Westover first, and thenapproached with an embarrassed face. 

Bessie got vividly to her feet. "No apologies, Mr. Durgin, please! Butin just another moment you'd have last your dance. "

Westover saw what he believed a change pass in Jeff's look fromembarrassment to surprise and then to flattered intelligence. He beamedall over; and he went away with Bessie toward the ballroom, and leftWestover to a wholly unsupported belief that she had not been engaged todance with Jeff. He wondered what her reckless meaning could be, but hehad always thought her a young lady singularly fitted by nature and artto take care of herself, and when he reasoned upon what was in his mindhe had to own that there was no harm in Jeff's dancing with her. 

He took leave of Miss Lynde, and was going to get his coat and hat forhis walk home when he was mysteriously stopped in a corner of the stairsby one of the caterer's men whom he knew. It is so unnatural to beaddressed by a servant at all unless he asks you if you will havesomething to eat or drink, that Westover was in a manner prepared tohave him say something startling. "It's about young Mr. Lynde, sor. We've got um in one of the rooms up-stairs, but he ain't fit to go homealone, and I've been lookin' for somebody that knows the family to helpget um into a car'ge. He won't go for anny of us, sor. "

"Where is he?" asked Westover, in anguish at being unable to refuse theappeal, but loathing the office put upon him. 

"I'll show you, sor, " said the caterer's man, and he sprang up thestairs before Westover, with glad alacrity. 

XXXIII. 

In a little room at the side of that where the men's hats and coats werechecked, Alan Lynde sat drooping forward in an arm-chair, with his headfallen on his breast. He roused himself at the flash of the burner whichthe man turned up. "What's all this?" he demanded, haughtily. "Where'sthe carriage? What's the matter?"

"Your carriage is waiting, Lynde, " said Westover. "I'll see you down toit, " and he murmured, hopelessly, to the caterer's man: "Is there anyback way?"

"There's the wan we got um up by. "

"It will do, " said Westover, as simply. 

But Lynde called out, defiantly: "Back way; I sha'n't go down back way. Inshult to guest. I wish--say--good-night to--Mrs. Enderby. Who you, anyway? Damn caterer's man?"

"I'm Westover, Lynde, " the painter began, but the young fellow broke inupon him, shaking his hand and then taking his arm. 

"Oh, Westover! All right! I'll go down back way with you. Thought--thought it was damn caterer's man. No--offence. "

"No. It's all right. " Westover got his arm under Lynde's elbow, and, with the man going before for them to fall upon jointly in case theyshould stumble, he got him down the dark and twisting stairs and throughthe basement hall, which was vaguely haunted by the dispossessed womenservants of the family, and so out upon the pavement of the moonlightedstreets. 

"Call Miss Lynde's car'ge, " shouted the caterer's man to the barker, andescaped back into the basement, leaving Westover to stay his helplesscharge on the sidewalk. 

It seemed a publication of the wretch's shame when the barker began tofill the night with hoarse cries of, "Miss Lynde's carriage; carriagefor Miss Lynde!" The cries were taken up by a coachman here and there inthe rank of vehicles whose varnished roofs shone in the moon up and downthe street. After a time that Westover of course felt to be longer thanit was, Miss Lynde's old coachman was roused from his sleep on the boxand started out of the rank. He took in the situation with the eye ofcustom, when he saw Alan supported on the sidewalk by a stranger at theend of the canopy covering the pavement. 

He said, "Oh, ahl right, sor!" and when the two white-gloved policemenfrom either side of it helped Westover into the carriage with Lynde, heset off at a quick trot. The policemen clapped their hands together, and smiled across the strip of carpet that separated them, and winks andnods of intelligence passed among the barkers to the footmen about thecurb and steps. There were none of them sorry to see a gentleman in thatstate; some of them had perhaps seen Alan in that state before. 

Half-way home he roused himself and put his hand on the carriage-doorlatch. "Tell the coachman drive us to--the--club. Make night of it. "

"No, no, " said Westover, trying to restrain him. "We'd better go righton to your house. "

"Who--who--who are you?" demanded Alan. 

"Westover. "

"Oh yes--Westover. Thought we left Westover at Mrs. Enderby's. Thoughtit was that jay--What's his name? Durgin. He's awful jay, but civilto me, and I want be civil to him. You're not--jay? No? That's right. Fellow made me sick; but I took his champagne; and I must show himsome--attention. " He released the door-handle, and fell back againstthe cushioned carriage wall. "He's a blackguard!" he said, sourly. "Not--simple jay-blackguard, too. No--no--business bring in my sister'sname, hey? You--you say it's--Westover? Oh yes, Westover. Old friend offamily. Tell you good joke, Westover--my sister's. No more jays for me, no more jags for you. That's what she say--just between her and me, youknow; she's a lady, Bess is; knows when to use--slang. Mark--mark of alady know when to use slang. Pretty good--jays and jags. Guess we didn'tcount this time--either of us. "

When the carriage pulled up before Miss Lynde's house, Westover openedthe door. "You're at home, now, Lynde. Come, let's get out. "

Lynde did not stir. He asked Westover again who he was, and when he hadmade sure of him, he said, with dignity, Very well; now they must getthe other fellow. Westover entreated; he even reasoned; Lynde lay backin the corner of the carriage, and seemed asleep. 

Westover thought of pulling him up and getting him indoors by mainforce. He appealed to the coachman to know if they could not do ittogether. 

"Why, you see, I couldn't leave me harsses, sor, " said the coachman. "What's he wants, sor?" He bent urbanely down from his box and listenedto the explanation that Westover made him, standing in the cold on thecurbstone, with one hand on the carriage door. "Then it's no use, sor, "the man decided. "Whin he's that way, ahl hell couldn't stir um. Best goback, sor, and try to find the gentleman. "

This was in the end what Westover had to do, feeling all the time thata thing so frantically absurd could not be a waking act, but helplessto escape from its performance. He thought of abandoning his charge andleaving him, to his fate when he opened the carriage door before Mrs. Enderby's house; but with the next thought he perceived that this wason all accounts impossible. He went in, and began his quest for Jeff, sending various serving men about with vague descriptions of him, andasking for him of departing guests, mostly young men he did not know, but who, he thought, might know Jeff. 

He had to take off his overcoat at last, and reappear at the ball. Thecrowd was still great, but visibly less dense than it had been. By asudden inspiration he made his way to the supper-room, and he found Jeffthere, filling a plate, as if he were about to carry it off somewhere. He commanded Jeff's instant presence in the carriage outside; he toldhim of Alan's desire for him. 

Jeff leaned back against the wall with the plate in his hand and laughedtill it half slipped from his hold. When he could get his breath, hesaid: "I'll be back in a few minutes; I've got to take this to MissBessie Lynde. But I'll be right back. "

Westover hardly believed him. But when he got on his own things again, Jeff joined him in his hat and overcoat, and they went out together. 

It was another carriage that stopped the way now, and once more thebarker made the night ring with what Westover felt his heartless andshameless cries for Miss Lynde's carriage. After a maddening delay, itlagged up to the curb and Jeff pulled the door open. 

"Hello!" he said. "There's nobody here!"

"Nobody there?" cried Westover, and they fell upon the coachman withwild question and reproach; the policeman had to tell him at last thatthe carriage must move on, to make way for others. 

The coachman had no explanation to offer: he did not know how or whenMr. Alan had got away. 

"But you can give a guess where he's gone?" Jeff suggested, with apresence of mind which Westover mutely admired. 

"Well, sor, I know where he do be gahn, sometimes, " the man admitted. 

"Well, that will do; take me there, " said Jeff. "You go in and accountfor me to Miss Lynde, " he instructed Westover, across his shoulder. "I'll get him home before morning, somehow; and I'll send the carriageright back for the ladies, now. "

Westover had the forethought to decide that Miss Bessie should ask forJeff if she wanted him, and this simplified matters very much. She askednothing about him. At sight of Westover coming up to her where she satwith her aunt, she merely said: "Why, Mr. Westover! I thought you tookleave of this scene of gayety long ago. "

"Did you?" Westover returned, provisionally, and she saved him from thesin of framing some deceit in final answer by her next question. 

"Have you seen anything of Alan lately?" she asked, in a voiceinvoluntarily lowered. 

Westover replied in the same octave: "Yes; I saw him going a good whileago. "

"Oh!" said the girl. "Then I think my aunt and I had better go, too. "

Still she did not go, and there was an interval in which she had the airof vaguely waiting. To Westover's vision, the young people still passingto and from the ballroom were like the painted figures of a picturequickened with sudden animation. There were scarcely any elders tobe seen now, except the chaperons, who sat in their places with ironfortitude; Westover realized that he was the only man of his age left. He felt that the lights ought to have grown dim, but the place was asbrilliant as ever. A window had been opened somewhere, and the coldbreath of the night was drawing through the heated rooms. 

He was content to have Bessie stay on, though he was almost droppingwith sleep, for he was afraid that if she went at once, the carriagemight not have got back, and the whole affair must somehow be givenaway; at last, if she were waiting, she decided to wait no longer, andthen Westover did not know how to keep her. He saw her rise and stoopover her aunt, putting her mouth to the elder lady's ear, and he heardher saying, "I am going home, Aunt Louisa. " She turned sweetly to him. "Won't you let us set you down, Mr. Westover?"

"Why, thank you, I believe I prefer walking. But do let me have yourcarriage called, " and again he hurried himself into his overcoat andhat, and ran down-stairs, and the barker a third time sent forth hislamentable cries in summons of Miss Lynde's carriage. 

While he stood on the curb-stone eagerly peering up and down the street, he heard, without being able either to enjoy or resent it, one of thepolicemen say across him to the other, "Miss lynde seems to be doin' alivery-stable business to-night. "

Almost at the moment a carriage drove up, and he recognized Miss Lynde'scoachman, who recognized him. 

"Just got back, sor, " he whispered, and a minute later Bessie camedaintily out over the carpeted way with her aunt. 

"How good of you!" she said, and "Good-night, Mr. Westover, " said MissLynde, with an implication in her voice that virtue was peculiarly itsown reward for those who performed any good office for her or hers. 

Westover shut them in, the carriage rolled off, and he started on hishomeward walk with a long sigh of relief. 

XXXIV. 

Bessie asked the sleepy man who opened her aunt's door whether herbrother had come in yet, and found that he had not. She helped her auntoff up-stairs with her maid, and when she came down again she sent theman to bed; she told him she was going to sit up and she would lether brother in. The caprices of Alan's latch-key were known to all theservants, and the man understood what she, meant. He said he had lefta light in the reception-room and there was a fire there; and Bessietripped on down from the library floor, where she had met him. She hadput off her ball dress and had slipped into the simplest and easiestof breakfast frocks, which was by no means plain. Bessie had no plainfrocks for any hour of the day; her frocks all expressed in stuff andstyle and color, and the bravery of their flying laces and ribbons, theaudacity of spirit with which she was herself chicqued together, as shesaid. This one she had on now was something that brightened her dullcomplexion, and brought out the best effect of her eyes and mouth, andseemed the effluence of her personal dash and grace. It made the mostof her, and she liked it beyond all her other negligees for itscomplaisance. 

She got a book, and sat down in a long, low chair before the fire andcrossed her pretty slippers on the warm hearth. It was a quarter afterthree by the clock on the mantel; but she had never felt more eagerlyawake. The party had not been altogether to her mind, up to midnight, but after that it had been a series of rapid and vivid emotions, whichcontinued themselves still in the tumult of her nerves, and seemed todemand an indefinite sequence of experience. She did not know what stateher brother might be in when he came home; she had not seen anything ofhim after she first went out to supper; till then, though, he had kepthimself straight, as he needs must; but she could not tell what happenedto him afterward. She hoped that he would come home able to talk, forshe wished to talk. She wished to talk about herself; and as she hadalready had flattery enough, she wanted some truth about herself; shewanted Alan to say what he thought of her behavior the whole eveningwith that jay. He must have seen something of it in the beginning, andshe should tell him all the rest. She should tell him just how often shehad danced with the man, and how many dances she had sat out with him;how she had pretended once that she was engaged when another man askedher, and then danced with the jay, to whom she pretended that he hadengaged her for the dance. She had wished to see how he would take it;for the same reason she had given to some one else a dance that wasreally his. She would tell Alan how the jay had asked her for that lastdance, and then never come near her again. That would give him the wholesituation, and she would know just what he thought of it. 

What she thought of herself she hardly knew, or made believe she hardlyknew. She prided herself upon not being a flirt; she might not be verygood, as goodness went, but she was not despicable, and a flirt wasdespicable. She did not call the audacity of her behavior with the jayflirting; he seemed to understand it as well as she, and to meet herin her own spirit; she wondered now whether this jay was really moreinteresting than the other men one met, or only different; whether hewas original, like Alan himself, or merely novel, and would soon weardown to the tiresomeness that seemed to underlie them all, and made onewish to do something dreadful. In the jay's presence she had no wish todo anything dreadful. Was it because he was dreadful enough for both, all the time, without doing anything? She would like to ask Alan that, and see how he would take it. Nothing seemed to put the jay out, so faras she had tried, and she had tried some bold impertinences with him. Hewas very jolly through them all, and at the worst of them he laughed andasked her for that dance, which he never came to claim, though in themean time he brought her some belated supper, and was devoted to her andher aunt, inventing services to do for them. Then suddenly he went offand did not return, and Mr. Westover mysteriously reappeared, and gottheir carriage. 

She heard a scratching at the key-hole of the outside door; she knew itwas Alan's latch. She had left the inner door ajar that there might beno uncertainty of hearing him, and she ran out into the space betweenthat and the outer door where the fumbling and scraping kept on. 

"Is that you, Alan?" she called, softly, and if she had any doubtbefore, she had none when she heard her brother outside, cursing hisluck with his key as usual. 

She flung the door open, and confronted him with another man, who hadhis arms around him as if he had caught him from falling with the inwardpull of the door. Alan got to his feet and grappled with the man, andinsisted that he should come in and make a night of it. 

Bessie saw that it was Jeff, and they stood a moment, looking at eachother. Jeff tried to free himself with an appeal to Bessie: "I beg yourpardon, Miss Lynde. I walked home with your brother, and I was justhelping him to get in--I didn't think that you--"

Alan said, with his measured distinctness: "Nobody cares what you think. Come in, and get something to carry you over the bridge. Cambridge carsstopped running long ago. I say you shall!" He began to raise his voice. A light flashed in a window across the way, and a sash was lifted; someone must be looking out. 

"Oh, come in with him!" Bessie implored, and at a little yielding inJeff her brother added:

"Come in, you damn jay!" He pulled at Jeff. 

Jeff made haste to shut the door behind them. He was laughing; and if itwas from mere brute insensibility to what would have shocked another inthe situation, his frank recognition of its grotesqueness was of bettereffect than any hopeless effort to ignore it would have been. Peopleadjust themselves to their trials; it is the pretence of the witnessthat there is no trial which hurts, and Bessie was not wounded by Jeff'slaugh. 

"There's a fire here in the reception-room, " she said. "Can you get himin?"

"I guess so. "

Jeff lifted Alan into the room and stayed him on foot there, while hetook off his hat and overcoat, and then he let him sink into the loweasy-chair Bessie had just risen from. All the time, Alan wasbidding her ring and have some champagne and cold meat set out on theside-board, and she was lightly promising and coaxing. But he drowsedquickly in the warmth, and the last demand for supper died half utteredon his lips. 

Jeff asked across him: "Can't I get him up-stairs for you? I can carryhim. "

She shook her head and whispered back, "I can leave him here, " andshe looked at Jeff with a moment's hesitation. "Did you--do you thinkthat--any one noticed him at Mrs. Enderby's?"

"No; they had got him in a room by himself--the caterer's men had. "

"And you found him there?"

"Mr. Westover found him there, " Jeff answered. 

"I don't understand. "

"Didn't he come to you after I left?"

"Yes. "

"I told him to excuse me--"

"He didn't. "

"Well, I guess he was pretty badly rattled. " Jeff stopped himself inthe vague laugh of one who remembers something ludicrous, and turned hisface away. 

"Tell me what it was!" she demanded, nervously. 

"Mr. Westover had been home with him once, and he wouldn't stay. He madeMr. Westover come back for me. "

"What did he want with you?"

Jeff shrugged. 

"And then what?"

"We went out to the carriage, as soon as I could get away from you; buthe wasn't in it. I sent Mr. Westover back to you and set out to look forhim. "

"That was very good of you. And I--thank you for your kindness to mybrother. I shall not forget it. And I wish to beg your pardon. "

"What for?" asked Jeff, bluntly. 

"For blaming you when you didn't come back for the dance. "

If Bessie had meant nothing but what was fitting to the moment someinherent lightness of nature played her false. But even the histrionictouch which she could not keep out of her voice, her manner, anothersort of man might have found merely pathetic. 

Jeff laughed with subtle intelligence. "Were you very hard on me?"

"Very, " she answered in kind, forgetting her brother and the wholeterrible situation. 

"Tell me what you thought of me, " he said, and he came a little nearerto her, looking very handsome and very strong. "I should like to know. "

"I said I should never speak to you again. "

"And you kept your word, " said Jeff. "Well, that's all right. Good-night-or good-morning, whichever it is. " He took her hand, whichshe could not withdraw, or feigned to herself that she could notwithdraw, and looked at her with a silent laugh, and a hardy, scepticalglance that she felt take in every detail of her prettiness, herplainness. Then he turned and went out, and she ran quickly and lockedthe door upon him. 

XXXV. 

Bessie crept up to her room, where she spent the rest of the nightin her chair, amid a tumult of emotion which she would have calledthinking. She asked herself the most searching questions, but she got novery candid answers to them, and she decided that she must see the wholefact with some other's eyes before she could know what she had meant orwhat she had done. 

When she let the daylight into her room, it showed her a face in hermirror that bore no trace of conflicting anxieties. Her complexionfavored this effect of inward calm; it was always thick; and her eyesseemed to her all the brighter for their vigils. 

A smile, even, hovered on her mouth as she sat down at thebreakfast-table, in the pretty negligee she had worn all night, andpoured out Miss Lynde's coffee for her. 

"That's always very becoming to you, Bessie, " said her aunt. "It's thenicest breakfast gown you have. "

"Do you think so?" Bessie looked down at it, first on one side and thenon the other, as a woman always does when her dress is spoken of. 

"Mr. Alan said he would have his breakfast in his room, miss, " murmuredthe butler, in husky respectfulness, as he returned to Bessie fromcarrying Miss Lynde's cup to her. "He don't want anything but a littletoast and coffee. "

She perceived that the words were meant to make it easy for her to ask:"Isn't he very well, Andrew?"

"About as usual, miss, " said Andrew, a thought more sepulchral thanbefore. "He's going on--about as usual. "

She knew this to mean that he was going on from bad to worse, and thathis last night's excess was the beginning of a debauch which could endonly in one way. She must send for the doctor; he would decide what wasbest, when he saw how Alan came through the day. 

Late in the afternoon she heard Mary Enderby's voice in thereception-room, bidding the man say that if Miss Bessie were lying downshe would come up to her, or would go away, just as she wished. She flewdownstairs with a glad cry of "Molly! What an inspiration! I was justthinking of you, and wishing for you. But I didn't suppose you were upyet!"

"It's pretty early, " said Miss Enderby. "But I should have been herebefore if I could, for I knew I shouldn't wake you, Bessie, withyour habit of turning night into day, and getting up any time in theforenoon. "

"How dissipated you sound!"

"Yes, don't I? But I've been thinking about you ever since I woke, and Ihad to come and find out if you were alive, anyhow. "

"Come up-stairs and see!" said Bessie, holding her friend's hand on thesofa where they had dropped down together, and going all over the sceneof last night in that place for the thousandth time. 

"No, no; I really mustn't. I hope you had a good time?"

"At your house!"

"How dear of you! But, Bessie, I got to thinking you'd been rathersacrificed. It came into my mind the instant I woke, and gave me thissevere case of conscience. I suppose it's a kind of conscience. "

"Yes, yes. Go on! I like having been a martyr, if I don't know whatabout. "

"Why, you know, Bessie, or if you don't you will presently, that it wasI who got mamma to send him a card; I felt rather sorry for him, thatday at Mrs. Bevidge's, because she'd so obviously got him there to usehim, and I got mamma to ask him. Everything takes care of itself, at alarge affair, and I thought I might trust in Providence to deal withhim after he came; and then I saw you made a means the whole evening! Ididn't reflect that there always has to be a means!"

"It's a question of Mr. Durgin?" said Bessie, coldly thrilling at thesound of a name that she pronounced so gayly in a tone of sympatheticamusement. 

Miss Enderby bobbed her head. "It shows that we ought never to do a goodaction, doesn't it? But, poor thing! How you must have been swearingoff!"

"I don't know. Was it so very bad? I'm trying to think, " said Bessie, thinking that after this beginning it would be impossible to confide inMary Enderby. 

"Oh, now, Bessie! Don't you be patient, or I shall begin to lose myfaith in human nature. Just say at once that it was an outrage and I'llforgive you! You see, " Miss Enderby went on, "it isn't merely that he'sa jay; but he isn't a very nice jay. None of the men like him--exceptFreddy Lancaster, of course; he likes everybody, on principle; hedoesn't count. I thought that perhaps, although he's so crude and blunt, he might be sensitive and high-minded; you're always reading about suchthings; but they say he isn't, in the least; oh, not the least! They sayhe goes with a set of fast jays, and that he's dreadful; though he hasa very good mind, and could do very well if he chose. That's what cousinJim said to-day; he's just been at our house; and it was so extremelytelepathic that I thought I must run round and prevent your having theman on your conscience if you felt you had had too much of him. Youwon't lay him up against us, will you?" She jumped to her feet. 

"You dear!" said Bessie, keeping Mary Enderby's hand, and pressing itbetween both of hers against her breast as they now stood face to face, "do come up and have some tea!"

"No, no! Really, I can't. "

They were both involuntarily silent. The door had been opened to someone, and there was a brief parley, which ended in a voice they knew tobe the doctor's, saying, "Then I'll go right up to his room. " Both thegirls broke into laughing adieux, to hide their consciousness that thedoctor was going up to see Alan Lynde, who was never sick except in theone way. 

Miss Enderby even said: "I was so glad to see Alan looking so well, lastnight. "

"Yes, he had such a good time, " said Bessie, and she followed her friendto the door, where she kissed her reassuringly, and thanked her fortaking all the trouble she had, bidding her not be the least anxious onher account. 

It seemed to her that she should sink upon the stairs in mountingthem to the library. Mary Enderby had told her only what she had knownbefore; it was what her brother had told her; but then it had not beenpossible for the man to say that he had brought Alan home tipsy, andbeen alone in the house with her at three o'clock in the morning. Hewould not only boast of it to all that vulgar comradehood of his, butit might get into those terrible papers which published the societyscandals. There would be no way but to appeal to his pity, hisgenerosity. She fancied herself writing to him, but he could show hernote, and she must send for him to come and see her, and try to put himon his honor. Or, that would not do, either. She must make it happenthat they should be thrown together, and then speak to him. Even thatmight make him think she was afraid of him; or he might take it wrong, and believe that she cared for him. He had really been very good toAlan, and she tried to feel safe in the thought of that. She did feelsafe for a moment; but if she had meant nothing but to make him believeher grateful, what must he infer from her talking to him in the lightway she did about forgiving him for not coming back to dance with her. Her manner, her looks, her tone, had given him the right to say thatshe had been willing to flirt with him there, at that hour, and in thosedreadful circumstances. 

She found herself lying in a deep arm-chair in the library, when she wasaware of Dr. Lacy pausing at the door and looking tentatively in uponher. 

"Come in, doctor, " she said, and she knew that her face was wet withtears, and that she spoke with the voice of weeping. 

He came forward and looked narrowly at her, without sitting down. "There's nothing to be alarmed about, Miss Bessie, " he said. "But Ithink your brother had better leave home again, for a while. "

"Yes, " she said, blankly. Her mind was not on his words. 

"I will make the arrangements. "

"Thank you, " said Bessie, listlessly. 

The doctor had made a step backward, as if he were going away, and nowhe stopped. "Aren't you feeling quite well, Miss Bessie?"

"Oh yes, " she said, and she began to cry. 

The doctor came forward and said, cheerily: "Let me see. " He pulled achair up to hers, and took her wrist between his fingers. "If you wereat Mrs. Enderby's last night, you'll need another night to put you justright. But you're pretty well as it is. " He let her wrist softly go, and said: "You mustn't distress yourself about your brother's case. Of course, it's hard to have it happen now after he's held up so long;longer than it has been before, I think, isn't it? But it's somethingthat it has been so long. The next time, let us hope, it will be longerstill. "

The doctor made as if to rise. Bessie put her hand out to stay him. "What is it makes him do it?"

"Ah, that's a great mystery, " said the doctor. "I suppose you might saythe excitement. "

"Yes!"

"But it seems to me very often, in such cases, as if it were to escapethe excitement. I think you're both keyed up pretty sharply by nature, Miss Bessie, " said the doctor, with the personal kindness he felt forthe girl, and the pity softening his scientific spirit. 

"I know!" she answered. "We're alike. Why don't I take to drinking, too?"

The doctor laughed at such a question from a young lady, but with aninner seriousness in his laugh, as if, coming from a patient, it wasto be weighed. "Well, I suppose it isn't the habit of your sex, MissBessie. "

"Sometimes it is. Sometimes women get drunk, and then I think theydo less harm than if they did other things to get away from theexcitement. " She longed to confide in him; the words were on her tongue;she believed he could help her, tell her what to do; out of his storesof knowledge and experience he must have some suggestion, some remedy;he could advise her; he could stand her friend, so far. People toldtheir doctors all kinds of things, silly things. Why should she not tellher doctor this?

It would have been easier if it had been an older man, who might havehad a daughter of her age. But he was in that period of the earlyforties when a doctor sometimes has a matter-of-fact, disagreeablewife whose idea stands between him and the spiritual intimacy of hispatients, so that it seems as if they were delivering their confidencesrather to her than to him. He was able, he was good, he was extremelyacute, he was even with the latest facts and theories; but as he satstraight up in his chair his stomach defined itself as a half-moonbefore him, and he said to the quivering heap of emotions beside him, "You mean like breaking hearts, and such little matters?"

It was fatally stupid, and it beat her back into herself. 

"Yes, " she said, with a contempt that she easily hid from him, "that'sworse than getting drunk, isn't it?"

"Well, it isn't so regarded, " said the doctor, who supposed himself tohave made a sprightly answer, and laughed at it. "I wish, Miss Bessie, you'd take a little remedy I'm going to send you. You've merely beenup too late, but it's a very good thing for people who've been up toolate. "

"Thank you. And about my brother?"

"Oh! I'll send a man to look after him to-night, and tomorrow I reallythink he'd better go. "

XXXVI. 

Miss Lynde had gone earlier than usual to bed, when Bessie heard Alan'sdoor open, and then heard him feeling his way fumbingly down-stairs. She surmised that he had drunk up all that he had in his room, and wasmaking for the side-board in the dining-room. 

She ran and got the two decanters-one of whiskey and one of brandy, which he was in the habit of carrying back to his room from such anincursion. 

"Alan!" she called to him, in a low voice. 

"Where are you?" he answered back. 

"In the library, " she said. "Come in here, please. "

He came, and stood looking gloomily in from the doorway. He caught sightof the decanters and the glasses on the library table. "Oh!" he said, and gave a laugh cut in two by a hiccough. 

"Come in, and shut the door, Alan, " she said. "Let's make a night of it. I've got the materials here. " She waved her hand toward the decanters. 

Alan shrugged. "I don't know what you mean. " But he came forward, andslouched into one of the deep chairs. 

"Well, I'll tell you what, " said Bessie, with a laugh. "We're bothexcited, and we want to get away from ourselves. Isn't that what's thematter with you when it begins? Doctor Lacy thinks it is. "

"Does he?" Alan asked. "I didn't suppose he had so much sense. What ofit?"

"Nothing. Merely that I'm going to drink a glass of whiskey and a glassof brandy for every glass that you drink to-night. "

"You mustn't play the fool, Bess, " said her brother, with dignifiedseverity. 

"But I'm really serious, Alan. Shall I give you something? Which shallwe begin on? And we'd better begin soon, for there's a man coming fromthe doctor to look after you, and then you won't get anything. "

"Don't be ridiculous! Give me those decanters!" Alan struggled out ofhis chair, and trembled over to where she had them on the table besideher. 

She caught them up, one in either hand, and held them as high as shecould lift them. "If you don't sit down and promise to keep still, I'llsmash them both on the hearth. You know I will. "

Her strange eyes gleamed, and he hesitated; then he went back to hischair. 

"I don't see what's got into you to-night. I don't want anything, " hesaid. He tried to brave it out, but presently he cast a piteous glanceat the decanters where she had put them down beside her again. "Does thedoctor think I'd better go again?" he asked. 

"Yes. "

"When?"

"To-morrow. "

He looked at the decanters. "And when is that fellow coming?"

"He may be here any moment. "

"It's pretty rough, " he sighed. "Two glasses of that stuff would driveyou so wild you wouldn't know where you were, Bess, " he expostulated. 

"Well, I wish I didn't know where I was. I wish I wasn't anywhere. " Helooked at her, and then dropped his eyes, with the effect of giving up ahopeless conundrum. 

But he asked: "What's the matter?"

She scanned him keenly before she answered: "Something that I shouldlike to tell you--that you ought to know. Alan, do you think you are fitto judge of a very serious matter?"

He laughed pathetically. "I don't believe I'm in a very judicial frameof mind to-night, Bess. To-morrow--"

"Oh, to-morrow! Where will you be to-morrow?"

"That's true! Well, what is it? I'll try to listen. But if you knewhow my nerves were going. " His eyes wandered from hers back to thedecanters. "If I had just one glass--"

"I'll have one, too, " she said, with a motion toward the decanter nexther. 

He threw up his arms. "Oh well, go on. I'll listen as well as I can. "He sank down in his chair and stretched his little feet out toward thefire. "Go on!"

She hesitated before she began. "Do you know who brought you home lastnight, Alan?"

"Yes, " he answered, quickly, "Westover. "

"Yes, Mr. Westover brought you, and you wouldn't stay. You don'tremember anything else?"

"No. What else?"

"Nothing for you, if you don't remember. " She sat in silent hopelessnessfor a while, and her brother's eyes dwelt on the decanters, which sheseemed to have forgotten. "Alan!" she broke out, abruptly, "I'm worried, and if I can't tell you about it there's no one I can. "

The appeal in her voice must have reached him, though he seemed scarcelyto have heeded her words. "What is it?" he asked, kindly. 

"You went back to the Enderbys' after Mr. Westover brought you home, andthen some one else had to bring you again. "

"How do you know?"

"I was up, and let you in--"

"Did you, Bessie? That was like you, " he said, tenderly. 

"And I had to let him in, too. You pulled him into the house, and youmade such a disturbance at the door that he had to come in for fear youwould bring the police. "

"What a beast!" said Alan, of himself, as if it were some one else. 

"He came in with you. And you wanted him to have some supper. And youfell asleep before the fire in the reception-room. "

"That--that was the dream!" said Alan, severely. "What are you talkingthat stuff for, Bessie?"

"Oh no!" she retorted, with a laugh, as if the pleasure of its comingin so fitly were compensation for the shame of the fact. "The dream waswhat happened afterward. The dream was that you fell asleep there, andleft me there with him--"

"Well, poor old Westover; he's a gentleman! You needn't be worried abouthim--"

"You're not fit!" cried the girl. "I give it up. " She got upon her feetand stood a moment listless. 

"No, I'm not, Bessie. I can't pull my mind together tonight. Butlook here!" He seemed to lose what he wanted to say. He asked: "Is itsomething I've got you in for? Do I understand that?"

"Partly, " she said. 

"Well, then, I'll help you out. You can trust me, Bessie; you can, indeed. You don't believe it?"

"Oh, I believe you think I can trust you. "

"But this time you can. If you need my help I will stand by you, rightor wrong. If you want to tell me now I'll listen, and I'll advise youthe best I can--"

"It's just something I've got nervous about, " she said, while her eyesshone with sudden tears. "But I won't trouble you with it to-night. There's no such great hurry. We can talk about it in the morning ifyou're better then. Oh, I forgot! You're going away!"

"No, " said the young man, with pathetic dignity, "I'm not going if youneed my help. But you're right about me tonight, Bessie. I'm not fit. I'm afraid I can't grasp anything to-night. Tell me in the morning. Oh, don't be afraid!" he cried out at the glance she gave the decanters. "That's over, now; you could put them in my hands and be safe enough. I'm going back to bed, and in the morning--"

He rose and went toward the door. "If that doctor's man comes to-nightyou can send him away again. He needn't bother. "

"All right, Alan, " she said, fondly. "Good-night. Don't worry about me. Try to get some sleep. "

"And you must sleep, too. You can trust me, Bessie. "

He came back after he got out of the room and looked in. "Bess, ifyou're anxious about it, if you don't feel perfectly sure of me, youcan take those things to your room with you. " He indicated the decanterswith a glance. 

"Oh no! I shall leave them here. It wouldn't be any use your justkeeping well overnight. You'll have to keep well a long time, Alan, ifyou're going to help me. And that's the reason I'd rather talk to youwhen you can give your whole mind to what I say. "

"Is it something so serious?"

"I don't know. That's for you to judge. Not very--not at all, perhaps. "

"Then I won't fail you, Bessie. I shall 'keep well, ' as you call it, aslong as you want me. Good-night. "

"Good-night. I shall leave these bottles here, remember. "

"You needn't be afraid. You might put them beside my bed. "

Bessie slept soundly, from exhaustion, and in that provisional fashionin which people who have postponed a care to a given moment are able tosleep. But she woke early, and crept down-stairs before any one else wasastir, and went to the library. The decanters stood there on the table, empty. Her brother lay a shapeless heap in one of the deep arm-chairs. 

XXXVII. 

Westover got home from the Enderby dance at last with the forecast of aviolent cold in his system, which verified itself the next morning. Hehad been housed a week, when Jeff Durgin came to see him. "Why didn'tyou let me know you were sick?" he demanded, "I'd have come and lookedafter you. "

"Thank you, " said Westover, with as much stiffness as he could commandin his physical limpness. "I shouldn't have allowed you to look afterme; and I want you to understand, now, that there can't be any sort offriendliness between us till you've accounted for your behavior withLynde the other night. "

"You mean at the party?" Jeff asked, tranquilly. 

"Yes!" cried Westover. "If I had not been shut up ever since, I shouldhave gone to see you and had it out with you. I've only let you in, now, to give you the chance to explain; and I refuse to hear a word from youtill you do. " Westover did not think that this was very forcible, and hewas not much surprised that it made Jeff smile. 

"Why, I don't know what there is to explain. I suppose you think I gothim drunk; I know what you thought that night. But he was pretty wellloaded when he struck my champagne. It wasn't a question of what he wasgoing to do any longer, but how he was going to do it. I kept an eye onhim, and at the right time I helped the caterer's man to get him up intothat room where he wouldn't make any trouble. I expected to go back andlook after him, but I forgot him. "

"I don't suppose, really, that you're aware what a devil's argument thatis, " said Westover. "You got Lynde drunk, and then you went back to hissister, and allowed her to treat you as if you were a gentleman, and didn't deserve to be thrown out of the house. " This at last wassomething like what Westover had imagined he would say to Jeff, and helooked to see it have the imagined effect upon him. 

"Do you suppose, " asked Jeff, with cheerful cynicism, "that it was thefirst time she was civil to a man her brother got drunk with?"

"No! But all the more you ought to have considered her helplessness. It ought to have made her the more sacred"--Jeff gave an exasperatingshrug--"to you, and you ought to have kept away from her for decency'ssake. "

"I was engaged to dance with her. "

"I can't allow you to be trivial with me, Durgin, " said Westover. "You've acted like a blackguard, and worse, if there is anything worse. "

Jeff stood at a corner of the fire, leaning one elbow on the mantel, andhe now looked thoughtfully down on Westover, who had sunk weakly into achair before the hearth. "I don't deny it from your point of view, Mr. Westover, " he said, without the least resentment in his tone. "Youbelieve that everything is done from a purpose, or that a thing isintended because it's done. But I see that most things in this world arenot thought about, and not intended. They happen, just as much as theother things that we call accidents. "

"Yes, " said Westover, "but the wrong things don't happen from people whoare in the habit of meaning the right ones. "

"I believe they do, fully half the time, " Jeff returned; "and, as far asthe grand result is concerned, you might as well think them and intendthem as not. I don't mean that you ought to do it; that's another thing, and if I had tried to get Lynde drunk, and then gone to dance with hissister, I should have been what you say I am. But I saw him gettingworse without meaning to make him so; and I went back to her because--Iwanted to. "

"And you think, I suppose, " said Westover, "that she wouldn't have caredany more than you cared if she had known what you did. "

"I can't say anything about that. "

The painter continued, bitterly: "You used to come in here, the firstyear, with notions of society women that would have disgraced a Goth, or a gorilla. Did you form your estimate of Miss Lynde from thosepremises?"

"I'm not a boy now, " Jeff answered, "and I haven't stayed all the kindsof a fool I was. "

"Then you don't think Miss Lynde would speak to you, or look at you, after she knew what you had done?"

"I should like to tell her and see, " said Jeff, with a hardy laugh. "But I guess I sha'n't have the chance. I've never been a favorite insociety, and I don't expect to meet her again. "

"Perhaps you'd like to have me tell her?"

"Why, yes, I believe I should, if you could tell me what shethought--not what she said about it. "

"You are a brute, " answered Westover, with a puzzled air. What puzzledhim most and pleased him least was the fellow's patience under hisseverity, which he seemed either not to feel or not to mind. It was ofa piece with the behavior of the rascally boy whom he had cuffed forfrightening Cynthia and her little brother long ago, and he wonderedwhat final malevolence it portended. 

Jeff said, as if their controversy were at an end and they might nowturn to more personal things: "You look pretty slim, Mr. Westover. A'n'tthere something I can do for you-get you? I've come in with a messagefrom mother. She says if you ever want to get that winter view of Lion'sHead, now's your time. She wants you to come up there; she and Cynthiaboth do. They can make you as comfortable as you please, and they'd liketo have a visit from you. Can't you go?"

Westover shook his head ruefully. "It's good of them, and I want you tothank them for me. But I don't know when I'm going to get out again. "

"Oh, you'll soon get out, " said Jeff. "I'm going to look after you alittle, " and this time Westover was too weak to protest. He did notforbid Jeff's taking off his overcoat; he suffered him to light hisspirit-lamp and make a punch of the whiskey which he owned the doctorwas giving him; and when Jeff handed him the steaming glass, and askedhim, "How's that?" he answered, with a pleasure in it which he knew tobe deplorable, "It's fine. "

Jeff stayed the whole evening with him, and made him more comfortablethan he had been since his cold began. Westover now talked seriously andfrankly with him, but no longer so harshly, and in his relenting he felta return of his old illogical liking for him. He fancied in Durgin'skindness to himself an indirect regret, and a desire to atone for whathe had done, and he said: "The effect is in you--the worst effect. Idon't think either of the young Lyndes very exemplary people. But you'dbe doing yourself a greater wrong than you've done then if you didn'trecognize that you had been guilty toward them. "

Jeff seemed struck by this notion. "What do you want me to do? What canI do? Chase myself out of society? Something like that? I'm willing. It's too easy, though. As I said, I've never been wanted much, there, and I shouldn't be missed. "

"Well, then, how would you like to leave it to the people at Lion's Headto say what you should do?" Westover suggested. 

"I shouldn't like it, " said Jeff, promptly. "They'd judge it as youdo--as if they'd done it themselves. That's the reason women are not fitto judge. " His gay face darkened. "But tell 'em if you want to. "

"Bah!" cried the painter. "Why should I want to I'm not a woman ineverything. "

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Westover. I didn't mean that. I only meant thatyou're an idealist. I look at this thing as if some one else had doneit; I believe that's the practical way; and I shouldn't go in forpunishing any one else for such a thing very severely. " He made anotherpunch--for himself this time, he said; but Westover joined him in aglass of it. 

"It won't do to take that view of your faults, Jeff, " he said, gravely. 

"What's the reason?" Jeff demanded; and now either the punch had begunto work in Westover's brain, or some other influence of like forceand quality. He perceived that in this earth-bound temperament was thepotentiality of all the success it aimed at. The acceptance of the moralfact as it was, without the unconscious effort to better it, or to holdhimself strictly to account for it, was the secret of the power in theman which would bring about the material results he desired; and thissimplicity of the motive involved had its charm. 

Westover was aware of liking Durgin at that moment much more than heought, and of liking him helplessly. In the light of his good-naturedselfishness, the injury to the Lyndes showed much less a sacrilege thanit had seemed; Westover began to see it with Jeff's eyes, and to see itwith reference to what might be low and mean in them, instead of whatmight be fine and high. 

He was sensible of the growth Jeff had made intellectually. He had notbeen at Harvard nearly four years for nothing. He had phrases and couldhandle them. In whatever obscure or perverse fashion, he had profited byhis opportunities. The fellow who could accuse him of being an idealist, and could in some sort prove it, was no longer a naughty boy to betutored and punished. The revolt latent in him would be violent inproportion to the pressure put upon him, and Westover began to bewithout the wish to press his fault home to him so strongly. In theoptimism generated by the punch, he felt that he might leave the case toJeff himself; or else in the comfort we all experience in sinking to alower level, he was unwilling to make the effort to keep his own moralelevation. But he did make an effort to save himself by saying: "Youcan't get what you've done before yourself as you can the action of someone else. It's part of you, and you have to judge the motive as well asthe effect. "

"Well, that's what I'm doing, " said Jeff; "but it seems to me thatyou're trying to have me judge of the effect from a motive I didn'thave. As far as I can make out, I hadn't any motive at all. "

He laughed, and all that Westover could say was, "Then you're stillresponsible for the result. " But this no longer appeared so true to him. 

XXXVIII. 

It was not a condition of Westover's welcome at Lion's Head that heshould seem peculiarly the friend of Jeff Durgin, but he could not helpmaking it so, and he began to overact the part as soon as he met Jeff'smother. He had to speak of him in thanking her for remembering his wishto paint Lion's Head in the winter, and he had to tell her of Jeff'sthoughtfulness during the past fortnight; he had to say that he did notbelieve he should ever have got away if it had not been for him. Thiswas true; Durgin had even come in from Cambridge to see him off on thetrain; he behaved as if the incident with Lynde and all their talk aboutit had cemented the friendship between Westover and himself, and hecould not be too devoted. It now came out that he had written home allabout Westover, and made his mother put up a stove in the painter's oldroom, so that he should have the instant use of it when he arrived. 

It was an air-tight wood-stove, and it filled the chamber with a heat inwhich Westover drowsed as soon as he entered it. He threw himself on thebed, and slept away the fatigue of his railroad journey and the cold ofhis drive with Jombateeste from the station. His nap was long, and hewoke from it in a pleasant languor, with the dream-clouds still hangingin his brain. He opened the damper of his stove, and set it roaringagain; then he pulled down the upper sash of his window and lookedout on a world whose elements of wood and snow and stone he tried toco-ordinate. There was nothing else in that world but these things, sorepellent of one another. He suffered from the incongruity of the woodenbulk of the hotel, with the white drifts deep about it, and with thegranite cliffs of Lion's Head before it, where the gray crags darkenedunder the pink afternoon light which was beginning to play upon itscrest from the early sunset. The wind that had seemed to bore throughhis thick cap and his skull itself, and that had tossed the dry snowlike dust against his eyes on his way from the railroad, had now fallen, and an incomparable quiet wrapped the solitude of the hills. Ateasing sense of the impossibility of the scene, as far as his art wasconcerned, filled him full of a fond despair of rendering its feeling. He could give its light and color and form in a sufficiently vividsuggestion of the fact, but he could not make that pink flush seemto exhale, like a long breath, upon those rugged shapes; he could notimpart that sentiment of delicately, almost of elegance, which hefound in the wilderness, while every detail of civilization physicallydistressed him. In one place the snow had been dug down to the pineplanking of the pathway round the house; and the contact of thiswoodenness with the frozen ground pierced his nerves and set his teethon edge like a harsh noise. When once he saw it he had to make an effortto take his eyes from it, and in a sort unknown to him in summer heperceived the offence of the hotel itself amid the pure and lonelybeauty of the winter landscape. It was a note of intolerable banality, of philistine pretence and vulgar convention, such as Whitwell's low, unpainted cottage at the foot of the hill did not give, nor the littlered school-house, on the other hand, showing through the naked trees. There should have been really no human habitation visible except awigwam in the shelter of the pines, here and there; and when he sawWhitwell making his way up the hill-side road, Westover felt that ifthere must be any human presence it should be some savage clad in skins, instead of the philosopher in his rubber boots and his clothing-storeulster. He preferred the small, wiry shape of Jombateeste, in his bluewoollen cap and his Canadian footgear, as he ran round the corner of thehouse toward the barn, and left the breath of his pipe in the fine airbehind him. 

The light began to deepen from the pale pink to a crimson which stainedthe tops and steeps of snow, and deepened the dark of the woods massedon the mountain slopes between the irregular fields of white. Theburnished brown of the hard-wood trees, the dull carbon shadows of theevergreens, seemed to wither to one black as the red strengthened in thesky. Westover realized that he had lost the best of any possible picturein letting that first delicate color escape him. This crimson was harshand vulgar in comparison; it would have almost a chromo quality; hecensured his pleasure in it as something gross and material, like thatof eating; and on a sudden he felt hungry. He wondered what time theywould give him supper, and he took slight account of the fact that acaprice of the wind had torn its hood of snow from the mountain summit, and that the profile of the Lion's Head showed almost as distinctly asin summer. He stood before the picture which for that day at leastwas lost to him, and questioned whether there would be a hearty meal, something like a dinner, or whether there would be something like afarmhouse supper, mainly of doughnuts and tea. 

He pulled up his window and was going to lie down again, when some oneknocked, and Frank Whitwell stood at the door. "Do you want we shouldbring your supper to you here, Mr. Westover, or will you--"

"Oh, let me join you all!" cried the painter, eagerly. "Is itready--shall I come now?"

"Well, in about five minutes or so. " Frank went away, after settingdown in the room the lamp he had brought. It was a lamp which Westoverthought he remembered from the farm-house period, and on his way down herealized as he had somehow not done in his summer sojourns, the entiretyof the old house in the hotel which had encompassed it. The primitivecold of its stairways and passages struck upon him as soon as he lefthis own room, and he found the parlor door closed against the chill. There was a hot stove-fire within, and a kerosene-lamp turned low, butthere was no one there, and he had the photograph of his first pictureof Lion's Head to himself in the dim light. The voices of Mrs. Durginand Cynthia came to him from the dining-room, and from the kitchenbeyond, with the occasional clash of crockery, and the clang of ironupon iron about the stove, and the quick tread of women's feet upon thebare floor. With these pleasant noises came the smell of cooking, andlater there was an opening and shutting of doors, with a thrill of thefreezing air from without, and the dull thumping of Whitwell's rubberboots, and the quicker flapping of Jombateeste's soft leathern soles. Then there was the sweep of skirted feet at the parlor door, and CynthiaWhitwell came in without perceiving him. She went to the table by thedarkening window, and quickly turned up the light of the lamp. In herignorance of his presence, he saw her as if she had been alone, almostas if she were out of the body; he received from her unconsciousnessthe impression of something rarely pure and fine, and he had a suddencompassion for her, as for something precious that is fated to be wastedor misprized. At a little movement which he made to relieve himself froma sense of eavesdropping, she gave a start, and shut her lips upon thelittle cry that would have escaped from another sort of woman. 

"I didn't know you were here, " she said; and she flushed with theshyness of him which she always showed at first. She had met him alreadywith the rest, but they had scarcely spoken together; and he knew of thestruggle she must now be making with herself when she went on: "I didn'tknow you had been called. I thought you were still sleeping. "

"Yes. I seemed to sleep for centuries, " said West over, "and I woke upfeeling coeval with Lion's Head. But I hope to grow younger again. "

She faltered, and then she asked: "Did you see the light on it when thesun went down?"

"I wish I hadn't. I could never get that light--even if it ever cameagain. "

"It's there every afternoon, when it's clear. "

"I'm sorry for that; I shall have to try for it, then. "

"Wasn't that what you came for?" she asked, by one of the efforts shewas making with everything she said. He could have believed he saw thepulse throbbing in her neck. But she held herself stone-still, and hedivined her resolution to conquer herself, if she should die for it. 

"Yes, I came for that, " said Westover. "That's what makes it sodismaying. If I had only happened on it, I shouldn't have beenresponsible for the failure I shall make of it. "

She smiled, as if she liked his lightness, but doubted if she ought. "Wedon't often get Lion's Head clear of snow. "

"Yes; that's another hardship, " said the painter. "Everything is againstme! If we don't have a snow overnight, and a cloudy day to-morrow, Ishall be in despair. "

She played with the little wheel of the wick; she looked down, and then, with a glance flashed at him, she gasped: "I shall have to take yourlamp for the table tea is ready. "

"Oh, well, if you will only take me with it. I'm frightfully hungry. "

Apparently she could not say anything to that. He tried to get the lampto carry it out for her, but she would not let him. "It isn't heavy, "she said, and hurried out before him. 

It was all nothing, but it was all very charming, and Westover wasrichly content with it; and yet not content, for he felt that thepleasure of it was not truly his, but was a moment of merely borrowedhappiness. 

The table was laid in the old farm-house sitting-room where he had beenserved alone when he first came to Lion's Head. But now he sat down withthe whole family, even to Jombateeste, who brought in a faint odor ofthe barn with him. 

They had each been in contact with the finer world which revisitsnature in the summer-time, and they must all have known something of itsusages, but they had reverted in form and substance to the rustic livingof their neighbors. They had steak for Westover, and baked potatoes; butfor themselves they had such farm fare as Mrs. Durgin had given him thefirst time he supped there. They made their meal chiefly of doughnutsand tea, and hot biscuit, with some sweet dishes of a festive sort addedin recognition of his presence; and there was mince-pie for all. Mrs. Durgin and Whitwell ate with their knives, and Jombateeste filledhimself so soon with every implement at hand that he was able to askexcuse of the others if he left them for the horses before they hadhalf finished. Frank Whitwell fed with a kind of official or functionalconformity to the ways of summer folks; but Cynthia, at whom Westoverglanced with anxiety, only drank some tea and ate a little bread andbutter. He was ashamed of his anxiety, for he had owned that it oughtnot to have mattered if she had used her knife like her father; and itseemed to him as if he had prompted Mrs. Durgin by his curious glanceto say: "We don't know half the time how the child lives. Cynthy! Takesomething to eat!"

Cynthia pleaded that she was not hungry; Mrs. Durgin declared that shewould die if she kept on as she was going; and then the girl escapedto the kitchen on one of the errands which she made from time to timebetween the stove and the table. 

"I presume it's your coming, Mr. Westover, " Mrs. Durgin went on, withthe comfortable superiority of elderly people to all the trials of theyoung. "I don't know why she should make a stranger of you, every time. You've known her pretty much all her life. "

"Ever since you give Jeff what he deserved for scaring her and Frankwith his dog, " said Whitwell. 

"Poor Fox!" Mrs. Durgin sighed. "He did have the least sense for a dog Iever saw. And Jeff used to be so fond of him! Well, I guess he got tiredof him, too, toward the last. "

"He's gone to the happy hunting-grounds now. Colorady didn't agreewith him-or old age, " said Whitwell. "I don't see why the Injuns wa'n'tright, " he pursued, thoughtfully. "If they've got souls, why ha'n'ttheir dogs? I suppose Mr. Westover here would say there wa'n't anycertainty about the Injuns themselves!"

"You know my weak point, Mr. Whitwell, " the painter confessed. "But Ican't prove they haven't. "

"Nor dogs, neither, I guess, " said Whitwell, tolerantly. "It'scurious, though, if animals have got souls, that we ha'n't ever had anycommunications from 'em. You might say that ag'in' the idea. "

"No, I'll let you say it, " returned Westover. "But a good many of thecommunications seem to come from the lower intelligences, if not thelower animals. "

Whitwell laughed out his delight in the thrust. "Well, I guess that'ssomething so. And them old Egyptian devils, over there, that you saydiscovered the doctrine of immortality, seemed to think a cat was aboutas good as a man. What's that, " he appealed to Mrs. Durgin, "Jacksonsaid in his last letter about their cat mummies?"

"Well, I guess I'll finish my supper first, " said Mrs. Durgin, whosenerves Westover would not otherwise have suspected of faintness. "But Jackson's letters, " she continued, loyally, "are about the bestletters!"

"Know they'd got some of 'em in the papers?" Whitwell asked; and at thesurprise that Westover showed he told him how a fellow who was trying tomake a paper go over at the Huddle, had heard of Jackson's letters andteased for some of them, and had printed them as neighborhood news inthat side of his paper which he did not buy ready printed in Boston. 

Mrs. Durgin studied with modest deprecation the effect of the factupon Westover, and seemed satisfied with it. "Well, of course, it'sinterestin' to Jackson's old friends in the country, here. They knowhe'd look at things, over there, pretty much as they would. Well, I hadto lend the letters round so much, anyway, it was a kind of a relief tohave 'em in the paper, where everybody could see 'em, and be done withit. Mr. Whit'ell here, he fixes 'em up so's to leave out the familypart, and I guess they're pretty well thought of. "

Westover said he had no doubt they were, and he should want to see allthe letters they could show him, in print and out of print. 

"If Jackson only had Jeff's health and opportunities--" the motherbegan, with a suppressed passion in her regret. 

Frank Whitwell pushed back his chair. "I guess I'll ask to be excused, "he said to the head of table. 

"There! I a'n't goin' to say any more about that, if that's what you'reafraid of, Frank, " said Mrs. Durgin. "Well, I presume I do talk a gooddeal about Jackson when I get goin', and I presume it's natural Cynthyshouldn't want I should talk about Jeff before folks. Frank, a'n't yougoin' to wait for that plate of hot biscuit?--if she ever gits it here!"

"I guess I don't care for anything more, " said Frank, and he got himselfout of the room more inarticulately than he need, Westover thought. 

His, father followed his retreat with an eye of humorous intelligence. "I guess Frank don't want to keep the young ladies waitin' a greatwhile. There's a church sociable over 't the Huddle, " he explained toWestover. 

"Oh, that's it, is it?" Mrs. Durgin put in. "Why didn't he say so. "

"Well, the young folks don't any of 'em seem to want to talk aboutsuch things nowadays, and I don't know as they ever did. " Whitwell tookWestover into his confidence with a wink. 

The biscuit that Cynthia brought in were burned a little on top, andMrs. Durgin recognized the fact with the question, "Did you get tostudyin', out there? Take one, do, Mr. Westover! You ha'n't made half ameal! If I didn't keep round after her, I don't know what would becomeof us all. The young ladies down at Boston, any of 'em, try to keep upwith the fellows in college?"

"I suppose they do in the Harvard Annex, " said Westover, simply, inspite of the glance with which Mrs. Durgin tried to convey acovert meaning. He understood it afterward, but for the present hissingle-mindedness spared the girl. 

She remained to clear away the table, when the rest left it, andWestover followed Mrs. Durgin into the parlor, where she indemnifiedherself for refraining from any explicit allusion to Jeff beforeCynthia. "The boy, " she explained, when she had made him ransack hismemory for every scrap of fact concerning her son, "don't hardly everwrite to me, and I guess he don't give Cynthy very much news. I presumehe's workin' harder than ever this year. And I'm glad he's goin' about alittle, from what you say. I guess he's got to feelin' a little better. It did worry me for him to feel so what you may call meechin' aboutfolks. You see anything that made you think he wa'n't appreciated?"

After Westover got back into his own room, some one knocked at his door, and he found Whitwell outside. He scarcely asked him to come in, butWhitwell scarcely needed the invitation. "Got everything you want? Itold Cynthy I'd come up and see after you; Frank won't be back in time. "He sat down and put his feet on top of the stove, and struck the heelsof his boots on its edge, from the habit of knocking the caked snow offthem in that way on stove-tops. He did not wait to find out that therewas no responsive sizzling before he asked, with a long nasal sigh, "Well, how is Jeff gettin' along?"

He looked across at Westover, who had provisionally seated himself onhis bed. 

"Why, in the old way. " Whitwell kept his eye on him, and he added: "Isuppose we don't any of us change; we develop. "

Whitwell smiled with pleasure in the loosely philosophic suggestion. "You mean that he's the same kind of a man that he was a boy? Well, Iguess that's so. The question is, what kind of a boy was he? I've beenmullin' over that consid'able since Cynthy and him fixed it up together. Of course, I know it's their business, and all that; but I presume I'vegot a right to spee'late about it?"

He referred the point to Westover, who knew an inner earnestness in it, in spite of Whitwell's habit of outside jocosity. "Every right in theworld, I should say, Mr. Whitwell, " he answered, seriously. 

"Well, I'm glad you feel that way, " said Whitwell, with a littleapparent surprise. "I don't want to meddle, any; but I know what Cynthyis--I no need to brag her up--and I don't feel so over and above certain't I know what he is. He's a good deal of a mixture, if you want to knowhow he strikes me. I don't mean I don't like him; I do; the fellow'sgot a way with him that makes me kind of like him when I see him. He'sgood-natured and clever; and he's willin' to take any amount of troublefor you; but you can't tell where to have him. " Westover denied theappeal for explicit assent in Whitwell's eye, and he went on: "If I'ddone that fellow a good turn, in spite of him, or if I'd held him up tosomething that he allowed was right, and consented to, I should want tokeep a sharp lookout that he didn't play me some ugly trick for it. He'sa comical devil, " Whitwell ended, rather inadequately. "How d's it lookto you? Seen anything lately that seemed to tally with my idee?"

"No, no; I can't say that I have, " said Westover, reluctantly. He wishedto be franker than he now meant to be, but he consulted a scruplethat he did not wholly respect; a mere convention it seemed to him, presently. He said: "I've always felt that charm in him, too, and I'veseen the other traits, though not so clearly as you seem to have done. He has a powerful will, yes--"

He stopped, and Whitwell asked: "Been up to any deviltry lately?"

"I can't say he has. Nothing that I can call intentional. "

"No, " said Whitwell. "What's he done, though?"

"Really, Mr. Whitwell, I don't know that you have any right to expect meto talk him over, when I'm here as his mother's guest--his own guest--?"

"No. I ha'n't, " said Whitwell. "What about the father of the girl he'sgoin' to marry?"

Westover could not deny the force of this. "You'd be anxious if I didn'ttell you what I had in mind, I dare say, more than if I did. " He toldhim of Jeff's behavior with Alan Lynde, and of his talk with him aboutit. "And I think he was honest. It was something that happened, thatwasn't meant. "

Whitwell did not assent directly, somewhat to Westover's surprise. Heasked: "Fellow ever done anything to Jeff?"

"Not that I know of. I don't know that they ever met before. "

Whitwell kicked his heels on the edge of the stove again. "Then it mightbeen an accident, " he said, dryly. 

Westover had to break the silence that followed, and he found himselfdefending Jeff, though somehow not for Jeff's sake. He urged that if hehad the strong will they both recognized in him, he would never committhe errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest. 

"How do you know that a strong-willed man a'n't a weak one?" Whitwellastonished him by asking. "A'n't what we call a strong will just a kindof a bull-dog clinch that the dog himself can't unloose? I take it a manthat has a good will is a strong man. If Jeff done a right thing againsthis will, he wouldn't rest easy till he'd showed that he wa'n't obligedto, by some mischief worse 'n what he was kept out of. I tell you, Mr. Westover, if I'd made that fellow toe the mark any way, I'd be afraid ofhim. " Whitwell looked at Westover with eyes of significance, if not ofconfidence. Then he rose with a prolonged "M--wel-l-l! We're all born, but we a'n't all buried. This world is a queer place. But I guess Jeff'll come out right in the end. "

Westover said, "I'm sure he will!" and he shook hands warmly with thefather of the girl Jeff was going to marry. 

Whitwell came back, after he had got some paces away, and said: "Ofcourse, this is between you and me, Mr. Westover. "

"Of course!"

"I don't mean Mis' Durgin. I shouldn't care what she thought of mytalkin' him over with you. I don't know, " he continued, putting up hishand against the door-frame, to give himself the comfort of its supportwhile he talked, "as you understood what she mean by the young ladiesat Boston keepin' up with the fellows in college. Well, that's whatCynthy's doin' with Jeff, right along; and if he ever works off themconditions of his, and gits his degree, it' ll be because she helped himto. I tell you, there's more than one kind of telepathy in this world, Mr. Westover. That's all. "

XXXIX

Westover understood from Whitwell's afterthought that it was Cynthia hewas anxious to keep ignorant of his misgivings, if they were so much asmisgivings. But the importance of this fact could not stay him againstthe tide of sleep which was bearing him down. When his head touchedthe pillow it swept over him, and he rose from it in the morning with agayety of heart which he knew to be returning health. He jumped out ofbed, and stuffed some shavings into his stove from the wood-box besideit, and laid some logs on them; he slid the damper open, and then laydown again, listening to the fire that showed its red teeth throughthe slats and roared and laughed to the day which sparkled on the whiteworld without. When he got out of bed a second time, he found the roomso hot that he had to pull down his window-sash, and he dressed in atemperature of twenty degrees below zero without knowing that the dryair was more than fresh. Mrs. Durgin called to him through the open doorof her parlor, as he entered the dining-room: "Cynthy will give you yourbreakfast, Mr. Westover. We're all done long ago, and I'm busy in here, "and the girl appeared with the coffee-pot and the dishes she had beenkeeping hot for him at the kitchen stove. She seemed to be going toleave him when she had put them down before him, but she faltered, andthen she asked: "Do you want I should pour your coffee for you?"

"Oh yes! Do!" he begged, and she sat down across the table from him. "I'm ashamed to make this trouble for you, " he added. "I didn't know itwas so late. "

"Oh, we have the whole day for our work, " she answered, tolerantly. 

He laughed, and said: "How strange that seems! I suppose I shall getused to it. But in town we seem never to have a whole day for a day'swork; we always have to do part of it at night, or the next morning. Doyou ever have a day here that's too large a size for its work?"

"You can nearly always find something to do about a house, " shereturned, evasively. "But the time doesn't go the way it does in thesummer. "

"Oh, I know how the country is in the winter, " he said. "I was broughtup in the country. "

"I didn't know that, " she said, and she gave him a stare of surprisebefore her eyes fell. 

"Yes. Out in Wisconsin. My people were emigrants, and I lived in thewoods, there, till I began to paint my way out. I began pretty early, but I was in the woods till I was sixteen. "

"I didn't know that, " she repeated. "I always thought that you were--"

"Summer folks, like the rest? No, I'm all-the-year-round folksoriginally. But I haven't been in the country in the winter since I wasa boy; and it's all been coming back to me, here, like some one else'sexperience. "

She did not say anything, but the interest in her eyes, which she couldnot keep from his face now, prompted him to go on. 

"You can make a beginning in the West easier than you can in the East, and some people who came to our lumber camp discovered me, and gave me achance to begin. I went to Milwaukee first, and they made me think Iwas somebody. Then I came on to New York, and they made me think I wasnobody. I had to go to Europe to find out which I was; but after I hadbeen there long enough I didn't care to know. What I was trying to dowas the important thing to me; not the fellow who was trying to do it. "

"Yes, " she said, with intelligence. 

"I met some Boston people in Italy, and I thought I should like to livewhere that kind of people lived. That's the way I came to be in Boston. It all seems very simple now, but I used to think it might look romanticfrom the outside. I've had a happy life; and I'm glad it began in thecountry. I shouldn't care if it ended there. I don't know why I'vebothered you with my autobiography, though. Perhaps because I thoughtyou knew it already. "

She looked as if she would have said something fitting if she could haveruled herself to it; but she said nothing at all. Her failure seemedto abash her, and she could only ask him if he would not have some morecoffee, and then excuse herself, and leave him to finish his breakfastalone. 

That day he tried for his picture from several points out-of-doorsbefore he found that his own window gave him the best. With the windowopen, and the stove warm at his back, he worked there in great comfortnearly every afternoon. The snows kept off, and the clear sunsets burnedbehind the summit day after day. He painted frankly and faithfully, andmade a picture which, he said to himself, no one would believe in, withthat warm color tender upon the frozen hills. The soft suffusion of thewinter scene was improbable to him when he had it in, nature beforehis eyes; when he looked at it as he got it on his canvas it was simplyimpossible. 

In the forenoons he had nothing to do, for he worked at his picture onlywhen the conditions renewed themselves with the sinking sun. He tried tobe in the open air, and get the good of it; but his strength for walkinghad failed him, and he kept mostly to the paths broken around the house. He went a good deal to the barn with Whitwell and Jombateeste to lookafter the cattle and the horses, whose subdued stamping and champinggave him a sort of animal pleasure. The blended odors of the hay-mowsand of the creatures' breaths came to him with the faint warmth whichtheir bodies diffused through the cold obscurity. 

When the wide doors were rolled back, and the full day was let in, heliked the appeal of their startled eyes, and the calls they made to oneanother from their stalls, while the men spoke back to them in termswhich they seemed to have in common with them, and with the poultrythat flew down from the barn lofts to the barn floor and out into thebrilliant day, with loud clamor and affected alarm. 

In these simple experiences he could not imagine the summer life of theplace. It was nowhere more extinct than in the hollow verandas, wherethe rocking-chairs swung in July and August, and where Westover's stepsin his long tramps up and down woke no echo of the absent feet. In-doorshe kept to the few stove-heated rooms where he dwelt with the family, and sent only now and then a vague conjecture into the hotel built roundthe old farm-house. He meant, before he left, to ask Mrs. Durgin tolet him go through the hotel, but he put it off from day to day, with aphysical shrinking from its cold and solitude. 

The days went by in the swiftness of monotony. His excursions to thebarn, his walks on the verandas, his work on his picture, filled up thefew hours of the light, and when the dark came he contentedly joined thelittle group in Mrs. Durgin's parlor. He had brought two or three bookswith him, and sometimes he read from one of them; or he talked withWhitwell on some of the questions of life and death that engaged hisspeculative mind. Jombateeste preferred the kitchen for the naps he tookafter supper before his early bedtime. Frank Whitwell sat with hisbooks there, where Westover sometimes saw his sister helping him at hisstudies. He was loyally faithful and obedient to her in all things. Hehelped her with the dishes, and was not ashamed to be seen at this work;she had charge of his goings and comings in society; he submitted toher taste in his dress, and accepted her counsel on many points whichhe referred to her, and discussed with her in low-spoken conferences. Heseemed a formal, serious boy, shy like his sister; his father let fallsome hints of a religious cast of mind in him. He had an ambition beyondthe hotel; he wished to study for the ministry; and it was not alonethe chance of going home with the girls that made him constant at theevening meetings. "I don't know where he gits it, " said his father, with a shake of the head that suggested doubt of the wisdom of the son'spreference of theology to planchette. 

Cynthia had the same care of her father as of her brother; she kept himneat, and held him up from lapsing into the slovenliness to which hewould have tended if she had not, as Westover suspected, made constantappeals to him for the respect due their guest. Mrs. Durgin, for herpart, left everything to Cynthia, with a contented acceptance of herfuture rule and an abiding trust in her sense and strength, whichincluded the details of the light work that employed her ratherluxurious leisure. Jombateeste himself came to Cynthia with his mending, and her needle kept him tight and firm against the winter which itamused Westover to realize was the Canuck's native element, insomuchthat there was now something incongruous in the notion of Jombateesteand any other season. 

The girl's motherly care of all the household did not leave Westoverout. Buttons appeared on garments long used to shifty contrivancesfor getting on without them; buttonholes were restored to their properlimits; his overcoat pockets were searched for gloves, and the glovesput back with their finger-tips drawn close as the petals of a flowerwhich had decided to shut and be a bud again. 

He wondered how he could thank her for his share of the blessing thather passion for motherly care was to all the house. It was pathetic, and he used sometimes to forecast her self-devotion with a tenderindignation, which included a due sense of his own present demerit. Hewas not reconciled to the sacrifice because it seemed the happiness, orat least the will, of the nature which made it. All the same it seemed awaste, in its relation to the man she was to marry. 

Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia sat by the lamp and sewed at night, or listenedto the talk of the men. If Westover read aloud, they whispered togetherfrom time to time about some matters remote from it, as women always dowhere there is reading. It was quiet, but it was not dull for Westover, who found himself in no hurry to get back to town. 

Sometimes he thought of the town with repulsion; its unrest, itsvacuous, troubled life haunted him like a memory of sickness; but hesupposed that when he should be quite well again all that would change, and be as it was before. He interested himself, with the sort of shrewdignorance of it that Cynthia showed in the questions she asked aboutit now and then when they chanced to be left alone together. Hefancied that she was trying to form some intelligible image of Jeff'senvironment there, and was piecing together from his talk of it theimpressions she had got from summer folks. He did his best to help her, and to construct for her a veritable likeness of the world as far as heknew it. 

A time came when he spoke frankly of Jeff in something they were saying, and she showed no such shrinking as he had expected she would; hereflected that she might have made stricter conditions with Mrs. Durginthan she expected to keep herself in mentioning him. This might wellhave been necessary with the mother's pride in her son, which knew nostop when it once began to indulge itself. What struck Westover morethan the girl's self-possession when they talked of Jeff was a certainausterity in her with regard to him. She seemed to hold herself tenseagainst any praise of him, as if she should fail him somehow if sherelaxed at all in his favor. 

This, at least, was the rather mystifying impression which Westover gotfrom her evident wish to criticise and understand exactly all that hereported, rather than to flatter herself from it. Whatever her motivewas, he was aware that through it all she permitted herself a closer andfuller trust of himself. At times it was almost too implicit; he wouldhave liked to deserve it better by laying open all that had been in hisheart against Jeff. But he forbore, of course, and he took refuge, aswell as he could, in the respect by which she held herself at a reverentdistance from him when he could not wholly respect himself. 

XL. 

One morning Westover got leave from Mrs. Durgin to help Cynthia openthe dim rooms and cold corridors at the hotel to the sun and air. Shepromised him he should take his death, but he said he would wrap upwarm, and when he came to join the girl in his overcoat and fur cap, hefound Cynthia equipped with a woollen cloud tied around her head, and alittle shawl pinned across her breast. 

"Is that all?" he reproached her. "I ought to have put on a singlewreath of artificial flowers and some sort of a blazer for thisexpedition. Don't you think so, Mrs. Durgin?"

"I believe women can stand about twice as much cold as you can, the bestof you, " she answered, grimly. 

"Then I must try to keep myself as warm as I can with work, " he said. "You must let me do all the rough work of airing out, won't you, Cynthia?"

"There isn't any rough work about it, " she answered, in a sort ofmotherly toleration of his mood, without losing anything of her filialreverence. 

She took care of him, he perceived, as she took care of her brother andher father, but with a delicate respect for his superiority, which wasno longer shyness. 

They began with the office and the parlor, where they flung up thewindows, and opened the doors, and then they opened the dining-room, where the tables stood in long rows, with the chairs piled on them legsupward. Cynthia went about with many sighs for the dust on everything, though to Westover's eyes it all seemed frigidly clean. "If it goes onas it has for the past two years, " she said, "we shall have to add on anew dining-room. I don't know as I like to have it get so large!"

"I never wanted it to go beyond the original farmhouse, " said Westover. "I've been jealous of every boarder but the first. I should have likedto keep it for myself, and let the world know Lion's Head from mypictures. "

"I guess Mrs. Durgin thinks it was your picture that began to sendpeople here. "

"And do you blame me, too? What if the thing I'm doing now should makeit a winter resort? Nothing could save you, then, but a fire. I believethat's Jeff's ambition. Only he would want to put another hotel in placeof this; something that would be more popular. Then the ruin I beganwould be complete, and I shouldn't come any more; I couldn't bear thesight. "

"I guess Mrs. Durgin wouldn't think it was lion's Head if you stoppedcoming, " said Cynthia. 

"But you would know better than that, " said Westover; and then hewas sorry he had said it, for it seemed to ask something of differentquality from her honest wish to make him know their regard for him. 

She did not answer, but went down a long corridor to which they hadmounted, to raise the window at the end, while he raised another at theopposite extremity. When they met at the stairway again to climb to thestory above, he said: "I am always ashamed when I try to make a personof sense say anything silly, " and she flushed, still without answering, as if she understood him, and his meaning pleased her. "But fortunatelya person of sense is usually equal to the temptation. One ought to beserious when he tries it with a person of the other sort; but I don'tknow that one is!"

"Do you feel any draught between these windows?" asked Cynthia, abruptly. "I don't want you should take cold. "

"Oh, I'm all right, " said Westover. 

She went into the rooms on one side of the corridor, and put up theirwindows, and flung the blinds back. He did the same on the other side. He got a peculiar effect of desolation from the mattresses pulled downover the foot of the bedsteads, and the dismantled interiors reflectedin the mirrors of the dressing-cases; and he was going to speak of itwhen he rejoined Cynthia at the stairway leading to the third story, when she said, "Those were Mrs. Vostrand's rooms I came out of thelast. " She nodded her head over her shoulder toward the floor they wereleaving. 

"Were they indeed! And do you remember people's rooms so long?"

"Yes; I always think of rooms by the name of people that have them, ifthey're any way peculiar. "

He thought this bit of uncandor charming, and accepted it as if it werethe whole truth. "And Mrs. Vostrand was certainly peculiar. Tell me, Cynthia, what did you think of her?"

"She was only here a little while. "

"But you wouldn't have come to think of her rooms by her name if shehadn't made a strong impression on you!" She did not answer, and hesaid, "I see you didn't like her!"

The girl would not speak, and Mr. Westover went on: "She used to be verygood to me, and I think she used to be better to herself than sheis now. " He knew that Jeff must have told Cynthia of his affair withGenevieve Vostrand, and he kept himself from speaking of her by aresolution he thought creditable, as he mounted the stairs to the upperstory in the silence to which Cynthia left his last remark. At the topshe made a little pause in the obscurer light of the close-shutteredcorridor, while she said: "I liked her daughter the best. "

"Yes?" he returned. "I--never felt very well acquainted with her, Ibelieve. One couldn't get far with her. Though, for the matter of that, one didn't get far with Mrs. Vostrand herself. Did you think Genevievewas much influenced by her mother?"

"She didn't seem a strong character. "

"No, that was it. She was what her mother wished her to be. I've oftenwondered how much she was interested in the marriage she made. "

Cynthia let a rustic silence ensue, and Westover shrank again from theinquisition he longed to make. 

It was not Genevieve Vostrand's marriage which really concerned him, butCynthia's engagement, and it was her mind that he would have liked tolook into. It might well be supposed that she regarded it in a perfectmatter-of-fact way, and with no ambition beyond it. She was a countrygirl, acquainted from childhood with facts of life which town-bred girlswould not have known without a blunting of the sensibilities, and whyshould she be different from other country girls? She might be asgood and as fine as he saw her, and yet be insensible to the spiritualtoughness of Jeff, because of her love for him. Her very goodness mightmake his badness unimaginable to her, and if her refinement were fromthe conscience merely, and not from the tastes and experiences, too, there was not so much to dread for her in her marriage with such a man. Still, he would have liked, if he could, to tell her what he had toldher father of Durgin's behavior with Lynde, and let her bring the testof her self-devotion to the case with a clear understanding. He hadsometimes been afraid that Whitwell might not be able to keep itto himself; but now he wished that the philosopher had not been sodiscreet. He had all this so absorbingly in mind that he startedpresently with the fear that she had said something and he had notanswered, but when he asked her he found that she had not spoken. Theywere standing at an open window looking out upon Lion's Head, when hesaid: "I don't know how I shall show my gratitude to Mrs. Durgin and youfor thinking of having me up here. I've done a picture of Lion's Headthat might be ever so much worse; but I shouldn't have dreamed ofgetting at it if it hadn't been for you, though I've so often dreamedof doing it. Now I shall go home richer in every sort of way-thanks toyou. "

She answered, simply: "You needn't thank anybody; but it was Jeff whothought of it; we were ready enough to ask you. "

"That was very good of him, " said Westover, whom her words confirmed ina suspicion he had had all along. But what did it matter that Jeff hadsuggested their asking him, and then attributed the notion to them? Itwas not so malign for him to use that means of ingratiating himself withWestover, and of making him forget his behavior with Lynde, and it wasnot unnatural. It was very characteristic; at the worst it merely provedthat Jeff was more ashamed of what he had done than he would allow, andthat was to his credit. 

He heard Cynthia asking: "Mr. Westover, have you ever been at Class Day?He wants us to come. "

"Class Day? Oh, Class Day!" He took a little time to gather himselftogether. "Yes, I've been at a good many. If you care to see somethingpretty, it's the prettiest thing in the world. The students' sistersand mothers come from everywhere; and there's fashion and feastingand flirting, from ten in the morning till ten at night. I'm not surethere's so much happiness; but I can't tell. The young people know aboutthat. I fancy there's a good deal of defeat and disappointment in itall. But if you like beautiful dresses, and music and dancing, and agreat flutter of gayety, you can get more of it at Class Day thanyou can in any other way. The good time depends a great deal upon theacquaintance a student has, and whether he is popular in college. "Westover found this road a little impassable, and he faltered. 

Cynthia did not apparently notice his hesitation. "Do you think Mrs. Durgin would like it?"

"Mrs. Durgin?" Westover found that he had been leaving her out of theaccount, and had been thinking only of Cynthia's pleasure or pain. "Well, I don't suppose--it would be rather fatiguing--Did Jeff want herto come too?"

"He said so. "

"That's very nice of him. If he could devote himself to her; but--Andwould she like to go?"

"To please him, she would. " Westover was silent, and the girl surprisedhim by the appeal she suddenly made to him. "Mr. Westover, do youbelieve it would be very well for either of us to go? I think it wouldbe better for us to leave all that part of his life alone. It's no usein pretending that we're like the kind of people he knows, or that weknow their ways, and I don't believe--"

Westover felt his heart rise in indignant sympathy. "There isn't anyone he knows to compare with you!" he said, and in this he was thinkingmainly of Bessie Lynde. "You're worth a thousand--If I were--if he'shalf a man he would be proud--I beg your pardon! I don't mean--but youunderstand--"

Cynthia put her head far out of the window and looked along the steeproof before them. "There is a blind off one of the windows. I heard itclapping in the wind the other night. I must go and see the number ofthe room. " She drew her head in quickly and ran away without letting himsee her face. 

He followed her. "Let me help you put it on again!"

"No, no!" she called back. "Frank will do that, or Jombateeste, whenthey come to shut up the house. "

XLI. 

Westover, did not meet Durgin for several days after his return fromLion's Head. He brought messages for him from his mother and fromWhitwell, and he waited for him to come and get them so long that he hadto blame himself for not sending them to him. When Jeff appeared, at theend of a week, Westover had a certain embarrassment in meeting him, andthe effort to overcome this carried him beyond his sincerity. He wasaware of feigning the cordiality he showed, and of having less realliking for him than ever before. He suggested that he must be busierevery day, now, with his college work, and he resented the air of socialprosperity which Jeff put on in saying, Yes, there was that, and then hehad some engagements which kept him from coming in sooner. 

He did not say what the engagements were, and they did not recur to thethings they had last spoken of. Westover could not do so without Jeff'sleading, and he was rather glad that he gave none. He stayed only alittle time, which was spent mostly in a show of interest on both sides, and the hollow hilarities which people use to mask their indifferenceto one another's being and doing. Jeff declared that he had never seenWestover looking so well, and said he must go up to Lion's Head again;it had done him good. As for his picture, it was a corker; it made himfeel as if he were there! He asked about all the folks, and receivedWestover's replies with vague laughter, and an absence in his bold eye, which made the painter wonder what his mind was on, without the wish tofind out. He was glad to have him go, though he pressed him to drop insoon again, and said they would take in a play together. 

Jeff said he would like to do that, and he asked at the door whetherWestover was going to the tea at Mrs. Bellingham's. He said he had tolook in there, before he went out to Cambridge; and left Westover inmute amaze at the length he had apparently gone in a road that had onceseemed no thoroughfare for him. Jeff's social acceptance, even after theEnderby ball, which was now some six or seven weeks past, had been slow;but of late, for no reason that he or any one else could have given, ithad gained a sudden precipitance; and people who wondered why they methim at other houses began to ask him to their own. 

He did not care to go to their houses, and he went at first in the hopeof seeing Bessie Lynde again. But this did not happen for some time, andit was a mid-Lenten tea that brought them together. As soon as he caughtsight of her he went up to her and began to talk as if they had been inthe habit of meeting constantly. She could not control a little start athis approach, and he frankly recognized it. 

"What's the matter?"

"Oh--the window!"

"It isn't open, " he said, trying it. "Do you want to try it yourself?"

"I think I can trust you, " she answered, but she sank a little into theshelter of the curtains, not to be seen talking with him, perhaps, ornot to be interrupted--she did not analyze her motive closely. 

He remained talking to her until she went away, and then he contrivedto go with her. She did not try to escape him after that; each timethey met she had the pleasure of realizing that there had never been anydanger of what never happened. But beyond this she could perhaps havegiven no better reason for her willingness to meet him again and againthan the bewildered witnesses of the fact. In her set people not onlynever married outside of it, but they never flirted outside of it. Forone of themselves, even for a girl like Bessie, whom they had not quiteknown from childhood, to be apparently amusing herself with a man likethat, so wholly alien in origin, in tradition, was something unheard of;and it began to look as if Bessie Lynde was more than amused. It seemedto Mary Enderby that wherever she went she saw that man talking toBessie. She could have believed that it was by some evil art that healways contrived to reach Bessie's side, if anything could have beenless like any kind of art than the bold push he made for her as soonas he saw her in a room. But sometimes Miss Enderby feared that it wasBessie who used such finesse as there was, and always put herself wherehe could see her. She waited with trembling for her to give the affairsanction by making her aunt ask him to something at her house. On theother hand, she could not help feeling that Bessie's flirtation was allthe more deplorable for the want of some such legitimation. 

She did not even know certainly whether Jeff ever called upon Bessie ather aunt's house, till one day the man let him out at the same time helet her in. 

"Oh, come up, Molly!" Bessie sang out from the floor above, and met herhalf-way down the stairs, where she kissed her and led her embraced intothe library. 

"You don't like my jay, do you, dear?" she asked, promptly. 

Mary Enderby turned her face, the mirror of conscience, upon her, andasked: "Is he your jay?"

"Well, no; not just in that sense, Molly. But suppose he was?"

"Then I should have nothing to say. "

"And suppose he wasn't?"

Still Mary Enderby found herself with nothing of all she had a thousandtimes thought she should say to Bessie if she had ever the slightestchance. It always seemed so easy, till now, to take Bessie in her arms, and appeal to her good sense, her self-respect, her regard for herfamily and friends; and now it seemed so impossible. 

She heard herself answering, very stiffly: "Perhaps I'd better apologizefor what I've said already. You must think I was very unjust the lasttime we mentioned him. "

"Not at all!" cried Bessie, with a laugh that sounded very mocking andvery unworthy to her friend. "He's all that you said, and worse. Buthe's more than you said, and better. "

"I don't understand, " said Mary, coldly. 

"He's very interesting; he's original; he's different!"

"Oh, every one says that. "

"And he doesn't flatter me, or pretend to think much of me. If he did, I couldn't bear him. You know how I am, Molly. He keeps me interested, don't you understand, and prowling about in the great unknown where hehas his weird being. "

Bessie put her hand to her mouth, and laughed at Mary Enderby with herslanted eyes; a sort of Parisian version of a Chinese motive in eyes. 

"I suppose, " her friend said, sadly, "you won't tell me more than youwish. "

"I won't tell you more than I know--though I'd like to, " said Bessie. She gave Mary a sudden hug. "You dear! There isn't anything of it, ifthat's what you mean. "

"But isn't there danger that there will be, Bessie?" her friendentreated. 

"Danger? I shouldn't call it danger, exactly!"

"But if you don't respect him, Bessie--"

"Why, how can I? He doesn't respect me!"

"I know you're teasing, now, " said Mary Enderby, getting up, "and you'requite right. I have no business to--"

Bessie pulled her down upon the seat again. "Yes, you have! Don't I tellyou, over and over? He doesn't respect me, because I don't know how tomake him, and he wouldn't like it if I did. But now I'll try to make youunderstand. I don't believe I care for him the least; but mind, I'm notcertain, for I've never cared for any one, and I don't know what it'slike. You know I'm not sentimental; I think sentiment's funny; and I'mnot dignified--"

"You're divine, " murmured Mary Enderby, with reproachful adoration. 

"Yes, but you see how my divinity could be improved, " said Bessie, witha wild laugh. "I'm not sentimental, but I'm emotional, and he gives meemotions. He's a riddle, and I'm all the time guessing at him. You getthe answer to the kind of men we know easily; and it's very nice, but itdoesn't amuse you so much as trying. Now, Mr. Durgin--what a name! I cansee it makes you creep--is no more like one of us than a--bear is--andhis attitude toward us is that of a bear who's gone so much with humanbeings that he thinks he's a human being. He's delightful, that way. And, do you know, he's intellectual! He actually brings me books, andwants to read passages to me out of them! He has brought me the plans ofthe new hotel he's going to build. It's to be very aesthetic, and it'sgoing to be called The Lion's Head Inn. There's to be a little theatre, for amateur dramatics, which I could conduct, and for all sorts ofprofessional amusements. If you should ever come, Molly, I'm sure weshall do our best to make you comfortable. "

Mary Enderby would not let Bessie laugh upon her shoulder after she saidthis. "Bessie Lynde, " she said, severely, "if you have no regard foryourself, you ought to have some regard for him. You may say you are notencouraging him, and you may believe it--"

"Oh, I shouldn't say it if I didn't believe it, " Bessie broke in, with amock air of seriousness. 

"I must be going, " said Mary, stiffly, and this time she succeeded ingetting to her feet. 

Bessie laid hold of her again. "You think you've been trifled with, don't you, dear?"

"No--"

"Yes, you do! Don't you try to be slippery, Molly. The plain pikestaffis your style, morally speaking--if any one knows what a pikestaff is. Well, now, listen! You're anxious about me. "

"You know how I feel, Bessie, " said Mary Enderby, looking her in theeyes. 

"Yes, I do, " said Bessie. "The trouble is, I don't know how I feel. Butif I ever do, Molly, I'll tell you! Is that fair?"

"Yes. "

"I'll give you ample warning. At the least little consciousness in theregion of the pericardium, off will go a note by a district messenger, and when you come I'll do whatever you say. There!"

"Oh, Bessie!" cried her friend, and she threw her arms round her, "youalways were the most fascinating creature in the world!"

"Yes, " said Bessie, "that's what I try to have him think. "

XLII. 

Toward the end of April most people who had places at the Shore weremostly in them, but they came up to town on frequent errands, and hadone effect of evanescence with people who still remained in their Bostonhouses provisionally, and seemed more than half absent. The Enderbyshad been at the Shore for a fortnight, and the Lyndes were going to be afortnight longer in Boston, yet, as Bessie made her friend observe, whenMary, ran in for lunch, or stopped for a moment on her way to the train, every few days, they were both of the same transitory quality. 

"It might as well be I as you, " Bessie said one day, "if we only thinkso. It's all very weird, dear, and I'm not sure but it is you who sitday after day at my lonely casement and watch the sparrows examining thefuzzy buds of the Jap ivy to see just how soon they can hope to buildin the vines. Do you object to the ivy buds looking so very much likesnipped woollen rags? If you do, I'm sure it's you, here in my place, for when I come up to town in your personality it sets my teeth on edge. In fact, that's the worst thing about Boston now--the fuzzy ivy buds;there's so much ivy! When you can forget the buds, there are a greatmany things to make you happy. I feel quite as if we were spending thesummer in town and I feel very adventurous and very virtuous, likesome sort of self-righteous bohemian. You don't know how I look downon people who have gone out of town. I consider them very selfishand heartless; I don't know why, exactly. But when we have a goodmarrow-freezing northeasterly storm, and the newspapers come out withtheir ironical congratulations to the tax-dodgers at the Shore, I feelthat Providence is on my side, and I'm getting my reward, even in thisworld. " Bessie suddenly laughed. "I see by your expression of fixedinattention, Molly, that you're thinking of Mr. Durgin!"

Mary gave a start of protest, but she was too honest to deny the factoutright, and Bessie ran on:

"No, we don't sit on a bench in the Common, or even in the Garden, or onthe walk in Commonwealth Avenue. If we come to it later, as the seasonadvances, I shall make him stay quite at the other end of the bench, andnot put his hand along the top. You needn't be afraid, Molly; all theproprieties shall be religiously observed. Perhaps I shall ask AuntLouisa to let us sit out on her front steps, when the evenings getwarmer; but I assure you it's much more comfortable in-doors yet, evenin town, though you'll hardly, believe it at the Shore. Shall you comeup to Class Day?"

"Oh, I don't know, " Mary began, with a sigh of the baffled hope and theinextinguishable expectation which the mention of Class Day stirs in theheart of every Boston girl past twenty. 

"Yes!" said Bessie, with a sigh burlesqued from Mary's. "That is whatwe all say, and it is certainly the most maddening of human festivals. I suppose, if we were quite left to ourselves, we shouldn't go; butwe seem never to be, quite. After every Class Day I say to myself thatnothing on earth could induce me to go to another; but when it comesround again, I find myself grasping at any straw of a pretext. I'mpretending now that I've a tender obligation to go because it's hisClass Day. "

"Bessie!" cried Mary Enderby. "You don't mean it!"

"Not if I say it, Mary dear. What did I promise you about thepericardiac symptoms? But I feel--I feel that if he asks me I must go. Shouldn't you like to go and see a jay Class Day--be part of it? Thinkof going once to the Pi Ute spread--or whatever it is! And dancing intheir tent! And being left out of the Gym, and Beck! Yes, I ought to go, so that it can be brought home to me, and I can have a realizing senseof what I am doing, and be stayed in my mad career. "

"Perhaps, " Mary Enderby suggested, colorlessly, "he will be devotedto his own people. " She had a cold fascination in the picture Bessie'swords had conjured up, and she was saying this less to Bessie than toherself. 

"And I should meet them--his mothers and sisters!" Bessie dramatized anexcess of anguish. "Oh, Mary, that is the very thorn I have been tryingnot to press my heart against; and does your hand commend it to myembrace? His folks! Yes, they would be folks; and what folks! I thinkI am getting a realizing sense. Wait! Don't speak don't move, Molly!"Bessie dropped her chin into her hand, and stared straight forward, gripping Mary Enderby's hand. 

Mary withdrew it. "I shall have to go, Bessie, " she said. "How is youraunt?"

"Must you? Then I shall always say that it was your fault that Icouldn't get a realizing sense--that you prevented me, just when I wasabout to see myself as others see me--as you see me. She's very well!"Bessie sighed in earnest, and her friend gave her hand a little pressureof true sympathy. "But of course it's rather dull here, now. "

"I hate to have you staying on. Couldn't you come down to us for aweek?"

"No. We both think it's best to be here when Alan gets back. We want himto go down with us. " Bessie had seldom spoken openly with Mary Enderbyabout her brother; but that was rather from Mary's shrinking than herown; she knew that everybody understood his case. She went so far now asto say: "He's ever so much better than he has been. We have such hopesof him, if he can keep well, when he gets back this time. "

"Oh, I know he will, " said Mary, fervently. "I'm sure of it. Couldn't wedo something for you, Bessie?"

"No, there isn't anything. But--thank you. I know you always think ofme, and that's worlds. When are you coming up again?"

"I don't know. Next week, some time. "

"Come in and see me--and Alan, if he should be at home. He likes you, and he will be so glad. "

Mary kissed Bessie for consent. "You know how much I admire Alan. Hecould be anything. "

"Yes, he could. If he could!"

Bessie seldom put so much earnest in anything, and Mary loved (as shewould have said) the sad sincerity, the honest hopelessness of her tone. "We must help him. I know we can. "

"We must try. But people who could--if they could--" Bessie stopped. 

Her friend divined that she was no longer speaking wholly of herbrother, but she said: "There isn't any if about it; and there are noifs about anything if we only think so. It's a sin not to think so. "

The mixture of severity and of optimism in the nature of her friend hadoften amused Bessie, and it did not escape her tacit notice in evenso serious a moment as this. Her theory was that she was shocked torecognize it now, because of its relation to her brother, but hertheories did not always agree with the facts. 

That evening, however, she was truly surprised when, after a ratherbelated ring at the door, the card of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Durgin cameup to her from the reception-room. Her aunt had gone to bed, and she hada luxurious moment in which she reaped all the reward of self-denialby supposing herself to have foregone the pleasure of seeing him, andsending down word that she was not at home. She did not wish, indeed, tosee him, but she wished to know how he felt warranted in calling in theevening, and it was this unworthy, curiosity which she stifled for thatluxurious moment. The next, with undiminished dignity, she said, "Askhim to come up, Andrew, " and she waited in the library for him to offera justification of the liberty he had taken. 

He offered none whatever, but behaved at once as if he had always hadthe habit of calling in the evening, or as if it was a general customwhich he need not account for in his own case. He brought her a bookwhich they had talked of at their last meeting, but he made no excuse orpretext of it. 

He said it was a beautiful night, and that he had found it rather warmwalking in from Cambridge. The exercise had moistened his whole rich, red color, and fine drops of perspiration stood on his clean-shavenupper lip and in the hollow between his under lip and his bold chin;he pushed back the coarse, dark-yellow hair from his forehead withhis handkerchief, and let his eyes mock her from under his thick, straw-colored eyebrows. She knew that he was enjoying his own impudence, and he was so handsome that she could not refuse to enjoy it with him. She asked him if he would not have a fan, and he allowed her to get itfor him from the mantel. "Will you have some tea?"

"No; but a glass of water, if you please, " he said, and Bessie rang andsent for some apollinaris, which Jeff drank a great goblet of when itcame. Then he lay back in the deep chair he had taken, with the air ofbeing ready for any little amusing thing she had to say. 

"Are you still a pessimist, Mr. Durgin?" she asked, tentatively, withthe effect of innocence that he knew meant mischief. 

"No, " he said. "I'm a reformed optimist. "

"What is that?"

"It's a man who can't believe all the good he would like, but likes tobelieve all the good he can. "

Bessie said it over, with burlesque thoughtfulness. "There was agirl here to-day, " she said, solemnly, "who must have been a reformedpessimist, then, for she said the same thing. "

"Oh! Miss Enderby, " said Jeff. 

Bessie started. "You're preternatural! But what a pity you should bemistaken. How came you to think of her?"

"She doesn't like me, and you always put me on trial after she's beenhere. "

"Am I putting you on trial now? It's your guilty conscience! Whyshouldn't Mary Enderby like you?"

"Because I'm not good enough. "

"Oh! And what has that to do with people's liking you? If that was areason, how many friends do you think you would have?"

"I'm not sure that I should have any. "

"And doesn't that make you feel badly?"

"Very. " Jeff's confession was a smiling one. 

"You don't show it!"

"I don't want to grieve you. "

"Oh, I'm not sure that would grieve me. "

"Well, I thought I wouldn't risk it. "

"How considerate of you!"

They had come to a little barrier, up that way, and could go no further. Jeff said: "I've just been interviewing another reformed pessimist. "

"Mr. Westover?"

"You're preternatural, too. And you're not mistaken, either. Do you evergo to his studio?"

"No; I haven't been there since he told me it would be of no use to comeas a student. He can be terribly frank. "

"Nobody knows that better than I do, " said Jeff, with a smile for thenotion of Westover's frankness as he had repeatedly experienced it. "Buthe means well. "

"Oh, that's what they always say. But all the frankness can't be wellmeant. Why should uncandor be the only form of malevolence?"

"That's a good idea. I believe I'll put that up on Westover the nexttime he's frank. "

"And will you tell me what he says?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. " Jeff lay back in his chair at large easeand chuckled. "I should like to tell you what he's just been saying tome, but I don't believe I can. "

"Do!"

"You know he was up at Lion's Head in February, and got a winterimpression of the mountain. Did you see it?"

"No. Was that what you were talking about?"

"We talked about something a great deal more interesting--the impressionhe got of me. "

"Winter impression. "

"Cold enough. He had come to the conclusion that I was very selfish andunworthy; that I used other people for my own advantage, or let themuse themselves; that I was treacherous and vindictive, and if I didn'tbetray a man I couldn't be happy till I had beaten him. He said that ifI ever behaved well, it came after I had been successful one way or theother. "

"How perfectly fascinating!" Bessie rested her elbow on the cornerof the table, and her chin in the palm of the hand whose thin fingerstapped her red lips; the light sleeve fell down and showed her pretty, lean little forearm. "Did it strike you as true, at all?"

"I could see how it might strike him as true. "

"Now you are candid. But go on! What did he expect you to do about it?"

"Nothing. He said he didn't suppose I could help it. "

"This is immense, " said Bessie. "I hope I'm taking it all in. How camehe to give you this flattering little impression? So hopeful, too! Or, perhaps your frankness doesn't go any farther?"

"Oh, I don't mind saying. He seemed to think it was a sort of abstractduty he owed to my people. "

"Your-folks?" asked Bessie. 

"Yes, " said Jeff, with a certain dryness. But as her face looked blanklyinnocent, he must have decided that she meant nothing offensive. Herelaxed into a broad smile. "It's a queer household up there, in thewinter. I wonder what you would think of it. "

"You might describe it to me, and perhaps we shall see. "

"You couldn't realize it, " said Jeff, with a finality that piqued her. He reached out for the bottle of apollinaris, with somehow the effect ofbeing in another student's room, and poured himself a glass. This wouldhave amused her, nine times out of ten, but the tenth time had come whenshe chose to resent it. 

"I suppose, " she said, "you are all very much excited about Class Day atCambridge. "

"That sounds like a remark made to open the way to conversation. " Jeffwent on to burlesque a reply in the same spirit. "Oh, very much soindeed, Miss Lynde! We are all looking forward to it so eagerly. Are youcoming?"

She rejected his lead with a slight sigh so skilfully drawn that itdeceived him when she said, gravely:

"I don't know. It's apt to be a very baffling time at the best. All themen that you like are taken up with their own people, and even the menthat you don't like overvalue themselves, and think they're doing youa favor if they give you a turn at the Gym or bring you a plate ofsomething. "

"Well, they are, aren't they?"

"I suppose, yes, that's what makes me hate it. One doesn't like to havesuch men do one a favor. And then, Juniors get younger every year! Evena nice Junior is only a Junior, " she concluded, with a sad fall of hermocking voice. 

"I don't believe there's a Senior in Harvard that wouldn't forsake hisfamily and come to the rescue if your feelings could be known, " saidJeff. He lifted the bottle at his elbow and found it empty, and thisseemed to remind him to rise. 

"Don't make them known, please, " said Bessie. "I shouldn't want anovation. " She sat, after he had risen, as if she wished to detain him, but when he came up to take leave she had to put her hand in his. Shelooked at it there, and so did he; it seemed very little and slim, aboutone-third the size of his palm, and it seemed to go to nothing in hisgrasp. "I should think, " she added, "that the jays would have the besttime on Class Day. I should like to dance at one of their spreads, anddo everything they did. It would be twice the fun, and there would besome nature in it. I should like to see a jay Class Day. "

"If you'll come out, I'll show you one, " said Jeff, without wincing. 

"Oh, will you?" she said, taking away her hand. "That would bedelightful. But what would become of your folks?" She caught a corner ofher mouth with her teeth, as if the word had slipped out. 

"Do you call them folks?" asked Jeff, quietly:

"I--supposed--Don't you?"

"Not in Boston. I do at Lion's Head. "

"Oh! Well-people. "

"I don't know as they're coming. "

"How delightful! I don't mean that; but if they're not, and if youreally knew some jays, and could get me a little glimpse of their ClassDay--"

"I think I could manage it for you. " He spoke as before, but he lookedat her with a mockery in his lips and eyes as intelligent as her own, and the latent change in his mood gave her the sense of being in thepresence of a vivid emotion. She rose in her excitement; she couldsee that he admired her, and was enjoying her insolence too, in a way, though in a way that she did not think she quite understood; and she hadthe wish to make him admire her a little more. 

She let a light of laughter come into her eyes, of harmless mischiefplayed to an end. "I don't deserve your kindness, and I won't come. I'vebeen very wicked, don't you think?"

"Not very--for you, " said Jeff. 

"Oh, how good!" she broke out. "But be frank now! I've offended you. "

"How? I know I'm a jay, and in the country I've got folks. "

"Ah, I see you're hurt at my joking, and I'm awfully sorry. I wish therewas some way of making you forgive me. But it couldn't be that alone, "she went on rather aimlessly as to her words, trusting to his answerfor some leading, and willing meanwhile to prolong the situation for theeffect in her nerves. It had been a very dull and tedious day, and shewas finding much more than she could have expected in the mingled fearand slight which he inspired her with in such singular measure. Thesefeminine subtleties of motive are beyond any but the finest naturesin the other sex, and perhaps all that Jeff perceived was the note ofinsincerity in her words. 

"Couldn't be what alone?" he asked. 

"What I've said, " she ventured, letting her eyes fall; but they were noteyes that fell effectively, and she instantly lifted them again to his. 

"You haven't said anything, and if you've thought anything, what have Igot to do with that? I think all sorts of things about people--or folks, as you call them--"

"Oh, thank you! Now you are forgiving me!"

"I think them about you!"

"Oh, do sit down and tell me the kind of things you think about me!"Bessie implored, sinking back into her chair. 

"You mightn't like them. "

"But if they would do me good?"

"What should I want to do you good for?"

"That's true, " sighed Bessie, thoughtfully. 

"People--folks--"

"Thank you so much!"

"Don't try to do each other good, unless they're cranks like Lancaster, or bores like Mrs. Bevidge--"

"You belong to the analytical school of Seniors! Go on!"

"That's all, " said Jeff. 

"And you don't think I've tried to do you good?"

He laughed. Her comedy was delicious to him. He had never found, anybodyso amusing; he almost respected her for it. 

"If that is your opinion of me, Mr. Durgin, " she said, very gravely, "Iam sorry. May I remark that I don't see why you come, then?"

"I can tell you, " said Jeff, and he advanced upon her where she sat soabruptly that she started and shrank back in her chair. "I come becauseyou've got brains, and you're the only girl that has--here. " They wereAlan's words, almost his words, and for an instant she thought of herbrother, end wondered what he would think of this jay's praising herin his terms. "Because, " Jeff went on, "you've got more sense andnonsense--than all the women here put together. Because it's betterthan a play to hear you talk--and act; and because you're graceful--andfascinating, and chic, and--Good-night, Miss Lynde. "

He put out his hand, but she did not take it as she rose haughtily. "We've said good-night once. I prefer to say good-bye this time. I'msure you will understand why after this I cannot see you again. " Sheseemed to examine him for the effect of these words upon him before shewent on. 

"No, I don't understand, " he answered, coolly; "but it isn't necessaryI should; and I'm quite willing to say good-bye, if you prefer. Youhaven't been so frank with me as I have with you; but that doesn't makeany difference; perhaps you never meant to be, or couldn't be, if youmeant. Good-bye. " He bowed and turned toward the door. 

She fluttered between him and it. "I wish to know what you accuse meof!"

"I? Nothing. "

"You imply that I have been unjust toward you. "

"Oh no!"

"And I can't let you go till you prove it. "

"Prove to a woman that--Will you let me pass?"

"No!" She spread her slender arms across the doorway. 

"Oh, very well!" Jeff took her hands and put them both in the hold ofone of his large, strong bands. Then, with the contact, it came to him, from a varied experience of girls in his rustic past, that this younglady, who was nothing but a girl after all, was playing her comedy witha certain purpose, however little she might know it or own it. He puthis other large, strong hand upon her waist, and pulled her to him andkissed her. Another sort of man, no matter what he had believed of her, would have felt his act a sacrilege then and there. Jeff only knewthat she had not made the faintest straggle against him; she had eventrembled toward him, and he brutally exulted in the belief that he haddone what she wished, whether it was what she meant or not. 

She, for her part, realized that she had been kissed as once she hadhappened to see one of the maids kissed by the grocer's boy at thebasement door. In an instant this man had abolished all her defences offamily, of society, of personality, and put himself on a level with herin the most sacred things of life. Her mind grasped the fact andshe realized it intellectually, while as yet all her emotions seemedparalyzed. She did not know whether she resented it as an abominableoutrage or not; whether she hated the man for it or not. But perhapshe was in love with her, and his love overpowered him; in that caseshe could forgive him, if she were in love with him. She asked herselfwhether she was, and whether she had betrayed herself to him so that hewas somehow warranted in what he did. She wondered if another sort ofman would have done it, a gentleman, who believed she was in love withhim. She wondered if she were as much shocked as she was astonished. She knew that there was everything in the situation to make the factshocking, but she got no distinct reply from her jarred consciousness. 

It ought to be known, and known at once; she ought to tell her brother, as soon as she saw him; she thought of telling her aunt, and she fanciedhaving to shout the affair into her ear, and having to repeat, "Hekissed me! Don't you understand? Kissed me!" Then she reflected with astart that she could never tell any one, that in the midst of her worldshe was alone in relation to this; she was as helpless and friendless asthe poorest and lowliest girl could be. She was more so, for if she werelike the maid whom the grocer's boy kissed she would be of an order ofthings in which she could advise with some one else who had been kissed;and she would know what to feel. 

She asked herself whether she was at all moved at heart; till now itseemed to her that it had not been different with her toward him fromwhat it had been toward all the other men whose meaning she would haveliked to find out. She had not in the least respected them, and she didnot respect him; but if it happened because he was overcome by hislove for her, and could not help it, then perhaps she must forgive himwhether she cared for him or not. 

These ideas presented themselves with the simultaneity of things in adream in that instant when she lingered helplessly in his hold, and sheeven wondered if by any chance Andrew had seen them; but she heard hisstep on the floor below; and at the same time it appeared to her thatshe must be in love with this man if she did not resent what he haddone. 

XLIII

Westover was sitting at an open window of his studio smoking out intothe evening air, and looking down into the thinly foliaged tops of thepublic garden, where the electrics fainted and flushed and hissed. Carstrooped by in the troubled street, scraping the wires overhead thatscreamed as if with pain at the touch of their trolleys, and kindlingnow and again a soft planet, as the trolleys struck the batlike platesthat connected the crossing lines. The painter was getting almost asmuch pleasure out of the planets as pain out of the screams, and he wasin an after-dinner languor in which he was very reluctant to recognize astep, which he thought he knew, on his stairs and his stairs-landing. Aknock at his door followed the sound of the approaching steps. He liftedhimself, and called out, inhospitably, "Come in!" and, as he expected, Jeff Durgin came in. Westover's meetings with him had been an increasingdiscomfort since his return from Lion's Head. The uneasiness which hecommonly felt at the first moment of encounter with him yielded lessand less to the influence of Jeff's cynical bonhomie, and it returned inforce as soon as they parted. 

It was rather dim in the place, except for the light thrown up intoit from the turmoil of lights outside, but he could see that there wasnothing of the smiling mockery on Jeff's face which habitually expressedhis inner hardihood. It was a frowning mockery. 

"Hello!" said Westover. 

"Hello!" answered Jeff. "Any commands for Lion's Head?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going up there to-morrow. I've got to see Cynthia, and tell herwhat I've been doing. "

Westover waited a moment before he asked: "Do you want me to ask whatyou've been doing?"

"I shouldn't mind it. "

The painter paused again. "I don't know that I care to ask. Is it anygood?"

"No!" shouted Jeff. "It's the worst thing yet, I guess you'll think. I couldn't have believed it myself, if I hadn't been through it. Ishouldn't have supposed I was such a fool. I don't care for the girl; Inever did. "

"Cynthia?"

"Cynthia? No! Miss Lynde. Oh, try to take it in!" Jeff cried, with alaugh at the daze in Westover's face. "You must have known about theflirtation; if you haven't, you're the only one. " His vanity in the factbetrayed itself in his voice. "It came to a crisis last week, and wetried to make each other believe that we were in earnest. But therewon't be any real love lost. "

Westover did not speak. He could not make out whether he was surprisedor whether he was shocked, and it seemed to him that he was neithersurprised nor shocked. He wondered whether he had really expectedsomething of the kind, sooner or later, or whether he was not always soapprehensive of some deviltry in Durgin that nothing he did could quitetake him unawares. At last he said: "I suppose it's true--even thoughyou say it. It's probably the only truth in you. "

"That's something like, " said Jeff, as if the contempt gave him a sortof pleasure; and his heavy face lighted up and then darkened again. 

"Well, " said Westover, "what are we going to do? You've come to tellme. "

"I'm going to break with her. I don't care for her--that!" He snappedhis fingers. "I told her I cared because she provoked me to. It happenedbecause she wanted it to and led up to it. "

"Ah!" said Westover. "You put it on her!" But he waited for Durgin'sjustification with a dread that he should find something in it. 

"Pshaw! What's the use? It's been a game from the beginning, and aquestion which should ruin. I won. She meant to throw me over, if thetime came for her, but it came for me first, and it's only a questionnow which shall break first; we've both been near it once or twicealready. I don't mean she shall get the start of me. "

Westover had a glimpse of the innate enmity of the sexes in this game;of its presence in passion that was lived and of its prevalence inpassion that was played. But the fate of neither gambler concerned him;he was impatient of his interest in what Jeff now went on to tell him, without scruple concerning her, or palliation of himself. He scarcelyrealized that he was listening, but afterward he remembered it all, witha little pity for Bessie and none for Jeff, but with more shame for her, too. Love seems more sacredly confided to women than to men; it is andmust be a higher and finer as well as a holier thing with them; theirblame for its betrayal must always be the heavier. He had sometimessuspected Bessie's willingness to amuse herself with Jeff, as with anyother man who would let her play with him; and he would not have reliedupon anything in him to defeat her purpose, if it had been anything soserious as a purpose. 

At the end of Durgin's story he merely asked: "And what are you going todo about Cynthia?"

"I am going to tell her, " said Jeff. "That's what I am going up therefor. "

Westover rose, but Jeff remained sitting where he had put himselfastride of a chair, with his face over the back. The painter walkedslowly up and down before him in the capricious play of the streetlight. He turned a little sick, and he stopped a moment at the windowfor a breath of air. 

"Well?" asked Jeff. 

"Oh! You want my advice?" Westover still felt physically incapable ofthe indignation which he strongly imagined. "I don't know what to sayto you, Durgin. You transcend my powers. Are you able to see this wholething yourself?"

"I guess so, " Jeff answered. "I don't idealize it, though. I look atfacts; they're bad enough. You don't suppose that Miss Lynde is going tobreak her heart over--"

"I don't believe I care for Miss Lynde any more than I care for you. ButI believe I wish you were not going to break with her. "

"Why?"

"Because you and she are fit for each other. If you want my advice, Iadvise you to be true to her--if you can. "

"And Cynthia?"

"Break with her. "

"Oh!" Jeff gave a snort of derision. 

"You're not fit for her. You couldn't do a crueler thing for her than tokeep faith with her. "

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes, I mean it. Stick to Miss Lynde--if she'll let you. "

Jeff seemed puzzled by Westover's attitude, which was either too sincereor too ironical for him. He pushed his hat, which he had kept on, backfrom his forehead. "Damned if I don't believe she would, " he musedaloud. The notion seemed to flatter him and repay him for what he musthave been suffering. He smiled, but he said: "She wouldn't do, even ifshe were any good. Cynthia is worth a million of her. If she wants togive me up after she knows all about me, well and good. I shu'n't blameher. But I shall give her a fair chance, and I shu'n't whitewash myself;you needn't be afraid of that, Mr. Westover. "

"Why should I care what you do?" asked the painter, scornfully. 

"Well, you can't, on my account, " Durgin allowed. "But you do care onher account. "

"Yes, I do, " said Westover, sitting down again, and he did not sayanything more. 

Durgin waited a long while for him to speak before he asked: "Thenthat's really your advice, is it?"

"Yes, break with her. "

"And stick to Miss Lynde. "

"If she'll let you. "

Jeff was silent in his turn. He started from his silence with a laugh. "She'd make a daisy landlady for Lion's Head. I believe she would liketo try it awhile just for the fun. But after the ball was over--well, it would be a good joke, if it was a joke. Cynthia is a woman--she a'n'tany corpse-light. She understands me, and she don't overrate me, either. She knew just how much I was worth, and she took me at her ownvaluation. I've got my way in life marked out, and she believes in it asmuch as I do. If anybody can keep me level and make the best of me, shecan, and she's going to have the chance, if she wants to. I'm going toact square with her about the whole thing. I guess she's the best judgein a case like this, and I shall lay the whole case before her, don'tyou be afraid of that. And she's got to have a free field. Why, evenif there wa'n't any question of her, " he went on, falling more and moreinto his vernacular, "I don't believe I should care in the long run forthis other one. We couldn't make it go for any time at all. She wantsexcitement, and after the summer folks began to leave, and we'd beento Florida for a winter, and then came back to Lion's Head-well! Thisplanet hasn't got excitement enough in it for that girl, and I doubt ifthe solar system has. At any rate, I'm not going to act as advance-agentfor her. "

"I see, " said Westover, "that you've been reasoning it all out, and I'mnot surprised that you've kept your own advantage steadily in mind. I don't suppose you know what a savage you are, and I don't suppose Icould teach you. I sha'n't try, at any rate. I'll take you on your ownground, and I tell you again you had better break with Cynthia. I won'tsay that it's what you owe her, for that won't have any effect with you, but it's what you owe yourself. You can't do a wrong thing and prosperon it--"

"Oh yes, you can, " Jeff interrupted, with a sneering laugh. "How do yousuppose all the big fortunes were made? By keeping the Commandments?"

"No. But you're an unlucky man if life hasn't taught you that you mustpay in suffering of some kind, sooner or later, for every wrong thingyou do--"

"Now that's one of your old-fashioned superstitions, Mr. Westover, " saidJeff, with a growing kindliness in his tone, as if the pathetic delusionof such a man really touched him. "You pay, or you don't pay, just asit happens. If you get hit soon after you've done wrong, you think it'sretribution, and if it holds off till you've forgotten all about it, youthink it's a strange Providence, and you puzzle over it, but you don'treform. You keep right along in the old way. Prosperity and adversity, they've got nothing to do with conduct. If you're a strong man, you getthere, and if you're a weak man, all the righteousness in the universewon't help you. But I propose to do what's right about Cynthia, and notwhat's wrong; and according to your own theory, of life--which won'thold water a minute--I ought to be blessed to the third and fourthgeneration. I don't look for that, though. I shall be blessed if I lookout for myself; and if I don't, I shall suffer for my want of foresight. But I sha'n't suffer for anything else. Well, I'm going to cut some ofmy recitations, and I'm going up to Lion's Head, to-morrow, to settlemy business with Cynthia. I've got a little business to look after herewith some one else first, and I guess I shall have to be about it. Idon't know which I shall like the best. " He rose, and went over to whereWestover was sitting, and held out his hand to him. 

"What is it?" asked Westover. 

"Any commands for Lion's Head?" Jeff said, as at first. 

"No, " said Westover, turning his face away. 

"Oh, all right. " Durgin put his hand into his pocket unshaken. 

XLIV

"What is it, Jeff?" asked Cynthia, the next night, as they started outtogether after supper, and began to stroll down the hill toward herfather's house. It lay looking very little and low in the nook at thefoot of the lane, on the verge of the woods that darkened away to thenorthward from it, under the glassy night sky, lit with the spare youngmoon. The peeping of the frogs in the marshy places filled the air; thehoarse voice of the brook made itself heard at intervals through them. 

"It's not so warm here, quite, as it is in Boston, " he returned. "Areyou wrapped up enough? This air has an edge to it. "

"I'm all right, " said the girl. "What is it?"

"You think there's something? You don't believe I've come up for restover Sunday? I guess mother herself didn't, and I could see your fatherfollowing up my little lies as if he wa'n't going to let one escape him. Well, you're right. There is something. Think of the worst thing youcan, Cynthy!"

She pulled her hand out of his arm, which she had taken, and halted himby her abrupt pause. "You're not going to get through!"

"I'm all right on my conditions, " said Jeff, with forlorn derision. "You'll have to guess again. " He stood looking back over his shoulder ather face, which showed white in the moonlight, swathed airily round inthe old-fashioned soft woollen cloud she wore. 

"Is it some trouble you've got into? I shall stand by you!"

"Oh, you splendid girl! The trouble's over, but it's something you can'tstand by me in, I guess. You know that girl I wrote to you about--theone I met at the college tea, and--"

"Yes! Miss Lynde!"

"Come on! We can't stay here talking. Let's go down and sit on yourporch. " She mechanically obeyed him, and they started on together downthe hill again; but she did not offer to take his arm, and he kept thewidth of the roadway from her. 

"What about her?" she quietly asked. 

"Last night I ended up the flirtation I've been carrying on with herever since. "

"I want to know just what you mean, Jeff. "

"I mean that last week I got engaged to her, and last night I broke withher. " Cynthia seemed to stumble on something; he sprang over and caught. Her, and now she put her hand in his arm, and stayed herself by him asthey walked. 

"Go on, " she said. 

"That's all there is of it. "

"No!" She stopped, and then she asked, with a kind of gentlebewilderment: "What did you want to tell me for?"

"To let you break with me--if you wanted to. "

"Don't you care for me any more?"

"Yes, more than ever I did. But I'm not fit for you, Cynthia. Mr. Westover said I wasn't. I told him about it--"

"What did he say?"

"That I ought to break with you. "

"But if you broke with her?"

"He told me to stick to her. He was right about you, Cynthy. I'm not fitfor you, and that's a fact. "

"What was it about that girl? Tell me everything. " She spoke in a toneof plaintive entreaty, very unlike the command she once used with Jeffwhen she was urging him to be frank with her and true to himself. Theyhad come to her father's house and she freed her hand from his armagain, and sat down on the step before the side door with a little sighas of fatigue. 

"You'll take cold, " said Jeff, who remained on foot in front of her. 

"No, " she said, briefly. "Go on. "

"Why, " Jeff began, harshly, and with a note of scorn for himself and histheme in his voice, "there isn't any more of it, but there's no endto her. I promised Mr. Westover I shouldn't whitewash myself, and Isha'n't. I've been behaving badly, and it's no excuse for me because shewanted me to. I began to go for her as soon as I saw that she wanted meto, and that she liked the excitement. The excitement is all that shecared for; she didn't care for me except for the excitement of it. Shethought she could have fun with me, and then throw me over; but I guessshe found her match. You couldn't understand such a girl, and I don'tbrag of it. All she cared for was to flirt with me, and she liked it allthe more because I was a jay and she could get something new out of it. I can't explain it; but I could see it right along. She fooled herselfmore than she fooled me. "

"Was she--very good-looking?" Cynthia asked, listlessly. 

"No!" shouted Jeff. "She wasn't good-looking at all. She was dark andthin, and she had little slanting eyes; but she was graceful, and sheknew how to make herself go further than any girl I ever saw. If shecame into a room, she made you look at her, or you had to somehow. Shewas bright, too; and she had more sense than all the other girls thereput together. But she was a fool, all the same. " Jeff paused. "Is thatenough?"

"It isn't all. "

"No, it isn't all. We didn't meet much at first, but I got to walkinghome with her from some teas; and then we met at a big ball. Idanced with her the whole while nearly, and--and I took her brotherhome--Pshaw! He was drunk; and I--well, he had got drunk drinking withme at the ball. The wine didn't touch me, but it turned his head; andI took him home; he's a drunkard, anyway. She let us in when we got totheir house, and that kind of made a tie between us. She pretended tothink she was under obligations to me, and so I got to going to herhouse. "

"Did she know how her brother got drunk?"

"She does now. I told her last night. "

"How came you to tell her?"

"I wanted to break with her. I wanted to stop it, once for all, and Ithought that would do it, if anything would. "

"Did that make her willing to give you up?"

Jeff checked himself in a sort of retrospective laugh. "I'm not so sure. I guess she liked the excitement of that, too. You couldn't understandthe kind of girl she--She wanted to flirt with me that night I broughthim home tipsy. "

"I don't care to hear any more about her. Why did you give her up?"

"Because I didn't care for her, and I did care for you, Cynthy. "

"I don't believe it. " Cynthia rose from the step, where she had beensitting, as if with renewed strength. "Go up and tell father to comedown here. I want to see him. " She turned and put her hand on the latchof the door. 

"You're not going in there, Cynthia, " said Jeff. "It must be like deathin there. "

"It's more like death out here. But if it's the cold you mean, youneedn't be troubled. We've had a fire to-day, airing out the house. Willyou go?"

"But what do you--what are you going to say to me?"

"I don't know, yet. If I said anything now, I should tell you what Mr. Westover did: go back to that girl, if she'll let you. You're fit foreach other, as he said. Did you tell her that you were engaged to someone else?"

"I did, last night. "

"But before that she didn't know how false you were. Well, you're notfit for her, then; you're not good enough. "

She opened the door and went in, closing it after her. Jeff turned andwalked slowly away; then he came quickly back, as if he were going tofollow her within. But through the window he saw her as she stood by thetable with a lamp in her hand. She had turned up the light, which shonefull in her face and revealed its severe beauty broken and writhen withthe effort to repress her weeping. He might not have minded the severityor the beauty, but the pathos was more than he could stand. "Oh, Lord!"he said, with a shrug, and he turned again and walked slowly up thehill. 

When Whitwell faced his daughter in the little sitting-room, whose lowceiling his hat almost touched as he stood before her, the storm hadpassed with her, and her tear-drenched visage wore its wonted look ofstill patience. 

"Did Jeff tell you why I sent for you, father?"

"No. But I knew it was trouble, " said Whitwell, with a dignity which-hissympathy for her gave a countenance better adapted to the expression ofthe lighter emotions. 

"I guess you were right about him, " she resumed: She went on to tellin brief the story that Jeff had told her. Her father did not interrupther, but at the end he said, inadequately: "He's a comical devil. I knewabout his gittin' that feller drunk. Mr. Westover told me when he was uphere. "

"Mr. Westover did!" said Cynthia, in a note of indignation. 

"He didn't offer to, " Whitwell explained. "I got it out of him in spiteof him, I guess. " He had sat down with his hat on, as his absent-mindedhabit was, and he now braced his knees against the edge of the table. Cynthia sat across it from him with her head drooped over it, drawingvague figures on the board with her finger. "What are you goin' to do?"

"I don't know, " she answered. 

"I guess you don't quite realize it yet, " her father suggested, tenderly. "Well, I don't want to hurry you any. Take your time. "

"I guess I realize it, " said the girl. 

"Well, it's a pootty plain case, that's a fact, " Whitwell conceded. Shewas silent, and he asked: "How did he come to tell you?"

"It's what he came up for. He began to tell me at once. I was certainthere was some trouble. "

"Was it his notion to come, I wonder, or Mr. Westover's?"

"It was his. But Mr. Westover told him to break off with me, and keep onwith her, if she would let him. "

"I guess that was pootty good advice, " said Whitwell, letting his facebetray his humorous relish of it. "I guess there's a pair of 'em. "

"She was not playing any one else false, " said Cynthia, bitterly. 

"Well, I guess that's so, too, " her father assented. "'Ta'n't so much ofa muchness as you might think, in that light. " He took refuge from thesubject in an undirected whistle. 

After a moment the girl asked, forlornly: "What should you do, father, if you were in my place?"

"Well, there I guess you got me, Cynthy, " said her father. "I don'tbelieve 't any man, I don't care how old he is, or how much experiencehe's had, knows exactly how a girl feels about a thing like this, or hasgot any call to advise her. Of course, the way I feel is like takin' thetop of his head off. But I d' know, " he added, "as that would do a greatdeal of good, either. I presume a woman's got rather of a chore to getalong with a man, anyway. We a'n't any of us much to brag on. It's outo' sight, out o' mind, with the best of us, I guess. "

"It wouldn't be with Jackson--it wouldn't be with Mr. Westover. "

"There a'n't many men like Mr. Westover--well, not a great many;or Jackson, either. Time! I wish Jackson was home! He'd know how tostraighten this thing out, and he wouldn't weaken over Jeff much--well, not much. But he a'n't here, and you've got to act for yourself. The wayI look at it is this: you took Jeff when you knowed what a comicaldevil he was, and I presume you ha'n't got quite the same right to bedisappointed in what he done as if you hadn't knowed. Now mind, I a'n'texcusin' him. But if you knowed he was the feller to play the devil ifhe got a chance, the question is whether--whether--"

"I know what you mean, father, " said the girl, "and I don't want toshirk my responsibility. It was everything to have him come right up andtell me. "

"Well, " said Whitwell, impartially, "as far forth as that goes, I don'tthink he's strained himself. He'd know you would hear of it sooner orlater anyway, and he ha'n't just found out that he was goin' wrong. Beenkeepin' it up for the last three months, and writin' you all the whilethem letters you was so crazy to get. "

"Yes, " sighed the girl. "But we've got to be just to his disposition aswell as his actions. I can see it in one light that can excuse it some. He can't bear to be put down, and I know he's been left out a gooddeal among the students, and it's made him bitter. He told me about it;that's one reason why he wanted to leave Harvard this last year. He sawother young men made much of, when he didn't get any notice; and whenhe had the chance to pay them back with a girl of their own set that wastrying to make a fool of him--"

"That was the time for him to remember you, " said Whitwell. 

Cynthia broke under the defence she was trying to make. "Yes, " she said, with an indrawn sigh, and she began to sob piteously. 

The sight of her grief seemed to kindle her father's wrath to a flame. "Any way you look at him, he's been a dumn blackguard; that's what he'sbeen. You're a million times too good for him; and I--"

She sobbed herself quiet, and then she said: "Father, I don't like to goup there to-night. I want to stay here. "

"All right, Cynthia. I'll come down and stay with you. You goteverything we want here?"

"Yes. And I'll go up and get the breakfast for them in the morning. There won't be much to do. "

"Dumn 'em! Let 'em get their own breakfast!" said Whitwell, recklessly. 

"And, father, " the girl went on as if he had not spoken, "don't you talkto Mrs. Durgin about it, will you?"

"No, no. I sha'n't speak to her. I'll just tell Frank you and me aregoin' to stay down here to-night. She'll suspicion something, but shecan figure it out for herself. Or she can make Jeff tell her. It can'tbe kept from her. "

"Well, let him be the one to tell her. Whatever happens, I shall neverspeak of it to a soul besides you. "

"All right, Cynthy. You'll have the night to think it over--I guess youwon't sleep much--and I'll trust you to do what's the best thing aboutit. "

XLV. 

Cynthia found Mrs. Durgin in the old farm-house kitchen at work gettingbreakfast when she came up to the hotel in the morning. She was early, but the elder woman had been earlier still, and her heavy face showedmore of their common night-long trouble than the girl's. 

She demanded, at sight of her, "What's the matter with you and Jeff, Cynthy?"

Cynthia was unrolling the cloud from her hair. She said, as she tied onher apron: "You must get him to tell you, Mrs. Durgin. "

"Then there is something?"

"Yes. "

"Has Jeff been using you wrong?"

Cynthia stooped to open the oven door, and to turn the pan of biscuitshe found inside. She shut the door sharply to, and said, as she rose:"I don't want to tell anything about it, and I sha'n't, Mrs. Durgin. Hecan do it, if he wants to. Shall I make the coffee?"

"Yes; you seem to make it better than I do. Do you think I shouldn'tbelieve you was fair to him?"

"I wasn't thinking of that. But it's his secret. If he wants to keep it, he can keep it, for all me. "

"You ha'n't give each other up?"

"I don't know. " Cynthia turned away with a trembling chin, and began tobeat the coffee up with an egg she had dropped into the pot. She putthe breakfast on the table when it was ready, but she would not sit downwith the rest. She said she did not want any breakfast, and she drank acup of coffee in the kitchen. 

It fell to Jeff mainly to keep the talk going. He had been out at thebarn with Jombateeste since daybreak, looking after the cattle, and thejoy of the weather had got into his nerves and spirits. At first hehad lain awake after he went to bed, but he had fallen asleep aboutmidnight, and got a good night's rest. He looked fresh and strong andvery handsome. He talked resolutely to every one at the table, butJombateeste was always preoccupied with eating at his meals, and FrankWhitwell had on a Sunday silence, which was perhaps deepened by afeeling that there was something wrong between his sister and Jeff, and it would be rash to commit himself to an open friendliness until heunderstood the case. His father met Jeff's advances with philosophicalblandness and evasion, and Mrs. Durgin was provisionally dry and severeboth with the Whitwells and her son. After breakfast she went to theparlor, and Jeff set about a tour of the hotel, inside and out. Helooked carefully to the details of its winter keeping. Then he cameback and boldly joined his mother where she sat before her stove, whosesubdued heat she found pleasant in the lingering cold of the earlyspring. 

He tossed his hat on the table beside her, and sat down on the otherside of the stove. "Well, I must say the place has been well lookedafter. I don't believe Jackson himself could have kept it in bettershape. When was the last you heard from him?"

"I hope, " said his mother, gravely, "you've been lookin' after your endat Boston, too. "

"Well, not as well as you have here, mother, " said Jeff, candidly. "HasCynthy told you?"

"I guess she expected you to tell me, if there was anything. "

"There's a lot; but I guess I needn't go over it all. I've been playingthe devil. "

"Jeff!"

"Yes, I have. I've been going with another girl down there, one the kindyou wanted me to make up to, and I went so far I--well, I made love toher; and then I thought it over, and found out I didn't really care forher, and I had to tell her so, and then I came up to tell Cynthy. That'sabout the size of it. What do you think of it?"

"D' you tell Cynthy?"

"Yes, I told her. "

"What 'd she say?"

"She said I'd better go back to the other girl. " Jeff laughed hardily, but his mother remained impassive. 

"I guess she's right; I guess you had. "

"That seems to be the general opinion. That's what Mr. Westover advised. I seem to be the only one against it. I suppose you mean that I'm notfit for Cynthy. I don't deny it. All I say is I want her, and I don'twant the other one. What are you going to do in a case like that?"

"The way I should look at it, " said his mother, "is this: whatever youare, Cynthy made you. You was a lazy, disobedient, worthless boy, andit was her carin' for you from the first that put any spirit and anyprinciple into you. It was her that helped you at school when you waslittle things together; and she helped you at the academy, and she'shelped you at college. I'll bet she could take a degree, or whateverit is, at Harvard better than you could now; and if you ever do take adegree, you've got her to thank for it. "

"That's so, " said Jeff. "And what's the reason you didn't want me tomarry her when I came in here last summer and told you I'd asked herto?"

"You know well enough what the reason was. It was part of the same thingas my wantin' you to be a lawyer; but I might knowed that if you didn'thave Cynthy to go into court with you, and put the words into yourmouth, you wouldn't make a speech that would"--Mrs. Durgin paused for afitting figure--"save a flea from the gallows. "

Jeff burst into a laugh. "Well, I guess that's so, mother. And now youwant me to throw away the only chance I've got of learning how to runLion's Head in the right way by breaking with Cynthy. "

"Nobody wants you to run Lion's Head for a while yet, " his motherreturned, scornfully. "Jackson is going to run Lion's Head. He'll behome the end of June, and I'll run Lion's Head till he gets here. Youtalk, " she went on, "as if it was in your hands to break with Cynthy, orthrow away the chance with her. The way I look at it, she's broke withyou, and you ha'n't got any chance with her. Oh, Jeff, " she suddenlyappealed to him, "tell me all about it! What have you been up to? If Iunderstood it once, I know I can make her see it in the right light. "

"The better you understand it, mother, the less you'll like it; and Iguess Cynthy sees it in the right light already. What did she say?"

"Nothing. She said she'd leave it to you. "

"Well, that's like Cynthy. I'll tell you, then, " said Jeff; and hetold his mother his whole affair with Bessie Lynde. He had to bevery elemental, and he was aware, as he had never been before, of thedifference between Bessie's world and his mother's world, in trying tomake Bessie's world conceivable to her. 

He was patient in going over every obscure point, and illustrating fromthe characters and condition of different summer folks the factsof Bessie's entourage. It is doubtful, however, if he succeeded inconveying to his mother a clear and just notion of the purely chicnature of the girl. In the end she seemed to conceive of her simply asa hussy, and so pronounced her, without limit or qualification, in spiteof Jeff's laughing attempt to palliate her behavior, and to inculpatehimself. She said she did not see what he had done that was so much outof the way. That thing had led him on from the beginning; she had merelygot her come-uppings, when all was said. Mrs. Durgin believed Cynthiawould look at it as she did, if she could have it put before herrightly. Jeff shook his head with persistent misgiving. His notion wasthat Cynthia saw the affair only too clearly, and that there was no newlight to be thrown on it from her point of view. Mrs. Durgin would notallow this; she was sure that she could bring Cynthia round; and sheasked Jeff whether it was his getting that fellow drunk that she seemedto blame him for the most. He answered that he thought that was prettybad, but he did not believe that was the worst thing in Cynthia's eyes. He did not forbid his mother's trying to do what she could with her, and he went away for a walk, and left the house to the two women. Jombateeste was in the barn, which he preferred to the house, andFrank Whitwell had gone to church over at the Huddle. As Jeff passedWhitwell's cottage in setting out on his stroll he saw the philosopherthrough the window, seated with his legs on the table, his hat pushedback, and his spectacles fallen to the point of his nose, reading, andmoving his lips as he read. 

The forenoon sun was soft, but the air was cool. 

There was still plenty of snow on the upper slopes of the hills, andthere was a drift here and there in a corner of pasture wall in thevalley; but the springtime green was beginning to hover over the wetplaces in the fields; the catkins silvered the golden tracery of thewillow branches by the brook; there was a buzz of bees about them, andabout the maples, blackened by the earlier flow of sap through the holesin the bark made by the woodpeckers' bills. Now and then the tremolo ofa bluebird shook in the tender light and the keen air. At one point inthe road where the sun fell upon some young pines in a sheltered spot abalsamic odor exhaled from them. 

These gentle sights and sounds and odors blended in the influence whichJeff's spirit felt more and more. He realized that he was a blot on theloveliness of the morning. He had a longing to make atonement and to winforgiveness. His heart was humbled toward Cynthia, and he went wonderinghow his mother would make it out with her, and how, if she won him anyadvantage, he should avail himself of it and regain the girl's trust;he had no doubt of her love. He perceived that there was nothing forhim hereafter but the most perfect constancy of thought and deed, and hedesired nothing better. 

At a turn of his road where it branched toward the Huddle a group ofyoung girls stood joking and laughing; before Jeff came up with themthey separated, and all but one continued on the way beyond the turning. She came toward Jeff, who gayly recognized her as she drew near. 

She blushed and bridled at his bow and at his beauty and splendor, andin her embarrassment pertly said that she did not suppose he would haveremembered her. She was very young, but at fifteen a country girl is notso young as her town sister at eighteen in the ways of the other sex. 

Jeff answered that he should have known her anywhere, in spite of herlooking so much older than she did in the summer when she had come withberries to the hotel. He said she must be feeling herself quite a younglady now, in her long dresses, and he praised the dress which she hadon. He said it became her style; and he found such relief from his heavythoughts in these harmless pleasantries that he kept on with them. Hehad involuntarily turned with her to walk back to her house on the wayhe had come, and he asked her if he might not carry her catkins for her. She had a sheaf of them in the hollow of her slender arm, which seemedto him very pretty, and after a little struggle she yielded them to him. The struggle gave him still greater relief from his self-reproach, and at her gate he begged her to let him keep one switch of thepussywillows, and he stood a moment wondering whether he might notask her for something else. She chose one from the bundle, and drew itlightly across his face before she put it in his hand. "You may havethis for Cynthy, " she said, and she ran laughingly up the pathway to herdoor. 

XLVI

Cynthia did not appear at dinner, and Jeff asked his mother when he sawher alone if she had spoken to the girl. "Yes, but she said she did notwant to talk yet. "

"All right, " he returned. "I'm going to take a nap; I believe I feel asif I hadn't slept for a month. "

He slept the greater part of the afternoon, and came down rather dull tothe early tea. Cynthia was absent again, and his mother was silent andwore a troubled look. Whitwell was full of a novel conception of theagency of hypnotism in interpreting the life of the soul as it isintimated in dreams. He had been reading a book that affirmed theconsubstantiality of the sleep-dream and the hypnotic illusion. Hewanted to know if Jeff, down at Boston, had seen anything of thehypnotic doings that would throw light on this theory. 

It was still full light when they rose from the table, and it wasscarcely twilight when Jeff heard Cynthia letting herself out at theback door. He fancied her going down to her father's house, and he wentout to the corner of the hotel to meet her. She faltered a moment atsight of him, and then kept on with averted face. 

He joined her, and walked beside her. "Well, Cynthy, what are you goingto say to me? I'm off for Cambridge again to-morrow morning, and Isuppose we've got to understand each other. I came up here to put myselfin your hands, to keep or to throw away, just as you please. Well? Haveyou thought about it?"

"Every minute, " said the girl, quietly. 

"Well?"

"If you had cared for me, it couldn't have happened. "

"Oh yes, it could. Now that's just where you're mistaken. That's wherea woman never can understand a man. I might carry on with half a dozengirls, and yet never forget you, or think less of you, although I couldsee all the time how pretty and bright every one of 'em was. That's theway a man's mind is built. It's curious, but it's true. "

"I don't believe I care for any share in your mind, then, " said thegirl. 

"Oh, come, now! You don't mean that. You know I was just joking; youknow I don't justify what I've done, and I don't excuse it. But I thinkI've acted pretty square with you about it--about telling you, I mean. I don't want to lay any claim, but you remember when you made me promisethat if there was anything shady I wanted to hide from you--Well, Iacted on that. You do remember?"

"Yes, " said Cynthia, and she pulled the cloud over the side of her facenext to him, and walked a little faster. 

He hastened his steps to keep up with her. "Cynthy, if you put your armsround me, as you did then--"

"I can't Jeff!"

"You don't want to. "

"Yes, I do! But you don't want me to, as you did then. Do you?" Shestopped abruptly and faced him full. "Tell me, honestly!"

Jeff dropped his bold eyes, and the smile left his handsome mouth. 

"You don't, " said the girl, "for you know that if you did, I would doit. " She began to walk on again. "It wouldn't be hard for me to forgiveyou anything you've done against me--or against yourself; I should carefor you the same--if you were the same person; but you're not the same, and you know it. I told you then--that time that I didn't want to makeyou do what you knew was right, and I never shall try to do it again. I'm sorry I did it then. I was wrong. And I should be afraid of you if Idid now. Some time you would make me suffer for it, just as you've mademe suffer for making you do then what was right. "

It struck Jeff as a very curious fact that Cynthia must always haveknown him better than he knew himself in some ways, for he now perceivedthe truth and accuracy of her words. He gave her mind credit for thepenetration due her heart; he did not understand that it is throughtheir love women divine the souls of men. What other witnesses of hischaracter had slowly and carefully reasoned out from their experience ofhim she had known from the beginning, because he was dear to her. 

He was silent, and then, with rare gravity, he said, "Cynthia, I believeyou're right, " and he never knew how her heart leaped toward him athis words. "I'm a pretty bad chap, I guess. But I want you to give meanother chance and I'll try not to make you pay for it, either, " headded, with a flicker of his saucy humor. 

"I'll give you a chance, then, " she said, and she shrank from the handhe put out toward her. "Go back and tell that girl you're free now, andif she wants you she can have you. "

"Is that what you call a chance?" demanded Jeff, between anger andinjury. For an instant he imagined her deriding him and revengingherself. 

"It's the only one I can give you. She's never tried to make you do whatwas right, and you'll never be tempted to hurt her. "

"You're pretty rough on me, Cynthy, " Jeff protested, almost plaintively. He asked, more in character: "Ain't you afraid of making me do right, now?"

"I'm not making you. I don't promise you anything, even if she won'thave you. "

"Oh!"

"Did you suppose I didn't mean that you were free? That I would put alie in your mouth for you to be true with?"

"I guess you're too deep for me, " said Jeff, after a sulky silence. 

"Then it's all off between us? What do you say?"

"What do you say?"

"I say it's just as it was before, if you care for me. "

"I care for you, but it can never be the same as it was before. Whatyou've done, you've done. I wish I could help it, but I can't. I can'tmake myself over into what I was twenty-four hours ago. I seem anotherperson, in another world; it's as if I died, and came to life somewhereelse. I'm sorry enough, if that could help, but it can't. Go and tellthat girl the truth: that you came up here to me, and I sent you back toher. "

A gleam of amusement visited Jeff in the gloom where he seemed to bedarkling. He fancied doing that very thing with Bessie Lynde, and thewild joy she would snatch from an experience so unique, so impossible. Then the gleam faded. "And what if I didn't want her?" he demanded. 

"Tell her that too, " said Cynthia. 

"I suppose, " said Jeff, sulkily, "you'll let me go away and do as Iplease, if I'm free. "

"Oh yes. I don't want you to do anything because I told you. I won'tmake that mistake again. Go and do what you are able to do of your ownfree will. You know what you ought to do as well as I do; and you know agreat deal better what you can do. "

They had reached Cynthia's house, and they were talking at the sidedoor, as they had the night before, when there had been hope for her inthe newness of her calamity, before she had yet fully imagined it. 

Jeff made no answer to her last words. He asked, "Am I going to see youagain?"

"I guess not. I don't believe I shall be up before you start. "

"All right. Good-bye, then. " He held out his hand, and she put hers init for the moment he chose to hold it. Then he turned and slowly climbedthe hill. 

Cynthia was still lying with her face in her pillow when her fathercame into the dark little house, and peered into her room with the newlylighted lamp in his hand. She turned her face quickly over and looked athim with dry and shining eyes. 

"Well, it's all over with Jeff and me, father. "

"Well, I'm satisfied, " said Whitwell. "If you could ha' made it up, soyou could ha' felt right about it, I shouldn't ha' had anything to sayagainst it, but I'm glad it's turned out the way it has. He's a comicaldevil, and he always was, and I'm glad you a'n't takin' on about him anymore. You used to have so much spirit when you was little. "

"Oh, --spirit! You don't know how much spirit I've had, now. "

"Well, I presume not, " Whitwell assented. 

"I've been thinking, " said the girl, after a little pause, "that weshall have to go away from here. "

"Well, I guess not, " her father began. "Not for no Jeff Dur--"

"Yes, yes. We must! Don't make one talk about it. We'll stay here tillJackson gets back in June, and then--we must go somewhere else. We'll godown to Boston, and I'll try to get a place to teach, or something, andFrank can get a place. "

"I presume, " Whitwell mused, "that Mr. Westover could--"

"Father!" cried the girl, with an energy that startled him, as shelifted herself on her elbow. "Don't ever think of troubling Mr. Westover! Oh, " she lamented, "I was thinking of troubling him myself!But we mustn't, we mustn't! I should be so ashamed!"

"Well, " said Whitwell, "time enough to think about all that. We got twogood months yet to plan it out before Jackson gets back, and I guess wecan think of something before that. I presume, " he added, thoughtfully, "that when Mrs. Durgin hears that you've give Jeff the sack, she'll makeconsid'able of a kick. She done it when you got engaged. "

XLVII. 

After he went back to Cambridge, Jeff continued mechanically in thedirection given him by motives which had ceased for him. In the midstof his divergence with Bessie Lynde he had still kept an inner fealty toCynthia, and tried to fulfil the purposes and ambition she had for him. The operation of this habitual allegiance now kept him up to his work, but the time must come when it could no longer operate, when his wholeconsciousness should accept the fact known to his intelligence, and heshould recognize the close of that incident of his life as the bereavedfinally accept and recognize the fact of death. 

The event brought him relief, and it brought him freedom. He wassensible in his relaxation of having strained up to another's ideal, ofhaving been hampered by another's will. His pleasure in the relief wastempered by a regret, not wholly unpleasant, for the girl whose aims, since they were no longer his, must be disappointed. He was sorry forCynthia, and in his remorse he was fonder of her than he had ever been. He felt her magnanimity and clemency; he began to question, in thatwordless deep of being where volition begins, whether it would not bepaying a kind of duty to her if he took her at her word and tried to goback to Bessie Lynde. But for the present he did nothing but renounceall notion of working at his conditions, or attempting to take a degree. That was part of a thing that was past, and was no part of anything tocome, so far as Jeff now forecast his future. 

He did not choose to report himself to Westover, and risk a scolding, or a snubbing. He easily forgave Westover for the tone he had taken attheir last meeting, but he did not care to see him. He would have methim half-way, however, in a friendly advance, and he was aware of muchgood-will toward him, which he could not have been reluctant to show ifchance had brought them together. 

Jeff missed Cynthia's letters which used to come so regularly everyTuesday, and he had a half-hour every Sunday which was at first ratherpainfully vacant since he no longer wrote to her. But in this vacancyhe had at least no longer the pang of self-reproach which her lettersalways brought him, and he was not obliged to put himself to the shameof concealment in writing to her. He had never minded that tacit lyingon his own account, but he hated it in relation to her; it always hurthim as something incongruous and unfit. He wrote to his mother nowon Sunday, and in his first letter, while the impression of Cynthia'sdignity and generosity was still vivid, he urged her to make it clear tothe girl that he wished her and her family to remain at Lion's Head asif nothing had happened. He put a great deal of real feeling into thisrequest, and he offered to go and spend a year in Europe, if his motherthought that Cynthia would be more reconciled to his coming back at theend of that time. 

His mother answered with a dryness to which his ear supplied the tonesof her voice, that she would try to get along in the management ofLion's Head till his brother got back, but that she had no objection tohis going to Europe for a year if he had the money to spare. Jeff couldnot refuse her joke, as he felt it, a certain applause, but he thoughtit pretty rough that his mother should take part so decidedly againsthim as she seemed to be doing. He had expected her to be angry with him, but before they parted she had seemed to find some excuse for him, andyet here she was siding against her own son in what he might very wellconsider an unnatural way. If Jackson had been at home he would havelaid it to his charge; but he knew that Cynthia would have scornedeven to speak of him with his mother, and he knew too well his mother'sslight for Whitwell to suppose that he could have influenced her. His mind turned in momentary suspicion to Westover. Had Westover, he wondered, with a purpose to pay him up for it forming itselfsimultaneously with his question, been setting his mother against him?She might have written to Westover to get at the true inwardness of hisbehavior, and Westover might have written her something that had madeher harden her heart against him. But upon reflection this seemed out ofcharacter for both of them; and Jeff was thrown back upon his mother'ssober second thought of his misconduct for an explanation of hercoldness. He could not deny that he had grievously disappointed her inseveral ways. But he did not see why he should not take a certain hintfrom her letter, or construct a hint from it, at one with a vague intentprompted by his own restless and curious vanity. Since he had partedwith Bessie Lynde, on terms of humiliation for her which must have beenanguish for him if he had ever loved her, or loved anything but hispower over her, he had remained in absolute ignorance of her. He hadnot heard where she was or how she was; but now, as the few weeks beforeClass Day and Commencement crumbled away, he began to wonder why shemade no sign. He believed that since she had been willing to go sofar to get him, she would not be willing to give him up so easily. Thethought of Cynthia had always intruded more or less effectively betweenthem, but now that this thought began to fade into the past, the thoughtof Bessie began to grow out of it with no interposing shadow. 

However, Jeff was in no hurry. It was not passion that moved him, andthe mood in which he could play with the notion of getting back to hisflirtation with Bessie Lynde was pleasanter after the violence of recentevents than any renewal of strong sensations could be. He preferred toloiter in this mood, and he was meantime much more comfortable thanhe had been for a great while. He was rid of the disagreeable sense ofdisloyalty to Cynthia, and he was rid of the stress of living up to herconscience in various ways. He was rid of Bessie Lynde, too, and of thetrouble of forecasting and discounting her caprices. His thought turnedat times with a soft regret to hopes, disappointments, experiencesconnected with neither, and now tinged with a tender melancholy, unalloyed by shame or remorse. As he drew nearer to Class Day he had asomewhat keener compunction for Cynthia and the hopes he had encouragedher to build and had then dashed. But he was coming more and more toregard it all as fatality; and if the chance that he counted upon tobring him and Bessie together again had occurred he could have moreeasily forgiven himself. 

One of the jays, who was spreading on rather a large scale, wanted Jeffto spread with him, but he refused, because, as he said, he meant tokeep out of it altogether; and for the same reason he declined to takepart in the spread of a rather jay society he belonged to. In his secretheart he trusted that some friendly fortuity might throw an invitationto Beck Hall in his way, or at least a card for the Gym, which, if nolonger the place it had been, was still by no means jay. He got neither;but as he felt all the joy of the June day in his young blood heconsoled himself very well with the dancing at one of the halls, wherethe company happened that year to be openly, almost recklessly jay. Jeffhad some distinction among the fellows who enviously knew of his socialsuccess during the winter, and especially of his affair with BessieLynde; and there were some girls very pretty and very well dressed amongthe crowd of girls who were neither. They were from remote parts of thecountry, and in the charge of chaperons ignorant of the differences sopoignant to local society. Jeff went about among them, and danced withthe sisters and cousins of several men who seemed superior to the lostcondition of their kinswomen; these were nice fellows enough, but doomedby their grinding, or digging, or their want of worldly wisdom, to aplace among the jays, when they really had some qualifications for anobler standing. He had a very good time, and he was enjoying himselfin his devotion to a lively young brunette whom he was making laugh withhis jokes about some of the others, when his eye was caught by a groupof ladies who advanced among the jays with something of that collectiveintrepidity and individual apprehension characteristic of people inslumming. They had the air of not knowing what might happen to them, but the adventurous young Boston matron in charge of the girls kept on abold front behind her lorgnette, and swept the strange company shefound herself in with an unshrinking eye as she led her band among thepromenaders, and past the couples seated along the walls. She hesitateda moment as her glance fell upon Jeff, and then she yielded, at whateverrisk, to the comfort of finding a known face among so many aliens. "Why, Mr. Durgin!" she called out. "Bessie, here's Mr. Durgin, " and she turnedto the girl, who was in her train, as Jeff had perceived by somethingfiner than the senses from the first. 

He rose from the side of his brunette, whose brother was standing near, and shook hands with the adventurous young matron, who seemed suddenlymuch better acquainted with him than he had ever thought her, and withBessie Lynde; the others were New York girls, and the matron presentedhim. "Are you going on?" she asked, and the vague challenge with thesmile that accompanied it was sufficient invitation for him. 

"Why, I believe so, " he said, and he turned to take leave of his prettybrunette; but she had promptly vanished with her brother, and he wasspared the trouble of getting rid of her. He would have been equal tomuch more for the sake of finding himself with Bessie Lynde again, whoseexcitement he could see burning in her eyes, though her thick complexiongrew neither brighter nor paler. He did not know what quality ofexcitement it might be, but he said, audaciously: "It's a good whilesince we met!" and he was sensible that his audacity availed. 

"Is it?" she asked. He put himself at her side, and he did not leave heragain till he went to dress for the struggle around the Tree. He foundhimself easily included in the adventurous young matron's party. Hehad not the elegance of some of the taller and slenderer men in thescholar's gown, but the cap became his handsome face. His affair withBessie Lynde had given him a certain note, and an adventurous youngmatron, who was naturally a little indiscriminate, might very well havebeen willing to let him go about with her party. She could not know howimpudent his mere presence was with reference to Bessie, and the girlherself made no sign that could have enlightened her. She acceptedsomething more that her share of his general usefulness to the party;she danced with him whenever he asked her, and she seemed not to scrupleto publish her affair with him in the openest manner. If he could havestilled a certain shame for her which he felt, he would have thought hewas having the best kind of time. They made no account of by-gones intheir talk, but she had never been so brilliant, or prompted him to somany of the effronteries which were the spirit of his humor. He thoughther awfully nice, with lots of sense; he liked her letting him come backwithout any fooling or fuss, and he began to admire instead of despisingher for it. Decidedly it was, as she would have said, the chicquest sortof thing. What was the use, anyway? He made up his mind. 

When he said he must go and dress for the Tree, he took leave of herfirst, and he was aware of a vivid emotion, which was like regret inher at parting with him. She said, Must he? She seemed to want to saysomething more to him; while he was dismissing himself from the others, he noticed that once or twice she opened her lips as if she were goingto speak. In the end she did nothing more important than to ask if hehad seen her brother; but after he had left the party he turned and sawher following him with eyes that he fancied anxious and even frightenedin their gaze. 

The riot round the Tree roared itself through its wonted events. Classafter class of the undergraduates filed in and sank upon the grass belowthe terraces and parterres of brilliantly dressed ladies within thequadrangle of seats; the alumni pushed themselves together against thewall of Holder Chapel; the men of the Senior class came last in theirgrotesque variety of sweaters and second and third best clothes for thescramble at the Tree. The regulation cheers tore from throats that grewhoarser and hoarser, till every class and every favorite in the facultyhad been cheered. Then the signal-hat was flung into the air, andthe rush at the Tree was made, and the combat' for the flowers thatgarlanded its burly waist began. 

Jeff's size and shape forbade him to try for the flowers from theshoulders of others. He was one of a group of jays who set their backsto the Tree, and fought away all comers except their own; they pulleddown every man not of their sort, and put up a jay, who stripped theTree of its flowers and flung them to his fellows below. As he was letdrop to the ground, Jeff snatched a handful of his spoil from him, andmade off with it toward the place where he had seen Bessie Lynde and herparty. But when he reached the place, shouldering and elbowing his waythrough the press, she was no longer there. He saw her hat at a distancethrough the crowd, where he did not choose to follow, and he stuffed theflowers into his breast to give to her later. He expected to meet hersomewhere in the evening; if not, he would try to find her at her aunt'shouse in town; failing that, he could send her the flowers, and trusther for some sort of leading acknowledgment. 

He went and had a bath and dressed himself freshly, and then he went fora walk in the still evening air. He was very hot from the battle whichhad been fought over him, and which he had shared with all his strength, and it seemed to him as if he could not get cool. He strolled far outalong Concord Avenue, beyond the expanses and ice-horses of Fresh Pond, into the country toward Belmont, with his hat off and his head down. Hewas very well satisfied, and he was smiling to himself at the ease ofhis return to Bessie, and securely speculating upon the outcome of theirrenewed understanding. 

He heard a vehicle behind him, rapidly driven, and he turned out forit without looking around. Then suddenly he felt a fiery sting on hisforehead, and then a shower of stings swiftly following each other overhis head and face. He remembered stumbling, when he was a boy, into anest of yellow-jackets, that swarmed up around him and pierced him likesparks of fire at every uncovered point. But he knew at the same timethat it was some one in the vehicle beside him who was lashing him overthe head with a whip. He bowed his head with his eyes shut and lungedblindly out toward his assailant, hoping to seize him. 

But the horse sprang aside, and tore past him down the road. Jeff openedhis eyes, and through the blood that dripped from the cuts above them hesaw the wicked face of Alan Lynde looking back at him from the dogcartwhere he sat with his man beside him. He brandished his broken whip inthe air, and flung it into the bushes. Jeff walked on, and picked it up, before he turned aside to the pools of the marsh stretching on eitherhand, and tried to stanch his hurts, and get himself into shape forreturning to town and stealing back to his lodging. He had to wait tillafter dark, and watch his chance to get into the house unnoticed. 

XLVIII

The chum to whom Jeff confided the story of his encounter with a man heleft nameless inwardly thanked fortune that he was not that man; forhe knew him destined sooner or later to make such reparation forthe injuries he had inflicted as Jeff chose to exact. He tended himcarefully, and respected the reticence Jeff guarded concerning the wholematter, even with the young doctor whom his friend called, and who keptto himself his impressions of the nature of Jeff's injuries. 

Jeff lay in his darkened room, and burned with them, and with thethoughts, guesses, purposes which flamed through his mind. Had she, thatgirl, known what her brother meant to do? Had she wished him to think ofher in the moment of his punishment, and had she spoken of her brotherso that he might recall her, or had she had some ineffective impulse towarn him against her brother when she spoke of him?

He lay and raged in vain with his conjectures, and he did a thousandimagined murders upon Lynde in revenge of his shame. 

Toward the end of the week, while his hurts were still too evident toallow him to go out-of-doors before dark, he had a note from Westoverasking him to come in at once to see him. 

"Your brother Jackson, " Westover wrote, "reached Boston by the New Yorktrain this morning, and is with me here. I must tell you I think he isnot at all well, but he does not know how sick he is, and so I forewarnyou. He wants to get on home, but I do not feel easy about letting himmake the rest of the journey alone. Some one ought to go with him. Iwrite not knowing whether you are still in Cambridge or not; or whether, if you are, you can get away at this time. But I think you ought, and Iwish, at any rate, that you would come in at once and see Jackson. Thenwe can settle what had best be done. "

Jeff wrote back that he had been suffering with a severe attack oferysipelas--he decided upon erysipelas for the time being, but he meantto let Westover know later that he had been in a row--and the doctorwould not let him go out yet. He promised to come in as soon as hepossibly could. If Westover thought Jackson ought to be got home atonce, and was not fit to travel alone, he asked him to send a hospitalnurse with him. 

Westover replied by Jeff's messenger that it would worry and alarmJackson to be put in charge of a nurse; but that he would go home withhim, and they would start the next day. He urged Jeff to come and seehis brother if it was at all safe for him to do so. But if he could not, Westover would give his mother a reassuring reason for his failure. 

Mrs. Durgin did not waste any anxiety for the sickness which preventedJeff from coming home with his brother. She said ironically that it mustbe very bad, and she gave all her thought and care to Jackson. Thesick man rallied, as he prophesied he should, in his native air, andcelebrated the sense and science of the last doctor he had seen inEurope, who told him that he had made a great gain, but he had betterhurry home as fast as he could, for he had got all the advantage hecould expect to have from his stay abroad, and now home air was the bestthing for him. 

It could not be known how much of this he believed; he had, at any rate, the pathetic hopefulness of his malady; but his mother believed it all, and she nursed him with a faith in his recovery which Whitwell confidedto Westover was about as much as he wanted to see, for one while. Sheseemed to grow younger in the care of him, and to get back to herself, more and more, from the facts of Jeff's behavior, which had aged andbroken her. She had to tell Jackson about it all, but he took it withthat indifference to the things of this world which the approach ofdeath sometimes brings, and in the light of his passivity it no longerseemed to her so very bad. It was a relief to have Jackson say, Well, perhaps it was for the best; and it was a comfort to see how he andCynthia took to each other; it was almost as if that dreadful troublehad not been. She told Jackson what hard work she had had to makeCynthia stay with her, and how the girl had consented to stay only untilJeff came home; but she guessed, now that Jackson had got back, he couldmake Cynthia see it all in another light, and perhaps it would all comeright again. She consulted him about Jeff's plan of going abroad, andJackson said it might be about as well; he should soon be around, andhe thought if Jeff went it would give Cynthia more of a chance to getreconciled. After all, his mother suggested, a good many fellows behavedworse than Jeff had done and still had made it up with the girls theywere engaged to; and Jackson gently assented. 

He did not talk with Cynthia about Jeff, out of that delicacy, or thatcoldness, common to them both. Perhaps it was not necessary for them tospeak of him; perhaps they understood him aright in their understandingof each other. 

Westover stayed on, day after day, thinking somehow that he ought towait till Jeff came. There were only a few other people in the hotel, and these were of a quiet sort; they were not saddened by the presenceof a doomed man under the same roof, as gayer summer folks might havebeen, and they were themselves no disturbance to him. 

He sat about with them on the veranda, and he made friends amongthem, and they did what they could to encourage and console him in hisimpatience to take up his old cares in the management of the hotel. TheWhitwells easily looked after the welfare of the guests, and Jackson wasso much better to every one's perception that Westover could honestlywrite Jeff a good report of him. 

The report may have been so good that Jeff took the affair too easily. It was a fortnight after Jackson's return to Lion's Head when he beganto fail so suddenly and alarmingly that Westover decided upon hisown responsibility to telegraph Jeff of his condition. But he had thesatisfaction of Whitwell's approval when he told him what he had done. 

"Of course, Jackson a'n't long for this world. Anybody but him and hismother could see that; and now he's just melting away, as you might say. I ha'n't liked his not carin' to work plantchette since he got back;looked to me from the start that he kind of knowed that it wa'n't worthwhile for him to trouble about a world that he'll know all about sosoon, anyways; and d' you notice he don't seem to care about Mars, either? I've tried to wake him up on it two-three times, but you can'tgit him to take an interest. I guess Jeff can't git here any too soonon Jackson's account; but as far forth as I go, he couldn't git here toolate. I should like to take the top of his head off. "

Westover had been in Whitwell's confidence since their first chance ofspeech together. He now said:

"I know it will be rather painful to you to have him here for somereasons, but--"

"You mean Cynthy? Well! I guess when Cynthy can't get along with thesight of Jeff Durgin, she'll be a different girl from what she's everbeen before. If she's got to see that skunk ag'in, I guess this is aboutthe best time to do it. "

It was Westover who drove to meet Jeff at the station, when he got hisdespatch, naming the train he would take, and he found him looking verywell, and perhaps stouter than he had been. 

They left the station in silence, after their greeting and Jeff'sinquiries about Jackson. Jeff had taken the reins, and now he put themwith the whip in one hand, and pushed up his hat with the other, andturned his face full upon Westover. "Notice anything in particular?" hedemanded. 

"No; yes--some slight marks. "

"I guess that fellow fixed me up pretty well: paints black eyes, andthat kind of thing. I got to scrapping with a man, Class Day; we wantedto settle a little business we began at the Tree, and he left his markson me. I meant to tell you the truth as soon as I could get at you; butI had to say erysipelas in my letter. I guess, if you don't mind, we'lllet erysipelas stand, with the rest. "

"I shouldn't have cared, " Westover said, "if you'd let it stand withme. "

"Oh, thank you, " Jeff returned. 

There could have been no show of affection at his meeting with Jacksoneven if there had been any fact of it; that was not the law of theirlife. But Jeff had always been a turbulent, rebellious, youngerbrother, resentful of Jackson's control, too much his junior to have theassociations of an equal companionship in the past, and yet too near himin age to have anything like a filial regard for him. They shook hands, and each asked the other how he was, and then they seemed to havedone with each other. Jeff's mother kissed him in addition to thehandshaking, but made him feel her preoccupation with Jackson; she askedhim if he had hurried home on Jackson's account, and he promptly liedher out of this anxiety. 

He shook hands with Cynthia, too, but it was across the barrier whichhad not been lowered between them since they parted. He spoke to Jacksonabout her, the day after he came home, when Jackson said he was feelingunusually strong and well, and the two brothers had strolled out throughthe orchard together. Now and then he gave the sick man his arm, andwhen he wanted to sit down in a sunny place he spread the shawl hecarried for him. 

"I suppose mother's told you about Cynthy and me, Jackson?" he began. 

Jackson answered, with lack-lustre eyes, "Yes. " Presently he asked:"What's become of the other girl?"

"Damn her! I don't know what's become of her, and I don't care!" Jeffexploded, furiously. 

"Then you don't care for her any more?" Jackson pursued, with the samelanguid calm. 

"I never cared for her. "

Jackson was silent, and the matter seemed to have faded out of hismind. But it was keenly alive in Jeff's mind, and he was in the strangenecessity which men in the flush of life and health often feel ofseeking counsel of those who stand in the presence of death, as if theirwords should have something of the mystical authority of the unknownwisdom they are about to penetrate. 

"What I want to know is, what I am going to do about Cynthy?"

"I don't know, " Jackson answered, vaguely, and he expressed by hisindirection the sense he must sometimes have had of his impendingfate--"I don't know what she's going to do, her or mother, either. "

"Yes, " Jeff assented, "that's what I think of. And I'd do anything thatI could--that you thought was right. "

Jackson apparently concentrated his mind upon the question by an effort. "Do you care as much for Cynthy as you used to?"

"Yes, " said Jeff, after a moment, "as much as I ever did; and more. ButI've been thinking, since the thing happened, that, if I'd cared for herthe way she did for me, it wouldn't have happened. Look here, Jackson!You know I've never pretended to be like some men--like Mr. Westover, for example--always looking out for the right and the wrong, and allthat. I didn't make myself, and I guess if the Almighty don't make mego right it's because He don't want me to. But I have got a conscienceabout Cynthy, and I'd be willing to help out a little if I knew how, about her. The devil of it is, I've got to being afraid. I don't meanthat I'm not fit for her; any man's fit for any woman if he wants herbad enough; but I'm afraid I sha'n't ever care for her in the right way. That's the point. I've cared for just one woman in this world, and ita'n't Cynthy, as far as I can make out. But she's gone, and I guess Icould coax Cynthy round again, and I could be what she wants me to be, after this. "

Jackson lay upon his shawl, looking up at the sky full of islands ofwarm clouds in its sea of blue; he was silent so long that Jeff began tothink he had not been listening; he could not hear him breathe, and hecame forward to him quickly from the shadow of the tree where he sat. 

"Well?" Jackson whispered, turning his eyes upon him. 

"Well?" Jeff returned. 

"I guess you'd better let it alone, " said Jackson. 

"All right. That's what I think, too. "

XLIX. 

Jackson died a week later, and they buried him in the old family lotin the farthest corner of the orchard. His mother and Cynthia put onmourning for him, and they stood together by his open grave, Mrs. Durginleaning upon her son's arm and the girl upon her father's. The womenwept quietly, but Jeff's eyes were dry, though his face was dischargedof all its prepotent impudence. Westover, standing across the gravefrom him, noticed the marks on his forehead that he said were from hisscrapping, and wondered what really made them. He recognized the spotwhere they were standing as that where the boy had obeyed the law of hisnature and revenged the stress put upon him for righteousness. Over thestone of the nearest grave Jeff had shown a face of triumphant derisionwhen he pelted Westover with apples. The painter's mind fell into achaos of conjecture and misgiving, so that he scarcely took in the wordsof the composite service which the minister from the Union Chapel at theHuddle read over the dead. 

Some of the guests from the hotel came to the funeral, but others whowere not in good health remained away, and there was a general senseamong them, which imparted itself to Westover, that Jackson's dying so, at the beginning of the season, was not a fortunate incident. As he sattalking with Jeff at a corner of the piazza late in the afternoon, FrankWhitwell came up to them and said there were some people in the officewho had driven over from another hotel to see about board, but they hadheard there was sickness in the house, and wished to talk with him. 

"I won't come, " said Jeff. 

"They're not satisfied with what I've said, " the boy urged. "What shallI tell them?"

"Tell them to-go to the devil, " said Jeff, and when Frank Whitwell madeoff with this message for delivery in such decent terms as he couldimagine for it, Jeff said, rather to himself than to Westover, "I don'tsee how we're going to run this hotel with that old family lot downthere in the orchard much longer. "

He assumed the air of full authority at Lion's Head; and Westoverfelt the stress of a painful conjecture in regard to the Whitwellsintensified upon him from the moment he turned away from Jackson'sgrave. 

Cynthia and her father had gone back to their own house as soon asJeff returned, and though the girl came home with Mrs. Durgin after thefuneral, and helped her in their common duties through the afternoon andevening, Westover saw her taking her way down the hill with her brotherwhen the long day's work was over. Jeff saw her too; he was sittingwith Westover at the office door smoking, and he was talking of theWhitwells. 

"I suppose they won't stay, " he said, "and I can't expect it; but Idon't know what mother will do, exactly. "

At the same moment Whitwell came round the corner of the hotel from thebarn, and approached them: "Jeff, I guess I better tell you straight offthat we're goin', the children and me. "

"All right, Mr. Whitwell, " said Jeff, with respectful gravity; "I wasafraid of it. "

Westover made a motion to rise, but Whitwell laid a detaining hand uponhis knee. "There ain't anything so private about it, so far as I know. "

"Don't go, Mr. Westover, " said Jeff, and Westover remained. 

"We a'n't a-goin' to leave you in the lurch, and we want you should takeyour time, especially Mis' Durgin. But the sooner the better. Heigh?"

"Yes, I understand that, Mr. Whitwell; I guess mother will miss you, but if you must go, you must. " The two men remained silent a moment, andthen Jeff broke out passionately, rising and flinging his cigar away:"I wish I could go, instead! That would be the right way, and I guessmother would like it full as well. Do you see any way to manage it?" Heput his foot up in his chair, and dropped his elbow on his knee, withhis chin propped in his hand. Westover could see that he meant what hewas saying. "If there was any way, I'd do it. I know what you think ofme, and I should be just like you, in your place. I don't feel right toturn you out here, I don't, Mr. Whitwell, and yet if I stay, I've got todo it. What's the reason I can't go?"

"You can't, " said Whitwell, "and that's all about it. We shouldn't letyou, if you could. But I a'n't surprised you feel the way you do, " headded, unsparingly. "As you say, I should feel just so myself if I wasin your place. Well, goodnight, Mr. Westover. "

Whitwell turned and slouched down the hill, leaving the painter to themost painful moment he had known with Jeff Durgin, and nearer sympathy. "That's all right, Mr. Westover, " Jeff said, "I don't blame him. "

He remained in a constraint from which he presently broke with mockinghilarity when Jombateeste came round the corner of the house, as ifhe had been waiting for Whitwell to be gone, and told Jeff he must getsomebody else to look after the horses. 

"Why don't you wait and take the horses with you, Jombateeste?" heinquired. "They'll be handing in their resignation, the next thing. Whynot go altogether?"

The little Canuck paused, as if uncertain whether he was made theobject of unfriendly derision or not, and looked at Westover for help. Apparently he decided to chance it in as bitter an answer as he couldinvent. "The 'oss can't 'elp 'imself, Mr. Durgin. 'E stay. But you don'hown EVERYBODY. "

"That's so, Jombateeste, " said Jeff. "That's a good hit. It makes mefeel awfully. Have a cigar?" The Canuck declined with a dignified bow, and Jeff said: "You don't smoke any more? Oh, I see! It's my tobaccoyou're down on. What's the matter, Jombateeste? What are you going awayfor?" Jeff lighted for himself the cigar the Canuck had refused, andsmoked down upon the little man. 

"Mr. W'itwell goin', " Jombateeste said, a little confused and daunted. 

"What's Mr. Whitwell going for?"

"You hask Mr. W'itwell. "

"All right. And if I can get him to stay will you stay too, Jombateeste?I don't like to see a rat leaving a ship; the ship's sure to sink, ifhe does. How do you suppose I'm going to run Lion's Head without you tothrow down hay to the horses? It will be ruin to me, sure, Jombateeste. All the guests know how you play on the pitchfork out there, and they'llleave in a body if they hear you've quit. Do say you'll stay, and I'llreduce your wages one-half on the spot. "

Jombateeste waited to hear no more injuries. He said: "You'll don' gotmoney enough, Mr. Durgin, by gosh! to reduce my wages, " and he starteddown the hill toward Whitwell's house with as great loftiness as couldcomport with a down-hill gait and his stature. 

"Well, I seem to be getting it all round, Mr. Westover, " said Jeff. "This must make you feel good. I don't know but I begin to believethere's a God in Israel, myself. "

He walked away without saying good-night, and Westover went to bedwithout the chance of setting himself right. In the morning, when hecame down to breakfast, and stopped at the desk to engage a conveyancefor the station from Frank Whitwell the boy forestalled him with a graveface. "You don't know about Mrs. Durgin?"

"No; what about her?"

"Well, we can't tell exactly. Father thinks it's a shock; Jombateestegone over to Lovewell for the doctor. Cynthia's with her. It seemed tocome on in the night. "

He spoke softly, that no one else might hear; but by noon the fact thatMrs. Durgin had been stricken with paralysis was all over the place. Thegloom cast upon the opening season by Jackson's death was deepened amongthe guests. Some who had talked of staying through July went awaythat day. But under Cynthia's management the housekeeping was reallyunaffected by Mrs. Durgin's calamity, and the people who stayed foundthemselves as comfortable as ever. Jeff came fully into the hotelmanagement, and in their business relation Cynthia and he werecontinually together; there was no longer a question of the Whitwellsleaving him; even Jombateeste persuaded himself to stay, and Westoverfelt obliged to remain at least till the present danger in Mrs. Durgin'scase was past. 

With the first return of physical strength, Mrs. Durgin was impatient tobe seen about the house, and to retrieve the season that her afflictionhad made so largely a loss. The people who had become accustomed toit stayed on, and the house filled up as she grew better, but even thesight of her in a wheeled chair did not bring back the prosperity ofother years. She lamented over it with a keen and full perception of thefact, but in a cloudy association of it with the joint future of Jeffand Cynthia. 

One day, after Mrs. Durgin had declared that she did not know what theywere to do, if things kept on as they were going, Whitwell asked hisdaughter:

"Do you suppose she thinks you and Jeff have made it up again?"

"I don't know, " said the girl, with a troubled voice, "and I don't knowwhat to do about it. It don't seem as if I could tell her, and yet it'swrong to let her go on. "

"Why didn't he tell her?" demanded her father. "'Ta'n't fair his leavin'it to you. But it's like him. "

The sick woman's hold upon the fact weakened most when she was tired. When she was better, she knew how it was with them. Commonly it was whenCynthia had got her to bed for the night that she sent for Jeff, andwished to ask him what he was going to do. "You can't expect Cynthy tostay here another winter helpin' you, with Jackson away. You've got toeither take her with you, or else come here yourself. Give up your lastyear in college, why don't you? I don't want you should stay, and Idon't know who does. If I was in Cynthia's place, I'd let you work offyour own conditions, now you've give up the law. She'll kill herself, tryin' to keep you along. "

Sometimes her speech became so indistinct that no one but Cynthia couldmake it out; and Jeff, listening with a face as nearly discharged asmight be of its laughing irony, had to turn to Cynthia for the wordwhich no one else could catch, and which the stricken woman remaineddistressfully waiting for her to repeat to him, with her anxious eyesupon the girl's face. He was dutifully patient with all his mother'swhims. He came whenever she sent for him, and sat quiet under theseverities with which she visited all his past unworthiness. "Who youbeen hectorin' now, I should like to know, " she began on him one eveningwhen he came at her summons. "Between you and Fox, I got no peace of mylife. Where is the dog?"

"Fox is all right, mother, " Jeff responded. "You're feeling a littlebetter to-night, a'n't you?"

"I don't know; I can't tell, " she returned, with a gleam of intelligencein her eye. Then she said: "I don't see why I'm left to strangers allthe time. "

"You don't call Cynthia a stranger, do you, mother?" he asked, coaxingly. 

"Oh--Cynthy!" said Mrs. Durgin, with a glance as of surprise at seeingher. "No, Cynthy's all right. But where's Jackson and your father? IfI've told them not to be out in the dew once, I've told 'em a hundredtimes. Cynthy'd better look after her housekeepin' if she don't want thewhole place to run behind, and not a soul left in the house. What timeo' year is it now?" she suddenly asked, after a little weary pause. 

"It's the last of August, mother. "

"Oh, " she sighed, "I thought it was the beginnin' of May. Didn't youcome up here in May?"

"Yes. "

"Well, then--Or, mebbe that's one o' them tormentin' dreams; they dopester so! What did you come for?"

Jeff was sitting on one side of her bed and Cynthia on the other: Shewas looking at the sufferer's face, and she did not meet the glance ofamusement which Jeff turned upon her at being so fairly cornered. "Well, I don't know, " he said. "I thought you might like to see me. "

"What 'd he come for?"--the sick woman turned to Cynthia. 

"You'd better tell her, " said the girl, coldly, to Jeff. "She won't besatisfied till you do. She'll keep coming back to it. "

"Well, mother, " said Jeff, still with something of his hardy amusement, "I hadn't been acting just right, and I thought I'd better tell Cynthy. "

"You better let the child alone. If I ever catch you teasin' themchildren again, I'll make Jackson shoot Fox. "

"All right, mother, " said Jeff. 

She moved herself restively in bed. "What's this, " she demanded of herson, "that Whitwell's tellin' about you and Cynthy breakin' it off?"

"Well, there was talk of that, " said Jeff, passing his hand over hislips to keep back the smile that was stealing to them. 

"Who done it?"

Cynthia kept her eyes on Jeff, who dropped his to his mother's face. "Cynthy did it; but I guess I gave her good enough reason. "

"About that hussy in Boston? She was full more to blame than what youwas. I don't see what Cynthy wanted to do it for on her account. "

"I guess Cynthy was right. "

Mrs. Durgin's speech had been thickening more and more. She now saidsomething that Jeff could not understand. He looked involuntarily atCynthia. 

"She says she thinks I was hasty with you, " the girl interpreted. 

Jeff kept his eyes on hers, but he answered to his mother: "Not any morethan I deserved. I hadn't any right to expect that she would stand it. "

Again the sick woman tried to say something. Jeff made out a fewsyllables, and, after his mother had repeated her words, he had to lookto Cynthia for help. 

"She wants to know if it's all right now. "

"What shall I say?" asked Jeff, huskily. 

"Tell her the truth. "

"What is the truth?"

"That we haven't made it up. "

Jeff hesitated, and then said: "Well, not yet, mother, " and he bent anentreating look upon Cynthia which she could not feel was wholly forhimself. "I--I guess we can fix it, somehow. I behaved very badly toCynthia. "

"No, not to me!" the girl protested in an indignant burst. 

"Not to that little scalawag, then!" cried Jeff. "If the wrong wasn't toyou, there wasn't any wrong. "

"It was to you!" Cynthia retorted. 

"Oh, I guess I can stand it, " said Jeff, and his smile now came to hislips and eyes. 

His mother had followed their quick parley with eager looks, as if shewere trying to keep her intelligence to its work concerning them. Theeffort seemed to exhaust her, and when she spoke again her words wereso indistinct that even Cynthia could not understand them till she hadrepeated them several times. 

Then the girl was silent, while the invalid kept an eager look upon her. She seemed to understand that Cynthia did not mean to speak; and thetears came into her eyes. 

"Do you want me to know what she said?" asked Jeff, respectfully, reverently almost. 

Cynthia said, gently: "She says that then you must show you didn't meanany harm to me, and that you cared for me, all through, and you didn'tcare for anybody else. "

"Thank you, " said Jeff, and he turned to his mother. "I'll do everythingI can to make Cynthy believe that, mother. "

The girl broke into tears and went out of the room. She sent in thenight-watcher, and then Jeff took leave of his mother with an unwontedkiss. 

Into the shadow of a starlit night he saw the figure he had been waitingfor glide out of the glitter of the hotel lights. He followed it downthe road. 

"Cynthia!" he called; and when he came up with her he asked: "What's thereason we can't make it true? Why can't you believe what mother wants meto make you?"

Cynthia stopped, as her wont was when she wished to speak seriously. "Doyou ask that for my sake or hers?"

"For both your sakes. "

"I thought so. You ought to have asked it for your own sake, Jeff, andthen I might have been fool enough to believe you. But now--"

She started swiftly down the hill again, and this time he did not try tofollow her. 

L. 

Mrs. Durgin's speech never regained the measure of clearness it hadbefore; no one but Cynthia could understand her, and often she couldnot. The doctor from Lovewell surmised that she had sustained anotherstroke, lighter, more obscure than the first, and it was that which hadrendered her almost inarticulate. The paralysis might have also affectedher brain, and silenced her thoughts as well as her words. Either shebelieved that the reconciliation between Jeff and Cynthia had takenplace, or else she could no longer care. She did not question themagain, but peacefully weakened more and more. Near the end of Septembershe had a third stroke, and from this she died. 

The day after the funeral Jeff had a talk with Whitwell, and opened hismind to him. 

"I'm going over to the other side, and I shan't be back before spring, or about time to start the season here. What I want to know is whether, if I'm out of the house, and not likely to come back, you'll stay hereand look after the place through the winter. It hasn't been a goodseason, but I guess I can afford to make it worth your while if you lookat it as a matter of business. "

Whitwell leaned forward and took a straw into his mouth from the goldenwall of oat sheaves in the barn where they were talking. A soft rustlingin the mow overhead marked the remote presence of Jombateeste, who wasgetting forward the hay for the horses, pushing it toward the holeswhere it should fall into their racks. 

"I should want to think about it, " said Whitwell. "I do' know asCynthy'd care much about stayin'--or Frank. "

"How long do you want to think about it?" Jeff demanded, ignoring thepossible wishes of Cynthia and Frank. 

"I guess I could let you know by night. "

"All right, " said Jeff. 

He was turning away, when Whitwell remarked:

"I don't know as I should want to stay without I could have somebody Icould depend on, with me, to look after the hosses. Frank wouldn't wantto. "

"Who'd you like?"

"Well--Jombateeste. "

"Ask him. "

Whitwell called to the Canuck, and he came forward to the edge of themow, and stood, fork in hand, looking down. 

"Want to stay here this winter and look after the horses, Jombateeste?"Whitwell asked. 

"Nosseh!" said the Canuck, with a misliking eye on Jeff. 

"I mean, along with me, " Whitwell explained. "If I conclude to stay, will you? Jeff's goin' abroad. "

"I guess I stay, " said Jombateeste. 

"Don't strain yourself, Jombateeste, " said Jeff, with malevolentderision. 

"Not for you, Jeff Dorrgin, " returned the Canuck. "I strain myself tillI bust, if I want. "

Jeff sneered to Whitwell: "Well, then, the most important point issettled. Let me know about the minor details as soon as you can. "

"All right. "

Whitwell talked the matter over with his children at supper thatevening. Jeff had made him a good offer, and he had the winter beforehim to provide for. 

"I don't know what deviltry he's up to, " he said in conclusion. 

Frank looked to his sister for their common decision. "I am going to tryfor a school, " she said, quietly. "It's pretty late, but I guess I canget something. You and Frank had better stay. "

"And you don't feel as if it was kind of meechin', our takin' up withhis offer, after what's--" Whitwell delicately forbore to fill out hissentence. 

"You are doing the favor, father, " said the girl. "He knows that, andI guess he wouldn't know where to look if you refused. And, after all, what's happened now is as much my doing as his. "

"I guess that's something so, " said Whitwell, with a long sigh ofrelief. "Well, I'm glad you can look at it in that light, Cynthy. It'sthe way the feller's built, I presume, as much as anything. "

His daughter waived the point. "I shouldn't feel just right if none ofus stayed in the old place. I should feel as if we had turned our backson Mrs. Durgin. "

Her eyes shone, and her father said: "Well, I guess that's so, come tothink of it. She's been like a mother to you, this past year, ha'n'tshe? And it must have come pootty hard for her, sidin' ag'in' Jeff. Butshe done it. "

The girl turned her head away. They were sitting in the little, low keeping-room of Whitwell's house, and her father had his hat onprovisionally. Through the window they could see the light of thelantern at the office door of the hotel, whose mass was lost in the darkabove and behind the lamp. It was all very still outside. 

"I declare, " Whitwell went on, musingly, "I wisht Mr. Westover washere. "

Cynthia started, but it was to ask: "Do you want I should help you withyour Latin, Frank?"

Whitwell came back an hour later and found them still at their books. Hetold them it was all arranged; Durgin was to give up the place to himin a week, and he was to surrender it again when Jeff came back in thespring. In the mean time things were to remain as they were; after hewas gone, they could all go and live at Lion's Head if they chose. 

"We'll see, " said Cynthia. "I've been thinking that might be the bestway, after all. I might not get a school, it's so late. "

"That's so, " her father assented. "I declare, " he added, after amoment's muse, "I felt sorry for the feller settin' up there alone, withnobody to do for him but that old thing he's got in. She can't cook anymore than--" He desisted for want of a comparison, and said: "Such alookin' table, too. "

"Do you think I better go and look after things a little?" Cynthiaasked. 

"Well, you no need to, " said her father. He got down the planchette, andlabored with it, while his children returned to Frank's lessons. 

"Dumn 'f I can make the thing work, " he said to himself at last. "Ican't git any of 'em up. If Jackson was here, now!"

Thrice a day Cynthia went up to the hotel and oversaw the preparation ofJeff's meals and kept taut the slack housekeeping of the old Irish womanwho had remained as a favor, after the hotel closed, and professed tohave lost the chance of a place for the winter by her complaisance. She submitted to Cynthia's authority, and tried to make interest for anindefinite stay by sudden zeal and industry, and the last days of Jeffin the hotel were more comfortable than he openly recognized. He leftthe care of the building wholly to Whitwell, and shut himself up in theold farm parlor with the plans for a new hotel which he said he meant toput up some day, if he could ever get rid of the old one. He went onceto Lovewell, where he renewed the insurance, and somewhat increased it;and he put a small mortgage on the property. He forestalled the slowprogress of the knowledge of others' affairs, which, in the country, isas sure as it is slow, and told Whitwell what he had done. He said hewanted the mortgage money for his journey, and the insurance money, ifhe could have the luck to cash up by a good fire, to rebuild with. 

Cynthia seldom met him in her comings and goings, but if they met theyspoke on the terms of their boy and girl associations, and with noapproach through resentment or tenderness to the relation that was endedbetween them. She saw him oftener than at any other time setting offon the long tramps he took through the woods in the afternoons. He wasalways alone, and, so far as any one knew, his wanderings had no objectbut to kill the time which hung heavy on his hands during the fortnightafter his mother's death, before he sailed. It might have seemed strangethat he should prefer to pass the days at Lion's Head after he hadarranged for the care of the place with Whitwell, and Whitwell alwaysbelieved that he stayed in the hope of somehow making up with Cynthia. 

One day, toward the very last, Durgin found himself pretty well faggedin the old pulp-mill clearing on the side of Lion's Head, which stillbelonged to Whitwell, and he sat down on a mouldering log there to rest. It had always been a favorite picnic ground, but the season just pasthad known few picnics, and it was those of former years that had lefttheir traces in rusty sardine-cans and broken glass and crockery on theborder of the clearing, which was now almost covered with white moss. Jeff thought of the day when he lurked in the hollow below with Fox, while Westover remained talking with Whitwell. He thought of the picnicthat Mrs. Marven had embittered for him, and he thought of the last timethat he had been there with Westover, when they talked of the Vostrands. 

Life had, so far, not been what he meant it, and just now it occurred tohim that he might not have wholly made it what it had been. It seemed tohim that a good many other people had come in and taken a hand in makinghis own life what it had been; and if he had meddled with theirs morethan he was wanted, it was about an even thing. As far as he could makeout, he was a sort of ingredient in the general mixture. He had probablydone his share of the flavoring, but he had had very little to do withthe mixing. There were different ways of looking at the thing. Westoverhad his way, but it struck Jeff that it put too much responsibility onthe ingredient, and too little on the power that chose it. He believedthat he could prove a clear case in his own favor, as far as thequestion of final justice was concerned, but he had no complaints tomake. Things had fallen out very much to his mind. He was the Landlordat Lion's Head, at last, with the full right to do what he pleased withthe place, and with half a year's leisure before him to think it over. He did not mean to waste the time while he was abroad; if there wasanything to be learned anywhere about keeping a summer hotel, hewas going to learn it; and he thought the summer hotel could beadvantageously studied in its winter phases in the mild climates ofSouthern Europe. He meant to strike for the class of Americans whoresorted to those climates; to divine their characters and to pleasetheir tastes. 

He unconsciously included Cynthia in his scheme of inquiry; he had beenused so long to trust to her instincts and opinions, and to rely uponher help, and he realized that she was no longer in his life withsomething like the shock a man experiences when the loss of a limb, which continues a part of his inveterate consciousness, is brought tohis sense by some mechanical attempt to use it. But even in this pang hedid not regret that all was over between them. He knew now that he hadnever cared for her as he had once thought, and on her account, if nothis own, he was glad their engagement was broken. A soft melancholy forhis own disappointment imparted itself to his thoughts of Cynthia. Hefelt truly sorry for her, and he truly admired and respected her. He wasin a very lenient mood toward every one, and he went so far in thoughttoward forgiving his enemies that he was willing at least to pardon allthose whom he had injured. A little rustling in the underbrush acrossthe clearing caught his quick ear, and he looked up to see Jombateesteparting the boughs of the young pines on its edge and advancing intothe open with a gun on his shoulder. He called to him, cheerily: "Hello, John! Any luck?"

Jombateeste shook his head. "Nawthing. " He hesitated. 

"What are you after?"

"Partridge, " Jombateeste ventured back. 

Jeff could not resist the desire to scoff which always came upon him atsight of the Canuck. "Oh, pshaw! Why don't you go for woodchucks? Theyfly low, and you can hit them on the wing, if you can't sneak on 'emsitting. "

Jombateeste received his raillery in dignified silence, and turnedback into the woods again. He left Durgin in heightened good-humor withhimself and with the world, which had finally so well adapted itself tohis desires and designs. 

Jeff watched his resentful going with a grin, and then threw himselfback on the thick bed of dry moss where he had been sitting, and watchedthe clouds drifting across the space of blue which the clearing openedoverhead. His own action reminded him of Jackson, lying in the orchardand looking up at the sky. He felt strangely at one with him, and heexperienced a tenderness for his memory which he had not known before. Jackson had been a good man; he realized that with a curious senseof novelty in the reflection; he wondered what the incentives and theobjects of such men as Jackson and Westover were, anyway. Somethinglike grief for his brother came upon him; not such grief as he had felt, passionately enough, though tacitly, for his mother, but a regret fornot having shown Jackson during his life that he could appreciate hisunselfishness, though he could not see the reason or the meaning of it. He said to himself, in their safe remoteness from each other, that hewished he could do something for Jackson. He wondered if in the courseof time he should get to be something like him. He imagined trying. 

He heard sounds again in the edge of the clearing, but he decided thatit was that fool Jombateeste coming back; and when steps approachedsoftly and hesitantly across the moss, he did not trouble himself totake his eyes from the clouds. He was only vexed to have his reverybroken in upon. 

A voice that was not Jombateeste's spoke: "I say! Can you tell me theway to the Brooker Institute, or to the road down the mountain?"

Jeff sat suddenly bolt-upright; in another moment he jumped to hisfeet. The Brooker Institute was a branch of the Keeley Cure recentlyestablished near the Huddle, and this must be a patient who had wanderedfrom it, on one of the excursions the inmates made with their guardians, and lost his way. This was the fact that Jeff realized at the firstglance he gave the man. The next he recognized that the man was AlanLynde. 

"Oh, it's you, " he said, quite simply. He felt so cruelly the hardshipof his one unforgiven enemy's coming upon him just when he had resolvedto be good that the tears came into his eyes. Then his rage seemed toswell up in him like the rise of a volcanic flood. "I'm going to killyou!" he, roared, and he launched himself upon Lynde, who stood dazed. 

But the murder which Jeff meant was not to be so easily done. Lynde hadnot grown up in dissolute idleness without acquiring some of the arts ofself-defence which are called manly. He met Jeff's onset with rememberedskill and with the strength which he had gained in three months of thewholesome regimen of the Brooker Institute. He had been sent there, not by Dr. Lacy's judgment, but by his despair, and so far the Cure hadcured. He felt strong and fresh, and the hate which filled Jeff at sightof him steeled his shaken nerves and reinforced his feebler muscles, too. 

He made a desperate fight where he could not hope for mercy, and kepthimself free of his powerful foe, whom he fought round and foiled, if hecould not hurt him. Jeff never knew of the blows Lynde got in upon him;he had his own science, too, but he would not employ it. He wanted tocrash through Lynde's defence and lay hold of him and crush the life outof him. 

The contest could not have lasted long at the best; but before Lynde wasworn out he caught his heel in an old laurel root, and while he whirledto recover his footing Jeff closed in upon him, caught him by themiddle, flung him down upon the moss, and was kneeling on his breastwith both hands at his throat. 

He glared down into his enemy's face, and suddenly it looked pitifullylittle and weak, like a girl's face, a child's. 

Sometimes, afterward, it seemed to him that he forbore because at thatinstant he saw Jombateeste appear at the edge of the clearing and comerunning upon them. At other times he had the fancy that his action waspurely voluntary, and that, against the logic of his hate and habit ofhis life, he had mercy upon his enemy. He did not pride himself uponit; he rather humbled himself before the fact, which was accomplishedthrough his will, and not by it, and remained a mystery he did not tryto solve. 

He took his hands from Lynde's throat and his knees off his breast. "Get up, " he said; and when Lynde stood trembling on his feet he said toJombateeste: "Show this man the way to the Brooker Institute. I'll takeyour gun home for you, " and it was easy for him to detach the piece fromthe bewildered Canuck's grasp. "Go! And if you stop, or even let himlook back, I'll shoot him. Quick!"

LI. 

The day after Thanksgiving, when Westover was trying to feel well afterthe turkey and cranberry and cider which a lady had given him at aconsciously old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner, but not making it outsufficiently to be able to work, he was astonished to receive a visitfrom Whitwell. 

"Well, sir, " said the philosopher, without giving himself pause for theexchange of reflections upon his presence in Boston, which might havebeen agreeable to him on a less momentous occasion. "It's all up withLion's Head. "

"What do you mean?" demanded Westover, with his mind upon the mountain, which he electrically figured in an incredible destruction. 

"She's burnt. Burnt down the day before yist'd'y aft'noon. A'n't hardlya stick of her left. Ketehed Lord knows how, from the kitchen chimney, and a high northwest wind blowin', that ca'd the sparks to the barn, and set fire to that, too. Hasses gone; couldn't get round to 'em; onlythree of us there, and mixed up so about the house till it was so latethe critters wouldn't come out. Folks from over Huddle way see theblaze, and helped all they could; but it wa'n't no use. I guess all wesaved, about, was the flag-pole. "

"But you're all right yourselves? Cynthia. "

"Well, there was our misfortune, " said Whitwell, while Westover's heartstopped in a mere wantonness of apprehension. "If she'd be'n there, it might ha' be'n diff'ent. We might ha' had more sense; or she would, anyway. But she was over to Lovewell stockin' up for Thanksgivin', and Ihad to make out the best I could, with Frank and Jombateeste. Why, that Canuck didn't seem to have no more head on him than a hen. I wasdisgusted; but Cynthy wouldn't let me say anything to him, and I d' knowas 't 'ould done any good, myself. We've talked it all over in everylight, ever since; guess we've set up most the time talkin', and nothin'would do her but I should come down and see you before I took a singlestep about it. "

"How--step about what?" asked Westover, with a remote sense of hardshipat being brought in, tempered by the fact that it was Cynthia who hadbrought him in. 

"Why, that devil, " said Whitwell, and Westover knew that he meant Jeff, "went and piled on all the insurance he could pile on, before he left;and I don't know what to do about it. "

"I should think the best thing was to collect the insurance, " Westoversuggested, distractedly. 

"It a'n't so easy as what that comes to, " said Whitwell. "I couldn'tcollect the insurance; and here's the point, anyway. When a hotel's madea bad season, and she's fully insured, she's pootty certain to burnup some time in the winter. Everybody knows that comical devil wantedlion's Head to burn up so 't he could build new, and I presume therea'n't a man, woman, or child anywhere round but what believes I set heron fire. Hired to do it. Now, see? Jeff off in Europe; daytime; no liveslost; prop'ty total loss 's a clear case. Heigh? I tell you, I'm afraidI've got trouble ahead. "

Westover tried to protest, to say something in derision or defiance;but he was shaken himself, and he ended by getting his hat and coat;Whitwell had kept his own on, in the excitement. "We'll go out and seea lawyer. A friend of mine; it won't cost you anything. " He added thisassurance at a certain look of reluctance that came into Whitwell'sface, and that left it as soon as he had spoken. Whitwell glanced roundthe studio even cheerily. "Who'd ha' thought, " he said, fastening uponthe study which Westover had made of Lion's head the winter before, "that the old place would 'a' gone so soon?" He did not mean themountain which he was looking at, but the hotel that was present to hismind's eye; and Westover perceived as he had not before that to Whitwellthe hotel and not the mountain was Lion's Head. 

He remembered to ask now where Whitwell had left his family, andWhitwell said that Frank and Cynthia were at home in his own house withJombateeste; but he presumed he could not get back to them now beforethe next day. He refused to be interested in any of the aspects ofBoston which Westover casually pointed out, but when they had seen thelawyer he came forth a new man, vividly interested in everything. Thelawyer had been able to tell them that though the insurance companieswould look sharply into the cause of the fire, there was no probability, hardly a possibility, that they would inculpate him, and he need givehimself no anxiety about the affair. 

"There's one thing, though, " Whitwell said to Westover when they got outupon the street. "Hadn't I ought to let Jeff know?"

"Yes, at once. You'd better cable him. Have you got his address?"

Whitwell had it, and he tasted all the dramatic quality of sendingword to Jeff, which he would receive in Florence an hour after it leftBoston. "I did hope I could ha' cabled once to Jackson while he wasgone, " he said, regretfully, "but, unless we can fix up a wire with theother world, I guess I shan't ever do it now. I suppose Jackson's stillhangin' round Mars, some'res. "

He had a sectarian pride in the beauty of the Spiritual Temple whichWestover walked him by on his way to see Trinity Church and the FineArts Museum, and he sorrowed that he could not attend a service'there. But he was consoled by the lunch which he had with Westover ata restaurant where it was served in courses. "I presume this is whatJeff's goin' to give 'em at Lion's Head when he gits it goin' again. "

"How is it he's in Florence?" it occurred to Westover to ask. "I thoughthe was going to Nice for the winter. "

"I don't know. That's the address he give in his last letter, " saidWhitwell. "I'll be glad when I've done with him for good and all. He'sall kinds of a devil. "

It was in Westover's mind to say that he wished the Whitwells had neverhad anything to do with Durgin after his mother's death. He had felt ita want of delicacy in them that they had been willing to stay on in hisemploy, and his ideal of Cynthia had suffered a kind of wound fromwhat must have been her decision in the matter. He would have expectedsomething altogether different from her pride, her self-respect. Buthe now merely said: "Yes, I shall be glad, too. I'm afraid he's a badfellow. "

His words seemed to appeal to Whitwell's impartiality. "Well, I d' knowas I should say bad, exactly. He's a mixture. "

"He's a bad mixture, " said Westover. 

"Well, I guess you're partly right there, " Whitwell admitted, with alaugh. After a dreamy moment he asked: "Ever hear anything more aboutthat girl here in Boston?"

Westover knew that he meant Bessie Lynde. "She's abroad somewhere, withher aunt. "

Whitwell had not taken any wine; apparently he was afraid of forminginstantly the habit of drink if he touched it; but he toleratedWestover's pint of Zinfandel, and he seemed to warm sympathetically to agreater confidence as the painter made away with it. "There's one thingI never told Cynthy yet; well, Jombateeste didn't tell me himself tillafter Jeff was gone; and then, thinks I, what's the use? But I guess youhad better know. "

He leaned forward across the table, and gave Jombateeste's story of theencounter between Jeff and Alan Lynde in the clearing. "Now what do yousuppose was the reason Jeff let up on the feller? Of course, he meantto choke the life out of him, and his just ketchin' sight ofJombateeste--do you believe that was enough to stop him, when he'dstarted in for a thing like that? Or what was it done it?"

Westover listened with less thought of the fact itself than of anotherfact that it threw light upon. It was clear to him now that theClass-Day scrapping which had left its marks upon Jeff's face was withLynde, and that when Jeff got him in his power he was in such a fury forrevenge that no mere motive of prudence could have arrested him. In bothevents, it must have been Bessie Lynde that was the moving cause; butwhat was it that stayed Jeff in his vengeance?

"Let him up, and let him walk away, you say?" he demanded of Whitwell. 

Whitwell nodded. "That's what Jombateeste said. Said Jeff said if he letthe feller look back he'd shoot him. But he didn't haf to. "

"I can't make it out, " Westover sighed. 

"It's been too much for me, " Whitwell said. "I told Jombateeste he'dbetter keep it to himself, and I guess he done so. S'pose Jeff still hada sneakin' fondness for the girl?"

"I don't know; perhaps, " Westover asserted. 

Whitwell threw his head back in a sudden laugh that showed all the workof his dentist. "Well, wouldn't it be a joke if he was there in Florenceafter her? Be just like Jeff. "

"It would be like Jeff; I don't know whether it would be a joke or not. I hope he won't find it a joke, if it's so, " said Westover, gloomily. A fantastic apprehension seized him, which made him wish for the momentthat it might be so, and which then passed, leaving him simply sorry forany chance that might bring Bessie Lynde into the fellow's way again. 

For the evening Whitwell's preference would have been a lecture ofsome sort, but there was none advertised, and he consented to go withWestover to the theatre. He came back to the painter at dinner-time, after a wary exploration of the city, which had resulted not only ina personal acquaintance with its monuments, but an immunity from itsdangers and temptations which he prided himself hardly less upon. He hadseen Faneuil Hall, the old State House, Bunker Hill, the Public Library, and the Old South Church, and he had not been sandbagged or buncoedor led astray from the paths of propriety. In the comfortable senseof escape, he was disposed, to moralize upon the civilization of greatcities, which he now witnessed at first hand for the first time; andthroughout the evening, between the acts of the "Old Homestead, "which he found a play of some merit, but of not so much novelty in itscharacters as he had somehow led himself to expect, he recurred to thedifficulties and dangers that must beset a young man in coming to aplace like Boston. Westover found him less amusing than he had on hisown ground at Lion's Head, and tasted a quality of commonplace in hisdeliverances which made him question whether he had not, perhaps, alwaysowed more to this environment than he had suspected. But they partedupon terms of mutual respect and in the common hope of meeting again. Whitwell promised to let Westover know what he heard of Jeff, but, whenthe painter had walked the philosopher home to his hotel, he found amessage awaiting him at his studio from Jeff direct:

 Whitwell's despatch received. Wait letter. "DURGIN. "

Westover raged at the intelligent thrift of this telegram, and at theimplication that he not only knew all about the business of Whitwell'sdespatch, but that he was in communication with him, and would besufficiently interested to convey Jeff's message to him. Of course, Durgin had at once divined that Whitwell must have come to him foradvice, and that he would hear from him, whether he was still in Bostonor not. By cabling to Westover, Jeff saved the cost of an elaborateaddress to Whitwell at Lion's Head, and had brought the painter in forfurther consultation and assistance in his affairs. What vexed him stillmore was his own consciousness that he could not defeat this impudentexpectation. He had, indeed, some difficulty with himself to keep fromgoing to Whitwell's hotel with the despatch at once, and he slept badly, in his fear that he might not get it to him in the morning before heleft town. 

The sum of Jeff's letter when it came, and it came to Westover and notto Whitwell, was to request the painter to see a lawyer in his behalf, and put his insurance policies in his hands, with full authority toguard his interests in the matter. He told Westover where his policieswould be found, and enclosed the key of his box in the Safety Vaults, with a due demand for Westover's admission to it. He registered hisletter, and he jocosely promised Westover to do as much for him someday, in pleading that there was really no one else he could turn to. Heput the whole business upon him, and Westover discharged himself of itas briefly as he could by delivering the papers to the lawyer he hadalready consulted for Whitwell. 

"Is this another charity patient?" asked his friend, with a grin. 

"No, " replied Westover. "You can charge this fellow along the wholeline. "

Before he parted with the lawyer he had his misgivings, and he said: "Ishouldn't want the blackguard to think I had got a friend a fat job outof him. "

The lawyer laughed intelligently. "I shall only make the usual charge. Then he is a blackguard. "

"There ought to be a more blistering word. "

"One that would imply that he was capable of setting fire to hisproperty?"

"I don't say that. But I'm glad he was away when it took fire, " saidWestover. 

"You give him the benefit of the doubt. "

"Yes, of every kind of doubt. "

LII. 

Westover once more promised himself to have nothing to do with JeffDurgin or his affairs. But he did not promise this so confidentlyas upon former occasions, and he instinctively waited for a newcomplication. He could not understand why Jeff should not have comehome to look after his insurance, unless it was because he had becomeinterested in some woman even beyond his concern for his own advantage. He believed him capable of throwing away advantages for disadvantages ina thing of that kind, but he thought it more probable that he had fallenin love with one whom he would lose nothing by winning. It did not seemat all impossible that he should have again met Bessie Lynde, and thatthey should have made up their quarrel, or whatever it was. Jeff wouldconsider that he had done his whole duty by Cynthia, and that he wasfree to renew his suit with Bessie; and there was nothing in Bessie'scharacter, as Westover understood it, to prevent her taking him backupon a very small show of repentance if the needed emotions were inprospect. He had decided pretty finally that it would be Bessie ratherthan another when he received a letter from Mrs. Vostrand. It was datedat Florence, and after some pretty palaver about their old friendship, which she only hoped he remembered half as fondly as she did, the letterran:

 "I am turning to you now in a very strange difficulty, but I do not know that I should turn to you even now, and knowing all I do of your goodness, if I were not asked to do so by another. 

 "I believe we have not heard from each other since the first days of my poor Genevieve's marriage, when everything looked so bright and fair, and we little realized the clouds that were to overcast her happiness. It is a long story, and I will not go into it fully. The truth is that poor Gigi did not treat her very kindly, and that she has not lived with him since the birth of their little girl, now nearly two years old, and the sweetest little creature in the world; I wish you could see her; I am sure it would inspire your pencil with the idea of an angel-child. At first I hoped that the separation would be only temporary, and that when Genevieve had regained her strength she would be willing to go back to her husband; but nothing would induce her to do so. In fact, poor Gigi had spent all her money, and they would have had nothing to live upon but his pay, and you know that the pay of the Italian officers is very small. 

 "Gigi made several attempts to see her, and he threatened to take the child from her, but he was always willing to compromise for money. I am afraid that he never really loved her and that we were both deceived by his fervent protestations. We managed to get away from Florence without his knowing it, and we have spent the last two years in Lausanne, very happily, though very quietly. Our dear Checco is in the university there, his father having given up the plan of sending him to Harvard, and we had him with us, while we were taking measures to secure the divorce. Even in the simple way we lived Genevieve attracted a great deal of attention, as she always has done, and she would have had several eligible offers if she had been divorced, or if her affections had not already been engaged, as I did not know at the time. 

 "We were in this state of uncertainty up to the middle of last summer, when the news of poor Gigi's sudden death came. I am sorry to say that his habits in some respects were not good, and that probably hastened it some; it had obliged him to leave the army. Genevieve did not feel that she could consistently put on black for him, and I did not urge her, under the peculiar circumstances; there is so much mere formality in those kind of things at the best; but we immediately returned to Florence to try and see if we could not get back some of her effects which his family had seized. I am opposed to lawsuits if they can possibly be avoided, and we arranged with poor Gigi's family by agreeing to let them have Genevieve's furniture if they would promise never to molest her with the child, and I must say they have behaved very well. We are on the best of terms with them, and they have let us have some of the things back which were endeared to her by old associations, at a very reasonable rate. 

 "This brings me to the romantic part of my letter, and I will say at once that we found your friend Mr. Durgin in Florence, in the very hotel we went to. We all met in the dining-room, at the table d'hote one evening, and Genevieve and he took to each other at once. He spent the evening with us in our private drawing-room, and she said to me, after he went, that for the first time in years she felt rested. It seems that she had always secretly fancied him, and that she gave up to me in the matter of marrying poor Gigi, because she knew I had my heart set upon it, and she was not very certain of her own feelings when Mr. D. Offered himself in Boston; but the conviction that she had made a mistake grew upon, her more and more after she had married Gigi. 

 "Well, now, Mr. Westover, I suppose you have guessed by this time that Mr. Durgin has renewed his offer, and Genevieve has conditionally accepted him; we do not feel that she is like an ordinary widow, and that she has to fill up a certain season of mourning; she and Gigi have been dead to each other for years; and Mr. Durgin is as fond of our dear little Bice as her own father could be, and they are together all the time. Her name is Beatrice de' Popolani Grassi. Isn't it lovely? She has poor Gigi's black eyes, with the most beautiful golden hair, which she gets from our aide. You remember Genevieve's hair back in the dear old days, before any trouble had come, and we were all so happy together? And this brings me to what I wanted to say. You are the oldest friend we have, and by a singular coincidence you are the oldest friend of Mr. Durgin, too. I cannot bear to risk my child's happiness a second time, and though Mr. Vostrand fully approves of the match, and has cabled his consent from Seattle, Washington, still, you know, a mother's heart cannot be at rest without some positive assurance. I told Mr. Durgin quite frankly how I felt, and he agreed with me that after our experience with poor Gigi we could not be too careful, and he authorized me to write to you and find out all you knew about him. He said you had known him ever since he was a boy, and that if there was anything bad in his record you could tell it, and he did not want you to spire the truth. He knows you will be just, and he wants you to write out the facts as they struck you at the time. 

 "I shall be on pins and needles, as the saying is, till we hear from you, and you know hew Genevieve and Mr. D. Must be feeling. She is fully resolved not to have him without your endorsement, and he is quite willing to abide by what you say. 

 "I could almost wish you to cable me just Good or Bad, but I know that this will not be wise, and I am going to wait for your letter, and get your opinion in full. 

 "We all join in the kindest regards. Mr. D. Is talking with Genevieve while I write, and has our darling Bice on his knees. You cannot imagine what a picture it makes, her childish delicacy contrasted with his stalwart strength. She says to send you a baciettino, and I wish you were here to receive it from her angel lips. Yours faithfully, "MEDORA VOSTRAND. 

 "P. S. --Mr. D. Says that he fell in love with Genevieve across the barrier between the first and second cabin when he came over with us on the Aquitaine four years ago, and that he has never ceased to love her, though at one time he persuaded himself that he cared for another because he felt that she was lost to him forever, and it was no use: He really did care for the lady he was engaged to, and had a true affection for her, which he mistook for a warmer feeling. He says that she was worthy of any man's love and of the highest respect. I tell Genevieve that, she ought to honor him for it, and that she must never be jealous of a memory. We are very happy in Mr. Vostrand's cordial approval of the match. He is so glad to think that Mr. D. Is a business man. His cable from Seattle was most enthusiastic. 

 "M. D. "

Westover did not know whether to laugh or cry when he read this letter, which covered several sheets of paper in lines that traversed eachother in different directions. His old, youthful ideal of Mrs. Vostrandfinally perished in its presence, though still he could not blame herfor wishing to see her daughter well married after having seen hermarried so ill. He asked himself, without getting any very definiteresponse, whether Mrs. Vostrand had always been this kind of a woman, orhad grown into it by the use of arts which her peculiar plan of life hadrendered necessary to her. He remembered the intelligent toleration ofCynthia in speaking of her, and his indignation in behalf of the girlwas also thrill of joy for her escape from the fate which Mrs. Vostrandwas so eagerly invoking for her daughter. But he thought of Genevievewith something of the same tenderness, and with a compassion that wasfor her alone. She seemed to him a victim who was to be sacrificed asecond time, and he had clearly a duty to her which he must not evade. The only question could be how best to discharge it, and Westover tooksome hours from his work to turn the question over in his mind. In theend, when he was about to give the whole affair up for the present, andlose a night's sleep over it later, he had an inspiration, and he actedupon it at once. He perceived that he owed no formal response to thesentimental insincerities of Mrs. Vostrand's letter, and he decided towrite to Durgin himself, and to put the case altogether in his hands. IfDurgin chose to show the Vostrands what he should write, very well; ifhe chose not to show it, then Westover's apparent silence would be asufficient reply to Mrs. Vostrand's appeal. 

 "I prefer to address you, " he began, "because I do not choose to let you think that I have any feeling to indulge against you, and because I do not think I have the right to take you out of your own keeping in any way. You would be in my keeping if I did, and I do not wish that, not only because it would be a bother to me, but because it would be a wrong to you. 

 "Mrs. Vostrand, whose letter to me I will leave you to answer by showing her this, or in any other manner you choose, tells me you do not want me to spare the truth concerning you. I have never been quite certain what the truth was concerning you; you know that better than I do; and I do not propose to write your biography here. But I will remind you of a few things. 

 "The first day I saw you, I caught you amusing yourself with the terror of two little children, and I had the pleasure of cuffing you for it. But you were only a boy then, and afterward you behaved so well that I decided you were not so much cruel as thoughtlessly mischievous. When you had done all you could to lead me to this favorable conclusion, you suddenly turned and avenged yourself on me, so far as you could, for the help I had given the little ones against you. I never greatly blamed you for that, for I decided that you had a vindictive temperament, and that you were not responsible for your temperament, but only for your character. 

 "In your first year at Harvard your associations were bad, and your conduct generally was so bad that you were suspended. You were arrested with other rowdy students, and passed the night in a police station. I believe you were justly acquitted of any specific offence, and I always believed that if you had experienced greater kindness socially during your first year in college you would have been a better man. 

 "You seem to have told Mrs. Vostrand of your engagement, and I will not speak of that. It was creditable to you that so wise and good a girl as your betrothed should have trusted you, and I do not know that it was against you that another girl who was neither wise nor good should have trusted you at the same time. You broke with the last, because you had to choose between the two; and, so far as I know, you accepted with a due sense of your faithlessness your dismissal by the first. In this connection I must remind you that while you were doing your best to make the party to your second engagement believe that you were in love with her, you got her brother, an habitual inebriate, drunk, and were, so far, instrumental in breaking down the weak will with which he was struggling against his propensity. It is only fair to you that I should add that you persuaded me you got him only a little drunker than he already got himself, and that you meant to have looked after him, but forgot him in your preoccupation with his sister. 

 "I do not know what took place between you and these people after you broke your engagement with the sister, until your encounter with the brother in Whitwell's Clearing, and I know of this only at second hand. I can well believe that you had some real or fancied injury to pay off; and I give you all the credit you may wish to claim for sparing him at last. For one of your vindictive temperament it must have been difficult. 

 "I have told you the worst things I know of you, and I do not pretend to know them more than superficially. I am not asked to judge you, and I will not. You must be your own judge. You are to decide whether these and other acts of yours are the acts of a man good enough to be intrusted with the happiness of a woman who has already been very unhappy. 

 "You have sometimes, however--oftener than I wished--come to me for advice, and I now offer you some advice voluntarily. Do not suppose that because you love this woman, as you believe, you are fit to be the keeper of her future. Ask yourself how you have dealt hitherto with those who have loved you, and whom in a sort you loved, and do not go further unless the answer is such as you can fully and faithfully report to the woman you wish to marry. What you have made yourself you will be to the end. You once called me an idealist, and perhaps you will call this idealism. I will only add, and I will give the last word in your defence, you alone know what you are. "

LIII. 

As soon as Westover had posted his letter he began to blame himself forit. He saw that the right and manly thing would have been to writeto Mrs. Vostrand, and tell her frankly what he thought of Durgin. Her folly, her insincerity, her vulgarity, had nothing to do with theaffair, so far as he was concerned. If she had once been so kind to himas to bind him to her in grateful friendship, she certainly had a claimupon his best offices. His duty was to her, and not at all to Durgin. Heneed not have said anything against him because it was against him, but because it was true; and if he had written he must not have saidanything less than the truth. 

He could have chosen not to write at all. He could have said that hermawkish hypocrisy was a little too much; that she was really wanting himto whitewash Durgin for her, and she had no right to put upon him theresponsibility for the step she clearly wished to take. He could havemade either of these decisions, and defended them to himself; but inwhat he had done he had altogether shirked. While he was writing toDurgin, and pretending that he could justly leave this affair to him, hewas simply indulging a bit of sentimental pose, far worse than anythingin Mrs. Vostrand's sham appeal for his help. 

He felt, as the time went by, that she had not written of her ownimpulse, but at her daughter's urgence, and that it was this poorcreature whose trust he had paltered with. He believed that Durginwould not fail to make her unhappy, yet he had not done what he mightto deliver her out of his hand. He had satisfied a wretchedpseudo-magnanimity toward a faithless scoundrel, as he thought Durgin, at the cost of a woman whose anxious hope of his aid had probably forcedher mother's hand. 

At first he thought his action irrevocable, and he bitterly upbraidedhimself for not taking council with Cynthia upon Mrs. Vostrand's letter. He had thought of doing that, and then he had dismissed the thought asinvolving pain that he had no right to inflict; but now he perceivedthat the pain was such as she must suffer in the event, and that he hadstupidly refused himself the only means of finding out the right thingto do. Her true heart and her clear mind would have been infallible inthe affair, and he had trusted to his own muddled impulse. 

He began to write other letters: to Durgin, to Mrs. Vostrand, toGenevieve; but none of them satisfied him, and he let the days go bywithout doing anything to retrieve his error or fulfil his duty. At lasthe did what he ought to have done at first: he enclosed Mrs. Vostrand'sletter to Cynthia, and asked her what she thought he ought to have done. While he was waiting Cynthia's answer to his letter, a cable messagereached him from Florence:

 "Kind letter received. Married to-day. Written. 

 "Vostrand. "

The next mail brought Cynthia's reply, which was very brief:

 "I am sorry you had to write at all; nothing could have prevented it. Perhaps if he cares for her he will be good to her. "

Since the matter was now irremediable, Westover crept less miserablythrough the days than he could have believed he should, until the letterwhich Mrs. Vostrand's cable promised came to hand. 

 "Dear friend, " she wrote, "your generous and satisfactory answer came yesterday. It was so delicate and high, -minded, and so like you, to write to Mr. Durgin, and leave the whole affair to him; and he did not lose a moment in showing us your beautiful letter. He said you were a man after his own heart, and I wish you could have heard how he praised you. It made Genevieve quite jealous, or would have, if it had been any one else. But she is so happy in your approval of her marriage, which is to take place before the 'sindaco' to-morrow, We shall only have the civil rite; she feels that it is more American, and we are all coming home to Lion's Head in the spring to live and die true Americans. I wish you could spend the summer with us there, but, until Lion's Head is rebuilt, we can't ask you. I don't know exactly how we shall do ourselves, but Mr. Durgin is full of plans, and we leave everything to him. He is here, making Genevieve laugh so that I can hardly write. He joins us in love and thanks, and our darling Bice sends you a little kiss. 

 "MEDORA VOSTRAND. 

 "P. S. Mr. D. Has told us all about the affairs you alluded to. With Miss L. We cannot feel that he was to blame; but he blames himself in regard to Miss W. He says his only excuse is that he was always in love with Genevieve; and I think that is quite excuse enough. M. V. "

From time to time during the winter Westover wrote to Cynthia, and hadletters from her in which he pleased himself fancying almost a personaleffect of that shyness which he thought a charming thing in her. Butno doubt this was something he read into them; on their face they wereplain, straightforward accounts of the life she led in the little oldhouse at Lion's Head, under the shadow of the black ruin on the hill. Westover had taken to sending her books and magazines, and in thankinghim for these she would sometimes speak of things she had read in them. Her criticism related to the spirit rather than the manner of the thingsshe spoke of, and it pleased him that she seemed, with all her insight, to have very little artistic sense of any kind; in the world where helived there were so many women with an artistic sense in every kind thathe was rather weary of it. 

There never was anything about Durgin in the letters, and Westoverwas both troubled and consoled by this silence. It might be fromconsciousness, and it probably was; it might be from indifference. Inthe worst event, it hid any pain she might have felt with a dignity fromwhich no intimation of his moved her. The nearest she came to speakingof Jeff was when she said that Jombateeste was going to work at thebrick-yards in Cambridge as soon as the spring opened, and was not goingto stay any longer at Lion's Head. 

Her brother Frank, she reported, had got a place with part work in thedrug-and-book store at Lovewell, where he could keep on more easily withhis studies; he had now fully decided to study for the ministry; he hadalways wanted to be an Episcopalian. 

One day toward the end of April, when several weeks had passed withoutbringing Westover any word from Cynthia, her father presented himself, and enjoyed in the painter's surprise the sensation of having droppedupon him from the clouds. He gave due accounts of the health of each ofhis household; ending with Jombateeste. "You know he's out at the brick, as he calls it, in Cambridge. "

"Cynthia said he was coming. I didn't know he had come yet, " saidWestover. "I must go out and look him up, if you think I could find himamong all those Canucks. "

"Well, I don't know but you'd better look us up at the same time, " saidWhitwell, with additional pleasure in the painter's additional surprise. "I guess we're out in Cambridge, too, " he added, at Westover's startof question. "We're out there, visitin' one of our summer folks, as youmight say. Remember Mis' Fredericks?"

"Why, what the deuce kept you from telling me so at once?" Westoverdemanded, indignantly. 

"Guess I hadn't got round to it, " said Whitwell, with dry relish. 

"Do you mean that Cynthia's there?"

"Well, I guess they wouldn't cared much for a visit from me. "

Whitwell took advantage of Westover's moment of mystification to explainthat Jeff had written over to him from Italy, offering him a pretty goodrent for his house, which he wanted to occupy while he was rebuildingLion's Head. He was going to push the work right through in the summer, and be ready for the season the year after. That was what Whitwellunderstood, and he understood that Jeff's family was going to stay inLovewell, but Jeff himself wanted to be on the ground day and night. 

"So that's kind of turned us out of doors, as you may say, and Cynthia'salways had this idee of comin' down Boston way: and she didn't knowanybody that could advise with her as well as Mis' Fredericks, and shewrote to her, and Mis' Fredericks answered her to come right down andtalk it over. " Westover felt a pang of resentment that Cynthia, had notturned to him for counsel, but he said nothing, and Whitwell wenton: "She said she was, ashamed to bother you, you'd had the wholeneighborhood on your hands so much, and so she wrote to Mis'Fredericks. "

Westover had a vague discomfort in it all, which ultimately defineditself as a discontent with the willingness of the Whitwells to letDurgin occupy their house upon any terms, for any purpose, and alingering grudge that Cynthia should have asked help of any one buthimself, even from a motive of delicacy. 

In the evening he went out to see the girl at the house of Mrs. Fredericks, whom he found living in the Port. They had a first moment ofintolerable shyness on her part. He had been afraid to see her, with thejealousy for her dignity he always felt, lest she should look as if shehad been unhappy about Durgin. But he found her looking, not onlyvery well, but very happy and full of peace, as soon as that moment ofshyness passed. It seemed to Westover as if she had begun to live on newterms, and that a harassing element, which had always been in it, hadgone out of her life, and in its absence she was beginning to rejoicein a lasting repose. He found himself rejoicing with her, and he foundhimself on simpler and franker terms with her than ever before. Neitherof them spoke of Jeff, or made any approach to mention him, and Westoverbelieved that this was not from a morbid feeling in her, but from afinal and enduring indifference. 

He saw her alone, for Mrs. Fredericks and her daughter had gone intotown to a concert, which he made her confess she would have gone toherself if it had not been that her father said he was coming out to seeher. She would not let him joke about the sacrifice he pretended she hadmade; he had a certain pain in fancying that his visit was the highestand finest favor that life could do her. She told him of the ambitionshe had that she might get a school somewhere in the neighborhood ofBoston, and then find something for her brother to do, while he beganhis studies in the Theological School at Harvard. Frank was still atLovewell, it seemed. 

At the end of the long call he made, he said, abruptly, when he hadrisen to go, "I should like to paint you. "

"Who? Me?" she cried, as if it were the most incredible thing, while aglad color rushed over her face. 

"Yes. While you're waiting to get your school, couldn't you come in withyour father, now and then, and sit for me?"

"What's he want me to come fer?" Whitwell demanded, when the plan waslaid before him. He was giving his unlimited leisure to the explorationof Boston, and his tone expressed something of the injury, which he alsoput into words, as a sole objection to the proposed interruption. "Can'tyou go alone, Cynthy?" Cynthia said she did not know, but when thepoint was referred to Mrs. Fredericks, she was sure Cynthia could notgo alone, and she acquainted them both, as far as she could, with thatmystery of chaperonage which had never touched their lives before. Whitwell seemed to think that his daughter would give the matter up;and perhaps she might have done so, though she seemed reluctant, ifMrs. Fredericks had not further instructed them that it was the highestpossible honor Mr. Westover was offering them, and that if he hadproposed to paint her daughter she would simply have gone and lived withhim while he was doing it. 

Whitwell found some compensation for the time lost to his study ofBoston in the conversation of the painter, which he said was worth ahundred cents on the dollar every time, though it dealt less with themetaphysical aspect of the latest facts of science than the philosophercould have wished. He did not, to be sure, take very much stock in thepicture as it advanced, somewhat fitfully, with a good many reversionsto its original state of sketch. It appeared to him always a slight andfeeble representation of Cynthia, though, of course, a native politenessforbade him to express his disappointment. He avowed a faith inWestover's ability to get it right in the end, and always bade him goon, and take as much time to it as he wanted. 

He felt less uneasy than at first, because he had now found a littlefurnished house in the woodenest outskirts of North Cambridge, which hehired cheap from the recently widowed owner, and they were keeping housethere. Jombateeste lived with them, and worked in the brick-yards. Outof hours he helped Cynthia, and kept the ugly little place looking trimand neat, and left Whitwell free for the tramps home to nature, which hebegan to take over the Belmont uplands as soon as the spring opened. Hewas not homesick, as Cynthia was afraid he might be; his mind wasfully occupied by the vast and varied interests opened to it by theintellectual and material activities of the neighboring city; and hefound ample scope for his physical energies in doing Cynthia's errands, as well as studying the strange flora of the region. He apparentlythought that he had made a distinct rise and advance in the world. Sometimes, in the first days of his satisfaction with his establishment, he expressed the wish that Jackson could only have seen how he wasfixed, once. In his preoccupation with other things, he no longerattempted to explore the eternal mysteries with the help of planchette;the ungrateful instrument gathered as much dust as Cynthia would sufferon the what-not in the corner of the solemn parlor; and after twoor three visits to the First Spiritual Temple in Boston, he lapsedaltogether from an interest in the other world, which had, perhaps, mainly flourished in the absence of pressing subjects of inquiry, inthis. 

When at last Westover confessed that he had carried his pictureof Cynthia as far as he could, Whitwell did his best to hide hisdisappointment. "Well, sir, " he said, tolerantly and even cheeringly, "Ipresume we're every one of us a different person to whoever looks at us. They say that no two men see the same star. "

"You mean that she doesn't look so to you, " suggested the painter, whoseemed not at all abashed. 

"Well, you might say--Why, here! It's like her; photograph couldn't getit any better; but it makes me think-well, of a bird that you've come onsudden, and it stoops as if it was goin' to fly--"

"Ah, " said Westover, "does it make you think of that?"

LIV. 

The painter could not make out at first whether the girl herself waspleased with the picture or not, and in his uncertainty he could notgive it her at once, as he had hoped and meant to do. It was by a kindof accident he found afterward that she had always been passionatelyproud of his having painted her. This was when he returned from the lastsojourn he had made in Paris, whither he went soon after the Whitwellssettled in North Cambridge. He left the picture behind him to be framedand then sent to her with a letter he had written, begging her to giveit houseroom while he was gone. He got a short, stiff note inreply after he reached Paris, and he had not tried to continue thecorrespondence. But as soon as he returned he went out to see theWhitwells in North Cambridge. They were still in their little housethere; the young widower had married again; but neither he nor his newwife had cared to take up their joint life in his first home, and he hadfound Whitwell such a good tenant that he had not tried to put up therent on him. Frank was at home, now, with an employment that gave himpart of his time for his theological studies; Cynthia had been teachingschool ever since the fall after Westover went away, and they were all, as Whitwell said, in clover. He was the only member of the family athome when Westover called on the afternoon of a warm summer day, and heentertained him with a full account of a visit he had paid Lion's Headearlier in the season. 

"Yes, sir, " he said, as if he had already stated the fact, "I've sold myold place there to that devil. " He said devil without the least rancor;with even a smile of good-will, and he enjoyed the astonishment Westoverexpressed in his demand:

"Sold Durgin your house?"

"Yes; I see we never wanted to go back there to live, any of us, and Iwent up to pass the papers and close the thing out. Well, I did have anoffer for it from a feller that wanted to open a boa'din'-house thereand get the advantage of Jeff's improvements, and I couldn't seem tomake up my mind till I'd looked the ground over. Fust off, you know, Ithought I'd sell to the other feller, because I could see in a minutewhat a thorn it 'd be in Jeff's flesh. But, dumn it all! When I met thecomical devil I couldn't seem to want to pester him. Why, here, thinksI, if we've made an escape from him--and I guess we have, about thebiggest escape--what have I got ag'in' him, anyway? I'd ought to feelgood to him; and I guess that's the way I did feel, come to boil itdown. He's got a way with him, you know, when you're with him, thatmakes you like him. He may have a knife in your ribs the whole while, but so long's he don't turn it, you don't seem to know it, and you can'thelp likin' him. Why, I hadn't been with Jeff five minutes before I madeup my mind to sell to him. I told him about the other offer--felt boundto do it--and he was all on fire. 'I want that place, Mr. Whitwell, ' s'dhe. 'Name your price. ' Well, I wa'n't goin' to take an advantage of thefeller, and I guess he see it. 'You've offered me three thousand, ' s'dI, 'n' I don't want to be no ways mean about it. Five thousand buys theplace. ' 'It's mine, ' s'd he; just like that. I guess he see he had agentleman to deal with, and we didn't say a word more. Don't you think Idone right to sell to him? I couldn't 'a' got more'n thirty-five hundredout the other feller, to save me, and before Jeff begun his improvementsI couldn't 'a' realized a thousand dollars on the prop'ty. "

"I think you did right to sell to him, " said Westover, saddened somewhatby the proof Whitwell alleged of his magnanimity. 

"Well, Sir, I'm glad you do. I don't believe in crowdin' a man becauseyou got him in a corner, an' I don't believe in bearin' malice. Neverdid. All I wanted was what the place was wo'th--to him. 'Twa'n't wo'thnothin' to me! He's got the house and the ten acres around it, and he'sgot the house on Lion's Head, includin' the Clearin', that the poottiestpicnic-ground in the mountains. Think of goin' up there this summer?"

"No, " said Westover, briefly. 

"Well, I some wish you did. I sh'd like to know how Jeff's improvementsstruck you. Of course, I can't judge of 'em so well, but I guess he'smade a pootty sightly thing of it. He told me he'd had one of theleadin' Boston architects to plan the thing out for him, and I tell youhe's got something nice. 'Tain't so big as old Lion's Head, and Jeffwants to cater to a different style of custom, anyway. The buildin'slonger'n what she is deep, and she spreads in front so's to give as manyrooms a view of the mountain as she can. Know what 'runnaysonce' is?Well, that's the style Jeff said it was; it's all pillars and pilasters;and you ride up to the office through a double row of colyums, under akind of a portico. It's all painted like them old Colonial houses downon Brattle Street, buff and white. Well, it made me think of one of themold pagan temples. He's got her shoved along to the south'ard, and he'swidened out a piece of level for her to stand on, so 't that piece o'wood up the hill there is just behind her, and I tell you she looksnice, backin' up ag'inst the trees. I tell you, Jeff's got a head onhim! I wish you could see that dinin'-room o' his: all white colyums, and frontin' on the view. Why, that devil's got a regular littletheatyre back o' the dinin'-room for the young folks to act ammytureplays in, and the shows that come along, and he's got a dance-hallbesides; the parlors ain't much--folks like to set in the office; anda good many of the rooms are done off into soots, and got their ownparlors. I tell you, it's swell, as they say. You can order what youplease for breakfast, but for lunch and dinner you got to take what Jeffgives you; but he treats you well. He's a Durgin, when it comes to that. Served in cou'ses, and dinner at seven o'clock. I don't know where hegot his money for 't all, but I guess he put in his insurance fust, andthen he put a mortgage on the buildin'; be as much as owned it; saidhe'd had a splendid season last year, and if he done as well for acopule of seasons more he'd have the whole prop'ty free o' debt. "

Westover could see that the prosperity of the unjust man had corruptedthe imagination and confounded the conscience of this simple witness, and he asked, in the hope of giving his praises pause: "What has he doneabout the old family burying-ground in the orchard?"

"Well, there!" said Whitwell. "That got me more than any other onething: I naturally expected that Jeff 'd had 'em moved, for you know andI know, Mr. Westover, that a place like that couldn't be very pop'la'with summer folks; they don't want to have anything to kind of make 'emserious, as you may say. But that devil got his architect to treatthe place, as he calls it, and he put a high stone wall around it, andplanted it to bushes and evergreens so 't looks like a piece of oldgarden, down there in the corner of the orchard, and if you didn'thunt for it you wouldn't know it was there. Jeff said 't when folksdid happen to find it out, he believed they liked it; they think it'spicturesque and ancient. Why, some on 'em wanted him to put up a littlechapel alongside and have services there; and Jeff said he didn't knowbut he'd do it yet. He's got dark-colored stones up for Mis' Durgin andJackson, so 't they look as old as any of 'em. I tell you, he knows howto do things. "

"It seems so, " said Westover, with a bitterness apparently lost upon theoptimistic philosopher. 

"Yes, sir. I guess it's all worked out for the best. So long's he didn'tmarry Cynthy, I don't care who he married, and--I guess he's made outfust-rate, and he treats his wife well, and his mother-in-law, too. Youwouldn't hardly know they was in the house, they're so kind of quiet;and if a guest wants to see Jeff, he's got to send and ask for him;clerk does everything, but I guess Jeff keeps an eye out and knowswhat's goin' on. He's got an elegant soot of appartments, and he livesas private as if he was in his own house, him and his wife. But whenthere's anything goin' on that needs a head, they're both right on deck. 

"He don't let his wife worry about things a great deal; he's got afust-rate of a housekeeper, but I guess old Mis' Vostrand keeps thehousekeeper, as you may say. I hear some of the boa'ders talkin' upthere, and one of 'em said 't the great thing about Lion's Head was 'tyou could feel everywheres in it that it was a lady's house. I guessJeff has a pootty good time, and a time 't suits him. He shows up on thecoachin' parties, and he's got himself a reg'lar English coachman's rig, with boots outside his trouse's, and a long coat and a fuzzy plug-hat: Itell you, he looks gay! He don't spend his winters at Lion's Head: heis off to Europe about as soon as the house closes in the fall, and hekeeps bringin' home new dodges. Guess you couldn't get no boa'd therefor no seven dollars a week now! I tell you, Jeff's the gentleman now, and his wife's about the nicest lady I ever saw. Do' know as I care somuch about her mother; do' know as I got anything ag'inst her, either, very much. But that little girl, Beechy, as they call her, she's abeauty! And round with Jeff all the while! He seems full as fond of heras her own mother does, and that devil, that couldn't seem to get enoughof tormentin' little children when he was a boy, is as good and gentlewith that little thing as-pie!"

Whitwell seemed to have come to an end of his celebration of Jeff'ssuccess, and Westover asked:

"And what do you make now, of planchette's brokenshaft business? Ordon't you believe in planchette any more?"

Whitwell's beaming face clouded. "Well, sir, that's a thing that'salways puzzled me. If it wa'n't that it was Jackson workin' plantchettethat night, I shouldn't placed much dependence on what she said; butJackson could get the truth out of her, if anybody could. Sence I b'enup there I b'en figurin' it out like this: the broken shaft is the oldJeff that he's left off bein'--"

Whitwell stopped midway in his suggestion, with an inquiring eye on thepainter, who asked: "You think he's left off being the old Jeff?"

"Well, sir, you got me there, " the philosopher confessed. "I didn't seeanything to the contrary, but come to think of it--"

"Why couldn't the broken shaft be his unfulfilled destiny on the oldlines? What reason is there to believe he isn't what he's always been?"

"Well, come to think of it--"

"People don't change in a day, or a year, " Westover went on, "or two orthree years, even. Sometimes I doubt if they ever change. "

"Well, all that I thought, " Whitwell urged, faintly, against the hardscepticism of a man ordinarily so yielding, "is 't there must be a moralgovernment of the universe somewheres, and if a bad feller is to getalong and prosper hand over hand, that way, don't it look kind of asif--"

"There wasn't any moral government of the universe? Not the way I seeit, " said Westover. "A tree brings forth of its kind. As a man sows hereaps. It's dead sure, pitilessly sure. Jeff Durgin sowed success, ina certain way, and he's reaping it. He once said to me, when I tried towaken his conscience, that he should get where he was trying to go if hewas strong enough, and being good had nothing to do with it. I believenow he was right. But he was wrong too, as such a man always is. Thatkind of tree bears Dead Sea apples, after all. He sowed evil, and hemust reap evil. He may never know it, but he will reap what he has sown. The dreadful thing is that others must share in his harvest. What do youthink?"

Whitwell scratched his head. "Well, sir, there's something in what yousay, I guess. But here! What's the use of thinkin' a man can't change?Wa'n't there ever anything in that old idee of a change of heart? Whatdo you s'pose made Jeff let up on that feller that Jombateeste see himhave down, that day, in my Clearin'? What Jeff would natch'ly done wouldb'en to shake the life out of him; but he didn't; he let him up, and helet him go. What's the reason that wa'n't the beginnin' of a new lifefor him?"

"We don't know all the ins and outs of that business, " said Westover, after a moment. "I've puzzled over it a good deal. The man was thebrother of that girl that Jeff had jilted in Boston. I've found out thatmuch. I don't know just the size and shape of the trouble between them, but Jeff may have felt that he had got even with his enemy before thatday. Or he may have felt that if he was going in for full satisfaction, there was Jombateeste looking on. "

"That's true, " said Whitwell, greatly daunted. After a while he tookrefuge in the reflection, "Well, he's a comical devil. "

Westover said, in a sort of absence: "Perhaps we're all broken shafts, here. Perhaps that old hypothesis of another life, a world wherethere is room enough and time enough for all the beginnings of this tocomplete themselves--"

"Well, now you're shoutin', " said Whitwell. "And if plantchette--"Westover rose. "Why, a'n't you goin' to wait and see Cynthy? I'mexpectin' her along every minute now; she's just gone down to HarvardSquare. She'll be awfully put out when she knows you've be'n here. "

"I'll come out again soon, " said Westover. "Tell her--"

"Well, you must see your picture, anyway. We've got it in the parlor. Idon't know what she'll say to me, keepin' you here in the settin'-roomall the time. "

Whitwell led him into the little dark front hall, and into the parlor, less dim than it should have been because the afternoon sun was burningfull upon its shutters. The portrait hung over the mantel, in a badlight, but the painter could feel everything in it that he could notsee. 

"Yes, it had that look in it. "

"Well, she ha'n't took wing yet, I'm thankful to think, " said Whitwell, and he spoke from his own large mind to the sympathy of an old friendwho he felt could almost share his feelings as a father. 

LV

When Westover turned out of the baking little street where the Whitwellslived into an elm-shaded stretch of North Avenue, he took off his hatand strolled bareheaded along in the cooler air. He was disappointed notto have seen Cynthia, and yet he found himself hurrying away after hisfailure, with a sense of escape, or at least of respite. 

What he had come to say, to do, was the effect of long experience andmuch meditation. The time had arrived when he could no longer feign tohimself that his feelings toward the girl were not those of a lover, but he had his modest fears that she could never imagine him in thatcharacter, and that if he should ask her to do so he should shock andgrieve her, and inflict upon himself an incurable wound. 

During this last absence of his he had let his fancy dwell constantlyupon her, until life seemed worth having only if she would share it withhim. He was an artist, and he had always been a bohemian, but at hearthe was philistine and bourgeois. His ideal was a settlement, a fixedhabitation, a stated existence, a home where he could work constantly inan air of affection, and unselfishly do his part to make his home happy. It was a very simple-hearted ambition, and I do not quite know how tokeep it from appearing commonplace and almost sordid; but such as itwas, I must confess that it was his. He had not married his model, because he was mainly a landscapist, perhaps; and he had not married anyof his pupils, because he had not been in love with them, charmingand good and lovely as he had thought some of them; and of late he hadrealized more and more why his fancy had not turned in their direction. He perceived that it was already fixed, and possibly had long beenfixed. 

He did not blink the fact that there were many disparities, andthat there would be certain disadvantages which could never be quiteovercome. The fact had been brought rather strenuously home to him byhis interview with Cynthia's father. He perceived, as indeed he hadalways known, that with a certain imaginative lift in his thinking andfeeling, Whitwell was irreparably rustic, that he was and always mustbe practically Yankee. Westover was not a Yankee, and he did not love orhonor the type, though its struggles against itself touched and amusedhim. It made him a little sick to hear how Whitwell had profited byDurgin's necessity, and had taken advantage of him with conscientiousand self-applausive rapacity, while he admired his prosperity, and triedto account for it by doubt of its injustice. For a moment this seemedto him worse than Durgin's conscientious toughness, which was theantithesis of Whitwell's remorseless self-interest. For the moment thisclaimed Cynthia of its kind, and Westover beheld her rustic and Yankeeof her father's type. If she was not that now, she would grow intothat through the lapse from the personal to the ancestral which we allundergo in the process of the years. 

The sight of her face as he had pictured it, and of the soul which hehad imagined for it, restored him to a better sense of her, but he feltthe need of escaping from the suggestion of her father's presence, andtaking further thought. Perhaps he should never again reach the pointthat he was aware of deflecting from now; he filled his lungs withlong breaths, which he exhaled in sighs of relief. It might have been amistake on the spiritual as well as the worldly side; it would certainlynot have promoted his career; it might have impeded it. These misgivingsflitted over the surface of thought that more profoundly was occupiedwith a question of other things. In the time since he had seen her lastit might very well be that a young and pretty girl had met some one whohad taken her fancy; and he could not be sure that her fancy had everbeen his, even if this had not happened. He had no proof at all that shehad ever cared or could care for him except gratefully, respectfully, almost reverentially, with that mingling of filial and maternal anxietywhich had hitherto been the warmest expression of her regard. He triedto reason it out, and could not. He suddenly found himself bitterlydisappointed that he had missed seeing her, for if they had met, hewould have known by this time what to think, what to hope. He feltold--he felt fully thirty-six years old--as he passed his hand over hiscrown, whose gossamer growth opposed so little resistance to his touch. He had begun to lose his hair early, but till then he had not muchregretted his baldness. He entered into a little question of theircomparative ages, which led him to the conclusion that Cynthia must nowbe about twenty-five. 

Almost at the same moment he saw her coming up the walk toward him fromfar down the avenue. For a reason, or rather a motive, of his own hepretended to himself that it was not she, but he knew instantly that itwas, and he put on his hat. He could see that she did not know him, andit was a pretty thing to witness the recognition dawn on her. When ithad its full effect, he was aware of a flutter, a pause in her wholefigure before she came on toward him, and he hurried his steps for thecharm of her beautiful blushing face. 

It was the spiritual effect of figure and face that he had carried inhis thought ever since he had arrived at that one-sided intimacy throughhis study of her for the picture he had just seen. He had often hadto ask himself whether he had really perceived or only imagined thecharacter he had translated into it; but here, for the moment at least, was what he had seen. He hurried forward and joyfully took the hand shegave him. He thought he should speak of that at once, but it was notpossible, of course. There had to come first the unheeded questionsand answers about each other's health, and many other commonplaces. He turned and walked home with her, and at the gate of the little uglyhouse she asked him if he would not come in and take tea with them. 

Her father talked with him while she got the tea, and when it was readyher brother came in from his walk home out of Old Cambridge and helpedher put it on the table. He had grown much taller than Westover, andhe was very ecclesiastical in his manner; more so than he would be, probably, if he ever became a bishop, Westover decided. Jombateeste, inan interval of suspended work at the brick yard, was paying a visit tohis people in Canada, and Westover did not see him. 

All the time while they sat at table and talked together Westoverrealized more and more that for him, at least, the separation of thelast two years had put that space between them which alone made itpossible for them to approach each other on new ground. A kind ofhorror, of repulsion, for her engagement to Jeff Durgin had ceased fromhis sense of her; it was as if she had been unhappily married, and theman, who had been unworthy and unkind, was like a ghost who could nevercome to trouble his joy. He was more her contemporary, he found, thanformerly; she had grown a great deal in the past two years, and acertain affliction which her father's fixity had given him concerningher passed in the assurance of change which she herself gave him. 

She had changed her world, and grown to it, but her nature had notchanged. Even her look had not changed, and he told her how he had seenhis picture in her at the moment of their meeting in the street. Theyall went in to verify his impression from the painting. "Yes, that isthe way you looked. "

"It seems to me that is the way I felt, " she asserted. 

Frank went about the house-work, and left her to their guest. WhenWhitwell came back from the post-office, where he said he would only begone a minute, he did not rejoin Westover and Cynthia in the parlor. 

The parlor door was shut; he had risked his fate, and they were talkingit over. Cynthia was not sure; she was sure of nothing but that therewas no one in the world she cared for so much; but she was not sure thatwas enough. She did not pretend that she was surprised; she owned thatshe had sometimes expected it; she blamed herself for not expecting itthen. 

Westover said that he did not blame her for not knowing her mind; he hadbeen fifteen years learning his own fully. He asked her to take all thetime she wished. If she could not make sure after all, he should alwaysbe sure that she was wise and good. She told him everything there wasto tell of her breaking with Jeff, and he thought the last episode asupreme proof of her wisdom and goodness. 

After a certain time they went for a walk in the warm summer moonlightunder the elms, where they had met on the avenue. 

"I suppose, " she said, as they drew near her door again, "that peopledon't often talk it over as we've done. "

"We only know from the novels, " he answered. "Perhaps people do, oftenerthan is ever known. I don't see why they shouldn't. "

"No. "

"I've never wished to be sure of you so much as since you've wished tobe sure of yourself. "

"And I've never been so sure as since you were willing to let me, " saidCynthia. 

"I am glad of that. Try to think of me, if that will help my cause, assome one you might have always known in this way. We don't really knoweach other yet. I'm a great deal older than you, but still I'm not sovery old. "

"Oh, I don't care for that. All I want to be certain of is that thefeeling I have is really--the feeling. "

"I know, dear, " said Westover, and his heart surged toward her in histenderness for her simple conscience, her wise question. "Take time. Don't hurry. Forget what I've said--or no; that's absurd! Think of it;but don't let anything but the truth persuade you. Now, good-night, Cynthia. "

"Good-night--Mr. Westover. "

"Mr. Westover!" he reproached her. 

She stood thinking, as if the question were crucial. Then she said, firmly, "I should always have to call you Mr. Westover. "

"Oh, well, " he returned, "if that's all!"

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 Boldest man is commonly a little behind a timid woman Could not imagine the summer life of the place Crimson which stained the tops and steeps of snow Crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time Disposition to use his friends Errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest Exchanging inaudible banalities Fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little Government is best which governs least He might walk home with her if he would not seem to do so He's the same kind of a man that he was a boy Hollow hilarities which people use to mask their indifference Honesty is difficult I don't ever want to take the whip-hand I suppose they must feel it I sha'n't forget this very soon If one must, it ought to be champagne Insensate pride that mothers have in their children's faults Intent upon some point in the future Iron forks had two prongs Jefferson Joyful shame of children who have escaped punishment Man that could be your friend if he didn't like you Married Man: after the first start-off he don't try No two men see the same star Nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it Pathetic hopefulness People whom we think unequal to their good fortune Picture which, he said to himself, no one would believe in Quiet but rather dull look of people slightly deaf Society interested in a woman's past, not her future Stupefied by a life of unalloyed prosperity and propriety The great trouble is for the man to be honest with her To be exemplary is as dangerous as to be complimentary W'at you want letter for? Always same thing Want something hard, don't you know; but I want it to be easy We're company enough for ourselves With all her insight, to have very little artistic sense Women talked their follies and men acted theirs World made up of two kinds of people World seems to always come out at the same hole it went in at