Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

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

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

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

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

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

  “Guess we can put you up,” said Jeff.

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

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

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

  Jeff seemed to think a moment before he answered:

  “Just exactly the same.”

  “A little older?”

  “Not as I can see.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Nearer nineteen.”

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

  “Spirits?”

  “Yes.”

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

  “And where do you come in?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Does Franky cry as much as ever?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  X.

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

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

  “You among those that came this afternoon?”

  Westover claimed to be of the new arrivals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes; he did.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Bowdoin or Dartmouth?” Westover suggested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Now, Jackson!” said his mother.

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

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

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