Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “And what’s he goin’ to do with his college education?”

  Jeff interposed. “You think that all the college graduates turn out lawyers and doctors and professors? Some of ’em are mighty glad to sweep out banks in hopes of a clerkship; and some take any sort of a place in a mill or a business house, to work up; and some bum round out West ‘on cattle ranches; and some, if they’re lucky, get newspaper reporters’ places at ten dollars a week.”

  Cynthia followed with the generalization: “I don’t believe anybody can know too much to keep a hotel. It won’t hurt Jeff if he’s been to Harvard, or to Europe, either.”

  “I guess there’s a pair of you,” said Mrs. Durgin, with superficial contempt. She was silent for a time, and they waited. “Well, there!” she broke out again. “I’ve got something to chew upon for a spell, I guess. Go along, now, both of you! And the next time you’ve got to face your mother, Jeff, don’t you come in lookin’ round anybody’s petticoats! I’ll see you later about all this.”

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

  “That’s the last of it, Cynthy,” said Jeff.

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

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

  He would have released her, but she lingered in his embrace. “Will you promise that if there’s ever anything like it again, you won’t wait for me to make you?”

  “I like your having made me, but I promise,” he said.

  Then she tightened her arms round his neck and kissed him.

  XXV.

  The will of Jeff’s mother relaxed its grip upon the purpose so long held, as if the mere strain of the tenacity had wearied and weakened it. When it finally appeared that her ambition for her son was not his ambition for himself and would never be, she abandoned it. Perhaps it was the easier for her to forego her hopes of his distinction in the world, because she had learned before that she must forego her hopes of him in other ways. She had vaguely fancied that with the acquaintance his career at Harvard would open to him Jeff would make a splendid marriage. She had followed darkling and stumbling his course in society as far as he would report it to her, and when he would not suffer her to glory in it, she believed that he was forbidding her from a pride that would not recognize anything out of the common in it. She exulted in his pride, and she took all his snubbing reserves tenderly, as so many proofs of his success.

  At the bottom of her heart she had both fear and contempt of all towns-people, whom she generalized from her experience of them as summer folks of a greater or lesser silliness. She often found herself unable to cope with them, even when she felt that she had twice their sense; she perceived that they had something from their training that with all her undisciplined force she could never hope to win from her own environment. But she believed that her son would have the advantages which baffled her in them, for he would have their environment; and she had wished him to rivet his hold upon those advantages by taking a wife from among them, and by living the life of their world. Her wishes, of course, had no such distinct formulation, and the feeling she had toward Cynthia as a possible barrier to her ambition had no more definition. There had been times when the fitness of her marriage with Jeff had moved the mother’s heart to a jealousy that she always kept silent, while she hoped for the accident or the providence which should annul the danger. But Genevieve Vostrand had not been the kind of accident or the providence that she would have invoked, and when she saw Jeff’s fancy turning toward her, Mrs. Durgin had veered round to Cynthia. All the same she kept a keen eye upon the young ladies among the summer folks who came to Lion’s Head, and tacitly canvassed their merits and inclinations with respect to Jeff in the often-imagined event of his caring for any one of them. She found that her artfully casual references to her son’s being in Harvard scarcely affected their mothers in the right way. The fact made them think of the head waiters whom they had met at other hotels, and who were working their way through Dartmouth or Williams or Yale, and it required all the force of Jeff’s robust personality to dissipate their erroneous impressions of him. He took their daughters out of their arms and from under their noses on long drives upon his buckboard, and it became a convention with them to treat his attentions somewhat like those of a powerful but faithful vassal.

  Whether he was indifferent, or whether the young ladies were coy, none of these official flirtations came to anything. He seemed not to care for one more than another; he laughed and joked with them all, and had an official manner with each which served somewhat like a disparity of years in putting them at their ease with him. They agreed that he was very handsome, and some thought him very talented; but they questioned whether he was quite what you would call a gentleman. It is true that this misgiving attacked them mostly in the mass; singly, they were little or not at all troubled by it, and they severally behaved in an unprincipled indifference to it.

  Mrs. Durgin had the courage of her own purposes, but she had the fear of Jeff’s. After the first pang of the disappointment which took final shape from his declaration that he was going to marry Cynthia, she did not really care much. She had the habit of the girl; she respected her, she even loved her. The children, as she thought of them, had known each other from their earliest days; Jeff had persecuted Cynthia throughout his graceless boyhood, but he had never intimidated her; and his mother, with all her weakness for him, felt that it was well for him that his wife should be brave enough to stand up against him.

  She formulated this feeling no more than the others, but she said to Westover, whom Jeff bade her tell of the engagement: “It a’n’t exactly as I could ‘a’ wished it to be. But I don’t know as mothers are ever quite suited with their children’s marriages. I presume it’s from always kind of havin’ had her round under my feet ever since she was born, as you may say, and seein’ her family always so shiftless. Well, I can’t say that of Frank, either. He’s turned out a fine boy; but the father! Cynthy is one of the most capable girls, smart as a trap, and bright as a biscuit. She’s masterful, too! she NEED to have a will of her own with Jeff.”

  Something of the insensate pride that mothers have in their children’s faults, as their quick tempers, or their wastefulness, or their revengefulness, expressed itself in her tone; and it was perhaps this that irritated Westover.

  “I hope he’ll never let her know it. I don’t think a strong will is a thing to be prized, and I shouldn’t consider it one of Cynthia’s good points. The happiest life for her would be one that never forced her to use it.”

  “I don’t know as I understand you exactly,” said Mrs. Durgin, with some dryness. “I know Jeff’s got rather of a domineering disposition, but I don’t believe but she can manage him without meetin’ him on his own ground, as you may say.”

  “She’s a girl in a thousand,” Westover returned, evasively.

  “Then you think he’s shown sense in choosin’ of her?” pursued Jeff’s mother, resolute to find some praise of him in Westover’s words.

  “He’s a very fortunate man,” said the painter.

  “Well, I guess you’re right,” Mrs. Durgin acquiesced, as much to Jeff’s advantage as she could. “You know I was always afraid he would make a fool of himself, but I guess he’s kept his eyes pretty well open all the while. Well!” She closed the subject with this exclamation. “Him and Cynthy’s been at me about Jackson,” she added, abruptly. “They’ve cooked it up between ’em that he’s out of health or run down or something.”

  Her manner referred the matter to Westover, and he said: “He isn’t looking so well this summer. He ought to go away somewhere.”

  “That’s what they thought,” said Mrs. Durgin, smiling in her pleasure at having their opinion confirmed by the old and valued friend of the family.

  “Whereabouts do you think he’d best go?”

&n
bsp; “Oh, I don’t know. Italy — or Egypt—”

  “I guess, if you could get Jackson to go away at all, it would be to some of them old Bible countries,” said Mrs. Durgin. “We’ve got to have a fight to get him off, make the best of it, and I’ve thought it over since the children spoke about it, and I couldn’t seem to see Jackson willin’ to go out to Californy or Colorady, to either of his brothers. But I guess he would go to Egypt. That a good climate for the — his complaint?”

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

  “Tell him how it is,” said Mrs. Durgin, “and the tussle we shall have to have anyway to make Jackson believe he’d ought to have a rest. He’ll go to Egypt if he’ll go anywheres, because his mind keeps runnin’ on Bible questions, and it ‘ll interest him to go out there; and we can make him believe it’s just to bang around for the winter. He’s terrible hopeful.” Now that she began to speak, all her long-repressed anxiety poured itself out, and she hitched her chair nearer to Westover and wistfully clutched his sleeve. “That’s the worst of Jackson. You can’t make him believe anything’s the matter. Sometimes I can’t bear to hear him go on about himself as if he was a well young man. He expects that medium’s stuff is goin’ to cure him!”

  “People sick in that way are always hopeful,” said Westover.

  “Oh, don’t I know it! Ha’n’t I seen my children and my husband — Oh, do ask that doctor to answer as quick as he can!”

  XXVI.

  Westover had a difficulty in congratulating Jeff which he could scarcely define to himself, but which was like that obscure resentment we feel toward people whom we think unequal to their good fortune. He was ashamed of his grudge, whatever it was, and this may have made him overdo his expressions of pleasure. He was sensible of a false cordiality in them, and he checked himself in a flow of forced sentiment to say, more honestly: “I wish you’d speak to Cynthia for me. You know how much I think of her, and how much I want to see her happy. You ought to be a very good fellow, Jeff!”

  “I’ll tell her that; she’ll like that,” said Jeff. “She thinks the world of you.”

  “Does she? Well!”

  “And I guess she’ll be glad you sent word. She’s been wondering what you would say; she’s always so afraid of you.”

  “Is she? You’re not afraid of me, are you? But perhaps you don’t think so much of me.”

  “I guess Cynthia and I think alike on that point,” said Jeff, without abating Westover’s discomfort.

  There was a stress of sharp cold that year about the 20th of August. Then the weather turned warm again, and held fine till the beginning of October, within a week of the time when Jackson was to sail. It had not been so hard to make him consent when he knew where the doctor wished him to go, and he had willingly profited by Westover’s suggestions about getting to Egypt. His interest in the matter, which he tried to hide at first under a mask of decorous indifference, mounted with the fire of Whitwell’s enthusiasm, and they held nightly councils together, studying his course on the map, and consulting planchette upon the points at variance that rose between them, while Jombateeste sat with his chair tilted against the wall, and pulled steadily at his pipe, which mixed its strong fumes with the smell of the kerosene-lamp and the perennial odor of potatoes in the cellar under the low room where the companions forgathered.

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

  “I tell you, Jackson,” he said, “you’d ought to get hold o’ some them occult devils out there, and squeeze their science out of ‘em. Any Buddhists in Egypt, Mr. Westover?”

  “I don’t think there are,” said Westover. “Unless Jackson should come across some wandering Hindu. Or he might push on, and come home by the way of India.”

  “Do it, Jackson!” his friend conjured him. “May cost you something more, but it ‘ll be worth the money. If it’s true, what some them Blavetsky fellers claim, you can visit us here in your astral body — git in with ’em the right way. I should like to have you try it. What’s the reason India wouldn’t be as good for him as Egypt, anyway?” Whitwell demanded of Westover.

  “I suppose the climate’s rather too moist; the heat would be rather trying to him there.”

  “That so?”

  “And he’s taken his ticket for Alexandria,” Westover pursued.

  “Well, I guess that’s so.” Whitwell tilted his backward sloping hat to one side, so as to scratch the northeast corner of his bead thoughtfully.

  “But as far as that is concerned,” said Westover, “and the doctrine of immortality generally is concerned, Jackson will have his hands full if he studies the Egyptian monuments.”

  “What they got to do with it?”

  “Everything. Egypt is the home of the belief in a future life; it was carried from Egypt to Greece. He might come home by way of Athens.”

  “Why, man!” cried Whitwell. “Do you mean to say that them old Hebrew saints, Joseph’s brethren, that went down into Egypt after corn, didn’t know about immortality, and them Egyptian devils did?”

  “There’s very little proof in the Old Testament that the Israelites knew of it.”

  Whitwell looked at Jackson. “That the idee you got?”

  “I guess he’s right,” said Jackson. “There’s something a little about it in Job, and something in the Psalms: but not a great deal.”

  “And we got it from them Egyptian d — —”

  “I don’t say that,” Westover interposed. “But they had it before we had. As we imagine it, we got it though Christianity.”

  Jombateeste, who had taken his pipe out of his mouth in a controversial manner, put it back again.

  Westover added, “But there’s no question but the Egyptians believed in the life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments for the deeds done in the body, thousands of years before our era.”

  “Well, I’m dumned,” said Whitwell.

  Jombateeste took his pipe out again. “Hit show they got good sense. They know — they feel it in their bone — what goin’ ‘appen — when you dead. Me, I guess they got some prophet find it hout for them; then they goin’ take the credit.”

  “I guess that’s something so, Jombateeste,” said Whitwell. “It don’t stand to reason that folks without any alphabet, as you may say, and only a lot of pictures for words, like Injuns, could figure out the immortality of the soul. They got the idee by inspiration somehow. Why, here! It’s like this. Them Pharaohs must have always been clawin’ out for the Hebrews before they got a hold of Joseph, and when they found out the true doctrine, they hushed up where they got it, and their priests went on teachin’ it as if it was their own.”

  “That’s w’at I say. Got it from the ‘Ebrew.”

  “Well, it don’t matter a great deal where they got it, so they got it,” said Jackson, as he rose.

  “I believe I’ll go with you,” said Westover.

  “All there is about it,” said the sick man, solemnly, with a frail effort to straighten himself, to which his sunken chest would not respond, “is this: no man ever did figure that out for himself. A man sees folks die, and as far as his senses go, they don’t live again. But somehow he knows they do; and his knowledge comes from somewhere else; it’s inspired—”

  “That’s w’at I say,” Jombateeste hastened to interpose. “Got it from the ‘Ebrew. Feel it in ‘is bone.”

  Out under the stars Jackson and Westover silently mounted the hill-side together. At one of the thank-you-marms in the road the sick man stopped, like a weary horse, to breathe. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat of weakness that had gathered upon his forehead, and looked round the sky, powdered with the con
stellations and the planets. “It’s sightly,” he whispered.

  “Yes, it is fine,” Westover assented. “But the stars of our Northern nights are nothing to what you’ll see in Egypt.”

  Jackson repeated, vaguely: “Egypt! Where I should like to go is Mars.” He fixed his eyes on the flaming planets, in a long stare. “But I suppose they have their own troubles, same as we do. They must get sick and die, like the rest of us. But I should like to know more about ‘em. You believe it’s inhabited, don’t you?”

  Westover’s agnosticism did not, somehow, extend to Mars. “Yes, I’ve no doubt of it.”

  Jackson seemed pleased. “I’ve read everything I can lay my hands on about it. I’ve got a notion that if there’s any choosin’, after we get through here, I should like to go to Mars for a while, or as long as I was a little homesick still, and wanted to keep as near the earth as I could,” he added, quaintly.

  Westover laughed. “You could study up the subject of irrigation, there; they say that’s what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians perfect their signal code.”

  Perhaps the invalid’s fancy flagged. He drew a long, ragged breath. “I don’t know as I care to leave home, much. If it wa’n’t a kind of duty, I shouldn’t.” He seemed impelled by a sudden need to say, “How do you think Jefferson and mother will make it out together?”

  “I’ve no doubt they’ll manage,” said Westover.

  “They’re a good deal alike,” Jackson suggested.

  “Westover preferred not to meet his overture. You’ll be back, you know, almost as soon as the season commences, next summer.”

  “Yes,” Jackson assented, more cheerfully. “And now, Cynthy’s sure to be here.”

  “Yes, she will be here,” said Westover, not so cheerfully.

  Jackson seemed to find the opening he was seeking, in Westover’s tone. “What do you think of gettin’ married, anyway, Mr. Westover?” he asked.