“I don’t know as I do.”
“You say that because you always deserve it. You can’t tell how it is with a fellow like me. I should want you to like me, Cynthy, whatever you thought of me.” He looked round into her face, but she turned it away.
They had struck the level, long for the hill country, at the foot of the hotel road, and the mare, that found herself neither mounting nor descending a steep, dropped from the trot proper for an acclivity into a rapid walk.
“This mare can walk like a Kentucky horse,” said Jeff. “I believe I could teach her single-foot.” He added, with a laugh, “If I knew how,” and now Cynthia laughed with him.
“I was just going to say that.”
“Yes, you don’t lose many chances to give me a dig, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t know as I look for them. Perhaps I don’t need to.” The pine woods were deep on either side. They whispered in the thin, sweet wind, and gave out their odor in the high, westering sun. They covered with their shadows the road that ran velvety between them.
“This is nice,” said Jeff, letting himself rest against the back of the seat. He stretched his left arm along the top, and presently it dropped and folded itself about the waist of the girl.
“You may take your arm away, Jeff,” she said, quietly.
“Why?”
“Because it has no right there, for one thing!” She drew herself a little aside and looked round at him. “You wouldn’t put it round a town girl if you were riding with her.”
“I shouldn’t be riding with her: Girls don’t go buggy-riding in town any more,” said Jeff, brutally.
“Then I shall know what to do the next time you ask me.”
“Oh, they’d go quick enough if I asked them up here in the country. Etiquette don’t count with them when they’re on a vacation.”
“I’m not on a vacation; so it counts with me. Please take your arm away,” said Cynthia.
“Oh, all right. But I shouldn’t object to your putting your arm around me.”
“You will never have the chance.”
“Why are you so hard on me, Cynthy?” asked Jeff. “You didn’t used to be so.”
“People change.”
“Do I?”
“Not for the better.”
Jeff was dumb. She was pleased with her hit, and laughed. But her laugh did not encourage him to put his arm round her again. He let the mare walk on, and left her to resume the conversation at whatever point she would.
She made no haste to resume it. At last she said, with sufficient apparent remoteness from the subject they had dropped: “Jeff, I don’t know whether you want me to talk about it. But I guess I ought to, even if it isn’t my place exactly. I don’t think Jackson’s very well, this summer.”
Jeff faced round toward her. “What makes you think he isn’t well?”
“He’s weaker. Haven’t you noticed it?”
“Yes, I have noticed that. He’s worked down; that’s all.”
“No, that isn’t all. But if you don’t think so—”
“I want to know what you think, Cynthy,” said Jeff, with the amorous resentment all gone from his voice. “Sometimes folks outside notice the signs more — I don’t mean that you’re an outsider, as far as we’re concerned—”
She put by that point. “Father’s noticed it, too; and he’s with Jackson a good deal.”
“I’ll look after it. If he isn’t so well, he’s got to have a doctor. That medium’s stuff can’t do him any good. Don’t you think he ought to have a doctor?”
“Oh yes.”
“You don’t think a doctor can do him much good?”
“He ought to have one,” said the girl, noncommittally.
“Cynthia, I’ve noticed that Jackson was weak, too; and it’s no use pretending that he’s simply worked down. I believe he’s worn out. Do you think mother’s ever noticed it?”
“I don’t believe she has.”
“It’s the one thing I can’t very well make up my mind to speak to her about. I don’t know what she would do.” He did not say, “If she lost Jackson,” but Cynthia knew he meant that, and they were both silent. “Of course,” he went on, “I know that she places a great deal of dependence upon you, but Jackson’s her main stay. He’s a good man, and he’s a good son. I wish I’d always been half as good.”
Cynthia did not protest against his self-reproach as he possibly hoped she would. She said: “I think Jackson’s got a very good mind. He reads a great deal, and he’s thought a great deal, and when it comes to talking, I never heard any one express themselves better. The other night, we were out looking at the stars — I came part of the way home with him; I didn’t like to let him go alone, he seemed so feeble and he got to showing me Mars. He thinks it’s inhabited, and he’s read all that the astronomers say about it, and the seas and the canals that they’ve found on it. He spoke very beautifully about the other life, and then he spoke about death.” Cynthia’s voice broke, and she pulled her handkerchief out of her belt, and put it to her eyes. Jeff’s heart melted in him at the sight; he felt a tender affection for her, very unlike the gross content he had enjoyed in her presence before, and he put his arm round her again, but this time almost unconsciously, and drew her toward him. She did not repel him; she even allowed her head to rest a moment on his shoulder; though she quickly lifted it, and drew herself away, not resentfully, it seemed, but for her greater freedom in talking.
“I don’t believe he’s going to die,” Jeff said, consolingly, more as if it were her brother than his that he meant. “But he’s a very sick man, and he’s got to knock off and go somewhere. It won’t do for him to pass another winter here. He must go to California, or Colorado; they’d be glad to have him there, either of them; or he can go to Florida, or over to Italy. It won’t matter how long he stays—”
“What are you talking about, Jeff Durgin?” Cynthia demanded, severely. “What would your mother do? What would she do this winter?”
“That brings me to something, Cynthia,” said Jeff, “and I don’t want you to say anything till I’ve got through. I guess I could help mother run the place as well as Jackson, and I could stay here next winter.”
“You?”
“Now, you let me talk! My mind’s made up about one thing: I’m not going to be a lawyer. I don’t want to go back to Harvard. I’m going to keep a hotel, and, if I don’t keep one here at Lion’s Head, I’m going to keep it somewhere else.”
“Have you told your mother?”
“Not yet: I wanted to hear what you would say first.”
“I? Oh, I haven’t got anything to do with it,” said Cynthia.
“Yes, you have! You’ve got everything to do with it, if you’ll say one thing first. Cynthia, you know how I feel about you. It’s been so ever since we were boy and girl here. I want you to promise to marry me. Will you?”
The girl seemed neither surprised nor very greatly pleased; perhaps her pleasure had spent itself in that moment of triumphant expectation when she foresaw what was coming, or perhaps she was preoccupied in clearing the way in her own mind to a definite result.
“What do you say, Cynthia?” Jeff pursued, with more injury than misgiving in his voice at her delay in answering. “Don’t you-care for me?”
“Oh yes, I presume I’ve always done that — ever since we were boy and girl, as you say. But — —”
“Well?” said Jeff, patiently, but not insecurely.
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Always cared for me.”
He could not find his voice quite as promptly as before. He cleared his throat before he asked: “Has Mr. Westover been saying anything about me?”
“I don’t know what you mean, exactly; but I presume you do.”
“Well, then — I always expected to tell you — I did have a fancy for that girl, for Miss Vostrand, and I told her so. It’s like something that never happened. She wouldn’t have me. That’s all.”
/> “And you expect me to take what she wouldn’t have?”
“If you like to call it that. But I should call it taking a man that had been out of his head for a while, and had come to his senses again.”
“I don’t know as I should ever feel safe with a man that had been out of his head once.”
“You wouldn’t find many men that hadn’t,” said Jeff, with a laugh that was rather scornful of her ignorance.
“No, I presume not,” she sighed. “She was beautiful, and I believe she was good, too. She was very nice. Perhaps I feel strangely about it. But, if she hadn’t been so nice, I shouldn’t have been so willing that you should have cared for her.”
“I suppose I don’t understand,” said Jeff, “but I know I was hard hit. What’s the use? It’s over. She’s married. I can’t go back and unlive it all. But if you want time to think — of course you do — I’ve taken time enough—”
He was about to lift the reins on the mare’s back as a sign to her that the talk was over for the present, and to quicken her pace, when Cynthia put out her hand and laid it on his, and said with a certain effect of authority: “I shouldn’t want you should give up your last year in Harvard.”
“Just as you say, Cynthy;” and in token of intelligence he wound his arm round her neck and kissed her. It was not the first kiss by any means; in the country kisses are not counted very serious, or at all binding, and Cynthia was a country girl; but they both felt that this kiss sealed a solemn troth between them, and that a common life began for them with it.
XXII.
Cynthia came back in time to go into the dining-room and see that all was in order there for supper before the door opened. The waitresses knew that she had been out riding, as they called it, with Jeff Durgin; the fact had spread electrically to them where they sat in a shady angle of the hotel listening to one who read a novel aloud, and skipped all but the most exciting love parts. They conjectured that the pair had gone to Lovewell, but they knew nothing more, and the subtlest of them would not have found reason for further conjecture in Cynthia’s behavior, when she came in and scanned the tables and the girls’ dresses and hair, where they stood ranged against the wall. She was neither whiter nor redder than usual, and her nerves and her tones were under as good control as a girl’s ever are after she has been out riding with a fellow. It was not such a great thing, anyway, to ride with Jeff Durgin. First and last, nearly all the young lady boarders had been out with him, upon one errand or another to Lovewell.
After supper, when the girls had gone over to their rooms in the helps’ quarters, and the guests had gathered in the wide, low office, in the light of the fire kindled on the hearth to break the evening chill, Jeff joined Cynthia in her inspection of the dining-room. She always gave it a last look, to see that it was in perfect order for breakfast, before she went home for the night. Jeff went home with her; he was impatient of her duties, but he was in no hurry when they stole out of the side door together under the stars, and began to stray sidelong down the hill over the dewless grass.
He lingered more and more as they drew near her father’s house, in the abandon of a man’s love. He wished to give himself solely up to it, to think and to talk of nothing else, after a man’s fashion. But a woman’s love is no such mere delight. It is serious, practical. For her it is all future, and she cannot give herself wholly up to any present moment of it, as a man does.
“Now, Jeff,” she said, after a certain number of partings, in which she had apparently kept his duty clearly in mind, “you had better go home and tell your mother.”
“Oh, there’s time enough for that,” he began.
“I want you to tell her right away, or there won’t be anything to tell.”
“Is that so?” he joked back. “Well, if I must, I must, I suppose. But I didn’t think you’d take the whip-hand so soon, Cynthia.”
“Oh, I don’t ever want to take the whip-hand with you, Jeff. Don’t make me!”
“Well, I won’t, then. But what are you in such a hurry to have mother know for? She’s not going to object. And if she does—”
“It isn’t that,” said the girl, quickly. “If I had to go round a single day with your mother hiding this from her, I should begin to hate you. I couldn’t bear the concealment. I shall tell father as soon as I go in.”
“Oh, your father ‘ll be all right, of course.”
“Yes, he’ll be all right, but if he wouldn’t, and I knew it, I should have to tell him, all the same. Now, good-night. Well, there, then; and there! Now, let me go!”
She paused for a moment in her own room, to smooth her tumbled hair, and try to identify herself in her glass. Then she went into the sitting-room, where she found her father pulled up to the table, with his hat on, and poring over a sheet of hieroglyphics, which represented the usual evening with planchette.
“Have you been to help Jackson up?” she asked.
“Well, I wanted to, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’s feelin’ ever so much better to-night, and he wanted to go alone. I just come in.”
“Yes, you’ve got your hat on yet.”
Whitwell put his hand up and found that his daughter was right. He laughed, and said: “I guess I must ‘a’ forgot it. We’ve had the most interestin’ season with plantchette that I guess we’ve about ever had. She’s said something here—”
“Well, never mind; I’ve got something more important to say than plantchette has,” said Cynthia, and she pulled the sheet away from under her father’s eyes.
This made him look up at her. “Why, what’s happened?”
“Nothing. Jeff Durgin has asked me to marry him.”
“He has!” The New England training is not such as to fit people for the expression of strong emotion, and the best that Whitwell found himself able to do in view of the fact was to pucker his mouth for a whistle which did not come.
“Yes — this afternoon,” said Cynthia, lifelessly. The tension of her nerves relaxed in a languor which was evident even to her father, though his eyes still wandered to the sheet she had taken from him.
“Well, you don’t seem over and above excited about it. Did — did your — What did you say—”
“How should I know what I said? What do you think of it, father?”
“I don’t know as I ever give the subject much attention,” said the philosopher. “I always meant to take it out of him, somehow, if he got to playin’ the fool.”
“Then you wanted I should accept him?”
“What difference ‘d it make what I wanted? That what you done?”
“Yes, I’ve accepted him,” said the girl, with a sigh. “I guess I’ve always expected to.”
“Well, I thought likely it would come to that, myself. All I can say, Cynthy, is ‘t he’s a lucky feller.”
Whitwell leaned back, bracing his knees against the table, which was one of his philosophic poses. “I have sometimes believed that Jeff Durgin was goin’ to turn out a blackguard. He’s got it in him. He’s as like his gran’father as two peas, and he was an old devil. But you got to account in all these here heredity cases for counteractin’ influences. The Durgins are as good as wheat, right along, all of ‘em; and I guess Mis’ Durgin’s mother must have been a pretty good woman too. Mis’ Durgin’s all right, too, if she has got a will of her own.” Whitwell returned from his scientific inquiry to ask: “How ‘ll she take it?”
“I don’t know,” said Cynthia, dreamily, but without apparent misgiving. “That’s Jeff’s lookout.”
“So ’tis. I guess she won’t make much fuss. A woman never likes to see her son get married; but you’ve been a kind of daughter to her so long. Well, I guess that part of it ‘ll be all right. Jackson,” said Whitwell, in a tone of relief, as if turning from an irrelevant matter to something of real importance, “was down here to-night tryin’ to ring up some them spirits from the planet Mars. Martians, he calls ‘em. His mind’s got to runnin’ a good deal on Mars lately. I guess it’s this apposition that t
hey talk about that does it. Mars comin’ so much nearer the earth by a million of miles or so, it stands to reason that he should be more influenced by the minds on it. I guess it’s a case o’ that telepathy that Mr. Westover tells about. I judge that if he kept at it before Mars gits off too far again he might make something out of it. I couldn’t seem to find much sense in what plantchette done to-night; we couldn’t either of us; but she has her spells when you can’t make head or tail of her. But mebbe she’s just leadin’ up to something, the way she did about that broken shaft when Jeff come home. We ha’n’t ever made out exactly what she meant by that yet.”
Whitwell paused, and Cynthia seized the advantage of his getting round to Jeff again. “He wanted to give up going to Harvard this last year, but I wouldn’t let him.”
“Jeff did?” asked her father. “Well, you done a good thing that time, anyway, Cynthy. His mother ‘d never get over it.”
“There’s something else she’s got to get over, and I don’t know how she ever will. He’s going to give up the law.”
“Give up the law!”
“Yes. Don’t tease, father! He says he’s never cared about it, and he wants to keep a hotel. I thought that I’d ought to tell him how we felt about Jackson’s having a rest and going off somewhere; and he wanted to begin at once. But I said if he left off the last year at Harvard I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
Whitwell put his hand in his pocket for his knife, and mechanically looked down for a stick to whittle. In default of any, he scratched his head. “I guess she’ll make it warm for him. She’s had her mind set on his studyin’ law so long, ‘t she won’t give up in a hurry. She can’t see that Jackson ain’t fit to help her run the hotel any more — till he’s had a rest, anyway — and I believe she thinks her and Frank could run it — and you. She’ll make an awful kick,” said Whitwell, solemnly. “I hope you didn’t encourage him, Cynthy?”
“I should encourage him,” said the girl. “He’s got the right to shape his own life, and nobody else has got the right to do it; and I should tell his mother so, if she ever said anything to me about it.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 596