Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  With the first return of physical strength, Mrs. Durgin was impatient to be seen about the house, and to retrieve the season that her affliction had made so largely a loss. The people who had become accustomed to it stayed on, and the house filled up as she grew better, but even the sight of her in a wheeled chair did not bring back the prosperity of other years. She lamented over it with a keen and full perception of the fact, but in a cloudy association of it with the joint future of Jeff and Cynthia.

  One day, after Mrs. Durgin had declared that she did not know what they were to do, if things kept on as they were going, Whitwell asked his daughter:

  “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 know what to do about it. It don’t seem as if I could tell her, and yet it’s wrong 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 when Cynthia had got her to bed for the night that she sent for Jeff, and wished to ask him what he was going to do. “You can’t expect Cynthy to stay here another winter helpin’ you, with Jackson away. You’ve got to either take her with you, or else come here yourself. Give up your last year in college, why don’t you? I don’t want you should stay, and I don’t know who does. If I was in Cynthia’s place, I’d let you work off your 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 could make it out; and Jeff, listening with a face as nearly discharged as might be of its laughing irony, had to turn to Cynthia for the word which no one else could catch, and which the stricken woman remained distressfully waiting for her to repeat to him, with her anxious eyes upon the girl’s face. He was dutifully patient with all his mother’s whims. He came whenever she sent for him, and sat quiet under the severities with which she visited all his past unworthiness. “Who you been hectorin’ now, I should like to know,” she began on him one evening when he came at her summons. “Between you and Fox, I got no peace of my life. Where is the dog?”

  “Fox is all right, mother,” Jeff responded. “You’re feeling a little better to-night, a’n’t you?”

  “I don’t know; I can’t tell,” she returned, with a gleam of intelligence in her eye. Then she said: “I don’t see why I’m left to strangers all the 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 seeing her. “No, Cynthy’s all right. But where’s Jackson and your father? If I’ve told them not to be out in the dew once, I’ve told ’em a hundred times. Cynthy’d better look after her housekeepin’ if she don’t want the whole place to run behind, and not a soul left in the house. What time o’ 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 you come up here in May?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then — Or, mebbe that’s one o’ them tormentin’ dreams; they do pester so! What did you come for?”

  Jeff was sitting on one side of her bed and Cynthia on the other: She was looking at the sufferer’s face, and she did not meet the glance of amusement 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 be satisfied 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’ them children again, I’ll make Jackson shoot Fox.”

  “All right, mother,” said Jeff.

  She moved herself restively in bed. “What’s this,” she demanded of her son, “that Whitwell’s tellin’ about you and Cynthy breakin’ it off?”

  “Well, there was talk of that,” said Jeff, passing his hand over his lips 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 you was. 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 said something that Jeff could not understand. He looked involuntarily at Cynthia.

  “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 more than 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 few syllables, and, after his mother had repeated her words, he had to look to 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 an entreating look upon Cynthia which she could not feel was wholly for himself. “I — I guess we can fix it, somehow. I behaved very badly to Cynthia.”

  “No, not to me!” the girl protested in an indignant burst.

  “Not to that little scalawag, then!” cried Jeff. “If the wrong wasn’t to you, 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 his lips and eyes.

  His mother had followed their quick parley with eager looks, as if she were trying to keep her intelligence to its work concerning them. The effort seemed to exhaust her, and when she spoke again her words were so indistinct that even Cynthia could not understand them till she had repeated 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 the tears 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 mean any harm to me, and that you cared for me, all through, and you didn’t care for anybody else.”

  “Thank you,” said Jeff, and he turned to his mother. “I’ll do everything I can to make Cynthy believe that, mother.”

  The girl broke into tears and went out of the room. She sent in the night-watcher, and then Jeff took leave of his mother with an unwonted kiss.

  Into the shadow of a starlit night he saw the figure he had been waiting for glide out of the glitter of the hotel lights. He followed it down the road.

  “Cynthia!” he called; and when he came up with her he asked: “What’s the reason we can’t make it true? Why can’t you believe what mother wants me to make you?”

  Cynthia stopped, as her wont was when she wished to speak seriously. “Do you 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, and then 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 to follow her.

  L.

  Mrs. Durgin’s speech never re
gained the measure of clearness it had before; no one but Cynthia could understand her, and often she could not. The doctor from Lovewell surmised that she had sustained another stroke, lighter, more obscure than the first, and it was that which had rendered her almost inarticulate. The paralysis might have also affected her brain, and silenced her thoughts as well as her words. Either she believed that the reconciliation between Jeff and Cynthia had taken place, or else she could no longer care. She did not question them again, but peacefully weakened more and more. Near the end of September she had a third stroke, and from this she died.

  The day after the funeral Jeff had a talk with Whitwell, and opened his mind 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 here and look after the place through the winter. It hasn’t been a good season, but I guess I can afford to make it worth your while if you look at it as a matter of business.”

  Whitwell leaned forward and took a straw into his mouth from the golden wall of oat sheaves in the barn where they were talking. A soft rustling in the mow overhead marked the remote presence of Jombateeste, who was getting forward the hay for the horses, pushing it toward the holes where it should fall into their racks.

  “I should want to think about it,” said Whitwell. “I do’ know as Cynthy’d care much about stayin’ — or Frank.”

  “How long do you want to think about it?” Jeff demanded, ignoring the possible 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 I could depend on, with me, to look after the hosses. Frank wouldn’t want to.”

  “Who’d you like?”

  “Well — Jombateeste.”

  “Ask him.”

  Whitwell called to the Canuck, and he came forward to the edge of the mow, 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 malevolent derision.

  “Not for you, Jeff Dorrgin,” returned the Canuck. “I strain myself till I bust, if I want.”

  Jeff sneered to Whitwell: “Well, then, the most important point is settled. Let me know about the minor details as soon as you can.”

  “All right.”

  Whitwell talked the matter over with his children at supper that evening. Jeff had made him a good offer, and he had the winter before him 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 try for a school,” she said, quietly. “It’s pretty late, but I guess I can get something. You and Frank had better stay.”

  “And you don’t feel as if it was kind of meechin’, our takin’ up with his offer, after what’s—” Whitwell delicately forbore to fill out his sentence.

  “You are doing the favor, father,” said the girl. “He knows that, and I 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 of relief. “Well, I’m glad you can look at it in that light, Cynthy. It’s the way the feller’s built, I presume, as much as anything.”

  His daughter waived the point. “I shouldn’t feel just right if none of us stayed in the old place. I should feel as if we had turned our backs on Mrs. Durgin.”

  Her eyes shone, and her father said: “Well, I guess that’s so, come to think of it. She’s been like a mother to you, this past year, ha’n’t she? And it must have come pootty hard for her, sidin’ ag’in’ Jeff. But she 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 on provisionally. Through the window they could see the light of the lantern at the office door of the hotel, whose mass was lost in the dark above and behind the lamp. It was all very still outside.

  “I declare,” Whitwell went on, musingly, “I wisht Mr. Westover was here.”

  Cynthia started, but it was to ask: “Do you want I should help you with your Latin, Frank?”

  Whitwell came back an hour later and found them still at their books. He told them it was all arranged; Durgin was to give up the place to him in a week, and he was to surrender it again when Jeff came back in the spring. In the mean time things were to remain as they were; after he was 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 best way, after all. I might not get a school, it’s so late.”

  “That’s so,” her father assented. “I declare,” he added, after a moment’s muse, “I felt sorry for the feller settin’ up there alone, with nobody to do for him but that old thing he’s got in. She can’t cook any more than—” He desisted for want of a comparison, and said: “Such a lookin’ table, too.”

  “Do you think I better go and look after things a little?” Cynthia asked.

  “Well, you no need to,” said her father. He got down the planchette, and labored with it, while his children returned to Frank’s lessons.

  “Dumn ‘f I can make the thing work,” he said to himself at last. “I can’t git any of ’em up. If Jackson was here, now!”

  Thrice a day Cynthia went up to the hotel and oversaw the preparation of Jeff’s meals and kept taut the slack housekeeping of the old Irish woman who had remained as a favor, after the hotel closed, and professed to have lost the chance of a place for the winter by her complaisance. She submitted to Cynthia’s authority, and tried to make interest for an indefinite stay by sudden zeal and industry, and the last days of Jeff in the hotel were more comfortable than he openly recognized. He left the care of the building wholly to Whitwell, and shut himself up in the old farm parlor with the plans for a new hotel which he said he meant to put up some day, if he could ever get rid of the old one. He went once to Lovewell, where he renewed the insurance, and somewhat increased it; and he put a small mortgage on the property. He forestalled the slow progress of the knowledge of others’ affairs, which, in the country, is as sure as it is slow, and told Whitwell what he had done. He said he wanted the mortgage money for his journey, and the insurance money, if he 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 they spoke on the terms of their boy and girl associations, and with no approach through resentment or tenderness to the relation that was ended between them. She saw him oftener than at any other time setting off on the long tramps he took through the woods in the afternoons. He was always alone, and, so far as any one knew, his wanderings had no object but to kill the time which hung heavy on his hands during the fortnight after his mother’s death, before he sailed. It might have seemed strange that he should prefer to pass the days at Lion’s Head after he had arranged for the care of the place with Whitwell, and Whitwell always believed that he stayed in the hope of somehow making up with Cynthia.

  One day, toward the very last, Durgin found himself pretty well fagged in the old pulp-mill clearing on the side of Lion’s Head, which still belonged 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 past had known few picnics, and it was those of former years that had left their traces in rusty sardine-cans and broken gl
ass and crockery on the border 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 picnic that Mrs. Marven had embittered for him, and he thought of the last time that 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 to him that he might not have wholly made it what it had been. It seemed to him that a good many other people had come in and taken a hand in making his own life what it had been; and if he had meddled with theirs more than he was wanted, it was about an even thing. As far as he could make out, he was a sort of ingredient in the general mixture. He had probably done his share of the flavoring, but he had had very little to do with the mixing. There were different ways of looking at the thing. Westover had his way, but it struck Jeff that it put too much responsibility on the ingredient, and too little on the power that chose it. He believed that he could prove a clear case in his own favor, as far as the question of final justice was concerned, but he had no complaints to make. Things had fallen out very much to his mind. He was the Landlord at Lion’s Head, at last, with the full right to do what he pleased with the 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 was anything to be learned anywhere about keeping a summer hotel, he was going to learn it; and he thought the summer hotel could be advantageously studied in its winter phases in the mild climates of Southern Europe. He meant to strike for the class of Americans who resorted to those climates; to divine their characters and to please their tastes.

  He unconsciously included Cynthia in his scheme of inquiry; he had been used so long to trust to her instincts and opinions, and to rely upon her help, and he realized that she was no longer in his life with something like the shock a man experiences when the loss of a limb, which continues a part of his inveterate consciousness, is brought to his sense by some mechanical attempt to use it. But even in this pang he did not regret that all was over between them. He knew now that he had never cared for her as he had once thought, and on her account, if not his own, he was glad their engagement was broken. A soft melancholy for his own disappointment imparted itself to his thoughts of Cynthia. He felt truly sorry for her, and he truly admired and respected her. He was in a very lenient mood toward every one, and he went so far in thought toward forgiving his enemies that he was willing at least to pardon all those whom he had injured. A little rustling in the underbrush across the clearing caught his quick ear, and he looked up to see Jombateeste parting the boughs of the young pines on its edge and advancing into the open with a gun on his shoulder. He called to him, cheerily: “Hello, John! Any luck?”