Landlord at Lion's Head - Volume 2

Dean Howells William

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. Jackson kept his promise to write to Westover, but he was better than his word to his mother, and wrote to her every week that winter.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819947981
• Langue: English

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Part II.
XXVII.
Jackson kept his promise to write to Westover, buthe was better than his word to his mother, and wrote to her everyweek that winter.
“I seem just to live from letter to letter. It'sridic'lous, ” she said to Cynthia once when the girl brought themail in from the barn, where the men folks kept it till they hadput away their horses after driving over from Lovewell with it. Thetrains on the branch road were taken off in the winter, and thepost-office at the hotel was discontinued. The men had to go to thetown by cutter, over a highway that the winds sifted half full ofsnow after it had been broken out by the ox-teams in the morning.But Mrs. Durgin had studied the steamer days and calculated thetime 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 whenthe day came. It was usually Jombateeste, who reverted in winter tothe type of habitant from which he had sprung. He wore a bluewoollen cap, like a large sock, pulled over his ears and close tohis eyes, and below it his clean-shaven brown face showed. He hadblue woollen mittens, and boots of russet leather, without heels,came to his knees; he got a pair every time he went home on St.John's day. His lean little body was swathed in several shortjackets, and he brought the letters buttoned into one of theinnermost 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 you got something for me, Jombateeste? ”
“You expec' some letter? ” he said, unbuckling astrap and shouting louder.
“You know whether I do. Give it to me. ”
“I don' know. I think I drop something on the road.I saw something white; maybe snow; good deal of snow. ”
“Don't plague! Give it here! ”
“Wait I finish unhitch. I can't find any letter tillI get some time to look. ”
“Oh, now, Jombateeste! Give me my letter! ”
“W'at you want letter for? Always same thing. Well!'Old the 'oss; I goin' to feel. ”
Jombateeste felt in one pocket after another, whileCynthia clung to the colt's bridle, and he was uncertain till thelast whether he had any letter for her. When it appeared she made aflying snatch at it and ran; and the comedy was over, to berepeated in some form the next week.
The girl somehow always possessed herself of whatwas in her letters before she reached the room where Mrs. Durginwas waiting for hers. She had to read that aloud to Jackson'smother, and in the evening she had to read it again to Mrs. Durginand Whitwell and Jombateeste and Frank, after they had done theirchores, and they had gathered in the old farm-house parlor, aroundthe air-tight sheet-iron stove, in a heat of eighty degrees.Whitwell listened, with planchette ready on the table before him,and he consulted it for telepathic impressions of Jackson's actualmental state when the reading was over.
He got very little out of the perverse instrument.“I can't seem to work her. If Jackson was here— ”
“We shouldn't need to ask planchette about him, ”Cynthia once suggested, with the spare sense of humor thatsometimes revealed itself in her.
“Well, I guess that's something so, ” her fathercandidly admitted. But the next time he consulted the helplessplanchette as hopefully as before. “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 wholaughed a great deal, and they were each intent upon some point inthe future that kept them from pleasure in the present. The littleCanuck was the only one who suffered himself a contemporaneousconsolation. His early faith had so far lapsed from him that hecould hospitably entertain the wild psychical conjectures ofWhitwell without an accusing sense of heresy, and he found thewinter of northern New England so mild after that of Lower Canadathat he experienced a high degree of animal comfort in it, andlooked forward to nothing better. To be well fed, well housed, andwell heated; to smoke successive pipes while the others talked, andto catch through his smoke-wreaths vague glimpses of theirmeanings, was enough. He felt that in being promoted to the care ofthe stables in Jackson's absence he occupied a dignified andresponsible position, with a confidential relation to the exilewhich justified him in sending special messages to him, andattaching peculiar value to Jackson's remembrances.
The exile's letters said very little about hishealth, which in the sense of no news his mother held to be goodnews, but they were full concerning the monuments and theethnological interest of life in Egypt.
They were largely rescripts of each day'sobservations and experiences, close and full, as his mother likedthem in regard to fact, and generously philosophized on the side ofpolitics and religion for Whitwell. The Eastern question became inthe snow-choked hills of New England the engrossing concern of thisspeculative mind, and he was apt to spring it upon Mrs. Durgin andCynthia at mealtimes and other defenceless moments. He tried todebate it with Jombateeste, who conceived of it as a form ofspiritualistic inquiry, and answered from the hay-loft, where hewas throwing down fodder for the cattle to Whitwell, volublyreceiving it on the barn floor below, that he believed, him,everybody got a hastral body, English same as Mormons.
“Guess you mean Moslems, ” said Whitwell, andJombateeste asked the difference, defiantly.
The letters which came to Cynthia could not be madeas much a general interest, and, in fact, no one else cared so muchfor them as for Jackson's letters, not even Jeff's mother. AfterCynthia got one of them, she would ask, perfunctorily, what Jeffsaid, but when she was told there was no news she did not press herquestion.
“If Jackson don't get back in time next summer, ”Mrs. Durgin said, in one of the talks she had with the girl, “Iguess I shall have to let Jeff 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 would not assume that there was more inthem than they expressed.
When Jeff came home for the three days' vacation atThanksgiving, he wished again to relinquish his last year atHarvard, and Cynthia had to summon all her forces to keep him tohis promise of staying. He brought home the books with which he wasworking off his conditions, with a half-hearted intention of study,and she took hold with him, and together they fought forward overthe ground he had to gain. His mother was almost willing at lastthat he should give up his last year in college.
“What is the use? ” she asked. “He's give up thelaw, and he might as well commence here first as last, if he'sgoin' to. ”
The girl had no reason to urge against this; shecould only urge her feeling that he ought to go back and take hisdegree with the rest of his class.
“If you're going to keep Lion's Head the way youpretend you are, ” she said to him, as she could not say to hismother, “you want to keep all your Harvard friends, don't you, andhave them remember you? Go back, Jeff, and don't you come hereagain till after you've got your degree. Never mind the Christmasvacation, nor the Easter. Stay in Cambridge and work off yourconditions. You can do it, if you try. Oh, don't you suppose Ishould like to have you here? ” she reproached him.
He went back, with a kind of grudge in his heart,which he confessed in his first letter home to her, when he toldher that she was right and he was wrong. He was sure now, with theimpulse which their work on them in common had given him, that heshould get his conditions off, and he wanted her and his mother tobegin preparing their minds to come to his Class Day. He plannedhow they could both be away from the hotel for that day. The housewas to be opened on the 20th of June, but it was not likely thatthere would be so many people at once that they could not give the21st to Class Day; Frank and his father could run Lion's Headsomehow, or, if they could not, then the opening could be postponedtill the 24th. At all events, they must not fail to come. Cynthiashowed the whole letter to his mother, who refused to think of sucha thing, and then asked, as if the fact had not been fully setbefore her: “When is it to be? ”
“The 21st of June. ”
“Well, he's early enough with his invitation, ” shegrumbled.
“Yes, he is, ” said Cynthia; and she laughed forshame and pleasure as she confessed, “I was thinking he was ratherlate. ”
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'stalked to you about it. He never tells me much. I don't see why youshould want to go. What's it like? ”
“Oh, I don't know. But it's the day the graduatingclass have to themselves, 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 whenhe sees me. What am I goin' to wear, I should like to know? Whatyou goin' to wear, Cynthy? ”
XXVIII.
Jeff's place at Harvard had been too long fixedamong the jays to allow the hope of wholly retrieving his conditionnow. It was too late for him to be chosen in any of the nicer clubsor societies, but he was not beyond the mounting sentiment ofcomradery, which begins to tell in the last year among college men,and which had its due effect with his class. One of the men, whohad always had a foible for humanity, took advantage of theprevailing mood in another man, and wrought upon him to ask, amongthe fellows he was asking to a tea at his rooms, several fellowswho were distinctly and almost typically jay. The tea was for theaunt of the man who gave it, a very pretty woman from