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 sort 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."
"He's passed his preliminary examinations," said Jackson, with a touch of
hauteur, "and I guess he can enter this fall if we should so decide.
He'll have some conditions, prob'ly, but none but what he can work off, I
guess."
"Then, if you wish to have him go to college, by all means let him go to
Harvard, I should say. It's our great university and our oldest. I'm not
a college man myself; but, if I were, I should wish to have been a
Harvard man. If Jeff has any nonsense in him, it will take it out; and I
don't believe there's anything in Harvard, as Harvard, to make him
worse."
"That's what we both think," said Jackson.
"I've heard," Westover continued, and he rose and stood while he spoke,
"that Harvard's like the world. A man gets on there on the same terms
that he gets on in the world. He has to be a man, and he'd better be a
gentleman."
Mrs. Durgin still looked serious. "Have you come back to Boston for good
now? Do you expect to be there right along?"
"I've taken a studio there. Yes, I expect to be in Boston now. I've taken
to teaching, and I fancy I can make a living. If Jeff comes to Cambridge,
and I can be of any use--"
"We should be ever so much obliged to you," said his mother, with an air
of great relief.
"Not at all. I shall be very glad. Your mountain air is drugging me, Mrs.
Durgin. I shall have to say good-night, or I shall tumble asleep before I
get upstairs. Oh, I can find the way, I guess; this part of the house
seems the same." He got away from them, and with the lamp that Jackson
gave him found his way to his room. A few moments later some one knocked
at his door, and a boy stood there with a pitcher. "Some ice-water, Mr.
Westover?"
"Why, is that you, Franky? I'm glad to see you again. How are you?"
"I'm pretty well," said the boy, shyly. He was a very handsome little
fellow of distinctly dignified presence, and Westover was aware at once
that here was not a subject for patronage. "Is there anything else you
want, Mr. Westover? Matches, or soap, or anything?" He put the pitcher
down and gave a keen glance round the room.
"No, everything seems to be here, Frank," said Westover.
"Well, good-night," said the boy, and he slipped out, quietly closing the
door after him.
Westover pushed up his window and looked at Lion's Head in the moonlight.
It slumbered as if with the sleep of centuries-austere, august. The
moon-rays seemed to break and splinter on the outline of the lion-shape,
and left all the mighty mass black below.
In the old porch under his window Westover heard whispering. Then, "You
behave yourself, Jeff Durgin!" came in a voice which could be no other
than Cynthia Whitwell's, and Jeff Durgin's laugh followed.
He saw the girl in the morning. She met him at the door of the
dining-room, and he easily found in her shy, proud manner, and her pure,
cold beauty, the temperament and physiognomy of the child he remembered.
She was tall and slim, and she held herself straight without stiffness;
her face was fine, with a straight nose, and a decided chin, and a mouth
of the same sweetness which looked from her still, gray eyes; her hair,
of the average brown, had a rough effect of being quickly tossed into
form, which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him to place
him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily, unwillingly
graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of a hermit-thrush;
but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion in Cynthia's looks, her
acts were of plain and honest prose, such as giving Westover the
pleasantest place and the most intelligent waitress in the room.
He would have liked to keep her in talk a moment, but she made
business-like despatch of all his allusions to the past, and got herself
quickly away. Afterward she came back to him, with the effect of having
forced herself to come, and the color deepened in her cheeks while she
stayed.
She seemed glad of his being there, but helpless against the instincts or
traditions that forbade her to show her pleasure in his presence. Her
reticence became almost snubbing in its strictness when he asked her
about her school-teaching in the winter; but he found that she taught at
the little school-house at the foot of the hill, and lived at home with
her father.
"And have you any bad boys that frighten little girls in your school?" he
asked, jocosely.
"I don't know as I have," she said, with a consciousness that flamed into
her cheeks.
"Perhaps the boys have reformed?" Westover suggested.
"I presume," she said, stiffly, "that there's room for improvement in
every one," and then, as if she were afraid he might take this
personally, she looked unhappy and tried to speak of other things. She
asked him if he did not see a great many changes at Lion's Head; he
answered, gravely, that he wished he could have found it just as he left
it, and then she must have thought she had gone wrong again, for she left
him in an embarrassment that was pathetic, but which was charming.