After breakfast Westover walked out and saw Whitwell standing on the
grass in front of the house, beside the flagstaff. He suffered Westover
to make the first advances toward the renewal of their acquaintance, but
when he was sure of his friendly intention he responded with a cordial
openness which the painter had fancied wanting in his children. Whitwell
had not changed much. The most noticeable difference was the compact
phalanx of new teeth which had replaced the staggering veterans of former
days, and which displayed themselves in his smile of relenting. There was
some novelty of effect also in an arrangement of things in his hat-band.
At first Westover thought they were fishhooks and artificial flies, such
as the guides wear in the Adirondacks to advertise their calling about
the hotel offices and the piazzas. But another glance showd him that they
were sprays and wild flowers of various sorts, with gay mosses and fungi
and some stems of Indian-pipe.
Whitwell seemed pleased that these things should have caught Westover's
eye. He said, almost immediately: "Lookin' at my almanac? This is one of
our field-days; we have 'em once a week; and I like to let the ladies see
beforehand what nature's got on the bill for 'em, in the woods and
pastur's."
"It's a good idea," said Westover, "and it's fresh and picturesque."
Whitwell laughed for pleasure.
"They told me what a consolation you were to the ladies, with your walks
and talks."
"Well, I try to give 'em something to think about," said Whitwell.
"But why do you confine your ministrations to one sex?"
"I don't, on purpose. But it's the only sex here, three-fourths of the
time. Even the children are mostly all girls. When the husbands come up
Saturday nights, they don't want to go on a tramp Sundays. They want to
lay off and rest. That's about how it is. Well, you see some changes
about Lion's Head, I presume?" he asked, with what seemed an impersonal
pleasure in them.
"I should rather have found the old farm. But I must say I'm glad to find
such a good hotel."
"Jeff and his mother made their brags to you?" said Whitwell, with a kind
of amiable scorn. "I guess if it wa'n't for Cynthy she wouldn't know
where she was standin', half the time. It don't matter where Jeff stands,
I guess. Jackson's the best o' the lot, now the old man's gone." There
was no one by at the moment to hear these injuries except Westover, but
Whitwell called them out with a frankness which was perhaps more
carefully adapted to the situation than it seemed. Westover made no
attempt to parry them formally; but he offered some generalities in
extenuation of the unworthiness of the Durgins, which Whitwell did not
altogether refuse.
"Oh, it's all right. Old woman talk to you about Jeff's going to college?
I thought so. Wants to make another Dan'el Webster of him. Guess she
can's far forth as Dan'el's graduatin' went." Westover tried to remember
how this had been with the statesman, but could not. Whitwell added, with
intensifying irony so of look and tone: "Guess the second Dan'el won't
have a chance to tear his degree up; guess he wouldn't ever b'en ready to
try for it if it had depended on him. They don't keep any record at
Harvard, do they, of the way fellows are prepared for their preliminary
examinations?"
"I don't quite know what you mean," said Westover.
"Oh, nothin'. You get a chance some time to ask Jeff who done most of his
studyin' for him at the Academy."
This hint was not so darkling but Westover could understand that Whitwell
attributed Jeff's scholarship to the help of Cynthia, but he would not
press him to an open assertion of the fact. There was something painful
in it to him; it had the pathos which perhaps most of the success in the
world would reveal if we could penetrate its outside.
He was silent, and Whitwell left the point. "Well," he concluded, "what's
goin' on in them old European countries?"
"Oh, the old thing," said Westover. "But I can't speak for any except
France, very well."
"What's their republic like, over there? Ours? See anything of it, how it
works?"
"Well, you know," said Westover, "I was working so hard myself all the
time--"
"Good!" Whitwell slapped his leg. Westover saw that he had on long
India-rubber boots, which came up to his knees, and he gave a wayward
thought to the misery they would be on an August day to another man; but
Whitwell was probably insensible to any discomfort from them. "When a
man's mindin' his own business any government's good, I guess. But I
should like to prowl round some them places where they had the worst
scenes of the Revolution, Ever been in the Place de la Concorde?"
Whitwell gave it the full English pronunciation.
"I passed through it nearly every day."
"I want to know! And that column that they, pulled down in the Commune
that had that little Boney on it--see that?"
"In the Place Vendome?"
"Yes, Plass Vonndome."
"Oh yes. You wouldn't know it had ever been down."
"Nor the things it stood for?"
"As to that, I can't be so sure."
"Well, it's funny," said the philosopher, "how the world seems to always
come out at the same hole it went in at!" He paused, with his mouth open,
as if to let the notion have full effect with Westover.