"I guess he's right," said Jackson. "There's something a little about it
in Job, and something in the Psalms: but not a great deal."
"And we got it from them Egyptian d----"
"I don't say that," Westover interposed. "But they had it before we had.
As we imagine it, we got it though Christianity."
Jombateeste, who had taken his pipe out of his mouth in a controversial
manner, put it back again.
Westover added, "But there's no question but the Egyptians believed in
the life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments for the deeds
done in the body, thousands of years before our era."
"Well, I'm dumned," said Whitwell.
Jombateeste took his pipe out again. "Hit show they got good sense. They
know--they feel it in their bone--what goin' 'appen--when you dead. Me, I
guess they got some prophet find it hout for them; then they goin' take
the credit."
"I guess that's something so, Jombateeste," said Whitwell. "It don't
stand to reason that folks without any alphabet, as you may say, and only
a lot of pictures for words, like Injuns, could figure out the
immortality of the soul. They got the idee by inspiration somehow. Why,
here! It's like this. Them Pharaohs must have always been clawin' out for
the Hebrews before they got a hold of Joseph, and when they found out the
true doctrine, they hushed up where they got it, and their priests went
on teachin' it as if it was their own."
"That's w'at I say. Got it from the 'Ebrew."
"Well, it don't matter a great deal where they got it, so they got it,"
said Jackson, as he rose.
"I believe I'll go with you," said Westover.
"All there is about it," said the sick man, solemnly, with a frail effort
to straighten himself, to which his sunken chest would not respond, "is
this: no man ever did figure that out for himself. A man sees folks die,
and as far as his senses go, they don't live again. But somehow he knows
they do; and his knowledge comes from somewhere else; it's inspired--"
"That's w'at I say," Jombateeste hastened to interpose. "Got it from the
'Ebrew. Feel it in 'is bone."
Out under the stars Jackson and Westover silently mounted the hill-side
together. At one of the thank-you-marms in the road the sick man stopped,
like a weary horse, to breathe. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat
of weakness that had gathered upon his forehead, and looked round the
sky, powdered with the constellations and the planets. "It's sightly," he
whispered.
"Yes, it is fine," Westover assented. "But the stars of our Northern
nights are nothing to what you'll see in Egypt."
Jackson repeated, vaguely: "Egypt! Where I should like to go is Mars." He
fixed his eyes on the flaming planets, in a long stare. "But I suppose
they have their own troubles, same as we do. They must get sick and die,
like the rest of us. But I should like to know more about 'em. You
believe it's inhabited, don't you?"
Westover's agnosticism did not, somehow, extend to Mars. "Yes, I've no
doubt of it."
Jackson seemed pleased. "I've read everything I can lay my hands on about
it. I've got a notion that if there's any choosin', after we get through
here, I should like to go to Mars for a while, or as long as I was a
little homesick still, and wanted to keep as near the earth as I could,"
he added, quaintly.
Westover laughed. "You could study up the subject of irrigation, there;
they say that's what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and
telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians
perfect their signal code."
Perhaps the invalid's fancy flagged. He drew a long, ragged breath. "I
don't know as I care to leave home, much. If it wa'n't a kind of duty, I
shouldn't." He seemed impelled by a sudden need to say, "How do you think
Jefferson and mother will make it out together?"
"I've no doubt they'll manage," said Westover.
"They're a good deal alike," Jackson suggested.
"Westover preferred not to meet his overture. You'll be back, you know,
almost as soon as the season commences, next summer."
"Yes," Jackson assented, more cheerfully. "And now, Cynthy's sure to be
here."
"Yes, she will be here," said Westover, not so cheerfully.
Jackson seemed to find the opening he was seeking, in Westover's tone.
"What do you think of gettin' married, anyway, Mr. Westover?" he asked.
"We haven't either of us thought so well of it as to try it, Jackson,"
said the painter, jocosely.
"Think it's a kind of chance?"
"It's a chance."
Jackson was silent. Then, "I a'n't one of them," he said, abruptly, "that
think a man's goin' to be made over by marryin' this woman or that. If he
a'n't goin' to be the right kind of a man himself, he a'n't because his
wife's a good woman. Sometimes I think that a man's wife is the last
person in the world that can change his disposition. She can influence
him about this and about that, but she can't change him. It seems as if
he couldn't let her if he tried, and after the first start-off he don't
try."
"That's true," Westover assented. "We're terribly inflexible. Nothing but
something like a change of heart, as they used to call it, can make us
different, and even then we're apt to go back to our old shape. When you
look at it in that light, marriage seems impossible. Yet it takes place
every day!"
"It's a great risk for a woman," said Jackson, putting on his hat and
stirring for an onward movement. "But I presume that if the man is honest
with her it's the best thing she can have. The great trouble is for the
man to be honest with her."
"Honesty is difficult," said Westover.
He made Jackson promise to spend a day with him in Boston, on his way to
take the Mediterranean steamer at New York. When they met he yielded to
an impulse which the invalid's forlornness inspired, and went on to see
him off. He was glad that he did that, for, though Jackson was not sad at
parting, he was visibly touched by Westover's kindness.
Of course he talked away from it. "I guess I've left 'em in pretty good
shape for the winter at Lion's Head," he said. "I've got Whitwell to
agree to come up and live in the house with mother, and she'll have
Cynthy with her, anyway; and Frank and Jombateeste can look after the
bosses easy enough."
He had said something like this before, but Westover could see that it
comforted him to repeat it, and he encouraged him to do so in full. He
made him talk about getting home in the spring, after the frost was out
of the ground, but he questioned involuntarily, while the sick man spoke,
whether he might not then be lying under the sands that had never known a
frost since the glacial epoch. When the last warning for visitors to go
ashore came, Jackson said, with a wan smile, while he held Westover's
hand: "I sha'n't forget this very soon."
"Write to me," said Westover.