L.

Mrs. Durgin's speech never regained 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 glass 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?"

Jombateeste shook his head. "Nawthing." He hesitated.

"What are you after?"

"Partridge," Jombateeste ventured back.

Jeff could not resist the desire to scoff which always came upon him at

sight of the Canuck. "Oh, pshaw! Why don't you go for woodchucks? They

fly low, and you can hit them on the wing, if you can't sneak on 'em

sitting."

Jombateeste received his raillery in dignified silence, and turned back

into the woods again. He left Durgin in heightened good-humor with

himself and with the world, which had finally so well adapted itself to

his desires and designs.

Jeff watched his resentful going with a grin, and then threw himself back

on the thick bed of dry moss where he had been sitting, and watched the

clouds drifting across the space of blue which the clearing opened

overhead. His own action reminded him of Jackson, lying in the orchard

and looking up at the sky. He felt strangely at one with him, and he

experienced a tenderness for his memory which he had not known before.

Jackson had been a good man; he realized that with a curious sense of

novelty in the reflection; he wondered what the incentives and the

objects of such men as Jackson and Westover were, anyway. Something like

grief for his brother came upon him; not such grief as he had felt,

passionately enough, though tacitly, for his mother, but a regret for not

having shown Jackson during his life that he could appreciate his

unselfishness, though he could not see the reason or the meaning of it.

He said to himself, in their safe remoteness from each other, that he

wished he could do something for Jackson. He wondered if in the course of

time he should get to be something like him. He imagined trying.

He heard sounds again in the edge of the clearing, but he decided that it

was that fool Jombateeste coming back; and when steps approached softly

and hesitantly across the moss, he did not trouble himself to take his

eyes from the clouds. He was only vexed to have his revery broken in

upon.

A voice that was not Jombateeste's spoke: "I say! Can you tell me the way

to the Brooker Institute, or to the road down the mountain?"

Jeff sat suddenly bolt-upright; in another moment he jumped to his feet.

The Brooker Institute was a branch of the Keeley Cure recently

established near the Huddle, and this must be a patient who had wandered

from it, on one of the excursions the inmates made with their guardians,

and lost his way. This was the fact that Jeff realized at the first

glance he gave the man. The next he recognized that the man was Alan

Lynde.

"Oh, it's you," he said, quite simply. He felt so cruelly the hardship of

his one unforgiven enemy's coming upon him just when he had resolved to

be good that the tears came into his eyes. Then his rage seemed to swell

up in him like the rise of a volcanic flood. "I'm going to kill you!" he,

roared, and he launched himself upon Lynde, who stood dazed.

But the murder which Jeff meant was not to be so easily done. Lynde had

not grown up in dissolute idleness without acquiring some of the arts of

self-defence which are called manly. He met Jeff's onset with remembered

skill and with the strength which he had gained in three months of the

wholesome regimen of the Brooker Institute. He had been sent there, not

by Dr. Lacy's judgment, but by his despair, and so far the Cure had

cured. He felt strong and fresh, and the hate which filled Jeff at sight

of him steeled his shaken nerves and reinforced his feebler muscles, too.

He made a desperate fight where he could not hope for mercy, and kept

himself free of his powerful foe, whom he fought round and foiled, if he

could not hurt him. Jeff never knew of the blows Lynde got in upon him;

he had his own science, too, but he would not employ it. He wanted to

crash through Lynde's defence and lay hold of him and crush the life out

of him.

The contest could not have lasted long at the best; but before Lynde was

worn out he caught his heel in an old laurel root, and while he whirled

to recover his footing Jeff closed in upon him, caught him by the middle,

flung him down upon the moss, and was kneeling on his breast with both

hands at his throat.

He glared down into his enemy's face, and suddenly it looked pitifully

little and weak, like a girl's face, a child's.

Sometimes, afterward, it seemed to him that he forbore because at that

instant he saw Jombateeste appear at the edge of the clearing and come

running upon them. At other times he had the fancy that his action was

purely voluntary, and that, against the logic of his hate and habit of

his life, he had mercy upon his enemy. He did not pride himself upon it;

he rather humbled himself before the fact, which was accomplished through

his will, and not by it, and remained a mystery he did not try to solve.

He took his hands from Lynde's throat and his knees off his breast. "Get

up," he said; and when Lynde stood trembling on his feet he said to

Jombateeste: "Show this man the way to the Brooker Institute. I'll take

your gun home for you," and it was easy for him to detach the piece from

the bewildered Canuck's grasp. "Go! And if you stop, or even let him look

back, I'll shoot him. Quick!"