Westover met the ladies coming out of the dining-room as he went in
rather late to breakfast; he had been making a study of Lion's Head in
the morning light after the cloud lifted from it. He was always doing
Lion's Heads, it seemed to him; but he loved the mountain, and he was
always finding something new in it.
He was now seeing it inwardly with so exclusive a vision that he had no
eyes for these extremely pretty women till they were out of sight. Then
he remembered noticing them, and started with a sense of recognition,
which he verified by the hotel register when he had finished his meal.
It was, in fact, Mrs. James W. Vostrand, and it was Miss Vostrand, whom
Westover had know ten years before in Italy. Mrs. Vostrand had then
lately come abroad for the education of her children, and was pausing
in doubt at Florence whether she should educate them in Germany or
Switzerland. Her husband had apparently abandoned this question to her,
and he did not contribute his presence to her moral support during her
struggle with a problem which Westover remembered as having a tendency
to solution in the direction of a permanent stay in Florence.
In those days he liked Mrs. Vostrand very much, and at twenty he
considered her at thirty distinctly middle-aged. For one winter she had
a friendly little salon, which was the most attractive place in Florence
to him, then a cub painter sufficiently unlicked. He was aware of her
children being a good deal in the salon: a girl of eight, who was like
her mother, and quite a savage little boy of five, who may have been
like his father. If he was, and the absent Mr. Vostrand had the same
habit of sulking and kicking at people's shins, Westover could partly
understand why Mrs. Vostrand had come to Europe for the education of her
children. It all came vividly back to him, while he went about looking
for Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter on the verandas and in the parlors.
But he did not find them, and he was going to send his name to their
rooms when he came upon Jeff Durgin figuring about the office in a fresh
London conception of an outing costume.
“You're very swell,” said Westover, halting him to take full note of it.
“Like it? Well, I knew you'd understand what it meant. Mother thinks
it's a little too rowdy-looking. Her idea is black broadcloth frock-coat
and doeskin trousers for a gentleman, you know.” He laughed with a young
joyousness, and then became serious. “Couple of ladies here, somewhere,
I'd like to introduce you to. Came over with me from the depot last
night. Very nice people, and I'd like to make it pleasant for them--get
up something--go somewhere--and when you see their style you can judge
what it had better be. Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter.”
“Thank you,” said Westover. “I think I know them already at least one of
them. I used to go to Mrs. Vostrand's house in Florence.”
“That so? Well, fact is, I crossed with them; but I came second-cabin,
because I'd spent all my money, and I didn't get acquainted with them
on the ship, but we met in the train coming up last night. Said they had
heard of Lion's Head on the other side from friends. But it was quite
a coincidence, don't you think? I'd like to have them see what this
neighborhood really is; and I wish, Mr. Westover, you'd find out, if you
can, what they'd like. If they're for walking, we could get Whitwell to
personally conduct a party, and if they're for driving, I'd like to show
them a little mountain-coaching myself.”
“I don't know whether I'd better not leave the whole thing to you,
Jeff,” Westover said, after a moment's reflection. “I don't see exactly
how I could bring the question into a first interview.”
“Well, perhaps it would be rather rushing it. But, if I get up
something, you'll come, Mr. Westover?”
“I will, with great pleasure,” said Westover, and he went to make his
call.
A half-hour later he was passing the door of the old parlor which Mrs.
Durgin still kept for hers, on his way up to his room, when a sound
of angry voices came out to him. Then the voice of Mrs. Durgin defined
itself in the words: “I'm not goin' to have to ask any more folks for
their rooms on your account, Jeff Durgin--Mr. Westover! Mr. Westover,
is that you?” her voice broke off to call after him as he hurried by,
“Won't you come in here a minute?”
He hesitated, and then Jeff called, “Yes, come in, Mr. Westover.”
The painter found him sitting on the old hair-cloth sofa, with his stick
between his hands and knees, confronting his mother, who was rocking
excitedly to and fro in the old hair-cloth easy-chair.
“You know these folks that Jeff's so crazy about?” she demanded.
“Crazy!” cried Jeff, laughing and frowning at the same time. “What's
crazy in wanting to go off on a drive and choose your own party?”
“Do you know them?” Mrs. Durgin repeated to Westover.
“The Vostrands? Why, yes. I knew Mrs. Vostrand in Italy a good many
years ago, and I've just been calling on her and her daughter, who was a
little girl then.”
“What kind of folks are they?”
“What kind? Really! Why, they're very charming people--”
“So Jeff seems to think. Any call to show them any particular
attention?”
“I don't know if I quite understand--”
“Why, it's just this. Jeff, here, wants to make a picnic for them, or
something, and I can't see the sense of it. You remember what happened
at that other picnic, with that Mrs. Marven”--Jeff tapped the floor with
his stick impatiently, and Westover felt sorry for him--“and I don't
want it to happen again, and I've told Jeff so. I presume he thinks
it 'll set him right with them, if they're thinkin' demeaning of him
because he came over second-cabin on their ship.”
Jeff set his teeth and compressed his lips to bear as best he could,
the give-away which his mother could not appreciate in its importance to
him:
“They're not the kind of people to take such a thing shabbily,” said
Westover. “They didn't happen to mention it, but Mrs. Vostrand must have
got used to seeing young fellows in straits of all kinds during her life
abroad. I know that I sometimes made the cup of tea and biscuit she used
to give me in Florence do duty for a dinner, and I believe she knew it.”
Jeff looked up at Westover with a grateful, sidelong glance.
His mother said: “Well, then, that's all right, and Jeff needn't do
anything for them on that account. And I've made up my mind about one
thing: whatever the hotel does has got to be done for the whole hotel.
It can't pick and choose amongst the guests.” Westover liked so little
the part of old family friend which he seemed, whether he liked it or
not, to bear with the Durgins, that he would gladly have got away now,
but Mrs. Durgin detained him with a direct appeal. “Don't you think so,
Mr. Westover?”
Jeff spared him the pain of a response. “Very well,” he said to his
mother; “I'm not the hotel, and you never want me to be. I can do this
on my own account.”
“Not with my coach and not with my hosses,” said his mother.
Jeff rose. “I might as well go on down to Cambridge, and get to work on
my conditions.”
“Just as you please about that,” said Mrs. Durgin, with the same
impassioned quiet that showed in her son's handsome face and made it one
angry red to his yellow hair. “We've got along without you so far, this
summer, and I guess we can the rest of the time. And the sooner you work
off your conditions the better, I presume.”
The next morning Jeff came to take leave of him, where Westover had
pitched his easel and camp-stool on the slope behind the hotel.
“Why, are you really going?” he asked. “I was in hopes it might have
blown over.”
“No, things don't blow over so easy with mother,” said Jeff, with an
embarrassed laugh, but no resentment. “She generally means what she
says.”
“Well, in this case, Jeff, I think she was right.”
“Oh, I guess so,” said Jeff, pulling up a long blade of grass and taking
it between his teeth. “Anyway, it comes to the same thing as far as I'm
concerned. It's for her to say what shall be done and what sha'n't be
done in her own house, even if it is a hotel. That's what I shall do in
mine. We're used to these little differences; but we talk it out, and
that's the end of it. I shouldn't really go, though, if I didn't think
I ought to get in some work on those conditions before the thing begins
regularly. I should have liked to help here a little, for I've had a
good time and I ought to be willing to pay for it. But she's in good
hands. Jackson's well--for him--and she's got Cynthia.”
The easy security of tone with which Jeff pronounced the name vexed
Westover. “I suppose your mother would hardly know how to do without
her, even if you were at home,” he said, dryly.
“Well, that's a fact,” Jeff assented, with a laugh for the hit. “And
Jackson thinks the world of her. I believe he trusts her judgment more
than he does mother's about the hotel. Well, I must be going. You don't
know where Mrs. Vostrand is going to be this winter, I suppose?”
“No, I don't,” said Westover. He could not help a sort of blind
resentment in the situation. If he could not feel that Jeff was the best
that could be for Cynthia, he had certainly no reason to regret that his
thoughts could be so lightly turned from her. But the fact anomalously
incensed him as a slight to the girl, who might have been still more
sacrificed by Jeff's constancy. He forced himself to add: “I fancy Mrs.
Vostrand doesn't know herself.”
“I wish I didn't know where I was going to be,” said Jeff. “Well,
good-bye, Mr. Westover. I'll see you in Boston.”
“Oh, good-bye.” The painter freed himself from his brush and palette for
a parting handshake, reluctantly.
Jeff plunged down the hill, waving a final adieu from the corner of the
hotel before he vanished round it.
Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter were at breakfast when Westover came in
after the early light had been gone some time. They entreated him to
join them at their table, and the mother said: “I suppose you were up
soon enough to see young Mr. Durgin off. Isn't it too bad he has to go
back to college when it's so pleasant in the country?”
“Not bad for him,” said Westover. “He's a young man who can stand a
great deal of hard work.” Partly because he was a little tired of Jeff,
and partly because he was embarrassed in their presence by the reason of
his going, he turned the talk upon the days they had known together.
Mrs. Vostrand was very willing to talk of her past, even apart from his,
and she told him of her sojourn in Europe since her daughter had
left school. They spent their winters in Italy and their summers
in Switzerland, where it seemed her son was still at his studies in
Lausanne. She wished him to go to Harvard, she said, and she supposed he
would have to finish his preparation at one of the American schools; but
she had left the choice entirely to Mr. Vostrand.
This seemed a strange event after twelve years' stay in Europe for the
education of her children, but Westover did not feel authorized to make
any comment upon it. He fell rather to thinking how very pleasant both
mother and daughter were, and to wondering how much wisdom they had
between them. He reflected that men had very little wisdom, as far as
he knew them, and he questioned whether, after all, the main difference
between men and women might not be that women talked their follies and
men acted theirs. Probably Mrs. Vostrand, with all her babble, had
done fewer foolish things than her husband, but here Westover felt his
judgment disabled by the fact that he had never met her husband; and his
mind began to wander to a question of her daughter, whom he had there
before him. He found himself bent upon knowing more of the girl, and
trying to eliminate her mother from the talk, or, at least, to make
Genevieve lead in it. But apparently she was not one of the natures
that like to lead; at any rate, she remained discreetly in abeyance, and
Westover fancied she even respected her mother's opinions and ideas. He
thought this very well for both of them, whether it was the effect of
Mrs. Vostrand's merit or Miss Vostrand's training. They seemed both
of one exquisite gentleness, and of one sweet manner, which was rather
elaborate and formal in expression. They deferred to each other as
politely as they deferred to him, but, if anything, the daughter
deferred most.