That afternoon Westover saw Jeff helping Cynthia Whitwell into his
buckboard, and then, after his lively horse had made some paces of a
start, spring to the seat beside her, and bring it to a stand. “Can I
do anything for you over at Lovewell, Mr. Westover?” he called, and he
smiled toward the painter. Then he lightened the reins on the mare's
back; she squared herself for a start in earnest, and flashed down the
sloping hotel road to the highway below, and was lost to sight in the
clump of woods to the southward.
“That's a good friend of yours, Cynthy,” he said, leaning toward the
girl with a simple comfort in her proximity. She was dressed in a
pale-pink color, with a hat of yet paler pink; without having a great
deal of fashion, she had a good deal of style. She looked bright and
fresh; there was a dash of pink in her cheeks, which suggested the color
of the sweetbrier, its purity and sweetness, and if there was something
in Cynthia's character and temperament that suggested its thorns too,
one still could not deny that she was like that flower. She liked to
shop, and she liked to ride after a good horse, as the neighbors would
have said; she was going over to Lovewell to buy a number of things,
and Jeff Durgin was driving her there with the swift mare that was his
peculiar property. She smiled upon him without the usual reservations
she contrived to express in her smiles.
“Well, I don't know anybody I'd rather have for my friend than Mr.
Westover.” She added: “He acted like a friend the very first time I saw
him.”
Jeff laughed with shameless pleasure in the reminiscence her words
suggested. “Well, I did get my come-uppings that time. And I don't know
but he's been a pretty good friend to me, too. I'm not sure he likes me;
but Mr. Westover is a man that could be your friend if he didn't like
you.”
“What have you done to make him like you?” asked the girl.
“Nothing!” said Jeff, with a shout of laughter in his conviction. “I've
done a lot of things to make him despise me from the start. But if you
like a person yourself, you want him to like you whether you deserve it
or not.”
“I don't know as I do.”
“You say that because you always deserve it. You can't tell how it is
with a fellow like me. I should want you to like me, Cynthy, whatever
you thought of me.” He looked round into her face, but she turned it
away.
They had struck the level, long for the hill country, at the foot of
the hotel road, and the mare, that found herself neither mounting nor
descending a steep, dropped from the trot proper for an acclivity into a
rapid walk.
“This mare can walk like a Kentucky horse,” said Jeff. “I believe I
could teach her single-foot.” He added, with a laugh, “If I knew how,”
and now Cynthia laughed with him.
“I was just going to say that.”
“Yes, you don't lose many chances to give me a dig, do you?”
“Oh, I don't know as I look for them. Perhaps I don't need to.” The pine
woods were deep on either side. They whispered in the thin, sweet wind,
and gave out their odor in the high, westering sun. They covered with
their shadows the road that ran velvety between them.
“This is nice,” said Jeff, letting himself rest against the back of the
seat. He stretched his left arm along the top, and presently it dropped
and folded itself about the waist of the girl.
“You may take your arm away, Jeff,” she said, quietly.
“Why?”
“Because it has no right there, for one thing!” She drew herself a
little aside and looked round at him. “You wouldn't put it round a town
girl if you were riding with her.”
“I shouldn't be riding with her: Girls don't go buggy-riding in town any
more,” said Jeff, brutally.
“Then I shall know what to do the next time you ask me.”
“Oh, they'd go quick enough if I asked them up here in the country.
Etiquette don't count with them when they're on a vacation.”
“I'm not on a vacation; so it counts with me. Please take your arm
away,” said Cynthia.
“Oh, all right. But I shouldn't object to your putting your arm around
me.”
“You will never have the chance.”
“Why are you so hard on me, Cynthy?” asked Jeff. “You didn't used to be
so.”
“People change.”
“Do I?”
“Not for the better.”
Jeff was dumb. She was pleased with her hit, and laughed. But her laugh
did not encourage him to put his arm round her again. He let the mare
walk on, and left her to resume the conversation at whatever point she
would.
She made no haste to resume it. At last she said, with sufficient
apparent remoteness from the subject they had dropped: “Jeff, I don't
know whether you want me to talk about it. But I guess I ought to, even
if it isn't my place exactly. I don't think Jackson's very well, this
summer.”
Jeff faced round toward her. “What makes you think he isn't well?”
“He's weaker. Haven't you noticed it?”
“Yes, I have noticed that. He's worked down; that's all.”
“No, that isn't all. But if you don't think so--”
“I want to know what you think, Cynthy,” said Jeff, with the amorous
resentment all gone from his voice. “Sometimes folks outside notice
the signs more--I don't mean that you're an outsider, as far as we're
concerned--”
She put by that point. “Father's noticed it, too; and he's with Jackson
a good deal.”
“I'll look after it. If he isn't so well, he's got to have a doctor.
That medium's stuff can't do him any good. Don't you think he ought to
have a doctor?”
“Oh yes.”
“You don't think a doctor can do him much good?”
“He ought to have one,” said the girl, noncommittally.
“Cynthia, I've noticed that Jackson was weak, too; and it's no use
pretending that he's simply worked down. I believe he's worn out. Do you
think mother's ever noticed it?”
“I don't believe she has.”
“It's the one thing I can't very well make up my mind to speak to her
about. I don't know what she would do.” He did not say, “If she lost
Jackson,” but Cynthia knew he meant that, and they were both silent. “Of
course,” he went on, “I know that she places a great deal of dependence
upon you, but Jackson's her main stay. He's a good man, and he's a good
son. I wish I'd always been half as good.”
Cynthia did not protest against his self-reproach as he possibly hoped
she would. She said: “I think Jackson's got a very good mind. He reads a
great deal, and he's thought a great deal, and when it comes to talking,
I never heard any one express themselves better. The other night, we
were out looking at the stars--I came part of the way home with him;
I didn't like to let him go alone, he seemed so feeble and he got to
showing me Mars. He thinks it's inhabited, and he's read all that the
astronomers say about it, and the seas and the canals that they've found
on it. He spoke very beautifully about the other life, and then he spoke
about death.” Cynthia's voice broke, and she pulled her handkerchief out
of her belt, and put it to her eyes. Jeff's heart melted in him at the
sight; he felt a tender affection for her, very unlike the gross content
he had enjoyed in her presence before, and he put his arm round her
again, but this time almost unconsciously, and drew her toward him. She
did not repel him; she even allowed her head to rest a moment on his
shoulder; though she quickly lifted it, and drew herself away, not
resentfully, it seemed, but for her greater freedom in talking.
“I don't believe he's going to die,” Jeff said, consolingly, more as if
it were her brother than his that he meant. “But he's a very sick man,
and he's got to knock off and go somewhere. It won't do for him to pass
another winter here. He must go to California, or Colorado; they'd be
glad to have him there, either of them; or he can go to Florida, or over
to Italy. It won't matter how long he stays--”
“What are you talking about, Jeff Durgin?” Cynthia demanded, severely.
“What would your mother do? What would she do this winter?”
“That brings me to something, Cynthia,” said Jeff, “and I don't want you
to say anything till I've got through. I guess I could help mother run
the place as well as Jackson, and I could stay here next winter.”
“You?”
“Now, you let me talk! My mind's made up about one thing: I'm not going
to be a lawyer. I don't want to go back to Harvard. I'm going to keep a
hotel, and, if I don't keep one here at Lion's Head, I'm going to keep
it somewhere else.”
“Have you told your mother?”
“Not yet: I wanted to hear what you would say first.”
“I? Oh, I haven't got anything to do with it,” said Cynthia.
“Yes, you have! You've got everything to do with it, if you'll say one
thing first. Cynthia, you know how I feel about you. It's been so ever
since we were boy and girl here. I want you to promise to marry me. Will
you?”
The girl seemed neither surprised nor very greatly pleased; perhaps her
pleasure had spent itself in that moment of triumphant expectation when
she foresaw what was coming, or perhaps she was preoccupied in clearing
the way in her own mind to a definite result.
“What do you say, Cynthia?” Jeff pursued, with more injury than
misgiving in his voice at her delay in answering. “Don't you-care for
me?”
“Oh yes, I presume I've always done that--ever since we were boy and
girl, as you say. But----”
“Well?” said Jeff, patiently, but not insecurely.
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Always cared for me.”
He could not find his voice quite as promptly as before. He cleared his
throat before he asked: “Has Mr. Westover been saying anything about
me?”
“I don't know what you mean, exactly; but I presume you do.”
“Well, then--I always expected to tell you--I did have a fancy for that
girl, for Miss Vostrand, and I told her so. It's like something that
never happened. She wouldn't have me. That's all.”
“And you expect me to take what she wouldn't have?”
“If you like to call it that. But I should call it taking a man that had
been out of his head for a while, and had come to his senses again.”
“I don't know as I should ever feel safe with a man that had been out of
his head once.”
“You wouldn't find many men that hadn't,” said Jeff, with a laugh that
was rather scornful of her ignorance.
“No, I presume not,” she sighed. “She was beautiful, and I believe she
was good, too. She was very nice. Perhaps I feel strangely about it.
But, if she hadn't been so nice, I shouldn't have been so willing that
you should have cared for her.”
“I suppose I don't understand,” said Jeff, “but I know I was hard hit.
What's the use? It's over. She's married. I can't go back and unlive it
all. But if you want time to think--of course you do--I've taken time
enough--”
He was about to lift the reins on the mare's back as a sign to her that
the talk was over for the present, and to quicken her pace, when Cynthia
put out her hand and laid it on his, and said with a certain effect
of authority: “I shouldn't want you should give up your last year in
Harvard.”
“Just as you say, Cynthy;” and in token of intelligence he wound his arm
round her neck and kissed her. It was not the first kiss by any means;
in the country kisses are not counted very serious, or at all binding,
and Cynthia was a country girl; but they both felt that this kiss sealed
a solemn troth between them, and that a common life began for them with
it.