The painter could not make out at first whether the girl herself was
pleased with the picture or not, and in his uncertainty he could not
give it her at once, as he had hoped and meant to do. It was by a kind
of accident he found afterward that she had always been passionately
proud of his having painted her. This was when he returned from the last
sojourn he had made in Paris, whither he went soon after the Whitwells
settled in North Cambridge. He left the picture behind him to be framed
and then sent to her with a letter he had written, begging her to give
it houseroom while he was gone. He got a short, stiff note in
reply after he reached Paris, and he had not tried to continue the
correspondence. But as soon as he returned he went out to see the
Whitwells in North Cambridge. They were still in their little house
there; the young widower had married again; but neither he nor his new
wife had cared to take up their joint life in his first home, and he had
found Whitwell such a good tenant that he had not tried to put up the
rent on him. Frank was at home, now, with an employment that gave him
part of his time for his theological studies; Cynthia had been teaching
school ever since the fall after Westover went away, and they were all,
as Whitwell said, in clover. He was the only member of the family at
home when Westover called on the afternoon of a warm summer day, and he
entertained him with a full account of a visit he had paid Lion's Head
earlier in the season.
“Yes, sir,” he said, as if he had already stated the fact, “I've sold my
old place there to that devil.” He said devil without the least rancor;
with even a smile of good-will, and he enjoyed the astonishment Westover
expressed in his demand:
“Sold Durgin your house?”
“Yes; I see we never wanted to go back there to live, any of us, and I
went up to pass the papers and close the thing out. Well, I did have an
offer for it from a feller that wanted to open a boa'din'-house there
and get the advantage of Jeff's improvements, and I couldn't seem to
make up my mind till I'd looked the ground over. Fust off, you know, I
thought I'd sell to the other feller, because I could see in a minute
what a thorn it 'd be in Jeff's flesh. But, dumn it all! When I met the
comical devil I couldn't seem to want to pester him. Why, here, thinks
I, if we've made an escape from him--and I guess we have, about the
biggest escape--what have I got ag'in' him, anyway? I'd ought to feel
good to him; and I guess that's the way I did feel, come to boil it
down. He's got a way with him, you know, when you're with him, that
makes you like him. He may have a knife in your ribs the whole while,
but so long's he don't turn it, you don't seem to know it, and you can't
help likin' him. Why, I hadn't been with Jeff five minutes before I made
up my mind to sell to him. I told him about the other offer--felt bound
to do it--and he was all on fire. 'I want that place, Mr. Whitwell,' s'd
he. 'Name your price.' Well, I wa'n't goin' to take an advantage of the
feller, and I guess he see it. 'You've offered me three thousand,' s'd
I, 'n' I don't want to be no ways mean about it. Five thousand buys the
place.' 'It's mine,' s'd he; just like that. I guess he see he had a
gentleman to deal with, and we didn't say a word more. Don't you think I
done right to sell to him? I couldn't 'a' got more'n thirty-five hundred
out the other feller, to save me, and before Jeff begun his improvements
I couldn't 'a' realized a thousand dollars on the prop'ty.”
“I think you did right to sell to him,” said Westover, saddened somewhat
by the proof Whitwell alleged of his magnanimity.
“Well, Sir, I'm glad you do. I don't believe in crowdin' a man because
you got him in a corner, an' I don't believe in bearin' malice. Never
did. All I wanted was what the place was wo'th--to him. 'Twa'n't wo'th
nothin' to me! He's got the house and the ten acres around it, and he's
got the house on Lion's Head, includin' the Clearin', that the poottiest
picnic-ground in the mountains. Think of goin' up there this summer?”
“No,” said Westover, briefly.
“Well, I some wish you did. I sh'd like to know how Jeff's improvements
struck you. Of course, I can't judge of 'em so well, but I guess he's
made a pootty sightly thing of it. He told me he'd had one of the
leadin' Boston architects to plan the thing out for him, and I tell you
he's got something nice. 'Tain't so big as old Lion's Head, and Jeff
wants to cater to a different style of custom, anyway. The buildin's
longer'n what she is deep, and she spreads in front so's to give as many
rooms a view of the mountain as she can. Know what 'runnaysonce' is?
Well, that's the style Jeff said it was; it's all pillars and pilasters;
and you ride up to the office through a double row of colyums, under a
kind of a portico. It's all painted like them old Colonial houses down
on Brattle Street, buff and white. Well, it made me think of one of them
old pagan temples. He's got her shoved along to the south'ard, and he's
widened out a piece of level for her to stand on, so 't that piece o'
wood up the hill there is just behind her, and I tell you she looks
nice, backin' up ag'inst the trees. I tell you, Jeff's got a head on
him! I wish you could see that dinin'-room o' his: all white colyums,
and frontin' on the view. Why, that devil's got a regular little
theatyre back o' the dinin'-room for the young folks to act ammyture
plays in, and the shows that come along, and he's got a dance-hall
besides; the parlors ain't much--folks like to set in the office; and
a good many of the rooms are done off into soots, and got their own
parlors. I tell you, it's swell, as they say. You can order what you
please for breakfast, but for lunch and dinner you got to take what Jeff
gives you; but he treats you well. He's a Durgin, when it comes to that.
Served in cou'ses, and dinner at seven o'clock. I don't know where he
got his money for 't all, but I guess he put in his insurance fust, and
then he put a mortgage on the buildin'; be as much as owned it; said
he'd had a splendid season last year, and if he done as well for a
copule of seasons more he'd have the whole prop'ty free o' debt.”
Westover could see that the prosperity of the unjust man had corrupted
the imagination and confounded the conscience of this simple witness,
and he asked, in the hope of giving his praises pause: “What has he done
about the old family burying-ground in the orchard?”
“Well, there!” said Whitwell. “That got me more than any other one
thing: I naturally expected that Jeff 'd had 'em moved, for you know and
I know, Mr. Westover, that a place like that couldn't be very pop'la'
with summer folks; they don't want to have anything to kind of make 'em
serious, as you may say. But that devil got his architect to treat
the place, as he calls it, and he put a high stone wall around it, and
planted it to bushes and evergreens so 't looks like a piece of old
garden, down there in the corner of the orchard, and if you didn't
hunt for it you wouldn't know it was there. Jeff said 't when folks
did happen to find it out, he believed they liked it; they think it's
picturesque and ancient. Why, some on 'em wanted him to put up a little
chapel alongside and have services there; and Jeff said he didn't know
but he'd do it yet. He's got dark-colored stones up for Mis' Durgin and
Jackson, so 't they look as old as any of 'em. I tell you, he knows how
to do things.”
“It seems so,” said Westover, with a bitterness apparently lost upon the
optimistic philosopher.
“Yes, sir. I guess it's all worked out for the best. So long's he didn't
marry Cynthy, I don't care who he married, and--I guess he's made out
fust-rate, and he treats his wife well, and his mother-in-law, too. You
wouldn't hardly know they was in the house, they're so kind of quiet;
and if a guest wants to see Jeff, he's got to send and ask for him;
clerk does everything, but I guess Jeff keeps an eye out and knows
what's goin' on. He's got an elegant soot of appartments, and he lives
as private as if he was in his own house, him and his wife. But when
there's anything goin' on that needs a head, they're both right on deck.
“He don't let his wife worry about things a great deal; he's got a
fust-rate of a housekeeper, but I guess old Mis' Vostrand keeps the
housekeeper, as you may say. I hear some of the boa'ders talkin' up
there, and one of 'em said 't the great thing about Lion's Head was 't
you could feel everywheres in it that it was a lady's house. I guess
Jeff has a pootty good time, and a time 't suits him. He shows up on the
coachin' parties, and he's got himself a reg'lar English coachman's rig,
with boots outside his trouse's, and a long coat and a fuzzy plug-hat: I
tell you, he looks gay! He don't spend his winters at Lion's Head: he
is off to Europe about as soon as the house closes in the fall, and he
keeps bringin' home new dodges. Guess you couldn't get no boa'd there
for no seven dollars a week now! I tell you, Jeff's the gentleman now,
and his wife's about the nicest lady I ever saw. Do' know as I care so
much about her mother; do' know as I got anything ag'inst her, either,
very much. But that little girl, Beechy, as they call her, she's a
beauty! And round with Jeff all the while! He seems full as fond of her
as her own mother does, and that devil, that couldn't seem to get enough
of tormentin' little children when he was a boy, is as good and gentle
with that little thing as-pie!”
Whitwell seemed to have come to an end of his celebration of Jeff's
success, and Westover asked:
“And what do you make now, of planchette's brokenshaft business? Or
don't you believe in planchette any more?”
Whitwell's beaming face clouded. “Well, sir, that's a thing that's
always puzzled me. If it wa'n't that it was Jackson workin' plantchette
that night, I shouldn't placed much dependence on what she said; but
Jackson could get the truth out of her, if anybody could. Sence I b'en
up there I b'en figurin' it out like this: the broken shaft is the old
Jeff that he's left off bein'--”
Whitwell stopped midway in his suggestion, with an inquiring eye on the
painter, who asked: “You think he's left off being the old Jeff?”
“Well, sir, you got me there,” the philosopher confessed. “I didn't see
anything to the contrary, but come to think of it--”
“Why couldn't the broken shaft be his unfulfilled destiny on the old
lines? What reason is there to believe he isn't what he's always been?”
“Well, come to think of it--”
“People don't change in a day, or a year,” Westover went on, “or two or
three years, even. Sometimes I doubt if they ever change.”
“Well, all that I thought,” Whitwell urged, faintly, against the hard
scepticism of a man ordinarily so yielding, “is 't there must be a moral
government of the universe somewheres, and if a bad feller is to get
along and prosper hand over hand, that way, don't it look kind of as
if--”
“There wasn't any moral government of the universe? Not the way I see
it,” said Westover. “A tree brings forth of its kind. As a man sows he
reaps. It's dead sure, pitilessly sure. Jeff Durgin sowed success, in
a certain way, and he's reaping it. He once said to me, when I tried to
waken his conscience, that he should get where he was trying to go if he
was strong enough, and being good had nothing to do with it. I believe
now he was right. But he was wrong too, as such a man always is. That
kind of tree bears Dead Sea apples, after all. He sowed evil, and he
must reap evil. He may never know it, but he will reap what he has sown.
The dreadful thing is that others must share in his harvest. What do you
think?”
Whitwell scratched his head. “Well, sir, there's something in what you
say, I guess. But here! What's the use of thinkin' a man can't change?
Wa'n't there ever anything in that old idee of a change of heart? What
do you s'pose made Jeff let up on that feller that Jombateeste see him
have down, that day, in my Clearin'? What Jeff would natch'ly done would
b'en to shake the life out of him; but he didn't; he let him up, and he
let him go. What's the reason that wa'n't the beginnin' of a new life
for him?”
“We don't know all the ins and outs of that business,” said Westover,
after a moment. “I've puzzled over it a good deal. The man was the
brother of that girl that Jeff had jilted in Boston. I've found out that
much. I don't know just the size and shape of the trouble between them,
but Jeff may have felt that he had got even with his enemy before that
day. Or he may have felt that if he was going in for full satisfaction,
there was Jombateeste looking on.”
“That's true,” said Whitwell, greatly daunted. After a while he took
refuge in the reflection, “Well, he's a comical devil.”
Westover said, in a sort of absence: “Perhaps we're all broken shafts,
here. Perhaps that old hypothesis of another life, a world where
there is room enough and time enough for all the beginnings of this to
complete themselves--”
“Well, now you're shoutin',” said Whitwell. “And if plantchette--”
Westover rose. “Why, a'n't you goin' to wait and see Cynthy? I'm
expectin' her along every minute now; she's just gone down to Harvard
Square. She'll be awfully put out when she knows you've be'n here.”
“I'll come out again soon,” said Westover. “Tell her--”
“Well, you must see your picture, anyway. We've got it in the parlor. I
don't know what she'll say to me, keepin' you here in the settin'-room
all the time.”
Whitwell led him into the little dark front hall, and into the parlor,
less dim than it should have been because the afternoon sun was burning
full upon its shutters. The portrait hung over the mantel, in a bad
light, but the painter could feel everything in it that he could not
see.
“Yes, it had that look in it.”
“Well, she ha'n't took wing yet, I'm thankful to think,” said Whitwell,
and he spoke from his own large mind to the sympathy of an old friend
who he felt could almost share his feelings as a father.