The Landlord At Lion's Head. William Dean Howells
and brother, but Jeff Durgin's stalwart frame was notable for strength rather than height. He could not have been taller than his mother, whose stature was above the standard of her sex, but he was massive without being bulky. His chest was deep, his square shoulders broad, his powerful legs bore him with a backward bulge of the calves that showed through his shapely trousers; he caught up the trunks and threw them into the baggage-wagon with a swelling of the muscles on his short, thick arms which pulled his coat-sleeves from his heavy wrists and broad, short hands.
He had given one of these to Westover to shake when they met, but with something conditional in his welcome, and with a look which was not so much furtive as latent. The thatch of yellow hair he used to wear was now cropped close to his skull, which was a sort of dun-color; and it had some drops of sweat along the lighter edge where his hat had shaded his forehead. He put his hat on the seat between himself and Westover, and drove away from the station bareheaded, to cool himself after his bout with the baggage, which was following more slowly in its wagon. There was a good deal of it, and there were half a dozen people—women, of course—going to Lion's Head House. Westover climbed to the place beside Jeff to let them have the other two seats to themselves, and to have a chance of talking; but the ladies had to be quieted in their several anxieties concerning their baggage, and the letters and telegrams they had sent about their rooms, before they settled down to an exchange of apprehensions among themselves, and left Jeff Durgin free to listen to Westover.
“I don't know but I ought to have telegraphed you that I was coming,” Westover said; “but I couldn't realize that you were doing things on the hotel scale. Perhaps you won't have room for me?”
“Guess we can put you up,” said Jeff.
“No chance of getting my old room, I suppose?”
“I shouldn't wonder. If there's any one in it, I guess mother could change 'em.”
“Is that so?” asked Westover, with a liking for being liked, which his tone expressed. “How is your mother?”
Jeff seemed to think a moment before he answered:
“Just exactly the same.”
“A little older?”
“Not as I can see.”
“Does she hate keeping a hotel as badly as she expected?”
“That's what she says,” answered Jeff, with a twinkle. All the time, while he was talking with Westover, he was breaking out to his horses, which he governed with his voice, trotting them up hill and down, and walking them on the short, infrequent levels, in the mountain fashion.
Westover almost feared to ask: “And how is Jackson?”
“First-rate—that is, for him. He's as well as ever he was, I guess, and he don't appear a day older. You've changed some,” said Jeff, with a look round at Westover.
“Yes; I'm twenty-nine now, and I wear a heavier beard.” Westover noticed that Jeff was clean shaved of any sign of an approaching beard, and artistically he rejoiced in the fellow's young, manly beauty, which was very regular and sculpturesque. “You're about eighteen?”
“Nearer nineteen.”
“Is Jackson as much interested in the other world as he used to be?”
“Spirits?”
“Yes.”
“I guess he keeps it up with Mr. Whitwell. He don't say much about it at home. He keeps all the books, and helps mother run the house. She couldn't very well get along without him.”
“And where do you come in?”
“Well, I look after the transportation,” said Jeff, with a nod toward his horses—“when I'm at home, that is. I've been at the Academy in Lovewell the last three winters, and that means a good piece of the summer, too, first and last. But I guess I'll let mother talk to you about that.”
“All right,” said Westover. “What I don't know about education isn't worth knowing.”
Jeff laughed, and said to the off horse, which seemed to know that he was meant: “Get up, there!”
“And Cynthia? Is Cynthia at home?” Westover asked.
“Yes; they're all down in the little wood-colored house yet. Cynthia teaches winters, and summers she helps mother. She has charge of the dining-room.”
“Does Franky cry as much as ever?”
“No, Frank's a fine boy. He's in the house, too. Kind of bell-boy.”
“And you haven't worked Mr. Whitwell in anywhere?”
“Well, he talks to the ladies, and takes parties of 'em mountain-climbing. I guess we couldn't get along without Mr. Whitwell. He talks religion to 'em.” He cast a mocking glance at Westover over his shoulder. “Women seem to like religion, whether they belong to church or not.”
Westover laughed and asked: “And Fox? How's Fox?”
“Well,” said Jeff, “we had to give Fox away. He was always cross with the boarders' children. My brother was on from Colorado, and he took Fox back with him.”
“I didn't suppose,” said Westover, “that I should have been sorry to miss Fox. But I guess I shall be.”
Jeff seemed to enjoy the implication of his words. “He wasn't a bad dog. He was stupid.”
When they arrived at the foot of the lane, mounting to the farm, Westover saw what changes had been made in the house. There were large additions, tasteless and characterless, but giving the rooms that were needed. There was a vulgar modernity in the new parts, expressed with a final intensity in the four-light windows, which are esteemed the last word of domestic architecture in the country. Jeff said nothing as they approached the house, but Westover said: “Well, you've certainly prospered. You're quite magnificent.”
They reached the old level in front of the house, artificially widened out of his remembrance, with a white flag-pole planted at its edge, and he looked up at the front of the house, which was unchanged, except that it had been built a story higher back of the old front, and discovered the window of his old room. He could hardly wait to get his greetings over with Mrs. Durgin and Jackson, who both showed a decorous pleasure and surprise at his coming, before he asked:
“And could you let me have my own room, Mrs. Durgin?”
“Why, yes,” she said, “if you don't want something a little nicer.”
“I don't believe you've got anything nicer,” Westover said.
“All right, if you think so,” she retorted. “You can have the old room, anyway.”
X.
Westover could not have said he felt very much at home on his first sojourn at the farm, or that he had cared greatly for the Durgins. But now he felt very much at home, and as if he were in the hands of friends.
It was toward the close of the afternoon that he arrived, and he went in promptly to the meal that was served shortly after. He found that the farm-house had not evolved so far in the direction of a hotel as to have reached the stage of a late dinner. It was tea that he sat down to, but when he asked if there were not something hot, after listening to a catalogue of the cold meats, the spectacled waitress behind his chair demanded, with the air of putting him on his honor:
“You among those that came this afternoon?”
Westover claimed to be of the new arrivals.
“Well, then, you can have steak or chops and baked potatoes.”
He found the steak excellent, though succinct, and he looked round in the distinction it conferred upon him, on the older guests, who were served with cold ham, tongue, and corned-beef.