Westover

“ Jeff stood at a corner of the fire, leaning one elbow on the mantel, and he now looked thoughtfully down on Westover, who had sunk weakly into a chair before the hearth. “I don't deny it from your point of view, Mr. Westover,” he said, without the least resentment in his tone. “You believe that everything is done from a purpose, or that a thing is intended because it's done. But I see that most things in this world are not thought about, and not intended. They happen, just as much as the other things that we call accidents.” ”

“ There should have been really no human habitation visible except a wigwam in the shelter of the pines, here and there; and when he saw Whitwell making his way up the hill-side road, Westover felt that if there must be any human presence it should be some savage clad in skins, instead of the philosopher in his rubber boots and his clothing-store ulster. He preferred the small, wiry shape of Jombateeste, in his blue woollen cap and his Canadian footgear, as he ran round the corner of the house toward the barn, and left the breath of his pipe in the fine air behind him. ”

“ Durgin and Cynthia sat by the lamp and sewed at night, or listened to the talk of the men. If Westover read aloud, they whispered together from time to time about some matters remote from it, as women always do where there is reading. ”

“ Those who asked Carley Farnsworth got for reply:
"Oh, it is only that some of us think we ought to have a fitter man than Webb to represent us in the Senate, and we've nominated Westover without his knowledge or consent."
"But where is he?" was sure to be the next question. "Is he afraid to face the public?"
"No," Carley answered in every case. "If you get it into your head that Boyd Westover is afraid of anything or anybody, you'll be as badly mistaken as if you'd burnt your boots. He's away on a hunting and fishing expedition, just now, and he knows nothing of his nomination. ”

“ Westover, the attist?” He named each of them, and it would have been no great vanity in Westover to think they had made their little movement across the grass quite as much in the hope of an introduction to him as in the wish to consult Whitwell about his plans.
The painter found himself the centre of an agreeable excitement with all the ladies in the house. For this it was perhaps sufficient to be a man. To be reasonably young and decently good-looking, to be an artist, and an artist not unknown, were advantages which had the splendor of superfluity. ”

“ Westover was silent, and the girl surprised him by the appeal she suddenly made to him. “Mr. Westover, do you believe it would be very well for either of us to go? I think it would be better for us to leave all that part of his life alone. It's no use in pretending that we're like the kind of people he knows, or that we know their ways, and I don't believe—”
Westover felt his heart rise in indignant sympathy. “There isn't any one he knows to compare with you!” he said, and in this he was thinking mainly of Bessie Lynde. ”

“ To Westover, who had gone with the increasing forlornness a man feels in such pleasures after thirty-five, it seemed as if the two were in each other's company the whole evening. The impression was so strong with him that when Jeff restored Bessie to her aunt for the dance that was to be for some one else, and came back to the supper-room, the painter tried to satisfy a certain uneasiness by making talk with him. ”

“ Jeff's introductions at Westover's tea had not been many, and they had not availed him at all. He had been asked to no Boston houses, and when other students, whom he knew, were going in to dances, the whole winter he was socially as quiet, but for the Vostrands, as at the Mid-year Examinations. Westover could not resent the neglect of society in his case, and he could not find that he quite regretted it; but he thought it characteristically nice of Mrs. Vostrand to make as much of the friendless fellow as she fitly could. ”

“ Westover?”
Westover confirmed in general Jeff's report of the cleanliness of Paris.
“And beautiful! You don't know what a good-looking town is till you strike Paris. And they're proud of it, too. Every man acts as if he owned it. They've had the statue of Alsace in that Place de la Concorde of yours, Mr. Whitwell, where they had the guillotine all draped in black ever since the war with Germany; and they mean to have her back, some day.”
“Great country, Jombateeste!” Whitwell shouted to the Canuck. ”

“ But he was consoled by the lunch which he had with Westover at a restaurant where it was served in courses. “I presume this is what Jeff's goin' to give 'em at Lion's Head when he gits it goin' again.”
“How is it he's in Florence?” it occurred to Westover to ask. “I thought he was going to Nice for the winter.”
“I don't know. That's the address he give in his last letter,” said Whitwell. “I'll be glad when I've done with him for good and all. He's all kinds of a devil.” ”

“ When he had bowed to the lady and to her father, and had gone out of the room and down the lilac-bordered path and through the gate, and when the three at the window had watched him turn into Duke of Gloucester Street, the master of Westover looked at the master of Fair View and burst out laughing. "Ludwell hath for an overseer the scapegrace younger son of a baronet; and there are three brothers of an excellent name under indentures to Robert Carter. I have at Westover a gardener who annually makes the motto of his house to spring in pease and asparagus. ”

“ To our right as we walked, the lawn, thick set with trees, sloped gently to the river wall. To our left, the views came in broken, picturesque bits; a stretch of shrubbery, a reach of garden wall, some quaint outbuildings in warm, dull red, a glimpse of courtyard beyond a corner of box, and then the old home itself.
The riverward portal of Westover stands tall, white, and finely typical of its day. Above squared stone steps, the double doors with the fanlight above them are framed by two engaged columns supporting an elaborate pediment that has the symbolic pineapple in the centre. ”

“ It was in this mood that he encountered the first news of what had happened. It presented itself in the shape of one of Carley Farnsworth's nominating placards, tacked to the great hewn log posts of a gate that spanned the road, and Westover, after nearly twenty miles of tramping, came upon it about sunrise. He could not imagine what to make of it, and after a minute's consideration he dismissed it as somebody's practical joke—a part perhaps of that "devil to pay" in his own neighborhood of which Judy Peters had sent him warning. ”

“ Such people are refined, humane, appreciative, sympathetic; and Westover, fresh from the life abroad where life is seldom so free as ours without some stain, was glad to find himself in the midst of this unrestraint, which was so sweet and pure. He had seen enough of rich people to know that riches seldom bought the highest qualities, even among his fellow-countrymen who suppose that riches can do everything, and the first aspects of society at Lion's Head seemed to him Arcadian. ”

“ This was a crowning affront to a man of Webb's extraction, and perhaps Westover meant it to be such. The overseer class in Virginia was the most inferior of all, and the very suggestion of one gentleman that he would communicate with another through his overseer would have implied insult. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Westover thought that about the most tactful turning of a conversation that he had ever known. But she gave him no time to wonder over it.
"I'm staying at The Oaks, you know, with Margaret Conway. She's the very sweetest, truest, loveliest girl I ever knew. She's fit to be the wife of the noblest man in Virginia." ”

“ I've never forgiven you, Mr. Westover, never! Do keep on talking very excitedly; there's a man coming up to us that I don't want to think I see him, or he'll stop. There! He's veered off! Where were you, Mr. Westover?”
“Ah, Miss Bessie,” said the painter; delighted at her drama, “there isn't anything you couldn't do if you would.”
“You mean parlor entertainments; impersonations ”

“ Society, in the sense of good society, can always take care of itself, and does so perfectly. In the case of Mrs. Vostrand some ladies who liked Westover and wished to be civil to him asked her and her daughter to other afternoon teas, shook hands with them at their coming, and said, when they went, they were sorry they must be going so soon. In the crowds people recognized them now and then, both of those who had met them at Westover's studio, and of those who had met them at Florence and Lausanne. ”

“ Westover saw no reason why he should not be frank, and said: "Too much,
I've fancied sometimes, for a student in his Sophomore year."
"Yes, I know that. Well, it's over, whether it was too much or too little." He laughed in a joyless, helpless way, and looked deprecatingly at Westover. "I guess I've been making a fool of myself—that's all."
"It's better to make a fool of one's self than to make a fool of some one else," said Westover, oracularly.
"Yes," said Jeff, apparently finding nothing more definite in the oracle than people commonly find in oracles. ”

“ Westover stayed on, day after day, thinking somehow that he ought to wait till Jeff came. There were only a few other people in the hotel, and these were of a quiet sort; they were not saddened by the presence of a doomed man under the same roof, as gayer summer folks might have been, and they were themselves no disturbance to him. ”

“ He asked Westover what he thought of the notion, and Westover gave it his approval, which became enthusiastic when he saw the place. He found in it the melancholy grace, the poignant sentiment of ruin which expresses itself in some measure wherever man has invaded nature and then left his conquest to her again. In Whitwell's Clearing the effect was intensified by the approach on the fading wood road, which the wagons had made in former days when they hauled the fallen timber to the pulp-mill. ”

“ Westover, if I'd made that fellow toe the mark any way, I'd be afraid of him.” Whitwell looked at Westover with eyes of significance, if not of confidence. Then he rose with a prolonged “M—wel-l-l! We're all born, but we a'n't all buried. This world is a queer place. But I guess Jeff 'll come out right in the end.”
Westover said, “I'm sure he will!” and he shook hands warmly with the father of the girl Jeff was going to marry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Westover struggled with them a moment. “I can make out one word-shaft.”
“Anything else?” demanded Whitwell, with a glance of triumph at Jackson.
Westover studied the remaining letters. “Yes, I get one other word-broken.”
“Just what I done! But I wanted you to speak first. It's Broken Shaft. Jackson, she caught right onto what we was talkin' about. This life,” he turned to Westover, in solemn exegesis, “is a broken shaft when death comes. It rests upon the earth, but you got to look for the top of it in the skies. That's the way I look at it. What do you think, Jackson? Jombateeste?” ”

“ He looked over his shoulder at Westover, who was moving away. "Say, stop in some time you're passin'. I live in that wood-colored house at the foot of the Durgins' lane."
VIII. In a little sunken place, behind a rock, some rods away, Westover found Jeff lurking with his dog, both silent and motionless. "Hello?" he said, inquiringly.
"Come back to show you the way," said the boy. "Thought you couldn't find it alone."
"Oh, why didn't you say you'd wait?" The boy grinned. "I shouldn't think a fellow like you would want to be afraid of any man, even for the fun of scaring a little girl." ”

“ Westover started up at the same moment, exclaiming in French, “May I go with you?”
“Yes, yes,” cried Jeanette. “Come with him, come with him; the more the better; every one is a witness, and that is something.”
We darted down the stairs and away. How we got through the streets, I do not know, but we all hurried separately through the crowds, running against half a dozen people, and getting hearty benedictions for our pains. I arrived first at the apothecary’s shop, and saw at a glance as I entered, the villain himself deliberately packing up something at the counter. ”

“ Back in the beginnings of things American, when the dissatisfied planters at James Towne were starting out to establish their estates along the river, these lands by Herring Creek attracted attention. Under the name of Westover they soon became the property of the Byrd family, and rose to prominence among colonial estates in connection with the fortunes of that distinguished house.
The golden age of Westover was in the days of the second William Byrd, who was one of the most striking figures of colonial times. Handsome, learned, witty, and capable ”