The Landlord at Lion's Head — Complete

by William Dean Howells

At first he thought his action irrevocable, and he bitterly upbraided himself for not taking council with Cynthia upon Mrs. Vostrand's letter. He had thought of doing that, and then he had dismissed the thought as involving pain that he had no right to inflict; but now he perceived that the pain was such as she must suffer in the event, and that he had stupidly refused himself the only means of finding out the right thing to do. Her true heart and her clear mind would have been infallible in the affair, and he had trusted to his own muddled impulse.

He began to write other letters: to Durgin, to Mrs. Vostrand, to Genevieve; but none of them satisfied him, and he let the days go by without doing anything to retrieve his error or fulfil his duty. At last he did what he ought to have done at first: he enclosed Mrs. Vostrand's letter to Cynthia, and asked her what she thought he ought to have done. While he was waiting Cynthia's answer to his letter, a cable message reached him from Florence:

“Kind letter received. Married to-day. Written.
“Vostrand.”

The next mail brought Cynthia's reply, which was very brief:

“I am sorry you had to write at all; nothing could have prevented
it. Perhaps if he cares for her he will be good to her.”

Since the matter was now irremediable, Westover crept less miserably through the days than he could have believed he should, until the letter which Mrs. Vostrand's cable promised came to hand.

“Dear friend,” she wrote, “your generous and satisfactory answer came yesterday. It was so delicate and high,-minded, and so like you, to write to Mr. Durgin, and leave the whole affair to him; and he did not lose a moment in showing us your beautiful letter. He said you were a man after his own heart, and I wish you could have heard how he praised you. It made Genevieve quite jealous, or would have, if it had been any one else. But she is so happy in your approval of her marriage, which is to take place before the 'sindaco' to-morrow, We shall only have the civil rite; she feels that it is more American, and we are all coming home to Lion's Head in the spring to live and die true Americans. I wish you could spend the summer with us there, but, until Lion's Head is rebuilt, we can't ask you. I don't know exactly how we shall do ourselves, but Mr. Durgin is full of plans, and we leave everything to him. He is here, making Genevieve laugh so that I can hardly write. He joins us in love and thanks, and our darling Bice sends you a little kiss.
“MEDORA VOSTRAND.
“P. S. Mr. D. has told us all about the affairs you alluded to. With Miss L. we cannot feel that he was to blame; but he blames himself in regard to Miss W. He says his only excuse is that he was always in love with Genevieve; and I think that is quite excuse enough. M. V.”

From time to time during the winter Westover wrote to Cynthia, and had letters from her in which he pleased himself fancying almost a personal effect of that shyness which he thought a charming thing in her. But no doubt this was something he read into them; on their face they were plain, straightforward accounts of the life she led in the little old house at Lion's Head, under the shadow of the black ruin on the hill. Westover had taken to sending her books and magazines, and in thanking him for these she would sometimes speak of things she had read in them. Her criticism related to the spirit rather than the manner of the things she spoke of, and it pleased him that she seemed, with all her insight, to have very little artistic sense of any kind; in the world where he lived there were so many women with an artistic sense in every kind that he was rather weary of it.

There never was anything about Durgin in the letters, and Westover was both troubled and consoled by this silence. It might be from consciousness, and it probably was; it might be from indifference. In the worst event, it hid any pain she might have felt with a dignity from which no intimation of his moved her. The nearest she came to speaking of Jeff was when she said that Jombateeste was going to work at the brick-yards in Cambridge as soon as the spring opened, and was not going to stay any longer at Lion's Head.

Her brother Frank, she reported, had got a place with part work in the drug-and-book store at Lovewell, where he could keep on more easily with his studies; he had now fully decided to study for the ministry; he had always wanted to be an Episcopalian.