"I guess that's something so, Jombateeste," said Whitwell. "It don't stand to reason that folks without any alphabet, as you may say, and only a lot of pictures for words, like Injuns, could figure out the immortality of the soul. They got the idee by inspiration somehow. Why, here! It's like this. Them Pharaohs must have always been clawin' out for the Hebrews before they got a hold of Joseph, and when they found out the true doctrine, they hushed up where they got it, and their priests went on teachin' it as if it was their own.""That's w'at I say. Got it from the 'Ebrew.""Well, it don't matter a great deal where they got it, so they got it,"said Jackson, as he rose.
"I believe I'll go with you," said Westover.
"All there is about it," said the sick man, solemnly, with a frail effort to straighten himself, to which his sunken chest would not respond, "is this: no man ever did figure that out for himself. A man sees folks die, and as far as his senses go, they don't live again. But somehow he knows they do; and his knowledge comes from somewhere else; it's inspired--""That's w'at I say," Jombateeste hastened to interpose. "Got it from the 'Ebrew. Feel it in 'is bone."Out under the stars Jackson and Westover silently mounted the hill-side together. At one of the thank-you-marms in the road the sick man stopped, like a weary horse, to breathe. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat of weakness that had gathered upon his forehead, and looked round the sky, powdered with the constellations and the planets. "It's sightly," he whispered.
"Yes, it is fine," Westover assented. "But the stars of our Northern nights are nothing to what you'll see in Egypt."Jackson repeated, vaguely: "Egypt! Where I should like to go is Mars."He fixed his eyes on the flaming planets, in a long stare. "But Isuppose they have their own troubles, same as we do. They must get sick and die, like the rest of us. But I should like to know more about 'em.
You believe it's inhabited, don't you?"
Westover's agnosticism did not, somehow, extend to Mars. "Yes, I've no doubt of it."Jackson seemed pleased. "I've read everything I can lay my hands on about it. I've got a notion that if there's any choosin', after we get through here, I should like to go to Mars for a while, or as long as Iwas a little homesick still, and wanted to keep as near the earth as Icould," he added, quaintly.
Westover laughed. "You could study up the subject of irrigation, there;they say that's what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians perfect their signal code."Perhaps the invalid's fancy flagged. He drew a long, ragged breath.
"I don't know as I care to leave home, much. If it wa'n't a kind of duty, I shouldn't." He seemed impelled by a sudden need to say, "How do you think Jefferson and mother will make it out together?""I've no doubt they'll manage," said Westover.
"They're a good deal alike," Jackson suggested.
Westover preferred not to meet his overture. You'll be back, you know, almost as soon as the season commences, next summer.""Yes," Jackson assented, more cheerfully. "And now, Cynthy's sure to be here.""Yes, she will be here," said Westover, not so cheerfully.
Jackson seemed to find the opening he was seeking, in Westover's tone.
"What do you think of gettin' married, anyway, Mr. Westover?" he asked.
"We haven't either of us thought so well of it as to try it, Jackson,"said the painter, jocosely.
"Think it's a kind of chance?"
"It's a chance."
Jackson was silent. Then, "I a'n't one of them," he said, abruptly, "that think a man's goin' to be made over by marryin' this woman or that.
If he a'n't goin' to be the right kind of a man himself, he a'n't because his wife's a good woman. Sometimes I think that a man's wife is the last person in the world that can change his disposition. She can influence him about this and about that, but she can't change him. It seems as if he couldn't let her if he tried, and after the first start-off he don't try.""That's true," Westover assented. "We're terribly inflexible. Nothing but something like a change of heart, as they used to call it, can make us different, and even then we're apt to go back to our old shape. When you look at it in that light, marriage seems impossible. Yet it takes place every day!""It's a great risk for a woman," said Jackson, putting on his hat and stirring for an onward movement. "But I presume that if the man is honest with her it's the best thing she can have. The great trouble is for the man to be honest with her.""Honesty is difficult," said Westover.
He made Jackson promise to spend a day with him in Boston, on his way to take the Mediterranean steamer at New York. When they met he yielded to an impulse which the invalid's forlornness inspired, and went on to see him off. He was glad that he did that, for, though Jackson was not sad at parting, he was visibly touched by Westover's kindness.
Of course he talked away from it. "I guess I've left 'em in pretty good shape for the winter at Lion's Head," he said. "I've got Whitwell to agree to come up and live in the house with mother, and she'll have Cynthy with her, anyway; and Frank and Jombateeste can look after the bosses easy enough."He had said something like this before, but Westover could see that it comforted him to repeat it, and he encouraged him to do so in full. He made him talk about getting home in the spring, after the frost was out of the ground, but he questioned involuntarily, while the sick man spoke, whether he might not then be lying under the sands that had never known a frost since the glacial epoch. When the last warning for visitors to go ashore came, Jackson said, with a wan smile, while he held Westover's hand: "I sha'n't forget this very soon.""Write to me," said Westover.
End The Landlord At Lions Head V2 by William Dean Howells Part II.
