The Son Of Royal Langbrith. William Dean Howells
kind of fool. Unless,” Falk hastened to anticipate, “I’m all kinds.”
Langbrith was apparently not watching for the chance snatched from him. “Well, I think you could do it, somehow,” he insisted. “I’m going to Paris for my post-graduate business, and I’ve set my heart on having you with me. I wonder,” he mused aloud, “why I like you so much, Falk?”
“I couldn’t say,” Falk returned, without apparent interest in the mystery.
“You’re always saying nasty things to me,” Langbrith pursued. “You take every chance to give me a dig.”
“It’s all that keeps you in bounds.”
“No—”
“Yes, it is; your arrogance would naturally splay all over the place. But just at present, you’re in the melting mood that saps everybody’s manhood towards the end of the senior year. If I didn’t watch myself, I should feel a tenderness for you at times.”
“Would you, really, Falk?” Langbrith appeared touched, and interested.
“ I shall never know, for I don’t mean to be taken off my guard.”
“What a delightful fellow you are, Falk!”
“Do you think so? I should suppose you were a woman.”
“Oh, it isn’t the women alone that love you, old man. I love you because you are the only one who is frank with me.”
“It takes courage to be candid with a prince. But, thank Heaven, I have it.”
“ Oh, pshaw! There’s nobody by to admire your sarcasms.”
“I’m satisfied with you, my dear boy.”
“Will you answer me a serious question seriously?”
“Yes, if you keep your hands off, and don’t try to pat me on the head.”
Langbrith was silent, and he would not speak, in his resentment, till Falk said, “Fire away.”
Still it was an interval before Langbrith recovered poise enough to ask, “What do you think of Jessamy Colebridge?”
“Hope Hawberk, you mean,” Falk promptly translated.
Langbrith laughed, and said, “Well, make it Hope Hawberk.”
“She’s about the prettiest girl I’ve seen.”
“Isn’t she! And the gracefulest. There’s more charm in grace than in beauty, every time.”
“There is, this time, it seems.”
Langbrith laughed again for pleasure. “She has grace of mind. I don’t know where she gets it. Her father—well, that’s a tragedy.”
“ Better tell it.”
“ It would take a long time to do it justice. He was my father’s partner, here, when the mills were started, and I’ve heard he was a very brilliant fellow. They were great friends. But he must have had some sort of dry rot, always, and he took to opium.”
“Kill him?”
“No, it doesn’t kill on those terms, I believe. He’s away just now on one of his periodical retreats in a sanatorium, where they profess to cure opium-eating. There’s a lot of it among the country people about here—the women, especially. When Hawberk comes out, he is fitter than ever for opium.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I suppose it’s Dr. Anther that keeps him along. I want you to meet Dr. Anther, Falk.”
“ I inferred as much from a remark you made at dinner.”
“Oh, I believe I did speak of it. Well, now you know I mean it. He’s one of those men—doctors or lawyers, mostly; you don’t catch the reverend clergy hiding their light under a bushel quite so much—who could have been something great in the larger world, if they hadn’t preferred a small world. I suppose it is a streak of indolence in them. Anther’s practice has kept him poor in Saxmills, but it would have made him rich in Boston. You mustn’t imagine that he’s been rusting scientifically here. He is thoroughly up to. date as a physician; goes away now and then and rubs up in New York. He’s been our family physician ever since I can remember, and before. My father and he were great cronies, I believe, though he’s never boasted of it. I have inferred it from things my mother has dropped; or perhaps,” Langbrith laughed, “I’ve only imagined it. At any rate, he dates back to my father’s time, and two strong men, both willing to stay in Saxmills, must have had a good deal in common. He’s always been in and out of the house, more like a friend than a physician. A guardian couldn’t have looked after me better, when it was a question of advice; and, as a doctor, he pulled me through all the ills that flesh of kids is heir to. He has that abrupt quaintness that an old doctor gets. He would go into a play or a book just as he is. You don’t care so much for that sort of man as I do, I know, for you’re a sort of character yourself. Now, I’m different. I—”
“This seems getting to be more about you than your doctor,” Falk said. He rose, threw the end of his cigar into the fire, and stretched himself.
What is the matter with our going to see some of those girls?”
Langbrith flushed, as he rose too, but he said nothing in making for the door with his friend.
They met his mother before they reached the door, on her return from the kitchen. She gave the conscious start which every encounter with her son surprised from her since his home-coming, and gasped, Will you—shall you—see the young people, James? Or shall I?”
I can save you that trouble, mother. Falk and I were just going out to make some calls, and we can ask the girls.”
“ Well,” his mother said, and she passed the young men on her way into the room, while they stood aside for her; she gave her housekeeping glance over it, to see what things would have to be put in place when they were gone. “Then, I will ask the others, and we will have the dance after supper. Were you going,” she turned to her son with, for the first time, something like interest, “to ask Hope?”
“Why, certainly!”
“Yes. That was what I understood.”
“Didn’t you want me to?—I mentioned her.”
“Yes, yes, oh yes. I forgot. And your uncle John?”
“Yes, certainly. But you know he won’t come. Wild horses couldn’t get him here.”
“You ought to ask him.”
“Now, that’s just like my mother,” Langbrith said, as he went out with Falk into the night. “ Uncle John has had charge of the mills here ever since my father died, and he was nominally my guardian. But he hasn’t been inside of the house, I believe, half a dozen times, except on business, and he barely knows me by sight.”
“ The one I met yesterday in the office?”
‘‘Yes. That’s where he lives; that’s his home; though, of course, he has a place where he sleeps and eats, and has an old colored man to keep house for him. He’s a perfect hermit, and he’ll only hate a little less to be asked to come than he would to come. But mother wouldn’t omit asking him on any account. It makes me laugh.”
VI
The young men walked away under the windy April sky, with the boughs of the elms that overhung the village street creaking in the starless dark. The smell of spring was in the air, which beat damply and refreshingly in their faces, hot from the indoors warmth.
Langbrith was the first to speak again; but he did not speak till he had opened the gate of the walk leading up to the