The Son Of Royal Langbrith. William Dean Howells
asked—from a feeling that the doctor had meant to say “family” rather than “mother”— “You knew his father?”
“Oh yes, but he died when James was a very little child.”
“ He seems to have a sort of ancestor worship for him,” said Falk, with a slight amusement in his face.
“Yes,” the doctor dryly allowed.
Langbrith was talking gayly with his other guests at the farther end of the table, where his voice rose in somewhat noisy dominance. He seemed to be laying down the law on some point; and the others to be politely submitting rather than agreeing.
Anther stood looking at him. He turned to Falk, and, with his face slightly canted towards Langbrith, he asked from one side of his mouth, “ You’ve noticed his portrait in the library?”
“Jimmy doesn’t let you escape that!” Falk said. “How do you like it?”
“You mean artistically?”
“ No, personally. How does the face strike you?”
“Well, I don’t think I could worship an ancestor like that. Perhaps it isn’t a good likeness.”
“It was painted from a photograph.”
“ Yes, so he said. And that sort of portrait seems always to fail in conveying character.”
Doctor Anther made no reply for some time. In fact, he made no reply at all. He asked, “And such character as it does convey?”
“Well, he looks too much like a cat that has been at the cream. And it isn’t the feline slyness alone that’s there: there’s the feline ferocity. Perhaps it’s like a tiger that’s been at the cream.”
The doctor said gravely, “The artist had never seen Langbrith in life. You don’t find anything of that sort in James?”
“ No, he’s like his mother in looks.”
“Oh yes. Don’t you find — as an artist—Miss Hawberk very striking?”
“Wonderful. If I may speak as an artist. That cloud of hair hanging over her little face, and those coal-black eyes, and that red mouth between the pale cheeks! If I were a painter, which I’m not, and never shall be, I should want nothing better than to spend my life studying such a face.”
“Her father,” the doctor said, looking at Falk, as if to question how much he knew already, “is an extraordinary man.”
“ So Langbrith tells me. He told me about him. ”
“Oh, then,” said the doctor with the effect of implying that there need be nothing more said on that point; “you must stop me when I seem to be asking unwarrantable things. Do you think that James—”
“Doctor! Won’t you come here?” Langbrith called to him from the other end of the table where he was sitting. “I’ve got three stubborn men against me here, on a point which I want you to settle in my favor.”
“Somebody must give way, and you know I can’t,” the rector said, using the well-known words of the Boston lady who appealed to reason against her adversaries.
“What is this point that only one of you can agree on?” the doctor asked, coming up.
Langbrith laughed with high good humor, as if still in the afterglow of Hope Hawberk’s playful hostilities. The qualities which gave his classmates the question whether he was not an ass were in abeyance. Even if he showed no such deference as Matthewson paid to the judge or the clergyman, he was withheld from patronizing them by the instinct of hospitality. At the worst, his superiority took the form of pressing the wine on them, and insisting that they had failed to get good cigars.
“Oh, I expect there will be two, now, doctor,” he crowed. “It’s a question of taste. I don’t know how we got to talking about it—do you, judge? or you, Dr. Enderby? But we were speaking of that immediate acquiescence of a community in a change of name—like that of Groton Junction to Ayer Junction. The pill-man gave a town-hall, or something like that, to the place, and the bargain was struck. Said, done: and from that day to this nobody has mentioned Groton Junction even by a slip of the tongue, though the school at Groton keeps the old name alive and honored. The judge, here, and Dr. Enderby were saying it was a pity that we had to keep such an ugly and indistinctive name as ‘Saxmills,’ and I was defending it, just because it was ugly and indistinctive. I was saying that the whole American thing Was ugly and indistinctive, and that, if there was any choice, it was more so in New England than elsewhere. But now I want to tell you all something,” and he went eagerly on, as if to forestall any interruptive expression of opinion from the others on a point which did not really matter. He glanced at Falk, where he stood blowing rings of smoke into the air at the door of the conservatory, as if about to demand his nearer presence, but apparently decided to include him by lifting his voice. “There was a time when a change of name was suggested here. Did you ever know about it?” he asked the doctor.
The doctor shook his head with indifference.
“No? Well, that was just like my father, if I read his character right. He would have consulted with you, if he had not decided of himself to suppress the whole thing from himself, and by himself. It was after he had built the library, and given it to the town. There was a dedication, and all that; and in a little diary—one of those little pocket-almanac diaries, you know—which I came across the other day among my father’s papers, I found this laconic entry: ‘Library dedication. Had been some talk of changing Saxmills to Langbrith, but I squelched that so thoroughly that nobody peeped about it.’ Do you recall any such talk?”
Anther shook his head again. “ It was before my time, here.”
“And mine,” the judge said.
The rector did not think it worthwhile saying it was before his, apparently; he was such a newcomer. But he said: “It was almost a pity he squelched it. Langbrith would have been a fine name.”
The young man could scarcely conceal his satisfaction. “Oh, it would have been rather too romantic and Old English for a New England papermill town. I’m afraid it would have given the expectation of laid note, with deckelled edges.”
The rector owned that there might be something in that, but he insisted that the name was fine.
“I think my father was right. And it was like him; don’t you think so, doctor?”
“Very,” Anther assented briefly.
“ I can imagine just how he would have squelched it when the committee—there must have been a committee—came to propose the new name to him. I should not have liked to be in their shoes. He was not a man, as I imagine him, to have stood anything he considered nonsense.” Langbrith looked at the doctor for confirmation, but Anther smoked on in silence. Langbrith was probably too well pleased to note his silence with offence. He asked abruptly, “Is that a good likeness of him in the library?’’
“It was painted from a photograph, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Still, if it’s well done, it would convey his personality.”
“It’s fairly—characteristic.”
Falk, from his station between the conservatory doors, grinned.
Langbrith frowned slightly. “It doesn’t suit me, quite. And this brings me to something I want to talk with you gentlemen about. I’ve been thinking, for some time, of offering the town a medallion likeness of my father to be put up in front of the library somewhere.” He looked round at the others, but they waited as if for him to develop his idea fully. “My notion is, something in bronze; a low relief, of course, and a profile, or threequarters face. The difficulty is about getting that view of him. The thing in the library is a full face, and I don’t feel somehow that it does him justice. Do you, doctor?”
“Not