The Son Of Royal Langbrith. William Dean Howells

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      V

      Mrs. Langbrith went into the library with her son and his friend by the folding doors from the dining-room, but only to go out of the door which opened into the hall, and escape by that route to the kitchen for an immediate conference with the cook.

      The young men dropped into deep leather chairs at opposite corners of the fireplace, after lighting their cigars. Probably, the comfort of his seat suggested Langbrith’s reflection: “ It is a shame I never knew my father. We should have had so much in common. I couldn’t imagine anything more adapted to the human back than these chairs.”

      “His taste?” Falk asked, between whiffs.

      “Everything in the house is his taste. I don’t believe my mother has changed a thing. He must have been a strong personality.” Langbrith followed his friend’s eye in its lift towards his father’s portrait over the mantel.

      “I should think so,” Falk assented.

      “Those old New England faces,” Langbrith continued, meditatively, “have a great charm. From a child, that face of my father’s fascinated me. As I got on, and began to be interested in my environment, I read into it all I had read out of Hawthorne about the Puritan type. I put the grim old chaps out of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables and the Twice-Told Tales into it, and interpreted my father by them. But, really, I knew very little about him. My mother’s bereavement seemed to have sealed her lips, and I preferred dreaming to asking. A kid is queer! Once or twice when I did ask, she evaded answering; that was after I was old enough to understand, and I didn’t press my questions. He was much older than she; twenty years, I believe. He couldn’t have been a Puritan in his creed; he was a Unitarian, as far as churchgoing went, and I believe my mother is a Unitarian yet; but she goes to the Episcopal Church, which makes itself a home for everybody, and she likes the rector. You’ll like him, too, Falk.”

      “He won’t talk theology to me, I suppose,” Falk grumbled.

      “He’ll talk athletics with you. The good thing about a man of his church is that he’s usually a man of the world, too. He’s an Enderby, you know.”

      “I shouldn’t be much the wiser, if I did,” Falk said.

      “I wouldn’t work that pose so hard, Falk. You can’t get even with the Enderbys by ignoring them; and you can’t pretend it’s meekness that makes you profess ignorance. The only thing I don’t like about you is your peasant pride.”

      “I still have hopes of winning your whole heart then. I’ll study your peasant humility.”

      Langbrith made as if he had not noticed the point. He rose and moved restively about the room, and then came back to his chair again, and said, as if he had really been thinking of something else: “If I should decide to take up dramatic literature, I believe I’ll go to Paris to continue my studies, and perhaps we’ll keep on there together. I wish we could! Can’t you manage it, somehow? Those things of yours in Caricature have attracted attention; and if Life has asked you to send something, why couldn’t you get a lot of orders, and go out with me?”

      “Gentle dreamer!” Falk murmured.

      “No, but why not, really?”

      “ Because a lot of orders are not to be got for the asking, and I’m a bad hand at asking. I think my cheek is good for applying to a New York paper for a chance to do scenes in court, and hurry-pictures of fires, and the persons in a vivid accident; but I don’t think it would hold out to invite Harper's or Scribner's to have me do high-class studies abroad for them. I may be a fool, but I am not that 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 СКАЧАТЬ