“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 opiumeating. There’s a lot of it among the country people about here — the women, especially. When Hawberk cranes 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 malting 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 door of the house where he decided to begin their rounds. “Hello! they’re at home, apparently,” he said.
The windows of the house before them, as they showed to their advance through the leafless spray of the shrubbery, were bright with lamplight, and the sound of a piano, broken in upon with gay shouts and shrieks of girls’ laughter, penetrated the doors and the casements. If there had been any doubt on the point made, it was dispersed at their ring. There came a nervous whoop from within, followed by whispering and tittering; and then the door was flung open by Jessamy Colebridge herself, obscured by the light which silhouetted her little head and limp figure to the young men on the threshold.
“Why, Mr. Langbrith! And Mr. Falk! Well, if this isn’t too much! We were just talking — weren’t we, girls?” she called over her shoulder into the room she had left, and Langbrith asked gravely: “May we come in? If you are at home?”
“At home! I should think so! Papa and mamma are at evening meeting, and I let the two girls go; and I have got in Hope and Susie here to cheer me up, for I’m down sick, if you want to know, with the most fearful cold. I only hope it isn’t grippe, but you can’t tell.”
She led them, chattering, into the parlor, where the other young ladies, stricken with sudden decorum, stood like statues of themselves in the attitude of joyous alarm which the ring at the door had surprised them into.
One of them, a slender girl, with masses of black hair, imperfectly put away from her face, which looked reddened beyond the tint natural to her type, flared at the young men with large black eyes, in a sort of defiant question. The other, short and dense of figure, was a decided blonde; her smooth hair was a pale gold, and her serenely smiling face, with its close-drawn eyelids — the lower almost touching the upper, and wrinkling the fine short nose — was what is called “funny.” It was flushed, too, but was of a delicacy of complexion duly attested by its freckles.
There was a strong smell of burning in the room, and, somehow, an effect of things having been scurried out of sight.
The slim girl gave a wild cry, and precipitated herself towards the fireplace as if plunging into it; but it was only to snatch from the bed of coals a long-handled wire cage, from the meshes of which a thick, acrid smoke was pouring. “Much good it did to hustle the plates away and leave this burning up! Open the window, Jessamy!”
But Jessamy left Langbrith to do it, while she clapped
her hands and stood shouting: “We were popping corn! The furnace fire was out, and I lit this to keep the damp out, and we thought we would pop some corn! There was such a splendid bed of coals, and I was playing, and Susie and Hope were popping the corn! We were in such a gale, and we all hustled the things away when you rang, for we didn’t know who you were, and the girls thought it would be too absurd to be caught popping com, and in the hurry we forgot all about the popper itself, and left it burning up full of corn!’
Her voice rose to a screech, and she bowed herself with laughter, while she beat her hands together.
The young men listened according to their nature. Falk said: “I thought it was the house burning down. I didn’t know which of you ladies wanted to be saved first.”
The girl who had run to throw the corn-popper out of the window came back with Langbrith, who shut the window behind her. “Oh, I can swim,” she said, and they all laughed at her joke.
“Well, then, get the com, Hope,” Jessamy shrieked; “we may as well be hung for a sheep as a goat. It is a goat, isn’t it?” she appealed to the young men.
“It doesn’t seem as if it were,” Langbrith answered, with mock thoughtfulness.
“Some of those animals, then,” the girl laughed over her shoulder. “Where did I put the plates, Susie?”
“I know where I put the corn,” Hope said, going to the portière, where it touched the floor next the room beyond.
Falk ran after her. “Let me help carry it,” he entreated.
“Do get the salt, Susie,” Jessamy commanded. “I know where the plates are now.”
“We hadn’t got to the salt,” Susie Johns said; but Jessamy had not heard her when she stooped over the music-rack and handed up three plates to Langbrith.
Falk came with Hope, elaborately supporting one handle of the dish with a little heap of popped corn in the bottom. She held the other and explained, “ We had only got to the first popping,” and Jessamy added:
“We were not expecting company.”
“We could go away,” Langbrith suggested.
“Susie, have you got the salt?” Jessamy implored, putting the plates on the piano. Susie stood smiling serenely, and again the hostess forgot her. “Shall we have it on the piano, girls? Oh, I know; let’s have it on the hearth-rug here.”
“Yes,” Langbrith said, doubling his lankness down before the fire. He went on:
“‘For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.”
Jessamy had not minded the hoyden prank in which he took her at her word, but the name he seemed to invoke so lightly shocked her. She drew her face down and looked grave.
“It isn’t swearing, Jessamy,” Hope Hawberk reassured her; “it’s only Shakespeare. Mr. Langbrith never talks anything but Shakespeare, you know.” She had a deep, throaty voice, which gave weight to her irony.
“Oh, all right,” said Jessamy. “Susie, you wicked thing, have you got that salt? Why, of course! I never brought it from the dining-room. Here, sit by Mr. Langbrith, as Hope calls him — his Christian name used to be Jim — and keep him from Shakespearing, while I go for it.”
“You might get him a plate, too,” Falk called after her. Susie coiled herself softly, kitten-like, down on the rug at Langbrith’s side. “I’m going to eat out of the dish.”
“Hope, don’t you let him!” Jessamy screamed on her way to the dining-room.
When she came back she distributed the plates among her guests, and with one, in which Hope had put her a portion of corn, she stood behind them. “Bless you, my children,” she said. “Now, trot out your kings, Jimmy — Mr. Langbrith, I should say.”
“Oh no,” Langbrith protested; “ghosts. We oughtn’t to tell anything less goose-fleshing than ghost-stories before this fire.”
“Why, I thought you said your kings were dead. Good kings, dead kings!” Jessamy added, with no relation of ideas. “Or is it Indians?”
Anything served. They were young, and alone — joyful mysteries to themselves and to one another. They talked and laughed. They hardly knew what they said, and not at all why they laughed.
At nine o’clock, Jessamy’s father and mother came home, and with them some one whose voice they knew. The elders discreetly went up-stairs, when Jessamy called out to whoever it was had come with them, “Come in here, Harry Matthewson.”
They received him with gay screams, Jessamy having dropped to her knees beside the others, for the greater effect upon the smiling young fellow who came in rubbing his hands.
“Well, well!” he said.
“Now this is a little too pat,” Langbrith protested, and he gave the invitation which he had come with, and which met with no dissent.
“It is a vote,” said Matthewson, with the authority of a young lawyer beginning to take part in town meetings.
“Well, now,” Langbrith said, getting to his feet, “the business of the meeting being over, I move Falk and I adjourn.”
“No, no, don’t let him, Mr. Falk! You don’t want to go, do you?”
“Only for a breath of air. I’m nearly roasted.”
Matthewson laughed. “I wondered what you were sitting round the fire for; it’s as mild as May out, and there’s a full moon.”
“A full moon?” Jessamy put out her hand for him to help her up. The other girls put out their hands for help, too. “Then I’ll tell you what.
We’ll go home with the poor things, and see that the goblins don’t get them. What do you say, girls?”
“Oh! they say ‘yes.’ Don’t you, girls?” Langbrith entreated, with clasped hand.
The young men helped them put on their wraps. Jessamy, when she was fully equipped for the adventure, called up-stairs to her mother: “Mamma, I am going out for a few minutes.” Her mother shrieked back: “Jessamy Colebridge, don’t you do it. You’ll take your death.”
“No, I won’t, mamma. The air will do my cold good,” and she closed the debate by shutting the door behind her. “Now, that’s settled,” she said. “Where shall we go first?”
The notion of going home with Langbrith and Falk seemed to be relinquished. They went about from one house to another, where there were girls of their acquaintance, and sang before their gates or under their windows. At the first sign of consciousness within, they fled with shrieks and shouts.
In the assortment of couples, Matthewson led the way with Susie Johns, Falk followed with Jessamy, Langbrith and Hope were paired. Sometimes, the girls ran on alone; sometimes, in the dark places, they took the young men’s arms.
They saw each other to their houses; then, not to be outdone in civility, the girls who were left came away with those who had left them. It promised never to end, and no one seemed to care. The joy of their youth had gone to their heads in a divine madness, in which differences of temperament were merged and they were all alike.
Langbrith did not know bow it happened that he was at last taking leave of Hope Hawberk alone at her gate. He stooped over to whisper something. She pulled her hand from his arm, and said, “Don’t be silly!” and ran up the walk to her door. The elastic weight of her hand remained on his arm.
VII
THE compromise between a Boston dinner and a Saxmills tea, which the mother and son had agreed upon, prospered beyond the wont of compromises. It was a very good meal of the older-fashioned sort, and it was better served by Norah, from her habit of such meals, than could have been expected, with the help of the niece she had got in for the evening. The turkey was set before Langbrith and the chicken pie before his mother. Norah asked the guests which they would have, in taking their plates, and brought the plates bade with the chosen portion, and the vegetables added by the host or hostess from the deep dishes on their right and left. There were small plates of subsidiary viands, such as brandied peaches and sweet pickles, which the guests passed to one another. Tea and coffee and cocoa were served through the supper by Norah’s niece from the pantry, where she had them hot from the kitchen s
tove. There was no wine till the ladies left the table, when Langbrith had Norah put down, with the cigars, some decanters of madeira from, as he said, his father’s stock. He had a little pomp in saying that; it seemed to him there was something ancestral in it.
Instead of letting all follow the hostess out to supper pell-mell, as the Saxmills custom had always been, he went about asking the men, sotto voce, if they would take out such and such ladies. “Will you take out my mother, Dr. Anther?” he said, with special graciousness. He told Falk to give his arm to Hope Hawberk, and he gave his own to the rector’s wife. But when they came to look up their places, and found their names, by Falk’s example, on cards beside their plates, Hope found hers on Langbrith’s left. That way of appointing people their chairs was an innovation at Saxmills, and the girls put their dinner cards where they should remember to take them away. But the effect of this innovation was lost in the great innovation of having old and young people together at tea. The like had not happened in Saxmills before; except at a church sociable or a Sunday-school picnic, it had scarcely happened that the different ages met at all. When they did, it was understood that the old people were to go away early, and leave the young people to take their pleasure in their own fashion.
At first, the affair went hitchily. The girls had confided to one another, in the library, their astonishment at finding themselves in the mixed company, and their wonder whether their elders were going to stay for the dance. But, partly through their fear of Langbrith, which they could overcome only when they had him on their own ground, and partly through their embarrassment at being obliged to talk with the rector and the doctor and the judge, they remained in a petrified decorum which lasted well into the supper. Even when Jessamy Colebridge caught the eye of Hope Hawberk from her place diagonally across the table, and saw its lid droop in a slow, deliberate wink, instead of bursting into a whoop of sympathetic intelligence, she blushed painfully and turned her face away, with a tendency to tears. She was not having, as she would have said, a bit good time, between the judge on one hand, who did not speak much to any one, and Mr. Matthewson on the other, who was talking to Susie Johns. And she felt the joyous mockery of Hope’s triumph, where she sat between Falk and Langbrith, without the ability to respond in kind. Besides, she could not see why her father and mother had not been invited, if there were going to be old people. She could not catch the words which were kindly cast her across the table, from time to time, by the judge’s wife. But good cheer is a solvent which few spiritual discomforts can resist. Before she left the table, Jessamy was beginning to have the good time which mounted as the evening went on, and culminated in Mr. Matthewson’s going home with her. Judge Garley had scarcely talked to a young girl since his wife had ceased to be one. But he was so little versed in the nature of girls that he did not know how much he had failed to enjoy Jessamy’s conversation till his wife asked him at home how he could manage to find things to say to that little simpleton. In fact, he had set her and young Matthewson talking across him, while Susie sat placidly silent, or funnily smiled to her indirect vis-à-vis, who happened to be Falk, released to her by Hope’s preoccupation with Langbrith. As he noted to Susie, those two seemed to be having rather a stormy time, springing from a radical difference of opinion upon a point of sociology advanced by Langbrith, who held that the unions ought to be broken up, and alleged their criminal incivism even in their strikes in such a small place as Saxmills, where labor and capital were personally acquainted.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 793