Читать книгу The Son Of Royal Langbrith - William Dean Howells - Страница 9

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 jump 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 com! There was such a splendid bed of coals, and I was playing, and Susie and Hope were popping the com! 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 corn, 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 ran 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 corn, 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 portiere, 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 someone 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 how 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.