The Son Of Royal Langbrith. William Dean Howells
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corner, and invited Anther to the deeper one in front of thy fire by her action, I oughtn’t to stay,” he said, looking at his watch. But he sat down. Neither of them made haste to take up any talk for the entertainment of the other. What they were to say was to come because they were both thinking the same things, from interests that were no longer separable. Yet he began with as great apparent remoteness as possible from their common interests. “Hawberk is at home again,” he said, as if that followed from his saying he ought not to stay.
‘‘James told me,” she responded. “He saw him last night.”
“And he has begun again.”
“Yes, I knew that from the way that James said he talked. It doesn’t seem much use his ever going.”
“It prolongs his life, if that’s any use. If he hadn’t pulled up completely, from time to time, he would have been dead ten years ago. It is a curious case. Mostly they keep on and on, till they kill themselves, but Hawberk seems disposed to see how much relief can be got out of it with the least danger. At the rate he is going, he can live as long as anybody. Of course, the moral effect always follows the indulgence of a morbid appetite. What did he say to James?”
“ He just told him some of his wild stories. He boasted of being Mr. Langbrith’s greatest friend.”
“So he was, in a kind of way. An involuntary friend,” Anther said, with a smile. She smiled, too, strangely enough, but as people can smile, in dealing with an old wrong when it offers an ironical aspect to them. But she said, “Sometimes I wish it could be known what a deadly enemy Mr. Langbrith had been to him. Why shouldn’t I tell it?
I ought to feel guilty for not telling it. He robbed him, as much as if he had taken his money out of his pocket.”
“No doubt about that; and once it might have been best to own the fact publicly. But sometimes it seems to me that time is past. A wrong like that seems to gather a force that enslaves those who have done nothing worse than leave it unacknowledged through a good motive. You haven’t been silent for your own sake.”
“I am not sure it hasn’t been for my own sake.”
“I am.”
“I wonder,” she said, “that Mr. Hawberk hasn’t told it himself.”
“Well, possibly, he thinks that it wouldn’t be credited, that it would be regarded as one of his wild inventions; that is, he thinks that when he is in his soberer moments. When he is under the influence of the drug, he likes to make pleasing romances, and has no desire to mix a tragical ingredient in them.”
“Then Mr. Langbrith has ruined a soul!”
“Yes,” Anther admitted, “he has done something like that. And the most terrible thing is, that he holds the man in bondage now much more securely than he could have held him living. If they were both still alive, there would be some means of righting the wrong that has been done. Some pressure could be brought upon him to make him do Hawberk justice.”
“ No, no, he would know how to get out of that.” She rose and closed the door opening into the library. She had meant to do it quietly, and without self-betrayal; but, in the nervous stress that was on her, she brought it to with a clash, and then she felt obliged to explain: ‘‘It always seems as if it were listening,” and Anther knew that she meant the portrait over the library mantel.
“At any rate,” the doctor resumed, “he makes it hard for you to do him justice now. You do the best you can, and perhaps it is the best that anyone could do. I suppose that a moralist, like Enderby, for instance, would say that the secrecy which Hawberk’s misfortune promotes is the worst part of it. You pay Hawberk an income from a stolen invention, and he goes about bragging of the inventions which he has in the hands of Boston capitalists. Perhaps it is not even possible for him to tell the truth, in the perversion of his nature through his habit.”
“What was he like before he took to it, Dr. Anther?” she asked, from the security she felt in shutting out the portrait. “ I know that he took it up in the misery he felt at being trapped and robbed, and it was his only escape.”
“Do you mean, whether he was inclined some such way?”
“I have sometimes wished that he were.”
“He may have been,” the doctor mused. “I knew him very little before I came here. But there is a sort of crime, isn’t there, in pushing a man in the direction of a natural propensity? You don’t want to palliate what was done?”
“Mr. Langbrith was capable of any crime,” she answered. ‘‘Sometimes I have to shield his memory. But I don’t wish to do it when I needn’t. That is the comfort, the rest, of talking with you. I can’t tell you what a kind of awful happiness it is to say out to you the things I cannot say to anyone else. You will think I am crazy, but the next greatest happiness I have is in hoping that his fancy is taken with her, and that somehow it can be made up to them in that way. And yet there is a ghastliness in that, too, that is awful.”
He knew that now she was talking of her son and of Hawberk’s daughter. When she added, ‘‘She ought to know, at least,” he said:
“Oh, everybody ought to know. But it is no more possible for her to be told than for anyone else. I should be glad if he could get so good a girl. She is a beautiful creature, too, as well as good. Well!”
He rose from his chair, but from hers she entreated almost unawares, “ Oh, don’t go! Or, I oughtn’t to say it!”
“No, Amelia, you oughtn’t. If you said something else, I need never go.” He looked at her sadly, and her head drooped. “You let me see an image of home, like this, and then you take it from me. Well! I must submit. Good-night.” He put out his hand to her, but she would not take it.
She lifted her eyes to his, “You haven’t asked me if I tried to speak to James. I didn’t!”
“ I knew that.”
‘‘Perhaps I should—perhaps I should have tried, this morning, when we were alone, if— But perhaps I couldn’t.”
‘‘If what?”
“ If he hadn’t fancied that you did something last night that showed dislike of Mr. Langbrith.”
“What was it I did?”
“Something in the way you received his suggestion of the memorial tablet.”
“Oh, he noticed that? Well, I couldn’t help it.”
“ I know you couldn’t. Do you think I blame you?”
“I believe we don’t blame each other, Amelia.”
“And you don’t feel hard towards me for not trying?”
“I didn’t expect you to try.”
“But why shouldn’t we go on like this—the way we have gone on for twenty years? Why shouldn’t you be just my friend as long as you live? We are not young, and we couldn’t expect what young people expect of marriage.”
“I expect a great deal more,” he said. “You are solitary, and so am I. I have never had a home, and you could give me one. I have never had companionship at the time when a man wants it most, and you could be my companion. I want someone to talk to and to be silent to, when I feel the need of either. You could be my daughter, my mother, my sister. Why do you make me say these things to you?”
“ Well, then, why not come and let me be it here?
Why not come and make this your home? I know James wouldn’t object. I believe he would like to have you live with us. He has always been used to you—” Anther shook his head.
“Yes, yes,” she persisted. “We could give you all the room you wanted in the house here, and you could have Mr. Langbrith’s office for your office, out there by