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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/154-h.zip b/154-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..019ce6e --- /dev/null +++ b/154-h.zip diff --git a/154-h/154-h.htm b/154-h/154-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c92a356 --- /dev/null +++ b/154-h/154-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,21189 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 5%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: medium; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.finis { text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Rise of Silas Lapham + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #154] +[Last updated: June 25, 2014] +[Last updated: May 13, 2017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM *** + + + + +Produced by John Hamm. HTML version by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +by +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +William Dean Howells +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="100%"> +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%"> +<A HREF="#chap01">CHAPTER I</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%"> +<A HREF="#chap02">CHAPTER II</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%"> +<A HREF="#chap03">CHAPTER III</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%"> +<A HREF="#chap04">CHAPTER IV</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="20%"> +<A HREF="#chap05">CHAPTER V</A> +</TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">CHAPTER VI</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap07">CHAPTER VII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap09">CHAPTER IX</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap10">CHAPTER X</A> +</TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap11">CHAPTER XI</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap12">CHAPTER XII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap15">CHAPTER XV</A> +</TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap20">CHAPTER XX</A> +</TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV</A> +</TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII</A> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I. +</H3> + +<P> +WHEN Bartley Hubbard went to interview Silas Lapham for the "Solid Men +of Boston" series, which he undertook to finish up in The Events, after +he replaced their original projector on that newspaper, Lapham received +him in his private office by previous appointment. +</P> + +<P> +"Walk right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he caught sight +of through the door of the counting-room. +</P> + +<P> +He did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, but he gave +Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in the +direction of a vacant chair. "Sit down! I'll be with you in just half +a minute." +</P> + +<P> +"Take your time," said Bartley, with the ease he instantly felt. "I'm +in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on his knee, +and began to sharpen a pencil. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" Lapham pounded with his great hairy fist on the envelope he +had been addressing. +</P> + +<P> +"William!" he called out, and he handed the letter to a boy who came to +get it. "I want that to go right away. Well, sir," he continued, +wheeling round in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing +Bartley, seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you want +my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do you, young man?" +</P> + +<P> +"That's what I'm after," said Bartley. "Your money or your life." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money," said Lapham, as +if he were willing to prolong these moments of preparation. +</P> + +<P> +"Take 'em both," Bartley suggested. "Don't want your money without +your life, if you come to that. But you're just one million times more +interesting to the public than if you hadn't a dollar; and you know +that as well as I do, Mr. Lapham. There's no use beating about the +bush." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Lapham, somewhat absently. He put out his huge foot and +pushed the ground-glass door shut between his little den and the +book-keepers, in their larger den outside. +</P> + +<P> +"In personal appearance," wrote Bartley in the sketch for which he now +studied his subject, while he waited patiently for him to continue, +"Silas Lapham is a fine type of the successful American. He has a +square, bold chin, only partially concealed by the short reddish-grey +beard, growing to the edges of his firmly closing lips. His nose is +short and straight; his forehead good, but broad rather than high; his +eyes blue, and with a light in them that is kindly or sharp according +to his mood. He is of medium height, and fills an average arm-chair +with a solid bulk, which on the day of our interview was +unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue serge. His head droops +somewhat from a short neck, which does not trouble itself to rise far +from a pair of massive shoulders." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I know just where you want me to begin," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Might begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin," replied +Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +A gleam of humorous appreciation shot into Lapham's blue eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that," +he said. "But there's no disgrace in having been born, and I was born +in the State of Vermont, pretty well up under the Canada line--so well +up, in fact, that I came very near being an adoptive citizen; for I was +bound to be an American of SOME sort, from the word Go! That was +about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty years ago: this is '75, and +that was '20. Well, say I'm fifty-five years old; and I've LIVED 'em, +too; not an hour of waste time about ME, anywheres! I was born on a +farm, and----" +</P> + +<P> +"Worked in the fields summers and went to school winters: regulation +thing?" Bartley cut in. +</P> + +<P> +"Regulation thing," said Lapham, accepting this irreverent version of +his history somewhat dryly. +</P> + +<P> +"Parents poor, of course," suggested the journalist. "Any barefoot +business? Early deprivations of any kind, that would encourage the +youthful reader to go and do likewise? Orphan myself, you know," said +Bartley, with a smile of cynical good-comradery. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham looked at him silently, and then said with quiet self-respect, +"I guess if you see these things as a joke, my life won't interest you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, it will," returned Bartley, unabashed. "You'll see; it'll +come out all right." And in fact it did so, in the interview which +Bartley printed. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Lapham," he wrote, "passed rapidly over the story of his early +life, its poverty and its hardships, sweetened, however, by the +recollections of a devoted mother, and a father who, if somewhat her +inferior in education, was no less ambitious for the advancement of his +children. They were quiet, unpretentious people, religious, after the +fashion of that time, and of sterling morality, and they taught their +children the simple virtues of the Old Testament and Poor Richard's +Almanac." +</P> + +<P> +Bartley could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted to Lapham's +unliterary habit of mind for his security in making it, and most other +people would consider it sincere reporter's rhetoric. +</P> + +<P> +"You know," he explained to Lapham, "that we have to look at all these +facts as material, and we get the habit of classifying them. Sometimes +a leading question will draw out a whole line of facts that a man +himself would never think of." He went on to put several queries, and +it was from Lapham's answers that he generalised the history of his +childhood. "Mr. Lapham, although he did not dwell on his boyish trials +and struggles, spoke of them with deep feeling and an abiding sense of +their reality." This was what he added in the interview, and by the +time he had got Lapham past the period where risen Americans are all +pathetically alike in their narrow circumstances, their sufferings, and +their aspirations, he had beguiled him into forgetfulness of the check +he had received, and had him talking again in perfect enjoyment of his +autobiography. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir," said Lapham, in a strain which Bartley was careful not to +interrupt again, "a man never sees all that his mother has been to him +till it's too late to let her know that he sees it. Why, my mother--" +he stopped. "It gives me a lump in the throat," he said +apologetically, with an attempt at a laugh. Then he went on: "She was +a little frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized intermediate +school-girl; but she did the whole work of a family of boys, and +boarded the hired men besides. She cooked, swept, washed, ironed, made +and mended from daylight till dark--and from dark till daylight, I was +going to say; for I don't know how she got any time for sleep. But I +suppose she did. She got time to go to church, and to teach us to read +the Bible, and to misunderstand it in the old way. She was GOOD. But +it ain't her on her knees in church that comes back to me so much like +the sight of an angel as her on her knees before me at night, washing +my poor, dirty little feet, that I'd run bare in all day, and making me +decent for bed. There were six of us boys; it seems to me we were all +of a size; and she was just so careful with all of us. I can feel her +hands on my feet yet!" Bartley looked at Lapham's No. 10 boots, and +softly whistled through his teeth. "We were patched all over; but we +wa'n't ragged. I don't know how she got through it. She didn't seem +to think it was anything; and I guess it was no more than my father +expected of her. HE worked like a horse in doors and out--up at +daylight, feeding the stock, and groaning round all day with his +rheumatism, but not stopping." +</P> + +<P> +Bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, if he could have +spoken his mind, he would have suggested to Lapham that he was not +there for the purpose of interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had +learned to practise a patience with his victims which he did not always +feel, and to feign an interest in their digressions till he could bring +them up with a round turn. +</P> + +<P> +"I tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife into the +writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear women complaining +nowadays that their lives are stunted and empty, I want to tell 'em +about my MOTHER'S life. I could paint it out for 'em." +</P> + +<P> +Bartley saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in. "And you +say, Mr. Lapham, that you discovered this mineral paint on the old farm +yourself?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham acquiesced in the return to business. "I didn't discover it," +he said scrupulously. "My father found it one day, in a hole made by a +tree blowing down. There it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking +to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't +know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did +think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those +days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was +trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he +couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their +houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a +kind of joke with us; and I guess that paint-mine did as much as any +one thing to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old enough. All +my brothers went West, and took up land; but I hung on to New England +and I hung on to the old farm, not because the paint-mine was on it, +but because the old house was--and the graves. Well," said Lapham, as +if unwilling to give himself too much credit, "there wouldn't been any +market for it, anyway. You can go through that part of the State and +buy more farms than you can shake a stick at for less money than it +cost to build the barns on 'em. Of course, it's turned out a good +thing. I keep the old house up in good shape, and we spend a month or +so there every summer. M' wife kind of likes it, and the girls. +Pretty place; sightly all round it. I've got a force of men at work +there the whole time, and I've got a man and his wife in the house. +Had a family meeting there last year; the whole connection from out +West. There!" Lapham rose from his seat and took down a large warped, +unframed photograph from the top of his desk, passing his hand over it, +and then blowing vigorously upon it, to clear it of the dust. "There +we are, ALL of us." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't need to look twice at YOU," said Bartley, putting his finger +on one of the heads. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's Bill," said Lapham, with a gratified laugh. "He's about +as brainy as any of us, I guess. He's one of their leading lawyers, +out Dubuque way; been judge of the Common Pleas once or twice. That's +his son--just graduated at Yale--alongside of my youngest girl. +Good-looking chap, ain't he?" +</P> + +<P> +"SHE'S a good-looking chap," said Bartley, with prompt irreverence. He +hastened to add, at the frown which gathered between Lapham's eyes, +"What a beautiful creature she is! What a lovely, refined, sensitive +face! And she looks GOOD, too." +</P> + +<P> +"She is good," said the father, relenting. +</P> + +<P> +"And, after all, that's about the best thing in a woman," said the +potential reprobate. "If my wife wasn't good enough to keep both of us +straight, I don't know what would become of me." "My other daughter," +said Lapham, indicating a girl with eyes that showed large, and a face +of singular gravity. "Mis' Lapham," he continued, touching his wife's +effigy with his little finger. "My brother Willard and his +family--farm at Kankakee. Hazard Lapham and his wife--Baptist preacher +in Kansas. Jim and his three girls--milling business at Minneapolis. +Ben and his family--practising medicine in Fort Wayne." +</P> + +<P> +The figures were clustered in an irregular group in front of an old +farm-house, whose original ugliness had been smartened up with a coat +of Lapham's own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza. The +photographer had not been able to conceal the fact that they were all +decent, honest-looking, sensible people, with a very fair share of +beauty among the young girls; some of these were extremely pretty, in +fact. He had put them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of +course; and they all looked as if they had the instrument of torture +which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs. Here and +there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur; and some of the younger +children had twitched themselves into wavering shadows, and might have +passed for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts. It was the +standard family-group photograph, in which most Americans have figured +at some time or other; and Lapham exhibited a just satisfaction in it. +"I presume," he mused aloud, as he put it back on top of his desk, +"that we sha'n't soon get together again, all of us." +</P> + +<P> +"And you say," suggested Bartley, "that you stayed right along on the +old place, when the rest cleared out West?" +</P> + +<P> +"No o-o-o," said Lapham, with a long, loud drawl; "I cleared out West +too, first off. Went to Texas. Texas was all the cry in those days. +But I got enough of the Lone Star in about three months, and I come +back with the idea that Vermont was good enough for me." +</P> + +<P> +"Fatted calf business?" queried Bartley, with his pencil poised above +his note-book. +</P> + +<P> +"I presume they were glad to see me," said Lapham, with dignity. +"Mother," he added gently, "died that winter, and I stayed on with +father. I buried him in the spring; and then I came down to a little +place called Lumberville, and picked up what jobs I could get. I +worked round at the saw-mills, and I was ostler a while at the hotel--I +always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T exactly a college +graduate, and I went to school odd times. I got to driving the stage +after while, and by and by I BOUGHT the stage and run the business +myself. Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long story +short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham, with pride, "I married +the school-teacher. We did pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she +was always at me to paint up. Well, I put it off, and PUT it off, as a +man will, till one day I give in, and says I, 'Well, let's paint up. +Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out +on the farm. Let's go out and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let +the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less kind of a +Kanuck that had come down that way; and I'd hated to see the house with +him in it; but we drove out one Saturday afternoon, and we brought back +about a bushel of the stuff in the buggy-seat, and I tried it crude, +and I tried it burnt; and I liked it. M'wife she liked it too. There +wa'n't any painter by trade in the village, and I mixed it myself. +Well, sir, that tavern's got that coat of paint on it yet, and it +hain't ever had any other, and I don't know's it ever will. Well, you +know, I felt as if it was a kind of harumscarum experiment, all the +while; and I presume I shouldn't have tried it but I kind of liked to +do it because father'd always set so much store by his paint-mine. And +when I'd got the first coat on,"--Lapham called it CUT,--"I presume I +must have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and thinking how +he would have enjoyed it. I've had my share of luck in this world, and +I ain't a-going to complain on my OWN account, but I've noticed that +most things get along too late for most people. It made me feel bad, +and it took all the pride out my success with the paint, thinking of +father. Seemed to me I might 'a taken more interest in it when he was +by to see; but we've got to live and learn. Well, I called my wife +out,--I'd tried it on the back of the house, you know,--and she left +her dishes,--I can remember she came out with her sleeves rolled up and +set down alongside of me on the trestle,--and says I, 'What do you +think, Persis?' And says she, 'Well, you hain't got a paint-mine, Silas +Lapham; you've got a GOLD-mine.' She always was just so enthusiastic +about things. Well, it was just after two or three boats had burnt up +out West, and a lot of lives lost, and there was a great cry about +non-inflammable paint, and I guess that was what was in her mind. +'Well, I guess it ain't any gold-mine, Persis,' says I; 'but I guess it +IS a paint-mine. I'm going to have it analysed, and if it turns out +what I think it is, I'm going to work it. And if father hadn't had +such a long name, I should call it the Nehemiah Lapham Mineral Paint. +But, any rate, every barrel of it, and every keg, and every bottle, and +every package, big or little, has got to have the initials and figures +N.L.f. 1835, S.L.t. 1855, on it. Father found it in 1835, and I tried +it in 1855.'" +</P> + +<P> +"'S.T.--1860--X.' business," said Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Lapham, "but I hadn't heard of Plantation Bitters then, and +I hadn't seen any of the fellow's labels. I set to work and I got a +man down from Boston; and I carried him out to the farm, and he +analysed it--made a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and +we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; kept the +Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence of iron in the ore +showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to test it, he +found out that it contained about seventy-five per cent. of the +peroxide of iron." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort of reverent +satisfaction, as if awed through his pride by a little lingering +uncertainty as to what peroxide was. He accented it as if it were +purr-ox-EYED; and Bartley had to get him to spell it. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note of the +percentage. +</P> + +<P> +"What then?" echoed Lapham. "Well, then, the fellow set down and told +me, 'You've got a paint here,' says he, 'that's going to drive every +other mineral paint out of the market. Why' says he, 'it'll drive 'em +right into the Back Bay!' Of course, I didn't know what the Back Bay +was then, but I begun to open my eyes; thought I'd had 'em open before, +but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint has got hydraulic cement in +it, and it can stand fire and water and acids;' he named over a lot of +things. Says he, 'It'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you want +to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going to crack nor fade any; +and it ain't a-going to scale. When you've got your arrangements for +burning it properly, you're going to have a paint that will stand like +the everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.' Then he went +into a lot of particulars, and I begun to think he was drawing a +long-bow, and meant to make his bill accordingly. So I kept pretty +cool; but the fellow's bill didn't amount to anything hardly--said I +might pay him after I got going; young chap, and pretty easy; but every +word he said was gospel. Well, I ain't a-going to brag up my paint; I +don't suppose you came here to hear me blow." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I did," said Bartley. "That's what I want. Tell all there is +to tell, and I can boil it down afterward. A man can't make a greater +mistake with a reporter than to hold back anything out of modesty. It +may be the very thing we want to know. What we want is the whole +truth; and more; we've got so much modesty of our own that we can +temper almost any statement." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham looked as if he did not quite like this tone, and he resumed a +little more quietly. "Oh, there isn't really very much more to say +about the paint itself. But you can use it for almost anything where a +paint is wanted, inside or out. It'll prevent decay, and it'll stop +it, after it's begun, in tin or iron. You can paint the inside of a +cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it; and you can +paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't. You can cover a brick +wall with it, or a railroad car, or the deck of a steamboat, and you +can't do a better thing for either." +</P> + +<P> +"Never tried it on the human conscience, I suppose," suggested Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +"No, sir," replied Lapham gravely. "I guess you want to keep that as +free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it. I never cared +to try any of it on mine." Lapham suddenly lifted his bulk up out of +his swivel-chair, and led the way out into the wareroom beyond the +office partitions, where rows and ranks of casks, barrels, and kegs +stretched dimly back to the rear of the building, and diffused an +honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint. They were labelled +and branded as containing each so many pounds of Lapham's Mineral +Paint, and each bore the mystic devices, N.L.f. 1835--S.L.t. 1855. +"There!" said Lapham, kicking one of the largest casks with the toe of +his boot, "that's about our biggest package; and here," he added, +laying his hand affectionately on the head of a very small keg, as if +it were the head of a child, which it resembled in size, "this is the +smallest. We used to put the paint on the market dry, but now we grind +every ounce of it in oil--very best quality of linseed oil--and warrant +it. We find it gives more satisfaction. Now, come back to the office, +and I'll show you our fancy brands." +</P> + +<P> +It was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom, with the rafters +showing overhead in a cloudy perspective, and darkening away into the +perpetual twilight at the rear of the building; and Bartley had found +an agreeable seat on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he +was reluctant to leave. But he rose and followed the vigorous lead of +Lapham back to the office, where the sun of a long summer afternoon was +just beginning to glare in at the window. On shelves opposite Lapham's +desk were tin cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders, +and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top, the same label +borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom. Lapham merely waved +his hand toward these; but when Bartley, after a comprehensive glance +at them, gave his whole attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where +different tints of the paint showed through flawless glass, Lapham +smiled, and waited in pleased expectation. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello!" said Bartley. "That's pretty!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," assented Lapham, "it is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and +we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking +down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label. +</P> + +<P> +Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked at Lapham and +smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"After HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and put the first of +it on the market her last birthday. She was pleased." +</P> + +<P> +"I should think she might have been," said Bartley, while he made a +note of the appearance of the jars. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said Lapham +dubiously. +</P> + +<P> +"That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing else does. +Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel." It was in the dawn of +Bartley's prosperity on the Boston Events, before his troubles with +Marcia had seriously begun. +</P> + +<P> +"Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile another of the vast +majority of married Americans; a few underrate their wives, but the +rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability. "Well," he +added, "we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?" +</P> + +<P> +"We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we've all got to commence that way," suggested Lapham +consolingly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. I expect to be +under a roof of my own on Clover Street before long. I suppose," said +Bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass grow +under your feet much after you found out what was in your paint-mine?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at +Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in the +first days of his married life. "I went right back to Lumberville and +sold out everything, and put all I could rake and scrape together into +paint. And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back about +HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!" +</P> + +<P> +Bartley laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry." +</P> + +<P> +"No, we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly little girls +grown up to LOOK like women." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, as if upon second +thought. +</P> + +<P> +"If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint wouldn't have +come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the seventy-five per +cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it +was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER." +</P> + +<P> +"Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that." +</P> + +<P> +"In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder, +nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region +that didn't have 'Lapham's Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three +colours we begun by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the +window-sill, and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge foot +close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that. +</P> + +<P> +"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--X. man, and the +stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they advertised in +that way; and I've read articles about it in the papers; but I don't +see where the joke comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own +the barns and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has got +to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred about a big +rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't do to put mineral +paint on it in three colours. I wish some of the people that talk +about the landscape, and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks +OUT of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, as we +used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd sing a little +different tune about the profanation of scenery. There ain't any man +enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a +dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do. But I ain't +a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock I come across, as if we +were all a set of dumn Druids. I say the landscape was made for man, +and not man for the landscape." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man +and the kidney-cure man." +</P> + +<P> +"It was made for any man that knows how to use it," Lapham returned, +insensible to Bartley's irony. "Let 'em go and live with nature in the +WINTER, up there along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough +of her for one while. Well--where was I?" +</P> + +<P> +"Decorating the landscape," said Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville, and it give the place +a start too. You won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it +in the gazetteer. I give a pretty good lump of money to build a +town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held in it +they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T a name,--and it's +Lapham now." +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get the old Brandon +red?" asked Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's a good paint," +said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show you round up at our place +some odd time, if you get off." +</P> + +<P> +"Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time I got started, the +war broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. The thing +dropped perfectly dead. I presume that if I'd had any sort of +influence, I might have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages +and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels. But I hadn't, +and we had to face the music. I was about broken-hearted, but m'wife +she looked at it another way. 'I guess it's a providence,' says she. +'Silas, I guess you've got a country that's worth fighting for. Any +rate, you better go out and give it a chance.' Well, sir, I went. I +knew she meant business. It might kill her to have me go, but it would +kill her sure if I stayed. She was one of that kind. I went. Her +last words was, 'I'll look after the paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one +little girl then,--boy'd died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother was livin' +with us; and I knew if times DID anyways come up again, m'wife'd know +just what to do. So I went. I got through; and you can call me +Colonel, if you want to. Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and +forefinger and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee. +"Anything hard?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ball?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer. If it wa'n't for +that, I shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains." +</P> + +<P> +Bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "And +when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed it." +</P> + +<P> +"I took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could," said Lapham, +with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his autobiography. +"But I found that I had got back to another world. The day of small +things was past, and I don't suppose it will ever come again in this +country. My wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody +with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear the idea. That paint was +like my own blood to me. To have anybody else concerned in it was +like--well, I don't know what. I saw it was the thing to do; but I +tried to fight it off, and I tried to joke it off. I used to say, 'Why +didn't you take a partner yourself, Persis, while I was away?' And +she'd say, 'Well, if you hadn't come back, I should, Si.' Always DID +like a joke about as well as any woman I ever saw. Well, I had to come +to it. I took a partner." Lapham dropped the bold blue eyes with which +he had been till now staring into Bartley's face, and the reporter knew +that here was a place for asterisks in his interview, if interviews +were faithful. "He had money enough," continued Lapham, with a +suppressed sigh; "but he didn't know anything about paint. We hung on +together for a year or two. And then we quit." +</P> + +<P> +"And he had the experience," suggested Bartley, with companionable ease. +</P> + +<P> +"I had some of the experience too," said Lapham, with a scowl; and +Bartley divined, through the freemasonry of all who have sore places in +their memories, that this was a point which he must not touch again. +</P> + +<P> +"And since that, I suppose, you've played it alone." +</P> + +<P> +"I've played it alone." +</P> + +<P> +"You must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries, +Colonel?" suggested Bartley, putting on a professional air. +</P> + +<P> +"We ship it to all parts of the world. It goes to South America, lots +of it. It goes to Australia, and it goes to India, and it goes to +China, and it goes to the Cape of Good Hope. It'll stand any climate. +Of course, we don't export these fancy brands much. They're for home +use. But we're introducing them elsewhere. Here." Lapham pulled open +a drawer, and showed Bartley a lot of labels in different +languages--Spanish, French, German, and Italian. "We expect to do a +good business in all those countries. We've got our agencies in Cadiz +now, and in Paris, and in Hamburg, and in Leghorn. It's a thing that's +bound to make its way. Yes, sir. Wherever a man has got a ship, or a +bridge, or a lock, or a house, or a car, or a fence, or a pig-pen +anywhere in God's universe to paint, that's the paint for him, and he's +bound to find it out sooner or later. You pass a ton of that paint dry +through a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig-iron. +I believe in my paint. I believe it's a blessing to the world. When +folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me what I mix it with, +I always say, 'Well, in the first place, I mix it with FAITH, and after +that I grind it up with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that +money will buy.'" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham took out his watch and looked at it, and Bartley perceived that +his audience was drawing to a close. "'F you ever want to run down and +take a look at our works, pass you over the road,"--he called it +RUD--"and it sha'n't cost you a cent." "Well, may be I shall, +sometime," said Bartley. "Good afternoon, Colonel." +</P> + +<P> +"Good afternoon. Or--hold on! My horse down there yet, William?" he +called to the young man in the counting-room who had taken his letter +at the beginning of the interview. "Oh! All right!" he added, in +response to something the young man said. +</P> + +<P> +"Can't I set you down somewhere, Mr. Hubbard? I've got my horse at the +door, and I can drop you on my way home. I'm going to take Mis' Lapham +to look at a house I'm driving piles for, down on the New Land." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't care if I do," said Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying on his desk, +pulled down its rolling cover, turned the key in it, and gave the +papers to an extremely handsome young woman at one of the desks in the +outer office. She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her +smooth, yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white +forehead. "Here," said Lapham, with the same prompt gruff kindness +that he had used in addressing the young man, "I want you should put +these in shape, and give me a type-writer copy to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"What an uncommonly pretty girl!" said Bartley, as they descended the +rough stairway and found their way out to the street, past the dangling +rope of a block and tackle wandering up into the cavernous darkness +overhead. +</P> + +<P> +"She does her work," said Lapham shortly. +</P> + +<P> +Bartley mounted to the left side of the open buggy standing at the +curb-stone, and Lapham, gathering up the hitching-weight, slid it under +the buggy-seat and mounted beside him. +</P> + +<P> +"No chance to speed a horse here, of course," said Lapham, while the +horse with a spirited gentleness picked her way, with a high, long +action, over the pavement of the street. The streets were all narrow, +and most of them crooked, in that quarter of the town; but at the end +of one the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately against +the cool blue of the afternoon sky. The air was full of a smell +pleasantly compounded of oakum, of leather, and of oil. It was not the +busy season, and they met only two or three trucks heavily straggling +toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the cobble-stones of +the pavement were worn with the dint of ponderous wheels, and +discoloured with iron-rust from them; here and there, in wandering +streaks over its surface, was the grey stain of the salt water with +which the street had been sprinkled. +</P> + +<P> +After an interval of some minutes, which both men spent in looking +round the dash-board from opposite sides to watch the stride of the +horse, Bartley said, with a light sigh, "I had a colt once down in +Maine that stepped just like that mare." +</P> + +<P> +"Well!" said Lapham, sympathetically recognising the bond that this +fact created between them. "Well, now, I tell you what you do. You +let me come for you 'most any afternoon, now, and take you out over the +Milldam, and speed this mare a little. I'd like to show you what this +mare can do. Yes, I would." +</P> + +<P> +"All right," answered Bartley; "I'll let you know my first day off." +</P> + +<P> +"Good," cried Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Kentucky?" queried Bartley. +</P> + +<P> +"No, sir. I don't ride behind anything but Vermont; never did. Touch +of Morgan, of course; but you can't have much Morgan in a horse if you +want speed. Hambletonian mostly. Where'd you say you wanted to get +out?" +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you may put me down at the Events Office, just round the +corner here. I've got to write up this interview while it's fresh." +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Lapham, impersonally assenting to Bartley's use of +him as material. +</P> + +<P> +He had not much to complain of in Bartley's treatment, unless it was +the strain of extravagant compliment which it involved. But the +flattery was mainly for the paint, whose virtues Lapham did not believe +could be overstated, and himself and his history had been treated with +as much respect as Bartley was capable of showing any one. He made a +very picturesque thing of the discovery of the paint-mine. "Deep in the +heart of the virgin forests of Vermont, far up toward the line of the +Canadian snows, on a desolate mountain-side, where an autumnal storm +had done its wild work, and the great trees, strewn hither and thither, +bore witness to its violence, Nehemiah Lapham discovered, just forty +years ago, the mineral which the alchemy of his son's enterprise and +energy has transmuted into solid ingots of the most precious of metals. +The colossal fortune of Colonel Silas Lapham lay at the bottom of a +hole which an uprooted tree had dug for him, and which for many years +remained a paint-mine of no more appreciable value than a soap-mine." +</P> + +<P> +Here Bartley had not been able to forego another grin; but he +compensated for it by the high reverence with which he spoke of Colonel +Lapham's record during the war of the rebellion, and of the motives +which impelled him to turn aside from an enterprise in which his whole +heart was engaged, and take part in the struggle. "The Colonel bears +embedded in the muscle of his right leg a little memento of the period +in the shape of a minie-ball, which he jocularly referred to as his +thermometer, and which relieves him from the necessity of reading 'The +Probabilities' in his morning paper. This saves him just so much time; +and for a man who, as he said, has not a moment of waste time on him +anywhere, five minutes a day are something in the course of a year. +Simple, clear, bold, and straightforward in mind and action, Colonel +Silas Lapham, with a prompt comprehensiveness and a never-failing +business sagacity, is, in the best sense of that much-abused term, one +of nature's noblemen, to the last inch of his five eleven and a half. +His life affords an example of single-minded application and unwavering +perseverance which our young business men would do well to emulate. +There is nothing showy or meretricious about the man. He believes in +mineral paint, and he puts his heart and soul into it. He makes it a +religion; though we would not imply that it IS his religion. Colonel +Lapham is a regular attendant at the Rev. Dr. Langworthy's church. He +subscribes liberally to the Associated Charities, and no good object or +worthy public enterprise fails to receive his support. He is not now +actively in politics, and his paint is not partisan; but it is an open +secret that he is, and always has been, a staunch Republican. Without +violating the sanctities of private life, we cannot speak fully of +various details which came out in the free and unembarrassed interview +which Colonel Lapham accorded our representative. But we may say that +the success of which he is justly proud he is also proud to attribute +in great measure to the sympathy and energy of his wife--one of those +women who, in whatever walk of life, seem born to honour the name of +American Woman, and to redeem it from the national reproach of Daisy +Millerism. Of Colonel Lapham's family, we will simply add that it +consists of two young lady daughters. +</P> + +<P> +"The subject of this very inadequate sketch is building a house on the +water side of Beacon Street, after designs by one of our leading +architectural firms, which, when complete, will be one of the finest +ornaments of that exclusive avenue. It will, we believe, be ready for +the occupancy of the family sometime in the spring." +</P> + +<P> +When Bartley had finished his article, which he did with a good deal of +inward derision, he went home to Marcia, still smiling over the thought +of Lapham, whose burly simplicity had peculiarly amused him. "He +regularly turned himself inside out to me," he said, as he sat +describing his interview to Marcia. +</P> + +<P> +"Then I know you could make something nice out of it," said his wife; +"and that will please Mr. Witherby." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I've done pretty well; but I couldn't let myself loose on him +the way I wanted to. Confound the limitations of decency, anyway! I +should like to have told just what Colonel Lapham thought of landscape +advertising in Colonel Lapham's own words. I'll tell you one thing, +Marsh: he had a girl there at one of the desks that you wouldn't let ME +have within gunshot of MY office. Pretty? It ain't any name for it!" +Marcia's eyes began to blaze, and Bartley broke out into a laugh, in +which he arrested himself at sight of a formidable parcel in the corner +of the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello! What's that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I don't know what it is," replied Marcia tremulously. "A man +brought it just before you came in, and I didn't like to open it." +</P> + +<P> +"Think it was some kind of infernal machine?" asked Bartley, getting +down on his knees to examine the package. "MRS. B. Hubbard, heigh?" He +cut the heavy hemp string with his penknife. "We must look into this +thing. I should like to know who's sending packages to Mrs. Hubbard in +my absence." He unfolded the wrappings of paper, growing softer and +finer inward, and presently pulled out a handsome square glass jar, +through which a crimson mass showed richly. "The Persis Brand!" he +yelled. "I knew it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, what is it, Bartley?" quavered Marcia. Then, courageously drawing +a little nearer: "Is it some kind of jam?" she implored. "Jam? No!" +roared Bartley. "It's PAINT! It's mineral paint--Lapham's paint!" +</P> + +<P> +"Paint?" echoed Marcia, as she stood over him while he stripped their +wrappings from the jars which showed the dark blue, dark green, light +brown, dark brown, and black, with the dark crimson, forming the gamut +of colour of the Lapham paint. "Don't TELL me it's paint that I can +use, Bartley!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I shouldn't advise you to use much of it--all at once," replied +her husband. "But it's paint that you can use in moderation." +</P> + +<P> +Marcia cast her arms round his neck and kissed him. "O Bartley, I +think I'm the happiest girl in the world! I was just wondering what I +should do. There are places in that Clover Street house that need +touching up so dreadfully. I shall be very careful. You needn't be +afraid I shall overdo. But, this just saves my life. Did you BUY it, +Bartley? You know we couldn't afford it, and you oughtn't to have done +it! And what does the Persis Brand mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"Buy it?" cried Bartley. "No! The old fool's sent it to you as a +present. You'd better wait for the facts before you pitch into me for +extravagance, Marcia. Persis is the name of his wife; and he named it +after her because it's his finest brand. You'll see it in my +interview. Put it on the market her last birthday for a surprise to +her." +</P> + +<P> +"What old fool?" faltered Marcia. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Lapham--the mineral paint man." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, what a good man!" sighed Marcia from the bottom of her soul. +"Bartley! you WON'T make fun of him as you do of some of those people? +WILL you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing that HE'LL ever find out," said Bartley, getting up and +brushing off the carpet-lint from his knees. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H3> + +<P> +AFTER dropping Bartley Hubbard at the Events building, Lapham drove on +down Washington Street to Nankeen Square at the South End, where he had +lived ever since the mistaken movement of society in that direction +ceased. He had not built, but had bought very cheap of a terrified +gentleman of good extraction who discovered too late that the South End +was not the thing, and who in the eagerness of his flight to the Back +Bay threw in his carpets and shades for almost nothing. Mrs. Lapham +was even better satisfied with their bargain than the Colonel himself, +and they had lived in Nankeen Square for twelve years. They had seen +the saplings planted in the pretty oval round which the houses were +built flourish up into sturdy young trees, and their two little girls +in the same period had grown into young ladies; the Colonel's tough +frame had expanded into the bulk which Bartley's interview indicated; +and Mrs. Lapham, while keeping a more youthful outline, showed the +sharp print of the crow's-foot at the corners of her motherly eyes, and +certain slight creases in her wholesome cheeks. The fact that they +lived in an unfashionable neighbourhood was something that they had +never been made to feel to their personal disadvantage, and they had +hardly known it till the summer before this story opens, when Mrs. +Lapham and her daughter Irene had met some other Bostonians far from +Boston, who made it memorable. They were people whom chance had +brought for the time under a singular obligation to the Lapham ladies, +and they were gratefully recognisant of it. They had ventured--a +mother and two daughters--as far as a rather wild little Canadian +watering-place on the St. Lawrence, below Quebec, and had arrived some +days before their son and brother was expected to join them. Two of +their trunks had gone astray, and on the night of their arrival the +mother was taken violently ill. Mrs. Lapham came to their help, with +her skill as nurse, and with the abundance of her own and her +daughter's wardrobe, and a profuse, single-hearted kindness. When a +doctor could be got at, he said that but for Mrs. Lapham's timely care, +the lady would hardly have lived. He was a very effusive little +Frenchman, and fancied he was saying something very pleasant to +everybody. +</P> + +<P> +A certain intimacy inevitably followed, and when the son came he was +even more grateful than the others. Mrs. Lapham could not quite +understand why he should be as attentive to her as to Irene; but she +compared him with other young men about the place, and thought him +nicer than any of them. She had not the means of a wider comparison; +for in Boston, with all her husband's prosperity, they had not had a +social life. Their first years there were given to careful getting on +Lapham's part, and careful saving on his wife's. Suddenly the money +began to come so abundantly that she need not save; and then they did +not know what to do with it. A certain amount could be spent on +horses, and Lapham spent it; his wife spent on rich and rather ugly +clothes and a luxury of household appointments. Lapham had not yet +reached the picture-buying stage of the rich man's development, but +they decorated their house with the costliest and most abominable +frescoes; they went upon journeys, and lavished upon cars and hotels; +they gave with both hands to their church and to all the charities it +brought them acquainted with; but they did not know how to spend on +society. Up to a certain period Mrs. Lapham had the ladies of her +neighbourhood in to tea, as her mother had done in the country in her +younger days. Lapham's idea of hospitality was still to bring a +heavy-buying customer home to pot-luck; neither of them imagined +dinners. +</P> + +<P> +Their two girls had gone to the public schools, where they had not got +on as fast as some of the other girls; so that they were a year behind +in graduating from the grammar-school, where Lapham thought that they +had got education enough. His wife was of a different mind; she would +have liked them to go to some private school for their finishing. But +Irene did not care for study; she preferred house-keeping, and both the +sisters were afraid of being snubbed by the other girls, who were of a +different sort from the girls of the grammar-school; these were mostly +from the parks and squares, like themselves. It ended in their going +part of a year. But the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, +and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the +circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she +read, and rather proud of it. +</P> + +<P> +They were not girls who embroidered or abandoned themselves to +needle-work. Irene spent her abundant leisure in shopping for herself +and her mother, of whom both daughters made a kind of idol, buying her +caps and laces out of their pin-money, and getting her dresses far +beyond her capacity to wear. Irene dressed herself very stylishly, and +spent hours on her toilet every day. Her sister had a simpler taste, +and, if she had done altogether as she liked, might even have slighted +dress. They all three took long naps every day, and sat hours together +minutely discussing what they saw out of the window. In her +self-guided search for self-improvement, the elder sister went to many +church lectures on a vast variety of secular subjects, and usually came +home with a comic account of them, and that made more matter of talk +for the whole family. She could make fun of nearly everything; Irene +complained that she scared away the young men whom they got acquainted +with at the dancing-school sociables. They were, perhaps, not the +wisest young men. +</P> + +<P> +The girls had learned to dance at Papanti's; but they had not belonged +to the private classes. They did not even know of them, and a great +gulf divided them from those who did. Their father did not like +company, except such as came informally in their way; and their mother +had remained too rustic to know how to attract it in the sophisticated +city fashion. None of them had grasped the idea of European travel; +but they had gone about to mountain and sea-side resorts, the mother +and the two girls, where they witnessed the spectacle which such +resorts present throughout New England, of multitudes of girls, lovely, +accomplished, exquisitely dressed, humbly glad of the presence of any +sort of young man; but the Laphams had no skill or courage to make +themselves noticed, far less courted by the solitary invalid, or +clergyman, or artist. They lurked helplessly about in the hotel +parlours, looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward. +Perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so. They had not a +conceit of themselves, but a sort of content in their own ways that one +may notice in certain families. The very strength of their mutual +affection was a barrier to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one +another; they equipped their house for their own satisfaction; they +lived richly to themselves, not because they were selfish, but because +they did not know how to do otherwise. The elder daughter did not care +for society, apparently. The younger, who was but three years younger, +was not yet quite old enough to be ambitious of it. With all her +wonderful beauty, she had an innocence almost vegetable. When her +beauty, which in its immaturity was crude and harsh, suddenly ripened, +she bloomed and glowed with the unconsciousness of a flower; she not +merely did not feel herself admired, but hardly knew herself +discovered. If she dressed well, perhaps too well, it was because she +had the instinct of dress; but till she met this young man who was so +nice to her at Baie St. Paul, she had scarcely lived a detached, +individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother and her +sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. She took account of +everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out +exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest +movement or gesture. In this way she began for the first time to form +ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the +less her own because they were often mistaken. +</P> + +<P> +Some of the things that he partly said, partly looked, she reported to +her mother, and they talked them over, as they did everything relating +to these new acquaintances, and wrought them into the novel point of +view which they were acquiring. When Mrs. Lapham returned home, she +submitted all the accumulated facts of the case, and all her own +conjectures, to her husband, and canvassed them anew. +</P> + +<P> +At first he was disposed to regard the whole affair as of small +importance, and she had to insist a little beyond her own convictions +in order to counteract his indifference. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I can tell you," she said, "that if you think they were not the +nicest people you ever saw, you're mightily mistaken. They had about +the best manners; and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. I +declare it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods. I +don't know but the mother and the daughters would have let you feel so +a little, if they'd showed out all they thought; but they never did; +and the son--well, I can't express it, Silas! But that young man had +about perfect ways." +</P> + +<P> +"Seem struck up on Irene?" asked the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"How can I tell? He seemed just about as much struck up on me. Anyway, +he paid me as much attention as he did her. Perhaps it's more the way, +now, to notice the mother than it used to be." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had asked already, who +the people were. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham repeated their name. Lapham nodded his head. "Do you know +them? What business is he in?" +</P> + +<P> +"I guess he ain't in anything," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham impartially. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, they'd ought to be," returned the Colonel. "Never done anything +else." +</P> + +<P> +"They didn't seem stuck up," urged his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"They'd no need to--with you. I could buy him and sell him, twice +over." +</P> + +<P> +This answer satisfied Mrs. Lapham rather with the fact than with her +husband. "Well, I guess I wouldn't brag, Silas," she said. +</P> + +<P> +In the winter the ladies of this family, who returned to town very +late, came to call on Mrs. Lapham. They were again very polite. But +the mother let drop, in apology for their calling almost at nightfall, +that the coachman had not known the way exactly. +</P> + +<P> +"Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill." +</P> + +<P> +There was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on +comparing notes with her daughter, Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had +been left to rankle in her mind also. +</P> + +<P> +"They said they had never been in this part of the town before." +</P> + +<P> +Upon a strict search of her memory, Irene could not report that the +fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, but it was that +which gave it a more penetrating effect. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well, of course," said Lapham, to whom these facts were referred. +"Those sort of people haven't got much business up our way, and they +don't come. It's a fair thing all round. We don't trouble the Hill or +the New Land much." +</P> + +<P> +"We know where they are," suggested his wife thoughtfully. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," assented the Colonel. "I know where they are. I've got a lot +of land over on the Back Bay." +</P> + +<P> +"You have?" eagerly demanded his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"Want me to build on it?" he asked in reply, with a quizzical smile. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess we can get along here for a while." +</P> + +<P> +This was at night. In the morning Mrs. Lapham said-- +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose we ought to do the best we can for the children, in every +way." +</P> + +<P> +"I supposed we always had," replied her husband. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, we have, according to our light." +</P> + +<P> +"Have you got some new light?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as it's light. But if the girls are going to keep on +living in Boston and marry here, I presume we ought to try to get them +into society, some way; or ought to do something." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, who's ever done more for their children than we have?" demanded +Lapham, with a pang at the thought that he could possibly have been +out-done. "Don't they have everything they want? Don't they dress just +as you say? Don't you go everywhere with 'em? Is there ever anything +going on that's worth while that they don't see it or hear it? I don't +know what you mean. Why don't you get them into society? There's money +enough!" +</P> + +<P> +"There's got to be something besides money, I guess," said Mrs. Lapham, +with a hopeless sigh. "I presume we didn't go to work just the right +way about their schooling. We ought to have got them into some school +where they'd have got acquainted with city girls--girls who could help +them along." +</P> + +<P> +"Nearly everybody at Miss Smillie's was from some where else." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it's pretty late to think about that now," grumbled Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"And we've always gone our own way, and not looked out for the future. +We ought to have gone out more, and had people come to the house. +Nobody comes." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, is that my fault? I guess nobody ever makes people welcomer." +</P> + +<P> +"We ought to have invited company more." +</P> + +<P> +"Why don't you do it now? If it's for the girls, I don't care if you +have the house full all the while." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham was forced to a confession full of humiliation. "I don't +know who to ask." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you can't expect me to tell you." +</P> + +<P> +"No; we're both country people, and we've kept our country ways, and we +don't, either of us, know what to do. You've had to work so hard, and +your luck was so long coming, and then it came with such a rush, that +we haven't had any chance to learn what to do with it. It's just the +same with Irene's looks; I didn't expect she was ever going to have +any, she WAS such a plain child, and, all at once, she's blazed out +this way. As long as it was Pen that didn't seem to care for society, +I didn't give much mind to it. But I can see it's going to be +different with Irene. I don't believe but what we're in the wrong +neighbourhood." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the Colonel, "there ain't a prettier lot on the Back Bay +than mine. It's on the water side of Beacon, and it's twenty-eight +feet wide and a hundred and fifty deep. Let's build on it." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. "No," she said finally; "we've always +got along well enough here, and I guess we better stay." +</P> + +<P> +At breakfast she said casually: "Girls, how would you like to have your +father build on the New Land?" +</P> + +<P> +The girls said they did not know. It was more convenient to the +horse-cars where they were. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham stole a look of relief at her husband, and nothing more was +said of the matter. +</P> + +<P> +The mother of the family who had called upon Mrs. Lapham brought her +husband's cards, and when Mrs. Lapham returned the visit she was in +some trouble about the proper form of acknowledging the civility. The +Colonel had no card but a business card, which advertised the principal +depot and the several agencies of the mineral paint; and Mrs. Lapham +doubted, till she wished to goodness that she had never seen nor heard +of those people, whether to ignore her husband in the transaction +altogether, or to write his name on her own card. She decided finally +upon this measure, and she had the relief of not finding the family at +home. As far as she could judge, Irene seemed to suffer a little +disappointment from the fact. +</P> + +<P> +For several months there was no communication between the families. +Then there came to Nankeen Square a lithographed circular from the +people on the Hill, signed in ink by the mother, and affording Mrs. +Lapham an opportunity to subscribe for a charity of undeniable merit +and acceptability. She submitted it to her husband, who promptly drew +a cheque for five hundred dollars. +</P> + +<P> +She tore it in two. "I will take a cheque for a hundred, Silas," she +said. +</P> + +<P> +"Why?" he asked, looking up guiltily at her. +</P> + +<P> +"Because a hundred is enough; and I don't want to show off before them." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I thought may be you did. Well, Pert," he added, having satisfied +human nature by the preliminary thrust, "I guess you're about right. +When do you want I should begin to build on Beacon Street?" He handed +her the new cheque, where she stood over him, and then leaned back in +his chair and looked up at her. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't want you should begin at all. What do you mean, Silas?" She +rested against the side of his desk. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know as I mean anything. But shouldn't you like to +build? Everybody builds, at least once in a lifetime." +</P> + +<P> +"Where is your lot? They say it's unhealthy, over there." +</P> + +<P> +Up to a certain point in their prosperity Mrs. Lapham had kept strict +account of all her husband's affairs; but as they expanded, and ceased +to be of the retail nature with which women successfully grapple, the +intimate knowledge of them made her nervous. There was a period in +which she felt that they were being ruined, but the crash had not come; +and, since his great success, she had abandoned herself to a blind +confidence in her husband's judgment, which she had hitherto felt +needed her revision. He came and went, day by day, unquestioned. He +bought and sold and got gain. She knew that he would tell her if ever +things went wrong, and he knew that she would ask him whenever she was +anxious. +</P> + +<P> +"It ain't unhealthy where I've bought," said Lapham, rather enjoying +her insinuation. "I looked after that when I was trading; and I guess +it's about as healthy on the Back Bay as it is here, anyway. I got +that lot for you, Pert; I thought you'd want to build on the Back Bay +some day." +</P> + +<P> +"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Lapham, deeply pleased inwardly, but not going to +show it, as she would have said. "I guess you want to build there +yourself." She insensibly got a little nearer to her husband. They +liked to talk to each other in that blunt way; it is the New England +way of expressing perfect confidence and tenderness. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I guess I do," said Lapham, not insisting upon the unselfish +view of the matter. "I always did like the water side of Beacon. +There ain't a sightlier place in the world for a house. And some day +there's bound to be a drive-way all along behind them houses, between +them and the water, and then a lot there is going to be worth the gold +that will cover it--COIN. I've had offers for that lot, Pert, twice +over what I give for it. Yes, I have. Don't you want to ride over +there some afternoon with me and see it?" "I'm satisfied where we be, +Si," said Mrs. Lapham, recurring to the parlance of her youth in her +pathos at her husband's kindness. She sighed anxiously, for she felt +the trouble a woman knows in view of any great change. They had often +talked of altering over the house in which they lived, but they had +never come to it; and they had often talked of building, but it had +always been a house in the country that they had thought of. "I wish +you had sold that lot." +</P> + +<P> +"I hain't," said the colonel briefly. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I feel much like changing our way of living." +</P> + +<P> +"Guess we could live there pretty much as we live here. There's all +kinds of people on Beacon Street; you mustn't think they're all +big-bugs. I know one party that lives in a house he built to sell, and +his wife don't keep any girl. You can have just as much style there as +you want, or just as little. I guess we live as well as most of 'em +now, and set as good a table. And if you come to style, I don't know +as anybody has got more of a right to put it on than what we have." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't want to build on Beacon Street, Si," said Mrs. Lapham +gently. +</P> + +<P> +"Just as you please, Persis. I ain't in any hurry to leave." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held in her right hand +against the edge of her left. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel still sat looking up at her face, and watching the effect +of the poison of ambition which he had artfully instilled into her mind. +</P> + +<P> +She sighed again--a yielding sigh. "What are you going to do this +afternoon?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to take a turn on the Brighton road," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe but what I should like to go along," said his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"All right. You hain't ever rode behind that mare yet, Pert, and I +want you should see me let her out once. They say the snow's all +packed down already, and the going is A 1." +</P> + +<P> +At four o'clock in the afternoon, with a cold, red winter sunset before +them, the Colonel and his wife were driving slowly down Beacon Street +in the light, high-seated cutter, where, as he said, they were a pretty +tight fit. He was holding the mare in till the time came to speed her, +and the mare was springily jolting over the snow, looking intelligently +from side to side, and cocking this ear and that, while from her +nostrils, her head tossing easily, she blew quick, irregular whiffs of +steam. +</P> + +<P> +"Gay, ain't she?" proudly suggested the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"She IS gay," assented his wife. +</P> + +<P> +They met swiftly dashing sleighs, and let them pass on either hand, +down the beautiful avenue narrowing with an admirably even sky-line in +the perspective. They were not in a hurry. The mare jounced easily +along, and they talked of the different houses on either side of the +way. They had a crude taste in architecture, and they admired the +worst. There were women's faces at many of the handsome windows, and +once in a while a young man on the pavement caught his hat suddenly +from his head, and bowed in response to some salutation from within. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think our girls would look very bad behind one of those big +panes," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said his wife dreamily. +</P> + +<P> +"Where's the YOUNG man? Did he come with them?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; he was to spend the winter with a friend of his that has a ranch +in Texas. I guess he's got to do something." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; gentlemaning as a profession has got to play out in a generation +or two." +</P> + +<P> +Neither of them spoke of the lot, though Lapham knew perfectly well +what his wife had come with him for, and she was aware that he knew it. +The time came when he brought the mare down to a walk, and then slowed +up almost to a stop, while they both turned their heads to the right +and looked at the vacant lot, through which showed the frozen stretch +of the Back Bay, a section of the Long Bridge, and the roofs and +smoke-stacks of Charlestown. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it's sightly," said Mrs. Lapham, lifting her hand from the reins, +on which she had unconsciously laid it. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham said nothing, but he let the mare out a little. +</P> + +<P> +The sleighs and cutters were thickening round them. On the Milldam it +became difficult to restrict the mare to the long, slow trot into which +he let her break. The beautiful landscape widened to right and left of +them, with the sunset redder and redder, over the low, irregular hills +before them. They crossed the Milldam into Longwood; and here, from +the crest of the first upland, stretched two endless lines, in which +thousands of cutters went and came. Some of the drivers were already +speeding their horses, and these shot to and fro on inner lines, +between the slowly moving vehicles on either side of the road. Here +and there a burly mounted policeman, bulging over the pommel of his +M'Clellan saddle, jolted by, silently gesturing and directing the +course, and keeping it all under the eye of the law. It was what +Bartley Hubbard called "a carnival of fashion and gaiety on the +Brighton road," in his account of it. But most of the people in those +elegant sleighs and cutters had so little the air of the great world +that one knowing it at all must have wondered where they and their +money came from; and the gaiety of the men, at least, was expressed, +like that of Colonel Lapham, in a grim almost fierce, alertness; the +women wore an air of courageous apprehension. At a certain point the +Colonel said, "I'm going to let her out, Pert," and he lifted and then +dropped the reins lightly on the mare's back. +</P> + +<P> +She understood the signal, and, as an admirer said, "she laid down to +her work." Nothing in the immutable iron of Lapham's face betrayed his +sense of triumph as the mare left everything behind her on the road. +Mrs. Lapham, if she felt fear, was too busy holding her flying wraps +about her, and shielding her face from the scud of ice flung from the +mare's heels, to betray it; except for the rush of her feet, the mare +was as silent as the people behind her; the muscles of her back and +thighs worked more and more swiftly, like some mechanism responding to +an alien force, and she shot to the end of the course, grazing a +hundred encountered and rival sledges in her passage, but unmolested by +the policemen, who probably saw that the mare and the Colonel knew what +they were about, and, at any rate, were not the sort of men to +interfere with trotting like that. At the end of the heat Lapham drew +her in, and turned off on a side street into Brookline. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell you what, Pert," he said, as if they had been quietly jogging +along, with time for uninterrupted thought since he last spoke, "I've +about made up my mind to build on that lot." +</P> + +<P> +"All right, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham; "I suppose you know what you're +about. Don't build on it for me, that's all." +</P> + +<P> +When she stood in the hall at home, taking off her things, she said to +the girls, who were helping her, "Some day your father will get killed +with that mare." +</P> + +<P> +"Did he speed her?" asked Penelope, the elder. +</P> + +<P> +She was named after her grandmother, who had in her turn inherited from +another ancestress the name of the Homeric matron whose peculiar merits +won her a place even among the Puritan Faiths, Hopes, Temperances, and +Prudences. Penelope was the girl whose odd serious face had struck +Bartley Hubbard in the photograph of the family group Lapham showed him +on the day of the interview. Her large eyes, like her hair, were +brown; they had the peculiar look of near-sighted eyes which is called +mooning; her complexion was of a dark pallor. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother did not reply to a question which might be considered +already answered. "He says he's going to build on that lot of his," +she next remarked, unwinding the long veil which she had tied round her +neck to hold her bonnet on. She put her hat and cloak on the hall +table, to be carried upstairs later, and they all went in to tea: +creamed oysters, birds, hot biscuit, two kinds of cake, and dishes of +stewed and canned fruit and honey. The women dined alone at one, and +the Colonel at the same hour down-town. But he liked a good hot meal +when he got home in the evening. The house flared with gas; and the +Colonel, before he sat down, went about shutting the registers, through +which a welding heat came voluming up from the furnace. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll be the death of that darkey YET," he said, "if he don't stop +making on such a fire. The only way to get any comfort out of your +furnace is to take care of it yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," answered his wife from behind the teapot, as he sat down at +table with this threat, "there's nothing to prevent you, Si. And you +can shovel the snow too, if you want to--till you get over to Beacon +Street, anyway." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I can keep my own sidewalk on Beacon Street clean, if I take +the notion." +</P> + +<P> +"I should like to see you at it," retorted his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you keep a sharp lookout, and may be you will." +</P> + +<P> +Their taunts were really expressions of affectionate pride in each +other. They liked to have it, give and take, that way, as they would +have said, right along. +</P> + +<P> +"A man can be a man on Beacon Street as well as anywhere, I guess." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'll do the wash, as I used to in Lumberville," said Mrs. +Lapham. "I presume you'll let me have set tubs, Si. You know I ain't +so young any more." She passed Irene a cup of Oolong tea,--none of them +had a sufficiently cultivated palate for Sou-chong,--and the girl +handed it to her father. "Papa," she asked, "you don't really mean +that you're going to build over there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't I? You wait and see," said the Colonel, stirring his tea. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe you do," pursued the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"Is that so? I presume you'd hate to have me. Your mother does." He +said DOOS, of course. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope took the word. "I go in for it. I don't see any use in not +enjoying money, if you've got it to enjoy. That's what it's for, I +suppose; though you mightn't always think so." She had a slow, quaint +way of talking, that seemed a pleasant personal modification of some +ancestral Yankee drawl, and her voice was low and cozy, and so far from +being nasal that it was a little hoarse. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess the ayes has it, Pen," said her father. "How would it do to +let Irene and your mother stick in the old place here, and us go into +the new house?" At times the Colonel's grammar failed him. +</P> + +<P> +The matter dropped, and the Laphams lived on as before, with joking +recurrences to the house on the water side of Beacon. The Colonel +seemed less in earnest than any of them about it; but that was his way, +his girls said; you never could tell when he really meant a thing. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H3> + +<P> +TOWARD the end of the winter there came a newspaper, addressed to Miss +Irene Lapham; it proved to be a Texas newspaper, with a complimentary +account of the ranch of the Hon. Loring G. Stanton, which the +representative of the journal had visited. +</P> + +<P> +"It must be his friend," said Mrs. Lapham, to whom her daughter brought +the paper; "the one he's staying with." +</P> + +<P> +The girl did not say anything, but she carried the paper to her room, +where she scanned every line of it for another name. She did not find +it, but she cut the notice out and stuck it into the side of her +mirror, where she could read it every morning when she brushed her +hair, and the last thing at night when she looked at herself in the +glass just before turning off the gas. Her sister often read it aloud, +standing behind her and rendering it with elocutionary effects. +</P> + +<P> +"The first time I ever heard of a love-letter in the form of a puff to +a cattle-ranch. But perhaps that's the style on the Hill." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the arrival of the paper, treating the +fact with an importance that he refused to see in it. +</P> + +<P> +"How do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?" he demanded. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I know he did." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why he couldn't write to 'Rene, if he really meant +anything." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I guess that wouldn't be their way," said Mrs. Lapham; she did +not at all know what their way would be. +</P> + +<P> +When the spring opened Colonel Lapham showed that he had been in +earnest about building on the New Land. His idea of a house was a +brown-stone front, four stories high, and a French roof with an +air-chamber above. Inside, there was to be a reception-room on the +street and a dining-room back. The parlours were to be on the second +floor, and finished in black walnut or party-coloured paint. The +chambers were to be on the three floors above, front and rear, with +side-rooms over the front door. Black walnut was to be used everywhere +except in the attic, which was to be painted and grained to look like +black walnut. The whole was to be very high-studded, and there were to +be handsome cornices and elaborate centre-pieces throughout, except, +again, in the attic. +</P> + +<P> +These ideas he had formed from the inspection of many new buildings +which he had seen going up, and which he had a passion for looking +into. He was confirmed in his ideas by a master builder who had put up +a great many houses on the Back Bay as a speculation, and who told him +that if he wanted to have a house in the style, that was the way to +have it. +</P> + +<P> +The beginnings of the process by which Lapham escaped from the master +builder and ended in the hands of an architect are so obscure that it +would be almost impossible to trace them. But it all happened, and +Lapham promptly developed his ideas of black walnut finish, high +studding, and cornices. The architect was able to conceal the shudder +which they must have sent through him. He was skilful, as nearly all +architects are, in playing upon that simple instrument Man. He began +to touch Colonel Lapham's stops. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, certainly, have the parlours high-studded. But you've seen some of +those pretty old-fashioned country-houses, haven't you, where the +entrance-story is very low-studded?" "Yes," Lapham assented. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, don't you think something of that kind would have a very nice +effect? Have the entrance-story low-studded, and your parlours on the +next floor as high as you please. Put your little reception-room here +beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a +square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up three sides of +it. I'm sure Mrs. Lapham would find it much pleasanter." The architect +caught toward him a scrap of paper lying on the table at which they +were sitting and sketched his idea. "Then have your dining-room behind +the hall, looking on the water." +</P> + +<P> +He glanced at Mrs. Lapham, who said, "Of course," and the architect +went on-- +</P> + +<P> +"That gets you rid of one of those long, straight, ugly +staircases,"--until that moment Lapham had thought a long, straight +staircase the chief ornament of a house,--"and gives you an effect of +amplitude and space." +</P> + +<P> +"That's so!" said Mrs. Lapham. Her husband merely made a noise in his +throat. +</P> + +<P> +"Then, were you thinking of having your parlours together, connected by +folding doors?" asked the architect deferentially. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, of course," said Lapham. "They're always so, ain't they?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, nearly," said the architect. "I was wondering how would it do +to make one large square room at the front, taking the whole breadth of +the house, and, with this hall-space between, have a music-room back +for the young ladies?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham looked helplessly at his wife, whose quicker apprehension had +followed the architect's pencil with instant sympathy. "First-rate!" +she cried. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel gave way. "I guess that would do. It'll be kind of odd, +won't it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know," said the architect. "Not so odd, I hope, as the +other thing will be a few years from now." He went on to plan the rest +of the house, and he showed himself such a master in regard to all the +practical details that Mrs. Lapham began to feel a motherly affection +for the young man, and her husband could not deny in his heart that the +fellow seemed to understand his business. He stopped walking about the +room, as he had begun to do when the architect and Mrs. Lapham entered +into the particulars of closets, drainage, kitchen arrangements, and +all that, and came back to the table. "I presume," he said, "you'll +have the drawing-room finished in black walnut?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, yes," replied the architect, "if you like. But some less +expensive wood can be made just as effective with paint. Of course you +can paint black walnut too." +</P> + +<P> +"Paint it?" gasped the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the architect quietly. "White, or a little off white." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham dropped the plan he had picked up from the table. His wife made +a little move toward him of consolation or support. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," resumed the architect, "I know there has been a great +craze for black walnut. But it's an ugly wood; and for a drawing-room +there is really nothing like white paint. We should want to introduce +a little gold here and there. Perhaps we might run a painted frieze +round under the cornice--garlands of roses on a gold ground; it would +tell wonderfully in a white room." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel returned less courageously to the charge. "I presume +you'll want Eastlake mantel-shelves and tiles?" He meant this for a +sarcastic thrust at a prevailing foible of the profession. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, no," gently answered the architect. "I was thinking perhaps a +white marble chimney-piece, treated in the refined Empire style, would +be the thing for that room." +</P> + +<P> +"White marble!" exclaimed the Colonel. "I thought that had gone out +long ago." +</P> + +<P> +"Really beautiful things can't go out. They may disappear for a little +while, but they must come back. It's only the ugly things that stay +out after they've had their day." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham could only venture very modestly, "Hard-wood floors?" +</P> + +<P> +"In the music-room, of course," consented the architect. +</P> + +<P> +"And in the drawing-room?" +</P> + +<P> +"Carpet. Some sort of moquette, I should say. But I should prefer to +consult Mrs. Lapham's taste in that matter." +</P> + +<P> +"And in the other rooms?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, carpets, of course." +</P> + +<P> +"And what about the stairs?" +</P> + +<P> +"Carpet. And I should have the rail and banisters white--banisters +turned or twisted." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel said under his breath, "Well, I'm dumned!" but he gave no +utterance to his astonishment in the architect's presence. When he +went at last,--the session did not end till eleven o'clock,--Lapham +said, "Well, Pert, I guess that fellow's fifty years behind, or ten +years ahead. I wonder what the Ongpeer style is?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. I hated to ask. But he seemed to understand what he +was talking about. I declare, he knows what a woman wants in a house +better than she does herself." +</P> + +<P> +"And a man's simply nowhere in comparison," said Lapham. But he +respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, and have a reason +ready, as this architect had; and when he recovered from the daze into +which the complete upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left +him, he was in a fit state to swear by the architect. It seemed to him +that he had discovered the fellow (as he always called him) and owned +him now, and the fellow did nothing to disturb this impression. He +entered into that brief but intense intimacy with the Laphams which the +sympathetic architect holds with his clients. He was privy to all +their differences of opinion and all their disputes about the house. +He knew just where to insist upon his own ideas, and where to yield. +He was really building several other houses, but he gave the Laphams +the impression that he was doing none but theirs. +</P> + +<P> +The work was not begun till the frost was thoroughly out of the ground, +which that year was not before the end of April. Even then it did not +proceed very rapidly. Lapham said they might as well take their time +to it; if they got the walls up and the thing closed in before the snow +flew, they could be working at it all winter. It was found necessary +to dig for the kitchen; at that point the original salt-marsh lay near +the surface, and before they began to put in the piles for the +foundation they had to pump. The neighbourhood smelt like the hold of +a ship after a three years' voyage. People who had cast their fortunes +with the New Land went by professing not to notice it; people who still +"hung on to the Hill" put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and told +each other the old terrible stories of the material used in filling up +the Back Bay. +</P> + +<P> +Nothing gave Lapham so much satisfaction in the whole construction of +his house as the pile-driving. When this began, early in the summer, he +took Mrs. Lapham every day in his buggy and drove round to look at it; +stopping the mare in front of the lot, and watching the operation with +even keener interest than the little loafing Irish boys who +superintended it in force. It pleased him to hear the portable engine +chuckle out a hundred thin whiffs of steam in carrying the big iron +weight to the top of the framework above the pile, then seem to +hesitate, and cough once or twice in pressing the weight against the +detaching apparatus. There was a moment in which the weight had the +effect of poising before it fell; then it dropped with a mighty whack +on the iron-bound head of the pile, and drove it a foot into the earth. +</P> + +<P> +"By gracious!" he would say, "there ain't anything like that in THIS +world for BUSINESS, Persis!" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham suffered him to enjoy the sight twenty or thirty times +before she said, "Well, now drive on, Si." +</P> + +<P> +By the time the foundation was in and the brick walls had begun to go +up, there were so few people left in the neighbourhood that she might +indulge with impunity her husband's passion for having her clamber over +the floor-timbers and the skeleton stair-cases with him. Many of the +householders had boarded up their front doors before the buds had begun +to swell and the assessor to appear in early May; others had followed +soon; and Mrs. Lapham was as safe from remark as if she had been in the +depth of the country. Ordinarily she and her girls left town early in +July, going to one of the hotels at Nantasket, where it was convenient +for the Colonel to get to and from his business by the boat. But this +summer they were all lingering a few weeks later, under the novel +fascination of the new house, as they called it, as if there were no +other in the world. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham drove there with his wife after he had set Bartley Hubbard down +at the Events office, but on this day something happened that +interfered with the solid pleasure they usually took in going over the +house. As the Colonel turned from casting anchor at the mare's head +with the hitching-weight, after helping his wife to alight, he +encountered a man to whom he could not help speaking, though the man +seemed to share his hesitation if not his reluctance at the necessity. +He was a tallish, thin man, with a dust-coloured face, and a dead, +clerical air, which somehow suggested at once feebleness and tenacity. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham held out her hand to him. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Mr. Rogers!" she exclaimed; and then, turning toward her husband, +seemed to refer the two men to each other. They shook hands, but +Lapham did not speak. "I didn't know you were in Boston," pursued Mrs. +Lapham. "Is Mrs. Rogers with you?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Mr. Rogers, with a voice which had the flat, succinct sound +of two pieces of wood clapped together. "Mrs. Rogers is still in +Chicago." +</P> + +<P> +A little silence followed, and then Mrs Lapham said-- +</P> + +<P> +"I presume you are quite settled out there." +</P> + +<P> +"No; we have left Chicago. Mrs. Rogers has merely remained to finish +up a little packing." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed! Are you coming back to Boston?" +</P> + +<P> +"I cannot say as yet. We sometimes think of so doing." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham turned away and looked up at the building. His wife pulled a +little at her glove, as if embarrassed, or even pained. She tried to +make a diversion. +</P> + +<P> +"We are building a house," she said, with a meaningless laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Rogers, looking up at it. +</P> + +<P> +Then no one spoke again, and she said helplessly-- +</P> + +<P> +"If you come to Boston, I hope I shall see Mrs. Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"She will be happy to have you call," said Mr Rogers. +</P> + +<P> +He touched his hat-brim, and made a bow forward rather than in Mrs. +Lapham's direction. +</P> + +<P> +She mounted the planking that led into the shelter of the bare brick +walls, and her husband slowly followed. When she turned her face +toward him her cheeks were burning, and tears that looked hot stood in +her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"You left it all to me!" she cried. "Why couldn't you speak a word?" +</P> + +<P> +"I hadn't anything to say to him," replied Lapham sullenly. +</P> + +<P> +They stood a while, without looking at the work which they had come to +enjoy, and without speaking to each other. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose we might as well go on," said Mrs. Lapham at last, as they +returned to the buggy. The Colonel drove recklessly toward the +Milldam. His wife kept her veil down and her face turned from him. +After a time she put her handkerchief up under her veil and wiped her +eyes, and he set his teeth and squared his jaw. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see how he always manages to appear just at the moment when he +seems to have gone fairly out of our lives, and blight everything," she +whimpered. +</P> + +<P> +"I supposed he was dead," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't SAY such a thing! It sounds as if you wished it." +</P> + +<P> +"Why do you mind it? What do you let him blight everything for?" +</P> + +<P> +"I can't help it, and I don't believe I ever shall. I don't know as +his being dead would help it any. I can't ever see him without feeling +just as I did at first." +</P> + +<P> +"I tell you," said Lapham, "it was a perfectly square thing. And I +wish, once for all, you would quit bothering about it. My conscience +is easy as far as he is concerned, and it always was." +</P> + +<P> +"And I can't look at him without feeling as if you'd ruined him, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't look at him, then," said her husband, with a scowl. "I want you +should recollect in the first place, Persis, that I never wanted a +partner." +</P> + +<P> +"If he hadn't put his money in when he did, you'd 'a' broken down." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he got his money out again, and more, too," said the Colonel, +with a sulky weariness. +</P> + +<P> +"He didn't want to take it out." +</P> + +<P> +"I gave him his choice: buy out or go out." +</P> + +<P> +"You know he couldn't buy out then. It was no choice at all." +</P> + +<P> +"It was a business chance." +</P> + +<P> +"No; you had better face the truth, Silas. It was no chance at all. +You crowded him out. A man that had saved you! No, you had got greedy, +Silas. You had made your paint your god, and you couldn't bear to let +anybody else share in its blessings." +</P> + +<P> +"I tell you he was a drag and a brake on me from the word go. You say +he saved me. Well, if I hadn't got him out he'd 'a' ruined me sooner +or later. So it's an even thing, as far forth as that goes." +</P> + +<P> +"No, it ain't an even thing, and you know it, Silas. Oh, if I could +only get you once to acknowledge that you did wrong about it, then I +should have some hope. I don't say you meant wrong exactly, but you +took an advantage. Yes, you took an advantage! You had him where he +couldn't help himself, and then you wouldn't show him any mercy." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sick of this," said Lapham. "If you'll 'tend to the house, I'll +manage my business without your help." +</P> + +<P> +"You were very glad of my help once." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm tired of it now. Don't meddle." +</P> + +<P> +"I WILL meddle. When I see you hardening yourself in a wrong thing, +it's time for me to meddle, as you call it, and I will. I can't ever +get you to own up the least bit about Rogers, and I feel as if it was +hurting you all the while." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you want I should own up about a thing for when I don't feel +wrong? I tell you Rogers hain't got anything to complain of, and that's +what I told you from the start. It's a thing that's done every day. I +was loaded up with a partner that didn't know anything, and couldn't do +anything, and I unloaded; that's all." +</P> + +<P> +"You unloaded just at the time when you knew that your paint was going +to be worth about twice what it ever had been; and you wanted all the +advantage for yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"I had a right to it. I made the success." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you made it with Rogers's money; and when you'd made it you took +his share of it. I guess you thought of that when you saw him, and +that's why you couldn't look him in the face." +</P> + +<P> +At these words Lapham lost his temper. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you don't want to ride with me any more to-day," he said, +turning the mare abruptly round. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm as ready to go back as what you are," replied his wife. "And +don't you ask me to go to that house with you any more. You can sell +it, for all me. I sha'n't live in it. There's blood on it." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H3> + +<P> +THE silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain of wrong +and insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without +lesion; and sometimes the strength that knits society together might +appear to the eye of faltering faith the curse of those immediately +bound by it. Two people by no means reckless of each other's rights +and feelings, but even tender of them for the most part, may tear at +each other's heart-strings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity; +though if they were any other two they would not speak or look at each +other again after the outrages they exchange. It is certainly a +curious spectacle, and doubtless it ought to convince an observer of +the divinity of the institution. If the husband and wife are blunt, +outspoken people like the Laphams, they do not weigh their words; if +they are more refined, they weigh them very carefully, and know +accurately just how far they will carry, and in what most sensitive +spot they may be planted with most effect. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was proud of his wife, and when he married her it had been a +rise in life for him. For a while he stood in awe of his good fortune, +but this could not last, and he simply remained supremely satisfied +with it. The girl who had taught school with a clear head and a strong +hand was not afraid of work; she encouraged and helped him from the +first, and bore her full share of the common burden. She had health, +and she did not worry his life out with peevish complaints and +vagaries; she had sense and principle, and in their simple lot she did +what was wise and right. Their marriage was hallowed by an early +sorrow: they lost their boy, and it was years before they could look +each other in the face and speak of him. No one gave up more than they +when they gave up each other and Lapham went to the war. When he came +back and began to work, her zeal and courage formed the spring of his +enterprise. In that affair of the partnership she had tried to be his +conscience, but perhaps she would have defended him if he had accused +himself; it was one of those things in this life which seem destined to +await justice, or at least judgment, in the next. As he said, Lapham +had dealt fairly by his partner in money; he had let Rogers take more +money out of the business than he put into it; he had, as he said, +simply forced out of it a timid and inefficient participant in +advantages which he had created. But Lapham had not created them all. +He had been dependent at one time on his partner's capital. It was a +moment of terrible trial. Happy is the man for ever after who can +choose the ideal, the unselfish part in such an exigency! Lapham could +not rise to it. He did what he could maintain to be perfectly fair. +The wrong, if any, seemed to be condoned to him, except when from time +to time his wife brought it up. Then all the question stung and burned +anew, and had to be reasoned out and put away once more. It seemed to +have an inextinguishable vitality. It slept, but it did not die. +</P> + +<P> +His course did not shake Mrs. Lapham's faith in him. It astonished her +at first, and it always grieved her that he could not see that he was +acting solely in his own interest. But she found excuses for him, +which at times she made reproaches. She vaguely perceived that his +paint was something more than business to him; it was a sentiment, +almost a passion. He could not share its management and its profit +with another without a measure of self-sacrifice far beyond that which +he must make with something less personal to him. It was the poetry of +that nature, otherwise so intensely prosaic; and she understood this, +and for the most part forbore. She knew him good and true and +blameless in all his life, except for this wrong, if it were a wrong; +and it was only when her nerves tingled intolerably with some chance +renewal of the pain she had suffered, that she shared her anguish with +him in true wifely fashion. +</P> + +<P> +With those two there was never anything like an explicit +reconciliation. They simply ignored a quarrel; and Mrs. Lapham had +only to say a few days after at breakfast, "I guess the girls would +like to go round with you this afternoon, and look at the new house," +in order to make her husband grumble out as he looked down into his +coffee-cup. "I guess we better all go, hadn't we?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'll see," she said. +</P> + +<P> +There was not really a great deal to look at when Lapham arrived on the +ground in his four-seated beach-wagon. But the walls were up, and the +studding had already given skeleton shape to the interior. The floors +were roughly boarded over, and the stairways were in place, with +provisional treads rudely laid. They had not begun to lath and plaster +yet, but the clean, fresh smell of the mortar in the walls mingling +with the pungent fragrance of the pine shavings neutralised the +Venetian odour that drew in over the water. It was pleasantly shady +there, though for the matter of that the heat of the morning had all +been washed out of the atmosphere by a tide of east wind setting in at +noon, and the thrilling, delicious cool of a Boston summer afternoon +bathed every nerve. +</P> + +<P> +The foreman went about with Mrs. Lapham, showing her where the doors +were to be; but Lapham soon tired of this, and having found a pine +stick of perfect grain, he abandoned himself to the pleasure of +whittling it in what was to be the reception-room, where he sat looking +out on the street from what was to be the bay-window. Here he was +presently joined by his girls, who, after locating their own room on +the water side above the music-room, had no more wish to enter into +details than their father. +</P> + +<P> +"Come and take a seat in the bay-window, ladies," he called out to +them, as they looked in at him through the ribs of the wall. He +jocosely made room for them on the trestle on which he sat. +</P> + +<P> +They came gingerly and vaguely forward, as young ladies do when they +wish not to seem to be going to do a thing they have made up their +minds to do. When they had taken their places on their trestle, they +could not help laughing with scorn, open and acceptable to their +father; and Irene curled her chin up, in a little way she had, and +said, "How ridiculous!" to her sister. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I can tell you what," said the Colonel, in fond enjoyment of +their young ladyishness, "your mother wa'n't ashamed to sit with me on +a trestle when I called her out to look at the first coat of my paint +that I ever tried on a house." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; we've heard that story," said Penelope, with easy security of her +father's liking what she said. "We were brought up on that story." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it's a good story," said her father. +</P> + +<P> +At that moment a young man came suddenly in range, who began to look up +at the signs of building as he approached. He dropped his eyes in +coming abreast of the bay-window, where Lapham sat with his girls, and +then his face lightened, and he took off his hat and bowed to Irene. +She rose mechanically from the trestle, and her face lightened too. +</P> + +<P> +She was a very pretty figure of a girl, after our fashion of girls, +round and slim and flexible, and her face was admirably regular. But +her great beauty--and it was very great--was in her colouring. This +was of an effect for which there is no word but delicious, as we use it +of fruit or flowers. She had red hair, like her father in his earlier +days, and the tints of her cheeks and temples were such as suggested +May-flowers and apple-blossoms and peaches. Instead of the grey that +often dulls this complexion, her eyes were of a blue at once intense +and tender, and they seemed to burn on what they looked at with a soft, +lambent flame. It was well understood by her sister and mother that +her eyes always expressed a great deal more than Irene ever thought or +felt; but this is not saying that she was not a very sensible girl and +very honest. +</P> + +<P> +The young man faltered perceptibly, and Irene came a little forward, +and then there gushed from them both a smiling exchange of greeting, of +which the sum was that he supposed she was out of town, and that she +had not known that he had got back. A pause ensued, and flushing again +in her uncertainty as to whether she ought or ought not to do it, she +said, "My father, Mr. Corey; and my sister." +</P> + +<P> +The young man took off his hat again, showing his shapely head, with a +line of wholesome sunburn ceasing where the recently and closely +clipped hair began. He was dressed in a fine summer check, with a blue +white-dotted neckerchief, and he had a white hat, in which he looked +very well when he put it back on his head. His whole dress seemed very +fresh and new, and in fact he had cast aside his Texan habiliments only +the day before. +</P> + +<P> +"How do you do, sir?" said the Colonel, stepping to the window, and +reaching out of it the hand which the young man advanced to take. +"Won't you come in? We're at home here. House I'm building." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed?" returned the young man; and he came promptly up the +steps, and through its ribs into the reception-room. +</P> + +<P> +"Have a trestle?" asked the Colonel, while the girls exchanged little +shocks of terror and amusement at the eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," said the young man simply, and sat down. +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Lapham is upstairs interviewing the carpenter, but she'll be down +in a minute." +</P> + +<P> +"I hope she's quite well," said Corey. "I supposed--I was afraid she +might be out of town." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we are off to Nantasket next week. The house kept us in town +pretty late." +</P> + +<P> +"It must be very exciting, building a house," said Corey to the elder +sister. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it is," she assented, loyally refusing in Irene's interest the +opportunity of saying anything more. +</P> + +<P> +Corey turned to the latter. "I suppose you've all helped to plan it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no; the architect and mamma did that." +</P> + +<P> +"But they allowed the rest of us to agree, when we were good," said +Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +Corey looked at her, and saw that she was shorter than her sister, and +had a dark complexion. +</P> + +<P> +"It's very exciting," said Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"Come up," said the Colonel, rising, "and look round if you'd like to." +</P> + +<P> +"I should like to, very much," said the young man. He helped the young +ladies over crevasses of carpentry and along narrow paths of planking, +on which they had made their way unassisted before. The elder sister +left the younger to profit solely by these offices as much as possible. +She walked between them and her father, who went before, lecturing on +each apartment, and taking the credit of the whole affair more and more +as he talked on. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" he said, "we're going to throw out a bay-window here, so as +get the water all the way up and down. This is my girls' room," he +added, looking proudly at them both. +</P> + +<P> +It seemed terribly intimate. Irene blushed deeply and turned her head +away. +</P> + +<P> +But the young man took it all, apparently, as simply as their father. +"What a lovely lookout!" he said. The Back Bay spread its glassy sheet +before them, empty but for a few small boats and a large schooner, with +her sails close-furled and dripping like snow from her spars, which a +tug was rapidly towing toward Cambridge. The carpentry of that city, +embanked and embowered in foliage, shared the picturesqueness of +Charlestown in the distance. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Lapham, "I go in for using the best rooms in your house +yourself. If people come to stay with you, they can put up with the +second best. Though we don't intend to have any second best. There +ain't going to be an unpleasant room in the whole house, from top to +bottom." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I wish papa wouldn't brag so!" breathed Irene to her sister, where +they stood, a little apart, looking away together. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel went on. "No, sir," he swelled out, "I have gone in for +making a regular job of it. I've got the best architect in Boston, and +I'm building a house to suit myself. And if money can do it, guess I'm +going to be suited." +</P> + +<P> +"It seems very delightful," said Corey, "and very original." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir. That fellow hadn't talked five minutes before I saw that he +knew what he was about every time." +</P> + +<P> +"I wish mamma would come!" breathed Irene again. "I shall certainly go +through the floor if papa says anything more." +</P> + +<P> +"They are making a great many very pretty houses nowadays," said the +young man. "It's very different from the old-fashioned building." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the Colonel, with a large toleration of tone and a deep +breath that expanded his ample chest, "we spend more on our houses +nowadays. I started out to build a forty-thousand-dollar house. Well, +sir! that fellow has got me in for more than sixty thousand already, +and I doubt if I get out of it much under a hundred. You can't have a +nice house for nothing. It's just like ordering a picture of a +painter. You pay him enough, and he can afford to paint you a +first-class picture; and if you don't, he can't. That's all there is of +it. Why, they tell me that A. T. Stewart gave one of those French +fellows sixty thousand dollars for a little seven-by-nine picture the +other day. Yes, sir, give an architect money enough, and he'll give +you a nice house every time." +</P> + +<P> +"I've heard that they're sharp at getting money to realise their +ideas," assented the young man, with a laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I should say so!" exclaimed the Colonel. "They come to you with +an improvement that you can't resist. It has good looks and +common-sense and everything in its favour, and it's like throwing money +away to refuse. And they always manage to get you when your wife is +around, and then you're helpless." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel himself set the example of laughing at this joke, and the +young man joined him less obstreperously. The girls turned, and he +said, "I don't think I ever saw this view to better advantage. It's +surprising how well the Memorial Hall and the Cambridge spires work up, +over there. And the sunsets must be magnificent." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham did not wait for them to reply. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir, it's about the sightliest view I know of. I always did like +the water side of Beacon. Long before I owned property here, or ever +expected to, m'wife and I used to ride down this way, and stop the +buggy to get this view over the water. When people talk to me about +the Hill, I can understand 'em. It's snug, and it's old-fashioned, and +it's where they've always lived. But when they talk about Commonwealth +Avenue, I don't know what they mean. It don't hold a candle to the +water side of Beacon. You've got just as much wind over there, and +you've got just as much dust, and all the view you've got is the view +across the street. No, sir! when you come to the Back Bay at all, give +me the water side of Beacon." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I think you're quite right," said the young man. "The view here +is everything." +</P> + +<P> +Irene looked "I wonder what papa is going to say next!" at her sister, +when their mother's voice was heard overhead, approaching the opening +in the floor where the stairs were to be; and she presently appeared, +with one substantial foot a long way ahead. She was followed by the +carpenter, with his rule sticking out of his overalls pocket, and she +was still talking to him about some measurements they had been taking, +when they reached the bottom, so that Irene had to say, "Mamma, Mr. +Corey," before Mrs. Lapham was aware of him. +</P> + +<P> +He came forward with as much grace and speed as the uncertain footing +would allow, and Mrs. Lapham gave him a stout squeeze of her +comfortable hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Mr. Corey! When did you get back?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yesterday. It hardly seems as if I HAD got back. I didn't expect to +find you in a new house." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you are our first caller. I presume you won't expect I should +make excuses for the state you find it in. Has the Colonel been doing +the honours?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes. And I've seen more of your house than I ever shall again, I +suppose." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I hope not," said Lapham. "There'll be several chances to see +us in the old one yet, before we leave." +</P> + +<P> +He probably thought this a neat, off-hand way of making the invitation, +for he looked at his woman-kind as if he might expect their admiration. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, indeed!" said his wife. "We shall be very glad to see Mr. +Corey, any time." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you; I shall be glad to come." +</P> + +<P> +He and the Colonel went before, and helped the ladies down the +difficult descent. Irene seemed less sure-footed than the others; she +clung to the young man's hand an imperceptible moment longer than need +be, or else he detained her. He found opportunity of saying, "It's so +pleasant seeing you again," adding, "all of you." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," said the girl. "They must all be glad to have you at home +again." +</P> + +<P> +Corey laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I suppose they would be, if they were at home to have me. But +the fact is, there's nobody in the house but my father and myself, and +I'm only on my way to Bar Harbour." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! Are they there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; it seems to be the only place where my mother can get just the +combination of sea and mountain air that she wants." +</P> + +<P> +"We go to Nantasket--it's convenient for papa; and I don't believe we +shall go anywhere else this summer, mamma's so taken up with building. +We do nothing but talk house; and Pen says we eat and sleep house. She +says it would be a sort of relief to go and live in tents for a while." +</P> + +<P> +"She seems to have a good deal of humour," the young man ventured, upon +the slender evidence. +</P> + +<P> +The others had gone to the back of the house a moment, to look at some +suggested change. Irene and Corey were left standing in the doorway. +A lovely light of happiness played over her face and etherealised its +delicious beauty. She had some ado to keep herself from smiling +outright, and the effort deepened the dimples in her cheeks; she +trembled a little, and the pendants shook in the tips of her pretty +ears. +</P> + +<P> +The others came back directly, and they all descended the front steps +together. The Colonel was about to renew his invitation, but he caught +his wife's eye, and, without being able to interpret its warning +exactly, was able to arrest himself, and went about gathering up the +hitching-weight, while the young man handed the ladies into the +phaeton. Then he lifted his hat, and the ladies all bowed, and the +Laphams drove off, Irene's blue ribbons fluttering backward from her +hat, as if they were her clinging thoughts. +</P> + +<P> +"So that's young Corey, is it?" said the Colonel, letting the stately +stepping, tall coupe horse make his way homeward at will with the +beach-wagon. "Well, he ain't a bad-looking fellow, and he's got a good, +fair and square, honest eye. But I don't see how a fellow like that, +that's had every advantage in this world, can hang round home and let +his father support him. Seems to me, if I had his health and his +education, I should want to strike out and do something for myself." +</P> + +<P> +The girls on the back seat had hold of each other's hands, and they +exchanged electrical pressures at the different points their father +made. +</P> + +<P> +"I presume," said Mrs. Lapham, "that he was down in Texas looking after +something." +</P> + +<P> +"He's come back without finding it, I guess." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if his father has the money to support him, and don't complain +of the burden, I don't see why WE should." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I know it's none of my business, but I don't like the principle. +I like to see a man ACT like a man. I don't like to see him taken care +of like a young lady. Now, I suppose that fellow belongs to two or +three clubs, and hangs around 'em all day, lookin' out the +window,--I've seen 'em,--instead of tryin' to hunt up something to do +for an honest livin'." +</P> + +<P> +"If I was a young man," Penelope struck in, "I would belong to twenty +clubs, if I could find them and I would hang around them all, and look +out the window till I dropped." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you would, would you?" demanded her father, delighted with her +defiance, and twisting his fat head around over his shoulder to look at +her. "Well, you wouldn't do it on my money, if you were a son of MINE, +young lady." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you wait and see," retorted the girl. +</P> + +<P> +This made them all laugh. But the Colonel recurred seriously to the +subject that night, as he was winding up his watch preparatory to +putting it under his pillow. +</P> + +<P> +"I could make a man of that fellow, if I had him in the business with +me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke up the way I did because I +didn't choose Irene should think I would stand any kind of a loafer +'round--I don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. +And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw what I was +driving at." +</P> + +<P> +The girl, apparently, was less anxious about her father's ideas and +principles than about the impression which he had made upon the young +man. She had talked it over and over with her sister before they went +to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking at Penelope +brushing out her hair before the glass-- +</P> + +<P> +"Do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that bragging way?" +</P> + +<P> +"He'll be right if he does," answered her sister. "It's the way father +always does talk. You never noticed it so much, that's all. And I +guess if he can't make allowance for father's bragging, he'll be a +little too good. I enjoyed hearing the Colonel go on." +</P> + +<P> +"I know you did," returned Irene in distress. Then she sighed. +"Didn't you think he looked very nice?" +</P> + +<P> +"Who? The Colonel?" Penelope had caught up the habit of calling her +father so from her mother, and she used his title in all her jocose and +perverse moods. +</P> + +<P> +"You know very well I don't mean papa," pouted Irene. "Oh! Mr. Corey! +Why didn't you say Mr. Corey if you meant Mr. Corey? If I meant Mr. +Corey, I should say Mr. Corey. It isn't swearing! Corey, Corey, Co----" +</P> + +<P> +Her sister clapped her hand over her mouth "Will you HUSH, you wretched +thing?" she whimpered. "The whole house can hear you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, they can hear me all over the square. Well, I think he looked +well enough for a plain youth, who hadn't taken his hair out of +curl-papers for some time." +</P> + +<P> +"It WAS clipped pretty close," Irene admitted; and they both laughed at +the drab effect of Mr. Corey's skull, as they remembered it. "Did you +like his nose?" asked Irene timorously. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, now you're COMING to something," said Penelope. "I don't know +whether, if I had so much of a nose, I should want it all Roman." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see how you can expect to have a nose part one kind and part +another," argued Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I do. Look at mine!" She turned aside her face, so as to get a +three-quarters view of her nose in the glass, and crossing her hands, +with the brush in one of them, before her, regarded it judicially. +"Now, my nose started Grecian, but changed its mind before it got over +the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way." +</P> + +<P> +"You've got a very pretty nose, Pen," said Irene, joining in the +contemplation of its reflex in the glass. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment HIS, Mrs."--she +stopped, and then added deliberately--"C.!" +</P> + +<P> +Irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now she sprang at her +sister and beat her very softly on the shoulder with the flat of it. +"You mean thing!" she cried, between her shut teeth, blushing hotly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, D., then," said Penelope. "You've nothing to say against D.? +Though I think C. is just as nice an initial." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things. +</P> + +<P> +"I think he has very good eyes," admitted Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, he HAS! And didn't you like the way his sackcoat set? So close to +him, and yet free--kind of peeling away at the lapels?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I should say he was a young man of great judgment. He knows how +to choose his tailor." +</P> + +<P> +Irene sat down on the edge of a chair. "It was so nice of you, Pen, to +come in, that way, about clubs." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I didn't mean anything by it except opposition," said Penelope. +"I couldn't have father swelling on so, without saying something." +</P> + +<P> +"How he did swell!" sighed Irene. "Wasn't it a relief to have mamma +come down, even if she did seem to be all stocking at first?" +</P> + +<P> +The girls broke into a wild giggle, and hid their faces in each other's +necks. "I thought I SHOULD die," said Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"'It's just like ordering a painting,'" said Penelope, recalling her +father's talk, with an effect of dreamy absent-mindedness. "'You give +the painter money enough, and he can afford to paint you a first-class +picture. Give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a +first-class house, every time.'" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, wasn't it awful!" moaned her sister. "No one would ever have +supposed that he had fought the very idea of an architect for weeks, +before he gave in." +</P> + +<P> +Penelope went on. "'I always did like the water side of Beacon,--long +before I owned property there. When you come to the Back Bay at all, +give me the water side of Beacon.'" +</P> + +<P> +"Ow-w-w-w!" shrieked Irene. "DO stop!" +</P> + +<P> +The door of their mother's chamber opened below, and the voice of the +real Colonel called, "What are you doing up there, girls? Why don't you +go to bed?" +</P> + +<P> +This extorted nervous shrieks from both of them. The Colonel heard a +sound of scurrying feet, whisking drapery, and slamming doors. Then he +heard one of the doors opened again, and Penelope said, "I was only +repeating something you said when you talked to Mr. Corey." +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, now," answered the Colonel. "You postpone the rest of it +till to-morrow at breakfast, and see that you're up in time to let ME +hear it." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +V. +</H3> + +<P> +AT the same moment young Corey let himself in at his own door with his +latch-key, and went to the library, where he found his father turning +the last leaves of a story in the Revue des Deux Mondes. He was a +white-moustached old gentleman, who had never been able to abandon his +pince-nez for the superior comfort of spectacles, even in the privacy +of his own library. He knocked the glasses off as his son came in and +looked up at him with lazy fondness, rubbing the two red marks that +they always leave on the side of the nose. +</P> + +<P> +"Tom," he said, "where did you get such good clothes?" +</P> + +<P> +"I stopped over a day in New York," replied the son, finding himself a +chair. "I'm glad you like them." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I always do like your clothes, Tom," returned the father +thoughtfully, swinging his glasses, "But I don't see how you can afford +'em, I can't." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, sir," said the son, who dropped the "sir" into his speech with +his father, now and then, in an old-fashioned way that was rather +charming, "you see, I have an indulgent parent." +</P> + +<P> +"Smoke?" suggested the father, pushing toward his son a box of +cigarettes, from which he had taken one. +</P> + +<P> +"No, thank you," said the son. "I've dropped that." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, is that so?" The father began to feel about on the table for +matches, in the purblind fashion of elderly men. His son rose, lighted +one, and handed it to him. "Well,--oh, thank you, Tom!--I believe some +statisticians prove that if you will give up smoking you can dress very +well on the money your tobacco costs, even if you haven't got an +indulgent parent. But I'm too old to try. Though, I confess, I should +rather like the clothes. Whom did you find at the club?" +</P> + +<P> +"There were a lot of fellows there," said young Corey, watching the +accomplished fumigation of his father in an absent way. +</P> + +<P> +"It's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," observed +his father. "All summer through, in weather that sends the sturdiest +female flying to the sea-shore, you find the clubs filled with young +men, who don't seem to mind the heat in the least." +</P> + +<P> +"Boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," said the son, +declining to take up the matter in its ironical shape. +</P> + +<P> +"I dare say it isn't, compared with Texas," returned the father, +smoking tranquilly on. "But I don't suppose you find many of your +friends in town outside of the club." +</P> + +<P> +"No; you're requested to ring at the rear door, all the way down Beacon +Street and up Commonwealth Avenue. It's rather a blank reception for +the returning prodigal." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back out of season. +But I'm glad to have you back, Tom, even as it is, and I hope you're +not going to hurry away. You must give your energies a rest." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity," +suggested the son, taking his father's jokes in good part. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I don't know that I have," admitted the elder. "You've always +shown a fair degree of moderation, after all. What do you think of +taking up next? I mean after you have embraced your mother and sisters +at Mount Desert. Real estate? It seems to me that it is about time for +you to open out as a real-estate broker. Or did you ever think of +matrimony?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, not just in that way, sir," said the young man. "I shouldn't +quite like to regard it as a career, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you know +I've always contended that the affections could be made to combine +pleasure and profit. I wouldn't have a man marry for money,--that +would be rather bad,--but I don't see why, when it comes to falling in +love, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor +one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should say that the +chances of a quiet life with them were rather greater. They've always +had everything, and they wouldn't be so ambitious and uneasy. Don't +you think so?" +</P> + +<P> +"It would depend," said the son, "upon whether a girl's people had been +rich long enough to have given her position before she married. If +they hadn't, I don't see how she would be any better than a poor girl +in that respect." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich are on a level with +any of us nowadays. Money buys position at once. I don't say that it +isn't all right. The world generally knows what it's about, and knows +how to drive a bargain. I dare say it makes the new rich pay too much. +But there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. It is the romance, +the poetry of our age. It's the thing that chiefly strikes the +imagination. The Englishmen who come here are more curious about the +great new millionaires than about any one else, and they respect them +more. It's all very well. I don't complain of it." +</P> + +<P> +"And you would like a rich daughter-in-law, quite regardless, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, not quite so bad as that, Tom," said his father. "A little youth, +a little beauty, a little good sense and pretty behaviour--one mustn't +object to those things; and they go just as often with money as without +it. And I suppose I should like her people to be rather grammatical." +</P> + +<P> +"It seems to me that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "How can you +expect people who have been strictly devoted to business to be +grammatical? Isn't that rather too much?" +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps it is. Perhaps you're right. But I understood your mother to +say that those benefactors of hers, whom you met last summer, were very +passably grammatical." +</P> + +<P> +"The father isn't." +</P> + +<P> +The elder, who had been smoking with his profile toward his son, now +turned his face full upon him. "I didn't know you had seen him?" +</P> + +<P> +"I hadn't until to-day," said young Corey, with a little heightening of +his colour. "But I was walking down street this afternoon, and +happened to look round at a new house some one was putting up, and I +saw the whole family in the window. It appears that Mr. Lapham is +building the house." +</P> + +<P> +The elder Corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into the holder at his +elbow. "I am more and more convinced, the longer I know you, Tom, that +we are descended from Giles Corey. The gift of holding one's tongue +seems to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. I can't say +just how you would behave under peine forte et dure, but under ordinary +pressure you are certainly able to keep your own counsel. Why didn't +you mention this encounter at dinner? You weren't asked to plead to an +accusation of witchcraft." +</P> + +<P> +"No, not exactly," said the young man. "But I didn't quite see my way +to speaking of it. We had a good many other things before us." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's true. I suppose you wouldn't have mentioned it now if I +hadn't led up to it, would you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know, sir. It was rather on my mind to do so. Perhaps it was +I who led up to it." +</P> + +<P> +His father laughed. "Perhaps you did, Tom; perhaps you did. Your +mother would have known you were leading up to something, but I'll +confess that I didn't. What is it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing very definite. But do you know that in spite of his syntax I +rather liked him?" +</P> + +<P> +The father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's full +confidence was offered, Corey was not the man to ask it. "Well?" was +all that he said. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose that in a new country one gets to looking at people a little +out of our tradition; and I dare say that if I hadn't passed a winter +in Texas I might have found Colonel Lapham rather too much." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean that there are worse things in Texas?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not that exactly. I mean that I saw it wouldn't be quite fair to test +him by our standards." +</P> + +<P> +"This comes of the error which I have often deprecated," said the elder +Corey. "In fact I am always saying that the Bostonian ought never to +leave Boston. Then he knows--and then only--that there can BE no +standard but ours. But we are constantly going away, and coming back +with our convictions shaken to their foundations. One man goes to +England, and returns with the conception of a grander social life; +another comes home from Germany with the notion of a more searching +intellectual activity; a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdest +ideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the cowboys of +Texas, and tell us to our faces that we ought to try Papa Lapham by a +jury of his peers. It ought to be stopped--it ought, really. The +Bostonian who leaves Boston ought to be condemned to perpetual exile." +</P> + +<P> +The son suffered the father to reach his climax with smiling patience. +When he asked finally, "What are the characteristics of Papa Lapham +that place him beyond our jurisdiction?" the younger Corey crossed his +long legs, and leaned forward to take one of his knees between his +hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, sir, he bragged, rather." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't know that bragging should exempt him from the ordinary +processes. I've heard other people brag in Boston." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, not just in that personal way--not about money." +</P> + +<P> +"No, that was certainly different." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't mean," said the young fellow, with the scrupulosity which +people could not help observing and liking in him, "that it was more +than an indirect expression of satisfaction in the ability to spend." +</P> + +<P> +"No. I should be glad to express something of the kind myself, if the +facts would justify me." +</P> + +<P> +The son smiled tolerantly again. "But if he was enjoying his money in +that way, I didn't see why he shouldn't show his pleasure in it. It +might have been vulgar, but it wasn't sordid. And I don't know that it +was vulgar. Perhaps his successful strokes of business were the +romance of his life----" +</P> + +<P> +The father interrupted with a laugh. "The girl must be uncommonly +pretty. What did she seem to think of her father's brag?" +</P> + +<P> +"There were two of them," answered the son evasively. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, two! And is the sister pretty too?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not pretty, but rather interesting. She is like her mother." +</P> + +<P> +"Then the pretty one isn't the father's pet?" +</P> + +<P> +"I can't say, sir. I don't believe," added the young fellow, "that I +can make you see Colonel Lapham just as I did. He struck me as very +simple-hearted and rather wholesome. Of course he could be tiresome; +we all can; and I suppose his range of ideas is limited. But he is a +force, and not a bad one. If he hasn't got over being surprised at the +effect of rubbing his lamp." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, one could make out a case. I suppose you know what you are about, +Tom. But remember that we are Essex County people, and that in savour +we are just a little beyond the salt of the earth. I will tell you +plainly that I don't like the notion of a man who has rivalled the hues +of nature in her wildest haunts with the tints of his mineral paint; +but I don't say there are not worse men. He isn't to my taste, though +he might be ever so much to my conscience." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose," said the son, "that there is nothing really to be ashamed +of in mineral paint. People go into all sorts of things." +</P> + +<P> +His father took his cigarette from his mouth and once more looked his +son full in the face. "Oh, is THAT it?" +</P> + +<P> +"It has crossed my mind," admitted the son. "I must do something. +I've wasted time and money enough. I've seen much younger men all +through the West and South-west taking care of themselves. I don't +think I was particularly fit for anything out there, but I am ashamed +to come back and live upon you, sir." +</P> + +<P> +His father shook his head with an ironical sigh. "Ah, we shall never +have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a +parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It +strikes at the root of the whole feudal system. I really think you owe +me an apology, Tom. I supposed you wished to marry the girl's money, +and here you are, basely seeking to go into business with her father." +</P> + +<P> +Young Corey laughed again like a son who perceives that his father is a +little antiquated, but keeps a filial faith in his wit. "I don't know +that it's quite so bad as that; but the thing had certainly crossed my +mind. I don't know how it's to be approached, and I don't know that +it's at all possible. But I confess that I 'took to' Colonel Lapham +from the moment I saw him. He looked as if he 'meant business,' and I +mean business too." +</P> + +<P> +The father smoked thoughtfully. "Of course people do go into all sorts +of things, as you say, and I don't know that one thing is more ignoble +than another, if it's decent and large enough. In my time you would +have gone into the China trade or the India trade--though I didn't; and +a little later cotton would have been your manifest destiny--though it +wasn't mine; but now a man may do almost anything. The real-estate +business is pretty full. Yes, if you have a deep inward vocation for +it, I don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do. I fancy it's easy +enough approaching the matter. We will invite Papa Lapham to dinner, +and talk it over with him." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't think that would be exactly the way, sir," said the son, +smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness. +</P> + +<P> +"No? Why not?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid it would be a bad start. I don't think it would strike him +as business-like." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, we might say that if he were making the advances." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, perhaps you are right, Tom. What is your idea?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't a very clear one. It seems to me I ought to get some +business friend of ours, whose judgment he would respect, to speak a +good word for me." +</P> + +<P> +"Give you a character?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. And of course I must go to Colonel Lapham. My notion would be to +inquire pretty thoroughly about him, and then, if I liked the look of +things, to go right down to Republic Street and let him see what he +could do with me, if anything." +</P> + +<P> +"That sounds tremendously practical to me, Tom, though it may be just +the wrong way. When are you going down to Mount Desert?" +</P> + +<P> +"To-morrow, I think, sir," said the young man. "I shall turn it over +in my mind while I'm off." +</P> + +<P> +The father rose, showing something more than his son's height, with a +very slight stoop, which the son's figure had not. "Well," he said, +whimsically, "I admire your spirit, and I don't deny that it is +justified by necessity. It's a consolation to think that while I've +been spending and enjoying, I have been preparing the noblest future +for you--a future of industry and self-reliance. You never could draw, +but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint business shows that you +have inherited something of my feeling for colour." +</P> + +<P> +The son laughed once more, and waiting till his father was well on his +way upstairs, turned out the gas and then hurried after him and +preceded him into his chamber. He glanced over it to see that +everything was there, to his father's hand. Then he said, "Good night, +sir," and the elder responded, "Good night, my son," and the son went +to his own room. +</P> + +<P> +Over the mantel in the elder Corey's room hung a portrait which he had +painted of his own father, and now he stood a moment and looked at this +as if struck by something novel in it. The resemblance between his son +and the old India merchant, who had followed the trade from Salem to +Boston when the larger city drew it away from the smaller, must have +been what struck him. Grandfather and grandson had both the Roman nose +which appears to have flourished chiefly at the formative period of the +republic, and which occurs more rarely in the descendants of the +conscript fathers, though it still characterises the profiles of a good +many Boston ladies. Bromfield Corey had not inherited it, and he had +made his straight nose his defence when the old merchant accused him of +a want of energy. He said, "What could a man do whose unnatural father +had left his own nose away from him?" This amused but did not satisfy +the merchant. "You must do something," he said; "and it's for you to +choose. If you don't like the India trade, go into something else. +Or, take up law or medicine. No Corey yet ever proposed to do +nothing." "Ah, then, it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urged +the man who was then young, and who was now old, looking into the +somewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait. He had inherited as +little of the fierceness as of the nose, and there was nothing +predatory in his son either, though the aquiline beak had come down to +him in such force. Bromfield Corey liked his son Tom for the +gentleness which tempered his energy. +</P> + +<P> +"Well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his father's +portrait. "I will travel." "Travel? How long?" the keen eyes demanded. +"Oh, indefinitely. I won't be hard with you, father." He could see the +eyes soften, and the smile of yielding come over his father's face; the +merchant could not resist a son who was so much like his dead mother. +There was some vague understanding between them that Bromfield Corey +was to come back and go into business after a time, but he never did +so. He travelled about over Europe, and travelled handsomely, +frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself presented at +several courts, at a period when it was a distinction to do so. He had +always sketched, and with his father's leave he fixed himself at Rome, +where he remained studying art and rounding the being inherited from +his Yankee progenitors, till there was very little left of the +ancestral angularities. After ten years he came home and painted that +portrait of his father. It was very good, if a little amateurish, and +he might have made himself a name as a painter of portraits if he had +not had so much money. But he had plenty of money, though by this time +he was married and beginning to have a family. It was absurd for him +to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; +so he did not paint them at all. He continued a dilettante, never +quite abandoning his art, but working at it fitfully, and talking more +about it than working at it. He had his theory of Titian's method; and +now and then a Bostonian insisted upon buying a picture of him. After +a while he hung it more and more inconspicuously, and said +apologetically, "Oh yes! that's one of Bromfield Corey's things. It +has nice qualities, but it's amateurish." +</P> + +<P> +In process of time the money seemed less abundant. There were +shrinkages of one kind and another, and living had grown much more +expensive and luxurious. For many years he talked about going back to +Rome, but he never went, and his children grew up in the usual way. +Before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day spread at +Harvard, and then he had his son on his hands. The son made various +unsuccessful provisions for himself, and still continued upon his +father's hands, to their common dissatisfaction, though it was chiefly +the younger who repined. He had the Roman nose and the energy without +the opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father said to him, +"You ought not to have that nose, Tom; then you would do very well. +You would go and travel, as I did." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +LAPHAM and his wife continued talking after he had quelled the +disturbance in his daughters' room overhead; and their talk was not +altogether of the new house. +</P> + +<P> +"I tell you," he said, "if I had that fellow in the business with me I +would make a man of him." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Silas Lapham," returned his wife, "I do believe you've got +mineral paint on the brain. Do you suppose a fellow like young Corey, +brought up the way he's been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot +pole?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why not?" haughtily asked the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you don't know already, there's no use trying to tell you." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VI. +</H3> + +<P> +THE Coreys had always had a house at Nahant, but after letting it for a +season or two they found they could get on without it, and sold it at +the son's instance, who foresaw that if things went on as they were +going, the family would be straitened to the point of changing their +mode of life altogether. They began to be of the people of whom it was +said that they stayed in town very late; and when the ladies did go +away, it was for a brief summering in this place and that. The father +remained at home altogether; and the son joined them in the intervals +of his enterprises, which occurred only too often. +</P> + +<P> +At Bar Harbour, where he now went to find them, after his winter in +Texas, he confessed to his mother that there seemed no very good +opening there for him. He might do as well as Loring Stanton, but he +doubted if Stanton was doing very well. Then he mentioned the new +project which he had been thinking over. She did not deny that there +was something in it, but she could not think of any young man who had +gone into such a business as that, and it appeared to her that he might +as well go into a patent medicine or a stove-polish. +</P> + +<P> +"There was one of his hideous advertisements," she said, "painted on a +reef that we saw as we came down." +</P> + +<P> +Corey smiled. "Well, I suppose, if it was in a good state of +preservation, that is proof positive of the efficacy of the paint on +the hulls of vessels." +</P> + +<P> +"It's very distasteful to me, Tom," said his mother; and if there was +something else in her mind, she did not speak more plainly of it than +to add: "It's not only the kind of business, but the kind of people you +would be mixed up with." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought you didn't find them so very bad," suggested Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"I hadn't seen them in Nankeen Square then." +</P> + +<P> +"You can see them on the water side of Beacon Street when you go back." +</P> + +<P> +Then he told of his encounter with the Lapham family in their new +house. At the end his mother merely said, "It is getting very common +down there," and she did not try to oppose anything further to his +scheme. +</P> + +<P> +The young man went to see Colonel Lapham shortly after his return to +Boston. He paid his visit at Lapham's office, and if he had studied +simplicity in his summer dress he could not have presented himself in a +figure more to the mind of a practical man. His hands and neck still +kept the brown of the Texan suns and winds, and he looked as +business-like as Lapham himself. +</P> + +<P> +He spoke up promptly and briskly in the outer office, and caused the +pretty girl to look away from her copying at him. "Is Mr. Lapham in?" +he asked; and after that moment for reflection which an array of +book-keepers so addressed likes to give the inquirer, a head was lifted +from a ledger and nodded toward the inner office. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham had recognised the voice, and he was standing, in considerable +perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted +glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirt +sleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he +had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his +present address. He looked at the young man's face, as if he expected +him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair he had come upon. +</P> + +<P> +"Won't you sit down? How are you? You'll excuse me," he added, in brief +allusion to the shirt-sleeves. "I'm about roasted." +</P> + +<P> +Corey laughed. "I wish you'd let me take off MY coat." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, TAKE it off!" cried the Colonel, with instant pleasure. There is +something in human nature which causes the man in his shirt-sleeves to +wish all other men to appear in the same deshabille. +</P> + +<P> +"I will, if you ask me after I've talked with you two minutes," said +the young fellow, companionably pulling up the chair offered him toward +the desk where Lapham had again seated himself. "But perhaps you +haven't got two minutes to give me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I have," said the Colonel. "I was just going to knock off. I +can give you twenty, and then I shall have fifteen minutes to catch the +boat." +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Corey. "I want you to take me into the mineral paint +business." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel sat dumb. He twisted his thick neck, and looked round at +the door to see if it was shut. He would not have liked to have any of +those fellows outside hear him, but there is no saying what sum of +money he would not have given if his wife had been there to hear what +Corey had just said. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose," continued the young man, "I could have got several people +whose names you know to back my industry and sobriety, and say a word +for my business capacity. But I thought I wouldn't trouble anybody for +certificates till I found whether there was a chance, or the ghost of +one, of your wanting me. So I came straight to you." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham gathered himself together as well as he could. He had not yet +forgiven Corey for Mrs. Lapham's insinuation that he would feel himself +too good for the mineral paint business; and though he was dispersed by +that astounding shot at first, he was not going to let any one even +hypothetically despise his paint with impunity. "How do you think I am +going to take you on?" They took on hands at the works; and Lapham put +it as if Corey were a hand coming to him for employment. Whether he +satisfied himself by this or not, he reddened a little after he had +said it. +</P> + +<P> +Corey answered, ignorant of the offence: "I haven't a very clear idea, +I'm afraid; but I've been looking a little into the matter from the +outside." +</P> + +<P> +"I hope you hain't been paying any attention to that fellow's stuff in +the Events?" Lapham interrupted. Since Bartley's interview had +appeared, Lapham had regarded it with very mixed feelings. At first it +gave him a glow of secret pleasure, blended with doubt as to how his +wife would like the use Bartley had made of her in it. But she had not +seemed to notice it much, and Lapham had experienced the gratitude of +the man who escapes. Then his girls had begun to make fun of it; and +though he did not mind Penelope's jokes much, he did not like to see +that Irene's gentility was wounded. Business friends met him with the +kind of knowing smile about it that implied their sense of the +fraudulent character of its praise--the smile of men who had been there +and who knew how it was themselves. Lapham had his misgivings as to +how his clerks and underlings looked at it; he treated them with +stately severity for a while after it came out, and he ended by feeling +rather sore about it. He took it for granted that everybody had read +it. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what you mean," replied Corey, "I don't see the Events +regularly." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it was nothing. They sent a fellow down here to interview me, and +he got everything about as twisted as he could." +</P> + +<P> +"I believe they always do," said Corey. "I hadn't seen it. Perhaps it +came out before I got home." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps it did." +</P> + +<P> +"My notion of making myself useful to you was based on a hint I got +from one of your own circulars." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was proud of those circulars; he thought they read very well. +"What was that?" +</P> + +<P> +"I could put a little capital into the business," said Corey, with the +tentative accent of a man who chances a thing. "I've got a little +money, but I didn't imagine you cared for anything of that kind." +</P> + +<P> +"No, sir, I don't," returned the Colonel bluntly. "I've had one +partner, and one's enough." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," assented the young man, who doubtless had his own ideas as to +eventualities--or perhaps rather had the vague hopes of youth. "I +didn't come to propose a partnership. But I see that you are +introducing your paint into the foreign markets, and there I really +thought I might be of use to you, and to myself too." +</P> + +<P> +"How?" asked the Colonel scantly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I know two or three languages pretty well. I know French, and I +know German, and I've got a pretty fair sprinkling of Spanish." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean that you can talk them?" asked the Colonel, with the mingled +awe and slight that such a man feels for such accomplishments. "Yes; +and I can write an intelligible letter in either of them." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham rubbed his nose. "It's easy enough to get all the letters we +want translated." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," pursued Corey, not showing his discouragement if he felt any, +"I know the countries where you want to introduce this paint of yours. +I've been there. I've been in Germany and France and I've been in +South America and Mexico; I've been in Italy, of course. I believe I +could go to any of those countries and place it to advantage." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham had listened with a trace of persuasion in his face, but now he +shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"It's placing itself as fast as there's any call for it. It wouldn't +pay us to send anybody out to look after it. Your salary and expenses +would eat up about all we should make on it." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," returned the young man intrepidly, "if you had to pay me any +salary and expenses." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't propose to work for nothing?" +</P> + +<P> +"I propose to work for a commission." The Colonel was beginning to +shake his head again, but Corey hurried on. "I haven't come to you +without making some inquiries about the paint, and I know how it stands +with those who know best. I believe in it." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham lifted his head and looked at the young man, deeply moved. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the best paint in God's universe," he said with the solemnity of +prayer. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the best in the market," said Corey; and he repeated, "I believe +in it." +</P> + +<P> +"You believe in it," began the Colonel, and then he stopped. If there +had really been any purchasing power in money, a year's income would +have bought Mrs. Lapham's instant presence. He warmed and softened to +the young man in every way, not only because he must do so to any one +who believed in his paint, but because he had done this innocent person +the wrong of listening to a defamation of his instinct and good sense, +and had been willing to see him suffer for a purely supposititious +offence. +</P> + +<P> +Corey rose. +</P> + +<P> +"You mustn't let me outstay my twenty minutes," he said, taking out his +watch. "I don't expect you to give a decided answer on the spot. All +that I ask is that you'll consider my proposition." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't hurry," said Lapham. "Sit still! I want to tell you about this +paint," he added, in a voice husky with the feeling that his hearer +could not divine. "I want to tell you ALL about it." +</P> + +<P> +"I could walk with you to the boat," suggested the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"Never mind the boat! I can take the next one. Look here!" The Colonel +pulled open a drawer, as Corey sat down again, and took out a +photograph of the locality of the mine. "Here's where we get it. This +photograph don't half do the place justice," he said, as if the +imperfect art had slighted the features of a beloved face. "It's one +of the sightliest places in the country, and here's the very spot "--he +covered it with his huge forefinger--"where my father found that paint, +more than forty--years--ago. Yes, sir!" +</P> + +<P> +He went on, and told the story in unsparing detail, while his chance +for the boat passed unheeded, and the clerks in the outer office hung +up their linen office coats and put on their seersucker or flannel +street coats. The young lady went too, and nobody was left but the +porter, who made from time to time a noisy demonstration of fastening a +distant blind, or putting something in place. At last the Colonel +roused himself from the autobiographical delight of the history of his +paint. "Well, sir, that's the story." +</P> + +<P> +"It's an interesting story," said Corey, with a long breath, as they +rose together, and Lapham put on his coat. +</P> + +<P> +"That's what it is," said the Colonel. "Well!" he added, "I don't see +but what we've got to have another talk about this thing. It's a +surprise to me, and I don't see exactly how you're going to make it +pay." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm willing to take the chances," answered Corey. "As I said, I +believe in it. I should try South America first. I should try Chili." +</P> + +<P> +"Look here!" said Lapham, with his watch in his hand. "I like to get +things over. We've just got time for the six o'clock boat. Why don't +you come down with me to Nantasket? I can give you a bed as well as +not. And then we can finish up." +</P> + +<P> +The impatience of youth in Corey responded to the impatience of +temperament in his elder. "Why, I don't see why I shouldn't," he +allowed himself to say. "I confess I should like to have it finished +up myself, if it could be finished up in the right way." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we'll see. Dennis!" Lapham called to the remote porter, and the +man came. "Want to send any word home?" he asked Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"No; my father and I go and come as we like, without keeping account of +each other. If I don't come home, he knows that I'm not there. That's +all." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's convenient. You'll find you can't do that when you're +married. Never mind, Dennis," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +He had time to buy two newspapers on the wharf before he jumped on +board the steam-boat with Corey. "Just made it," he said; "and that's +what I like to do. I can't stand it to be aboard much more than a +minute before she shoves out." He gave one of the newspapers to Corey +as he spoke, and set him the example of catching up a camp-stool on +their way to that point on the boat which his experience had taught him +was the best. He opened his paper at once and began to run over its +news, while the young man watched the spectacular recession of the +city, and was vaguely conscious of the people about him, and of the gay +life of the water round the boat. The air freshened; the craft thinned +in number; they met larger sail, lagging slowly inward in the afternoon +light; the islands of the bay waxed and waned as the steamer approached +and left them behind. +</P> + +<P> +"I hate to see them stirring up those Southern fellows again," said the +Colonel, speaking into the paper on his lap. "Seems to me it's time to +let those old issues go." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the young man. "What are they doing now?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, stirring up the Confederate brigadiers in Congress. I don't like +it. Seems to me, if our party hain't got any other stock-in-trade, we +better shut up shop altogether." Lapham went on, as he scanned his +newspaper, to give his ideas of public questions, in a fragmentary way, +while Corey listened patiently, and waited for him to come back to +business. He folded up his paper at last, and stuffed it into his coat +pocket. "There's one thing I always make it a rule to do," he said, +"and that is to give my mind a complete rest from business while I'm +going down on the boat. I like to get the fresh air all through me, +soul and body. I believe a man can give his mind a rest, just the same +as he can give his legs a rest, or his back. All he's got to do is to +use his will-power. Why, I suppose, if I hadn't adopted some such rule, +with the strain I've had on me for the last ten years, I should 'a' +been a dead man long ago. That's the reason I like a horse. You've +got to give your mind to the horse; you can't help it, unless you want +to break your neck; but a boat's different, and there you got to use +your will-power. You got to take your mind right up and put it where +you want it. I make it a rule to read the paper on the boat----Hold +on!" he interrupted himself to prevent Corey from paying his fare to +the man who had come round for it. "I've got tickets. And when I get +through the paper, I try to get somebody to talk to, or I watch the +people. It's an astonishing thing to me where they all come from. +I've been riding up and down on these boats for six or seven years, and +I don't know but very few of the faces I see on board. Seems to be a +perfectly fresh lot every time. Well, of course! Town's full of +strangers in the summer season, anyway, and folks keep coming down from +the country. They think it's a great thing to get down to the beach, +and they've all heard of the electric light on the water, and they want +to see it. But you take faces now! The astonishing thing to me is not +what a face tells, but what it don't tell. When you think of what a +man is, or a woman is, and what most of 'em have been through before +they get to be thirty, it seems as if their experience would burn right +through. But it don't. I like to watch the couples, and try to make +out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, or better +be. But half the time I can't make any sort of guess. Of course, +where they're young and kittenish, you can tell; but where they're +anyways on, you can't. Heigh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I think you're right," said Corey, not perfectly reconciled to +philosophy in the place of business, but accepting it as he must. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't suppose it was meant we should know +what was in each other's minds. It would take a man out of his own +hands. As long as he's in his own hands, there's some hopes of his +doing something with himself; but if a fellow has been found out--even +if he hasn't been found out to be so very bad--it's pretty much all up +with him. No, sir. I don't want to know people through and through." +</P> + +<P> +The greater part of the crowd on board--and, of course, the boat was +crowded--looked as if they might not only be easily but safely known. +There was little style and no distinction among them; they were people +who were going down to the beach for the fun or the relief of it, and +were able to afford it. In face they were commonplace, with nothing +but the American poetry of vivid purpose to light them up, where they +did not wholly lack fire. But they were nearly all shrewd and +friendly-looking, with an apparent readiness for the humorous intimacy +native to us all. The women were dandified in dress, according to +their means and taste, and the men differed from each other in degrees +of indifference to it. To a straw-hatted population, such as ours is +in summer, no sort of personal dignity is possible. We have not even +the power over observers which comes from the fantasticality of an +Englishman when he discards the conventional dress. In our straw hats +and our serge or flannel sacks we are no more imposing than a crowd of +boys. +</P> + +<P> +"Some day," said Lapham, rising as the boat drew near the wharf of the +final landing, "there's going to be an awful accident on these boats. +Just look at that jam." +</P> + +<P> +He meant the people thickly packed on the pier, and under strong +restraint of locks and gates, to prevent them from rushing on board the +boat and possessing her for the return trip before she had landed her +Nantasket passengers. +</P> + +<P> +"Overload 'em every time," he continued, with a sort of dry, impersonal +concern at the impending calamity, as if it could not possibly include +him. "They take about twice as many as they ought to carry, and about +ten times as many as they could save if anything happened. Yes, sir, +it's bound to come. Hello! There's my girl!" He took out his folded +newspaper and waved it toward a group of phaetons and barouches drawn +up on the pier a little apart from the pack of people, and a lady in +one of them answered with a flourish of her parasol. +</P> + +<P> +When he had made his way with his guest through the crowd, she began to +speak to her father before she noticed Corey. "Well, Colonel, you've +improved your last chance. We've been coming to every boat since four +o'clock,--or Jerry has,--and I told mother that I would come myself +once, and see if I couldn't fetch you; and if I failed, you could walk +next time. You're getting perfectly spoiled." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel enjoyed letting her scold him to the end before he said, +with a twinkle of pride in his guest and satisfaction in her probably +being able to hold her own against any discomfiture, "I've brought Mr. +Corey down for the night with me, and I was showing him things all the +way, and it took time." +</P> + +<P> +The young fellow was at the side of the open beach-wagon, making a +quick bow, and Penelope Lapham was cozily drawling, "Oh, how do you do, +Mr. Corey?" before the Colonel had finished his explanation. +</P> + +<P> +"Get right in there, alongside of Miss Lapham, Mr. Corey," he said, +pulling himself up into the place beside the driver. "No, no," he had +added quickly, at some signs of polite protest in the young man, "I +don't give up the best place to anybody. Jerry, suppose you let me +have hold of the leathers a minute." +</P> + +<P> +This was his way of taking the reins from the driver; and in half the +time he specified, he had skilfully turned the vehicle on the pier, +among the crooked lines and groups of foot-passengers, and was spinning +up the road toward the stretch of verandaed hotels and restaurants in +the sand along the shore. "Pretty gay down here," he said, indicating +all this with a turn of his whip, as he left it behind him. "But I've +got about sick of hotels; and this summer I made up my mind that I'd +take a cottage. Well, Pen, how are the folks?" He looked half-way +round for her answer, and with the eye thus brought to bear upon her he +was able to give her a wink of supreme content. The Colonel, with no +sort of ulterior design, and nothing but his triumph over Mrs. Lapham +definitely in his mind, was feeling, as he would have said, about right. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The girl smiled a daughter's amusement at her father's boyishness. "I +don't think there's much change since morning. Did Irene have a +headache when you left?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, there's that to report." +</P> + +<P> +"Pshaw!" said the Colonel with vexation in his tone. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry Miss Irene isn't well," said Corey politely. +</P> + +<P> +"I think she must have got it from walking too long on the beach. The +air is so cool here that you forget how hot the sun is." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's true," assented Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"A good night's rest will make it all right," suggested the Colonel, +without looking round. "But you girls have got to look out." +</P> + +<P> +"If you're fond of walking," said Corey, "I suppose you find the beach +a temptation." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it isn't so much that," returned the girl. "You keep walking on +and on because it's so smooth and straight before you. We've been here +so often that we know it all by heart--just how it looks at high tide, +and how it looks at low tide, and how it looks after a storm. We're as +well acquainted with the crabs and stranded jelly-fish as we are with +the children digging in the sand and the people sitting under +umbrellas. I think they're always the same, all of them." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel left the talk to the young people. When he spoke next it +was to say, "Well, here we are!" and he turned from the highway and +drove up in front of a brown cottage with a vermilion roof, and a group +of geraniums clutching the rock that cropped up in the loop formed by +the road. It was treeless and bare all round, and the ocean, +unnecessarily vast, weltered away a little more than a stone's-cast +from the cottage. A hospitable smell of supper filled the air, and +Mrs. Lapham was on the veranda, with that demand in her eyes for her +belated husband's excuses, which she was obliged to check on her tongue +at sight of Corey. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VII. +</H3> + +<P> +THE exultant Colonel swung himself lightly down from his seat. "I've +brought Mr. Corey with me," he nonchalantly explained. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham made their guest welcome, and the Colonel showed him to his +room, briefly assuring himself that there was nothing wanting there. +Then he went to wash his own hands, carelessly ignoring the eagerness +with which his wife pursued him to their chamber. +</P> + +<P> +"What gave Irene a headache?" he asked, making himself a fine lather +for his hairy paws. +</P> + +<P> +"Never you mind Irene," promptly retorted his wife. "How came he to +come? Did you press him? If you DID, I'll never forgive you, Silas!" +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel laughed, and his wife shook him by the shoulder to make him +laugh lower. "'Sh!" she whispered. "Do you want him to hear EVERY +thing? DID you urge him?" +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel laughed the more. He was going to get all the good out of +this. "No, I didn't urge him. Seemed to want to come." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe it. Where did you meet him?" +</P> + +<P> +"At the office." +</P> + +<P> +"What office?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mine." +</P> + +<P> +"Nonsense! What was he doing there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nothing much." +</P> + +<P> +"What did he come for?" "Come for? Oh! he SAID he wanted to go into the +mineral paint business." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham dropped into a chair, and watched his bulk shaken with +smothered laughter. "Silas Lapham," she gasped, "if you try to get off +any more of those things on me----" +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel applied himself to the towel. "Had a notion he could work +it in South America. I don't know what he's up to." +</P> + +<P> +"Never mind!" cried his wife. "I'll get even with you YET." +</P> + +<P> +"So I told him he had better come down and talk it over," continued the +Colonel, in well-affected simplicity. "I knew he wouldn't touch it +with a ten-foot pole." +</P> + +<P> +"Go on!" threatened Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Right thing to do, wa'n't it?" +</P> + +<P> +A tap was heard at the door, and Mrs. Lapham answered it. A maid +announced supper. "Very well," she said, "come to tea now. But I'll +make you pay for this, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +Penelope had gone to her sister's room as soon as she entered the house. +</P> + +<P> +"Is your head any better, 'Rene?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, a little," came a voice from the pillows. "But I shall not come +to tea. I don't want anything. If I keep still, I shall be all right +by morning." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm sorry," said the elder sister. "He's come down with father." +</P> + +<P> +"He hasn't! Who?" cried Irene, starting up in simultaneous denial and +demand. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well, if you say he hasn't, what's the use of my telling you who?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, how can you treat me so!" moaned the sufferer. "What do you mean, +Pen?" +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I'd better not tell you," said Penelope, watching her like a +cat playing with a mouse. "If you're not coming to tea, it would just +excite you for nothing." +</P> + +<P> +The mouse moaned and writhed upon the bed. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I wouldn't treat YOU so!" +</P> + +<P> +The cat seated herself across the room, and asked quietly-- +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Well, what could you do if it WAS Mr. Corey? You couldn't come to tea, +you say. But HE'LL excuse you. I've told him you had a headache. +Why, of course you can't come! It would be too barefaced. But you +needn't be troubled, Irene; I'll do my best to make the time pass +pleasantly for him." Here the cat gave a low titter, and the mouse +girded itself up with a momentary courage and self-respect. +</P> + +<P> +"I should think you would be ashamed to come here and tease me so." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why you shouldn't believe me," argued Penelope. "Why +shouldn't he come down with father, if father asked him? and he'd be +sure to if he thought of it. I don't see any p'ints about that frog +that's any better than any other frog." +</P> + +<P> +The sense of her sister's helplessness was too much for the tease; she +broke down in a fit of smothered laughter, which convinced her victim +that it was nothing but an ill-timed joke. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Pen, I wouldn't use you so," she whimpered. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope threw herself on the bed beside her. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, poor Irene! He IS here. It's a solemn fact." And she caressed and +soothed her sister, while she choked with laughter. "You must get up +and come out. I don't know what brought him here, but here he is." +</P> + +<P> +"It's too late now," said Irene desolately. Then she added, with a +wilder despair: "What a fool I was to take that walk!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," coaxed her sister, "come out and get some tea. The tea will do +you good." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no; I can't come. But send me a cup here." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, and then perhaps you can see him later in the evening." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall not see him at all." +</P> + +<P> +An hour after Penelope came back to her sister's room and found her +before her glass. "You might as well have kept still, and been well by +morning, 'Rene," she said. "As soon as we were done father said, +'Well, Mr. Corey and I have got to talk over a little matter of +business, and we'll excuse you, ladies.' He looked at mother in a way +that I guess was pretty hard to bear. 'Rene, you ought to have heard +the Colonel swelling at supper. It would have made you feel that all +he said the other day was nothing." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham suddenly opened the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, see here, Pen," she said, as she closed it behind her, "I've had +just as much as I can stand from your father, and if you don't tell me +this instant what it all means----" +</P> + +<P> +She left the consequences to imagination, and Penelope replied with her +mock soberness-- +</P> + +<P> +"Well, the Colonel does seem to be on his high horse, ma'am. But you +mustn't ask me what his business with Mr. Corey is, for I don't know. +All that I know is that I met them at the landing, and that they +conversed all the way down--on literary topics." +</P> + +<P> +"Nonsense! What do you think it is?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you want my candid opinion, I think this talk about business +is nothing but a blind. It seems a pity Irene shouldn't have been up +to receive him," she added. +</P> + +<P> +Irene cast a mute look of imploring at her mother, who was too much +preoccupied to afford her the protection it asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Your father said he wanted to go into the business with him." +</P> + +<P> +Irene's look changed to a stare of astonishment and mystification, but +Penelope preserved her imperturbability. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it's a lucrative business, I believe." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't believe a word of it!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "And so I +told your father." +</P> + +<P> +"Did it seem to convince him?" inquired Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother did not reply. "I know one thing," she said. "He's got to +tell me every word, or there'll be no sleep for him THIS night." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, breaking down in one of her queer laughs, +"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you were right." +</P> + +<P> +"Go on and dress, Irene," ordered her mother, "and then you and Pen +come out into the parlour. They can have just two hours for business, +and then we must all be there to receive him. You haven't got headache +enough to hurt you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it's all gone now," said the girl. +</P> + +<P> +At the end of the limit she had given the Colonel, Mrs. Lapham looked +into the dining-room, which she found blue with his smoke. +</P> + +<P> +"I think you gentlemen will find the parlour pleasanter now, and we can +give it up to you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no, you needn't," said her husband. "We've got about through." +Corey was already standing, and Lapham rose too. "I guess we can join +the ladies now. We can leave that little point till to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +Both of the young ladies were in the parlour when Corey entered with +their father, and both were frankly indifferent to the few books and +the many newspapers scattered about on the table where the large lamp +was placed. But after Corey had greeted Irene he glanced at the novel +under his eye, and said, in the dearth that sometimes befalls people at +such times: "I see you're reading Middlemarch. Do you like George +Eliot?" +</P> + +<P> +"Who?" asked the girl. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope interposed. "I don't believe Irene's read it yet. I've just +got it out of the library; I heard so much talk about it. I wish she +would let you find out a little about the people for yourself," she +added. But here her father struck in-- +</P> + +<P> +"I can't get the time for books. It's as much as I can do to keep up +with the newspapers; and when night comes, I'm tired, and I'd rather go +out to the theatre, or a lecture, if they've got a good stereopticon to +give you views of the places. But I guess we all like a play better +than 'most anything else. I want something that'll make me laugh. I +don't believe in tragedy. I think there's enough of that in real life +without putting it on the stage. Seen 'Joshua Whitcomb'?" +</P> + +<P> +The whole family joined in the discussion, and it appeared that they +all had their opinions of the plays and actors. Mrs. Lapham brought +the talk back to literature. "I guess Penelope does most of our +reading." +</P> + +<P> +"Now, mother, you're not going to put it all on me!" said the girl, in +comic protest. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother laughed, and then added, with a sigh: "I used to like to get +hold of a good book when I was a girl; but we weren't allowed to read +many novels in those days. My mother called them all LIES. And I +guess she wasn't so very far wrong about some of them." +</P> + +<P> +"They're certainly fictions," said Corey, smiling. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we do buy a good many books, first and last," said the Colonel, +who probably had in mind the costly volumes which they presented to one +another on birthdays and holidays. "But I get about all the reading I +want in the newspapers. And when the girls want a novel, I tell 'em to +get it out of the library. That's what the library's for. Phew!" he +panted, blowing away the whole unprofitable subject. "How close you +women-folks like to keep a room! You go down to the sea-side or up to +the mountains for a change of air, and then you cork yourselves into a +room so tight you don't have any air at all. Here! You girls get on +your bonnets, and go and show Mr. Corey the view of the hotels from the +rocks." +</P> + +<P> +Corey said that he should be delighted. The girls exchanged looks with +each other, and then with their mother. Irene curved her pretty chin +in comment upon her father's incorrigibility, and Penelope made a droll +mouth, but the Colonel remained serenely content with his finesse. "I +got 'em out of the way," he said, as soon as they were gone, and before +his wife had time to fall upon him, "because I've got through my talk +with him, and now I want to talk with YOU. It's just as I said, +Persis; he wants to go into the business with me." +</P> + +<P> +"It's lucky for you," said his wife, meaning that now he would not be +made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. But she was too intensely +interested to pursue that matter further. "What in the world do you +suppose he means by it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I should judge by his talk that he had been trying a good many +different things since he left college, and he hain't found just the +thing he likes--or the thing that likes him. It ain't so easy. And +now he's got an idea that he can take hold of the paint and push it in +other countries--push it in Mexico and push it in South America. He's +a splendid Spanish scholar,"--this was Lapham's version of Corey's +modest claim to a smattering of the language,--"and he's been among the +natives enough to know their ways. And he believes in the paint," +added the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess he believes in something else besides the paint," said Mrs. +Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Silas Lapham, if you can't see NOW that he's after Irene, I +don't know what ever CAN open your eyes. That's all." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel pretended to give the idea silent consideration, as if it +had not occurred to him before. "Well, then, all I've got to say is, +that he's going a good way round. I don't say you're wrong, but if +it's Irene, I don't see why he should want to go off to South America +to get her. And that's what he proposes to do. I guess there's some +paint about it too, Persis. He says he believes in it,"--the Colonel +devoutly lowered his voice,--"and he's willing to take the agency on +his own account down there, and run it for a commission on what he can +sell." +</P> + +<P> +"Of course! He isn't going to take hold of it any way so as to feel +beholden to you. He's got too much pride for that." +</P> + +<P> +"He ain't going to take hold of it at all, if he don't mean paint in +the first place and Irene afterward. I don't object to him, as I know, +either way, but the two things won't mix; and I don't propose he shall +pull the wool over my eyes--or anybody else. But, as far as heard +from, up to date, he means paint first, last, and all the time. At any +rate, I'm going to take him on that basis. He's got some pretty good +ideas about it, and he's been stirred up by this talk, just now, about +getting our manufactures into the foreign markets. There's an +overstock in everything, and we've got to get rid of it, or we've got +to shut down till the home demand begins again. We've had two or three +such flurries before now, and they didn't amount to much. They say we +can't extend our commerce under the high tariff system we've got now, +because there ain't any sort of reciprocity on our side,--we want to +have the other fellows show all the reciprocity,--and the English have +got the advantage of us every time. I don't know whether it's so or +not; but I don't see why it should apply to my paint. Anyway, he wants +to try it, and I've about made up my mind to let him. Of course I +ain't going to let him take all the risk. I believe in the paint TOO, +and I shall pay his expenses anyway." +</P> + +<P> +"So you want another partner after all?" Mrs. Lapham could not forbear +saying. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, if that's your idea of a partner. It isn't mine," returned her +husband dryly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you've made up your mind, Si, I suppose you're ready for +advice," said Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel enjoyed this. "Yes, I am. What have you got to say +against it?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I've got anything. I'm satisfied if you are." +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" +</P> + +<P> +"When is he going to start for South America?" +</P> + +<P> +"I shall take him into the office a while. He'll get off some time in +the winter. But he's got to know the business first." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed! Are you going to take him to board in the family?" +</P> + +<P> +"What are you after, Persis?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nothing! I presume he will feel free to visit in the family, even +if he don't board with us." +</P> + +<P> +"I presume he will." +</P> + +<P> +"And if he don't use his privileges, do you think he'll be a fit person +to manage your paint in South America?" +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel reddened consciously. "I'm not taking him on that basis." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, you are! You may pretend you ain't to yourself, but you +mustn't pretend so to me. Because I know you." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel laughed. "Pshaw!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham continued: "I don't see any harm in hoping that he'll take +a fancy to her. But if you really think it won't do to mix the two +things, I advise you not to take Mr. Corey into the business. It will +do all very well if he DOES take a fancy to her; but if he don't, you +know how you'll feel about it. And I know you well enough, Silas, to +know that you can't do him justice if that happens. And I don't think +it's right you should take this step unless you're pretty sure. I can +see that you've set your heart on this thing." +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't set my heart on it at all," protested Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"And if you can't bring it about, you're going to feel unhappy over +it," pursued his wife, regardless of his protest. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, very well," he said. "If you know more about what's in my mind +than I do, there's no use arguing, as I can see." +</P> + +<P> +He got up, to carry off his consciousness, and sauntered out of the +door on to his piazza. He could see the young people down on the +rocks, and his heart swelled in his breast. He had always said that he +did not care what a man's family was, but the presence of young Corey +as an applicant to him for employment, as his guest, as the possible +suitor of his daughter, was one of the sweetest flavours that he had +yet tasted in his success. He knew who the Coreys were very well, and, +in his simple, brutal way, he had long hated their name as a symbol of +splendour which, unless he should live to see at least three +generations of his descendants gilded with mineral paint, he could not +hope to realise in his own. He was acquainted in a business way with +the tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many +things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's +money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could +not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. +Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the +tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything +that was offensively aristocratic. He had bristled up aggressively at +the name when his wife told how she had made the acquaintance of the +fellow's family the summer before, and he had treated the notion of +young Corey's caring for Irene with the contempt which such a +ridiculous superstition deserved. He had made up his mind about young +Corey beforehand; yet when he met him he felt an instant liking for +him, which he frankly acknowledged, and he had begun to assume the +burden of his wife's superstition, of which she seemed now ready to +accuse him of being the inventor. +</P> + +<P> +Nothing had moved his thick imagination like this day's events since +the girl who taught him spelling and grammar in the school at +Lumberville had said she would have him for her husband. +</P> + +<P> +The dark figures, stationary on the rocks, began to move, and he could +see that they were coming toward the house. He went indoors, so as not +to appear to have been watching them. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VIII. +</H3> + +<P> +A WEEK after she had parted with her son at Bar Harbour, Mrs. Corey +suddenly walked in upon her husband in their house in Boston. He was +at breakfast, and he gave her the patronising welcome with which the +husband who has been staying in town all summer receives his wife when +she drops down upon him from the mountains or the sea-side. For a +little moment she feels herself strange in the house, and suffers +herself to be treated like a guest, before envy of his comfort vexes +her back into possession and authority. Mrs. Corey was a lady, and she +did not let her envy take the form of open reproach. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Anna, you find me here in the luxury you left me to. How did +you leave the girls?" +</P> + +<P> +"The girls were well," said Mrs. Corey, looking absently at her +husband's brown velvet coat, in which he was so handsome. No man had +ever grown grey more beautifully. His hair, while not remaining dark +enough to form a theatrical contrast with his moustache, was yet some +shades darker, and, in becoming a little thinner, it had become a +little more gracefully wavy. His skin had the pearly tint which that +of elderly men sometimes assumes, and the lines which time had traced +upon it were too delicate for the name of wrinkles. He had never had +any personal vanity, and there was no consciousness in his good looks +now. +</P> + +<P> +"I am glad of that. The boy I have with me," he returned; "that is, +when he IS with me." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, where is he?" demanded the mother. +</P> + +<P> +"Probably carousing with the boon Lapham somewhere. He left me +yesterday afternoon to go and offer his allegiance to the Mineral Paint +King, and I haven't seen him since." +</P> + +<P> +"Bromfield!" cried Mrs. Corey. "Why didn't you stop him?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, my dear, I'm not sure that it isn't a very good thing." +</P> + +<P> +"A good thing? It's horrid!" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I don't think so. It's decent. Tom had found out--without +consulting the landscape, which I believe proclaims it everywhere----" +</P> + +<P> +"Hideous!" +</P> + +<P> +"That it's really a good thing; and he thinks that he has some ideas in +regard to its dissemination in the parts beyond seas." +</P> + +<P> +"Why shouldn't he go into something else?" lamented the mother. +</P> + +<P> +"I believe he has gone into nearly everything else and come out of it. +So there is a chance of his coming out of this. But as I had nothing +to suggest in place of it, I thought it best not to interfere. In +fact, what good would my telling him that mineral paint was nasty have +done? I dare say YOU told him it was nasty." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes! I did." +</P> + +<P> +"And you see with what effect, though he values your opinion three +times as much as he values mine. Perhaps you came up to tell him again +that it was nasty?" +</P> + +<P> +"I feel very unhappy about it. He is throwing himself away. Yes, I +should like to prevent it if I could!" +</P> + +<P> +The father shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"If Lapham hasn't prevented it, I fancy it's too late. But there may +be some hopes of Lapham. As for Tom's throwing himself away, I don't +know. There's no question but he is one of the best fellows under the +sun. He's tremendously energetic, and he has plenty of the kind of +sense which we call horse; but he isn't brilliant. No, Tom is not +brilliant. I don't think he would get on in a profession, and he's +instinctively kept out of everything of the kind. But he has got to do +something. What shall he do? He says mineral paint, and really I don't +see why he shouldn't. If money is fairly and honestly earned, why +should we pretend to care what it comes out of, when we don't really +care? That superstition is exploded everywhere." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it isn't the paint alone," said Mrs. Corey; and then she +perceptibly arrested herself, and made a diversion in continuing: "I +wish he had married some one." +</P> + +<P> +"With money?" suggested her husband. "From time to time I have +attempted Tom's corruption from that side, but I suspect Tom has a +conscience against it, and I rather like him for it. I married for +love myself," said Corey, looking across the table at his wife. +</P> + +<P> +She returned his look tolerantly, though she felt it right to say, +"What nonsense!" +</P> + +<P> +"Besides," continued her husband, "if you come to money, there is the +paint princess. She will have plenty." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that's the worst of it," sighed the mother. "I suppose I could +get on with the paint----" +</P> + +<P> +"But not with the princess? I thought you said she was a very pretty, +well-behaved girl?" +</P> + +<P> +"She is very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there is nothing of +her. She is insipid; she is very insipid." +</P> + +<P> +"But Tom seemed to like her flavour, such as it was?" +</P> + +<P> +"How can I tell? We were under a terrible obligation to them, and I +naturally wished him to be polite to them. In fact, I asked him to be +so." +</P> + +<P> +"And he was too polite." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't say that he was. But there is no doubt that the child is +extremely pretty." +</P> + +<P> +"Tom says there are two of them. Perhaps they will neutralise each +other." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, there is another daughter," assented Mrs. Corey. "I don't see +how you can joke about such things, Bromfield," she added. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't either, my dear, to tell you the truth. My hardihood +surprises me. Here is a son of mine whom I see reduced to making his +living by a shrinkage in values. It's very odd," interjected Corey, +"that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never +hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real +estate--all those values shrink abominably. Perhaps it might be argued +that one should put all his values into pictures; I've got a good many +of mine there." +</P> + +<P> +"Tom needn't earn his living," said Mrs. Corey, refusing her husband's +jest. "There's still enough for all of us." +</P> + +<P> +"That is what I have sometimes urged upon Tom. I have proved to him +that with economy, and strict attention to business, he need do nothing +as long as he lives. Of course he would be somewhat restricted, and it +would cramp the rest of us; but it is a world of sacrifices and +compromises. He couldn't agree with me, and he was not in the least +moved by the example of persons of quality in Europe, which I alleged +in support of the life of idleness. It appears that he wishes to do +something--to do something for himself. I am afraid that Tom is +selfish." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey smiled wanly. Thirty years before, she had married the rich +young painter in Rome, who said so much better things than he +painted--charming things, just the things to please the fancy of a girl +who was disposed to take life a little too seriously and practically. +She saw him in a different light when she got him home to Boston; but +he had kept on saying the charming things, and he had not done much +else. In fact, he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. It was a +good trait in him that he was not actively but only passively +extravagant. He was not adventurous with his money; his tastes were as +simple as an Italian's; he had no expensive habits. In the process of +time he had grown to lead a more and more secluded life. It was hard +to get him out anywhere, even to dinner. His patience with their +narrowing circumstances had a pathos which she felt the more the more +she came into charge of their joint life. At times it seemed too bad +that the children and their education and pleasures should cost so +much. She knew, besides, that if it had not been for them she would +have gone back to Rome with him, and lived princely there for less than +it took to live respectably in Boston. +</P> + +<P> +"Tom hasn't consulted me," continued his father, "but he has consulted +other people. And he has arrived at the conclusion that mineral paint +is a good thing to go into. He has found out all about it, and about +its founder or inventor. It's quite impressive to hear him talk. And +if he must do something for himself, I don't see why his egotism +shouldn't as well take that form as another. Combined with the paint +princess, it isn't so agreeable; but that's only a remote possibility, +for which your principal ground is your motherly solicitude. But even +if it were probable and imminent, what could you do? The chief +consolation that we American parents have in these matters is that we +can do nothing. If we were Europeans, even English, we should take +some cognisance of our children's love affairs, and in some measure +teach their young affections how to shoot. But it is our custom to +ignore them until they have shot, and then they ignore us. We are +altogether too delicate to arrange the marriages of our children; and +when they have arranged them we don't like to say anything, for fear we +should only make bad worse. The right way is for us to school +ourselves to indifference. That is what the young people have to do +elsewhere, and that is the only logical result of our position here. +It is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we don't interfere +with." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, people do interfere with their children's marriages very often," +said Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make it disagreeable +for themselves if the marriages go on in spite of them, as they're +pretty apt to do. Now, my idea is that I ought to cut Tom off with a +shilling. That would be very simple, and it would be economical. But +you would never consent, and Tom wouldn't mind it." +</P> + +<P> +"I think our whole conduct in regard to such things is wrong," said +Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, very likely. But our whole civilisation is based upon it. And +who is going to make a beginning? To which father in our acquaintance +shall I go and propose an alliance for Tom with his daughter? I should +feel like an ass. And will you go to some mother, and ask her sons in +marriage for our daughters? You would feel like a goose. No; the only +motto for us is, Hands off altogether." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall certainly speak to Tom when the time comes," said Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"And I shall ask leave to be absent from your discomfiture, my dear," +answered her husband. +</P> + +<P> +The son returned that afternoon, and confessed his surprise at finding +his mother in Boston. He was so frank that she had not quite the +courage to confess in turn why she had come, but trumped up an excuse. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, mother," he said promptly, "I have made an engagement with Mr. +Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"Have you, Tom?" she asked faintly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. For the present I am going to have charge of his foreign +correspondence, and if I see my way to the advantage I expect to find +in it, I am going out to manage that side of his business in South +America and Mexico. He's behaved very handsomely about it. He says +that if it appears for our common interest, he shall pay me a salary as +well as a commission. I've talked with Uncle Jim, and he thinks it's a +good opening." +</P> + +<P> +"Your Uncle Jim does?" queried Mrs. Corey in amaze. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; I consulted him the whole way through, and I've acted on his +advice." +</P> + +<P> +This seemed an incomprehensible treachery on her brother's part. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; I thought you would like to have me. And besides, I couldn't +possibly have gone to any one so well fitted to advise me." +</P> + +<P> +His mother said nothing. In fact, the mineral paint business, however +painful its interest, was, for the moment, superseded by a more +poignant anxiety. She began to feel her way cautiously toward this. +</P> + +<P> +"Have you been talking about your business with Mr. Lapham all night?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, pretty much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh. "I went to +see him yesterday afternoon, after I had gone over the whole ground +with Uncle Jim, and Mr. Lapham asked me to go down with him and finish +up." +</P> + +<P> +"Down?" repeated Mrs. Corey. "Yes, to Nantasket. He has a cottage +down there." +</P> + +<P> +"At Nantasket?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows a little. "What in the +world can a cottage at Nantasket be like?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, very much like a 'cottage' anywhere. It has the usual allowance +of red roof and veranda. There are the regulation rocks by the sea; +and the big hotels on the beach about a mile off, flaring away with +electric lights and roman-candles at night. We didn't have them at +Nahant." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said his mother. "Is Mrs. Lapham well? And her daughter?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I think so," said the young man. "The young ladies walked me +down to the rocks in the usual way after dinner, and then I came back +and talked paint with Mr. Lapham till midnight. We didn't settle +anything till this morning coming up on the boat." +</P> + +<P> +"What sort of people do they seem to be at home?" +</P> + +<P> +"What sort? Well, I don't know that I noticed." Mrs. Corey permitted +herself the first part of a sigh of relief; and her son laughed, but +apparently not at her. "They're just reading Middlemarch. They say +there's so much talk about it. Oh, I suppose they're very good people. +They seemed to be on very good terms with each other." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose it's the plain sister who's reading Middlemarch." +</P> + +<P> +"Plain? Is she plain?" asked the young man, as if searching his +consciousness. "Yes, it's the older one who does the reading, +apparently. But I don't believe that even she overdoes it. They like +to talk better. They reminded me of Southern people in that." The +young man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions of the Lapham +family. "The living, as the country people call it, is tremendously +good. The Colonel--he's a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's +coffee, as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, though I +believe it was merely inspired by her. And there was everything in the +house that money could buy. But money has its limitations." +</P> + +<P> +This was a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realise more and more +unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring her a certain +comfort in its application to the Laphams. "Yes, there is a point +where taste has to begin," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"They seemed to want to apologise to me for not having more books," +said Corey. "I don't know why they should. The Colonel said they +bought a good many books, first and last; but apparently they don't +take them to the sea-side." +</P> + +<P> +"I dare say they NEVER buy a NEW book. I've met some of these moneyed +people lately, and they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then +borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper editions." +</P> + +<P> +"I fancy that's the way with the Lapham family," said the young man, +smilingly. "But they are very good people. The other daughter is +humorous." +</P> + +<P> +"Humorous?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows in some perplexity. "Do you +mean like Mrs. Sayre?" she asked, naming the lady whose name must come +into every Boston mind when humour is mentioned. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no; nothing like that. She never says anything that you can +remember; nothing in flashes or ripples; nothing the least literary. +But it's a sort of droll way of looking at things; or a droll medium +through which things present themselves. I don't know. She tells what +she's seen, and mimics a little." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey coldly. After a moment she asked: "And is Miss +Irene as pretty as ever?" +</P> + +<P> +"She's a wonderful complexion," said the son unsatisfactorily. "I +shall want to be by when father and Colonel Lapham meet," he added, +with a smile. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, yes, your father!" said the mother, in that way in which a wife at +once compassionates and censures her husband to their children. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think it's really going to be a trial to him?" asked the young +man quickly. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, I can't say it is. But I confess I wish it was some other +business, Tom." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, mother, I don't see why. The principal thing looked at now is +the amount of money; and while I would rather starve than touch a +dollar that was dirty with any sort of dishonesty----" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course you would, my son!" interposed his mother proudly. +</P> + +<P> +"I shouldn't at all mind its having a little mineral paint on it. I'll +use my influence with Colonel Lapham--if I ever have any--to have his +paint scraped off the landscape." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you won't begin till the autumn." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I shall," said the son, laughing at his mother's simple +ignorance of business. "I shall begin to-morrow morning." +</P> + +<P> +"To-morrow morning!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. I've had my desk appointed already, and I shall be down there at +nine in the morning to take possession." +</P> + +<P> +"Tom," cried his mother, "why do you think Mr. Lapham has taken you +into business so readily? I've always heard that it was so hard for +young men to get in." +</P> + +<P> +"And do you think I found it easy with him? We had about twelve hours' +solid talk." +</P> + +<P> +"And you don't suppose it was any sort of--personal consideration?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I don't know exactly what you mean, mother. I suppose he likes +me." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey could not say just what she meant. She answered, +ineffectually enough-- +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. You wouldn't like it to be a favour, would you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think he's a man who may be trusted to look after his own interest. +But I don't mind his beginning by liking me. It'll be my own fault if +I don't make myself essential to him." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," demanded her husband, at their first meeting after her +interview with their son, "what did you say to Tom?" +</P> + +<P> +"Very little, if anything. I found him with his mind made up, and it +would only have distressed him if I had tried to change it." +</P> + +<P> +"That is precisely what I said, my dear." +</P> + +<P> +"Besides, he had talked the matter over fully with James, and seems to +have been advised by him. I can't understand James." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! it's in regard to the paint, and not the princess, that he's made +up his mind. Well, I think you were wise to let him alone, Anna. We +represent a faded tradition. We don't really care what business a man +is in, so it is large enough, and he doesn't advertise offensively; but +we think it fine to affect reluctance." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" asked his wife seriously. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly I do. There was a long time in my misguided youth when I +supposed myself some sort of porcelain; but it's a relief to be of the +common clay, after all, and to know it. If I get broken, I can be +easily replaced." +</P> + +<P> +"If Tom must go into such a business," said Mrs. Corey, "I'm glad James +approves of it." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid it wouldn't matter to Tom if he didn't; and I don't know +that I should care," said Corey, betraying the fact that he had perhaps +had a good deal of his brother-in-law's judgment in the course of his +life. "You had better consult him in regard to Tom's marrying the +princess." +</P> + +<P> +"There is no necessity at present for that," said Mrs. Corey, with +dignity. After a moment, she asked, "Should you feel quite so easy if +it were a question of that, Bromfield?" +</P> + +<P> +"It would be a little more personal." +</P> + +<P> +"You feel about it as I do. Of course, we have both lived too long, +and seen too much of the world, to suppose we can control such things. +The child is good, I haven't the least doubt, and all those things can +be managed so that they wouldn't disgrace us. But she has had a +certain sort of bringing up. I should prefer Tom to marry a girl with +another sort, and this business venture of his increases the chances +that he won't. That's all." +</P> + +<P> +"''Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'twill +serve.'" +</P> + +<P> +"I shouldn't like it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it hasn't happened yet." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, you never can realise anything beforehand." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps that has saved me some suffering. But you have at least the +consolation of two anxieties at once. I always find that a great +advantage. You can play one off against the other." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey drew a long breath as if she did not experience the +suggested consolation; and she arranged to quit, the following +afternoon, the scene of her defeat, which she had not had the courage +to make a battlefield. Her son went down to see her off on the boat, +after spending his first day at his desk in Lapham's office. He was in +a gay humour, and she departed in a reflected gleam of his good +spirits. He told her all about it, as he sat talking with her at the +stern of the boat, lingering till the last moment, and then stepping +ashore, with as little waste of time as Lapham himself, on the +gang-plank which the deck-hands had laid hold of. He touched his hat +to her from the wharf to reassure her of his escape from being carried +away with her, and the next moment his smiling face hid itself in the +crowd. +</P> + +<P> +He walked on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with trucks and +hacks and piles of freight, and, taking his way through the deserted +business streets beyond this bustle, made a point of passing the door +of Lapham's warehouse, on the jambs of which his name and paint were +lettered in black on a square ground of white. The door was still +open, and Corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to go upstairs and +fetch away some foreign letters which he had left on his desk, and +which he thought he might finish up at home. He was in love with his +work, and he felt the enthusiasm for it which nothing but the work we +can do well inspires in us. He believed that he had found his place in +the world, after a good deal of looking, and he had the relief, the +repose, of fitting into it. Every little incident of the momentous, +uneventful day was a pleasure in his mind, from his sitting down at his +desk, to which Lapham's boy brought him the foreign letters, till his +rising from it an hour ago. Lapham had been in view within his own +office, but he had given Corey no formal reception, and had, in fact, +not spoken to him till toward the end of the forenoon, when he suddenly +came out of his den with some more letters in his hand, and after a +brief "How d'ye do?" had spoken a few words about them, and left them +with him. He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person +seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. He did not go out +to lunch, but had it brought to him in his office, where Corey saw him +eating it before he left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging +seat before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. He observed +that all the others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to anticipate +his usual hour. When he returned, the pretty girl who had been +clicking away at a type-writer all the morning was neatly putting out +of sight the evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood, +and was preparing to go on with her copying. In his office Lapham lay +asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over his face. +</P> + +<P> +Now, while Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway, these two +came down the stairs together, and he heard Lapham saying, "Well, then, +you better get a divorce." +</P> + +<P> +He looked red and excited, and the girl's face, which she veiled at +sight of Corey, showed traces of tears. She slipped round him into the +street. +</P> + +<P> +But Lapham stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling but surprise: +"Hello, Corey! Did you want to go up?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; there were some letters I hadn't quite got through with." +</P> + +<P> +"You'll find Dennis up there. But I guess you better let them go till +to-morrow. I always make it a rule to stop work when I'm done." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps you're right," said Corey, yielding. +</P> + +<P> +"Come along down as far as the boat with me. There's a little matter I +want to talk over with you." +</P> + +<P> +It was a business matter, and related to Corey's proposed connection +with the house. +</P> + +<P> +The next day the head book-keeper, who lunched at the long counter of +the same restaurant with Corey, began to talk with him about Lapham. +Walker had not apparently got his place by seniority; though with his +forehead, bald far up toward the crown, and his round smooth face, one +might have taken him for a plump elder, if he had not looked equally +like a robust infant. The thick drabbish yellow moustache was what +arrested decision in either direction, and the prompt vigour of all his +movements was that of a young man of thirty, which was really Walker's +age. He knew, of course, who Corey was, and he had waited for a man +who might look down on him socially to make the overtures toward +something more than business acquaintance; but, these made, he was +readily responsive, and drew freely on his philosophy of Lapham and his +affairs. +</P> + +<P> +"I think about the only difference between people in this world is that +some know what they want, and some don't. Well, now," said Walker, +beating the bottom of his salt-box to make the salt come out, "the old +man knows what he wants every time. And generally he gets it. Yes, +sir, he generally gets it. He knows what he's about, but I'll be +blessed if the rest of us do half the time. Anyway, we don't till he's +ready to let us. You take my position in most business houses. It's +confidential. The head book-keeper knows right along pretty much +everything the house has got in hand. I'll give you my word I don't. +He may open up to you a little more in your department, but, as far as +the rest of us go, he don't open up any more than an oyster on a hot +brick. They say he had a partner once; I guess he's dead. I wouldn't +like to be the old man's partner. Well, you see, this paint of his is +like his heart's blood. Better not try to joke him about it. I've +seen people come in occasionally and try it. They didn't get much fun +out of it." +</P> + +<P> +While he talked, Walker was plucking up morsels from his plate, tearing +off pieces of French bread from the long loaf, and feeding them into +his mouth in an impersonal way, as if he were firing up an engine. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose he thinks," suggested Corey, "that if he doesn't tell, +nobody else will." +</P> + +<P> +Walker took a draught of beer from his glass, and wiped the foam from +his moustache. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, but he carries it too far! It's a weakness with him. He's just so +about everything. Look at the way he keeps it up about that +type-writer girl of his. You'd think she was some princess travelling +incognito. There isn't one of us knows who she is, or where she came +from, or who she belongs to. He brought her and her machine into the +office one morning, and set 'em down at a table, and that's all there +is about it, as far as we're concerned. It's pretty hard on the girl, +for I guess she'd like to talk; and to any one that didn't know the old +man----" Walker broke off and drained his glass of what was left in it. +</P> + +<P> +Corey thought of the words he had overheard from Lapham to the girl. +But he said, "She seems to be kept pretty busy." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes," said Walker; "there ain't much loafing round the place, in +any of the departments, from the old man's down. That's just what I +say. He's got to work just twice as hard, if he wants to keep +everything in his own mind. But he ain't afraid of work. That's one +good thing about him. And Miss Dewey has to keep step with the rest of +us. But she don't look like one that would take to it naturally. Such +a pretty girl as that generally thinks she does enough when she looks +her prettiest." +</P> + +<P> +"She's a pretty girl," said Corey, non-committally. "But I suppose a +great many pretty girls have to earn their living." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't any of 'em like to do it," returned the book-keeper. "They +think it's a hardship, and I don't blame 'em. They have got a right to +get married, and they ought to have the chance. And Miss Dewey's +smart, too. She's as bright as a biscuit. I guess she's had trouble. +I shouldn't be much more than half surprised if Miss Dewey wasn't Miss +Dewey, or hadn't always been. Yes, sir," continued the book-keeper, +who prolonged the talk as they walked back to Lapham's warehouse +together, "I don't know exactly what it is,--it isn't any one thing in +particular,--but I should say that girl had been married. I wouldn't +speak so freely to any of the rest, Mr. Corey,--I want you to +understand that,--and it isn't any of my business, anyway; but that's +my opinion." +</P> + +<P> +Corey made no reply, as he walked beside the book-keeper, who +continued-- +</P> + +<P> +"It's curious what a difference marriage makes in people. Now, I know +that I don't look any more like a bachelor of my age than I do like the +man in the moon, and yet I couldn't say where the difference came in, +to save me. And it's just so with a woman. The minute you catch sight +of her face, there's something in it that tells you whether she's +married or not. What do you suppose it is?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sure I don't know," said Corey, willing to laugh away the topic. +"And from what I read occasionally of some people who go about +repeating their happiness, I shouldn't say that the intangible +evidences were always unmistakable." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, of course," admitted Walker, easily surrendering his position. +"All signs fail in dry weather. Hello! What's that?" He caught Corey +by the arm, and they both stopped. +</P> + +<P> +At a corner, half a block ahead of them, the summer noon solitude of +the place was broken by a bit of drama. A man and woman issued from +the intersecting street, and at the moment of coming into sight the +man, who looked like a sailor, caught the woman by the arm, as if to +detain her. A brief struggle ensued, the woman trying to free herself, +and the man half coaxing, half scolding. The spectators could now see +that he was drunk; but before they could decide whether it was a case +for their interference or not, the woman suddenly set both hands +against the man's breast and gave him a quick push. He lost his +footing and tumbled into a heap in the gutter. The woman faltered an +instant, as if to see whether he was seriously hurt, and then turned +and ran. +</P> + +<P> +When Corey and the book-keeper re-entered the office, Miss Dewey had +finished her lunch, and was putting a sheet of paper into her +type-writer. She looked up at them with her eyes of turquoise blue, +under her low white forehead, with the hair neatly rippled over it, and +then began to beat the keys of her machine. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IX. +</H3> + +<P> +LAPHAM had the pride which comes of self-making, and he would not +openly lower his crest to the young fellow he had taken into his +business. He was going to be obviously master in his own place to +every one; and during the hours of business he did nothing to +distinguish Corey from the half-dozen other clerks and book-keepers in +the outer office, but he was not silent about the fact that Bromfield +Corey's son had taken a fancy to come to him. "Did you notice that +fellow at the desk facing my type-writer girl? Well, sir, that's the +son of Bromfield Corey--old Phillips Corey's grandson. And I'll say +this for him, that there isn't a man in the office that looks after his +work better. There isn't anything he's too good for. He's right here +at nine every morning, before the clock gets in the word. I guess it's +his grandfather coming out in him. He's got charge of the foreign +correspondence. We're pushing the paint everywhere." He flattered +himself that he did not lug the matter in. He had been warned against +that by his wife, but he had the right to do Corey justice, and his +brag took the form of illustration. "Talk about training for +business--I tell you it's all in the man himself! I used to believe in +what old Horace Greeley said about college graduates being the poorest +kind of horned cattle; but I've changed my mind a little. You take +that fellow Corey. He's been through Harvard, and he's had about every +advantage that a fellow could have. Been everywhere, and talks half a +dozen languages like English. I suppose he's got money enough to live +without lifting a hand, any more than his father does; son of Bromfield +Corey, you know. But the thing was in him. He's a natural-born +business man; and I've had many a fellow with me that had come up out +of the street, and worked hard all his life, without ever losing his +original opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it. I believe the +fellow would like to stick at that desk of his night and day. I don't +know where he got it. I guess it must be his grandfather, old Phillips +Corey; it often skips a generation, you know. But what I say is, a +thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain't born in him, all the +privations in the world won't put it there, and if it is, all the +college training won't take it out." +</P> + +<P> +Sometimes Lapham advanced these ideas at his own table, to a guest whom +he had brought to Nantasket for the night. Then he suffered exposure +and ridicule at the hands of his wife, when opportunity offered. She +would not let him bring Corey down to Nantasket at all. +</P> + +<P> +"No, indeed!" she said. "I am not going to have them think we're +running after him. If he wants to see Irene, he can find out ways of +doing it for himself." +</P> + +<P> +"Who wants him to see Irene?" retorted the Colonel angrily. +</P> + +<P> +"I do," said Mrs. Lapham. "And I want him to see her without any of +your connivance, Silas. I'm not going to have it said that I put my +girls at anybody. Why don't you invite some of your other clerks?" +</P> + +<P> +"He ain't just like the other clerks. He's going to take charge of a +part of the business. It's quite another thing." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Lapham vexatiously. "Then you ARE going to +take a partner." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall ask him down if I choose!" returned the Colonel, disdaining +her insinuation. +</P> + +<P> +His wife laughed with the fearlessness of a woman who knows her husband. +</P> + +<P> +"But you won't choose when you've thought it over, Si." Then she +applied an emollient to his chafed surface. "Don't you suppose I feel +as you do about it? I know just how proud you are, and I'm not going to +have you do anything that will make you feel meeching afterward. You +just let things take their course. If he wants Irene, he's going to +find out some way of seeing her; and if he don't, all the plotting and +planning in the world isn't going to make him." +</P> + +<P> +"Who's plotting?" again retorted the Colonel, shuddering at the +utterance of hopes and ambitions which a man hides with shame, but a +woman talks over as freely and coolly as if they were items of a +milliner's bill. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, not you!" exulted his wife. "I understand what you want. You +want to get this fellow, who is neither partner nor clerk, down here to +talk business with him. Well, now, you just talk business with him at +the office." +</P> + +<P> +The only social attention which Lapham succeeded in offering Corey was +to take him in his buggy, now and then, for a spin out over the +Mill-dam. He kept the mare in town, and on a pleasant afternoon he +liked to knock off early, as he phrased it, and let the mare out a +little. Corey understood something about horses, though in a +passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk business when +obliged to talk horse. But he deferred to his business superior with +the sense of discipline which is innate in the apparently insubordinate +American nature. If Corey could hardly have helped feeling the social +difference between Lapham and himself, in his presence he silenced his +traditions, and showed him all the respect that he could have exacted +from any of his clerks. He talked horse with him, and when the Colonel +wished he talked house. Besides himself and his paint Lapham had not +many other topics; and if he had a choice between the mare and the +edifice on the water side of Beacon Street, it was just now the latter. +Sometimes, in driving in or out, he stopped at the house, and made +Corey his guest there, if he might not at Nantasket; and one day it +happened that the young man met Irene there again. She had come up +with her mother alone, and they were in the house, interviewing the +carpenter as before, when the Colonel jumped out of his buggy and cast +anchor at the pavement. More exactly, Mrs. Lapham was interviewing the +carpenter, and Irene was sitting in the bow-window on a trestle, and +looking out at the driving. She saw him come up with her father, and +bowed and blushed. Her father went on up-stairs to find her mother, +and Corey pulled up another trestle which he found in the back part of +the room. The first floorings had been laid throughout the house, and +the partitions had been lathed so that one could realise the shape of +the interior. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you will sit at this window a good deal," said the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I think it will be very nice. There's so much more going on than +there is in the Square." +</P> + +<P> +"It must be very interesting to you to see the house grow." +</P> + +<P> +"It is. Only it doesn't seem to grow so fast as I expected." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I'm amazed at the progress your carpenter has made every time I +come." +</P> + +<P> +The girl looked down, and then lifting her eyes she said, with a sort +of timorous appeal-- +</P> + +<P> +"I've been reading that book since you were down at Nantasket." +</P> + +<P> +"Book?" repeated Corey, while she reddened with disappointment. "Oh +yes. Middlemarch. Did you like it?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't got through with it yet. Pen has finished it." +</P> + +<P> +"What does she think of it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I think she likes it very well. I haven't heard her talk about it +much. Do you like it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; I liked it immensely. But it's several years since I read it." +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know it was so old. It's just got into the Seaside Library," +she urged, with a little sense of injury in her tone. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it hasn't been out such a very great while," said Corey politely. +"It came a little before DANIEL DERONDA." +</P> + +<P> +The girl was again silent. She followed the curl of a shaving on the +floor with the point of her parasol. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you like that Rosamond Vincy?" she asked, without looking up. +</P> + +<P> +Corey smiled in his kind way. +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't suppose she was expected to have any friends. I can't say I +liked her. But I don't think I disliked her so much as the author +does. She's pretty hard on her good-looking"--he was going to say +girls, but as if that might have been rather personal, he +said--"people." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's what Pen says. She says she doesn't give her any chance +to be good. She says she should have been just as bad as Rosamond if +she had been in her place." +</P> + +<P> +The young man laughed. "Your sister is very satirical, isn't she?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Irene, still intent upon the convolutions of the +shaving. "She keeps us laughing. Papa thinks there's nobody that can +talk like her." She gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took +the parasol up across her lap. The unworldliness of the Lapham girls +did not extend to their dress; Irene's costume was very stylish, and +she governed her head and shoulders stylishly. "We are going to have +the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," she said abruptly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" returned Corey. "I should think that would be charming." +</P> + +<P> +"We expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants to build the +shelves in." +</P> + +<P> +The fact seemed to be referred to Corey for his comment. +</P> + +<P> +"It seems to me that would be the best way. They'll look like part of +the room then. You can make them low, and hang your pictures above +them." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's what he said." The girl looked out of the window in +adding, "I presume with nice bindings it will look very well." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nothing furnishes a room like books." +</P> + +<P> +"No. There will have to be a good many of them." +</P> + +<P> +"That depends upon the size of your room and the number of your +shelves." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, of course! I presume," said Irene, thoughtfully, "we shall have to +have Gibbon." +</P> + +<P> +"If you want to read him," said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an +imaginable joke. +</P> + +<P> +"We had a great deal about him at school. I believe we had one of his +books. Mine's lost, but Pen will remember." +</P> + +<P> +The young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, "You'll want +Greene, of course, and Motley, and Parkman." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. What kind of writers are they?" +</P> + +<P> +"They're historians too." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes; I remember now. That's what Gibbon was. Is it Gibbon or +Gibbons?" +</P> + +<P> +The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy. +"Gibbon, I think." +</P> + +<P> +"There used to be so many of them," said Irene gaily. "I used to get +them mixed up with each other, and I couldn't tell them from the poets. +Should you want to have poetry?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; I suppose some edition of the English poets." +</P> + +<P> +"We don't any of us like poetry. Do you like it?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid I don't very much," Corey owned. "But, of course, there +was a time when Tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now." +</P> + +<P> +"We had something about him at school too. I think I remember the +name. I think we ought to have ALL the American poets." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, not all. Five or six of the best: you want Longfellow and +Bryant and Whittier and Holmes and Emerson and Lowell." +</P> + +<P> +The girl listened attentively, as if making mental note of the names. +</P> + +<P> +"And Shakespeare," she added. "Don't you like Shakespeare's plays?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, very much." +</P> + +<P> +"I used to be perfectly crazy about his plays. Don't you think +'Hamlet' is splendid? We had ever so much about Shakespeare. Weren't +you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays of his +there were? I always thought there was nothing but 'Hamlet' and 'Romeo +and Juliet' and 'Macbeth' and 'Richard III.' and 'King Lear,' and that +one that Robeson and Crane have--oh yes! 'Comedy of Errors.'" +</P> + +<P> +"Those are the ones they usually play," said Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"I presume we shall have to have Scott's works," said Irene, returning +to the question of books. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes." +</P> + +<P> +"One of the girls used to think he was GREAT. She was always talking +about Scott." Irene made a pretty little amiably contemptuous mouth. +"He isn't American, though?" she suggested. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Corey; "he's Scotch, I believe." +</P> + +<P> +Irene passed her glove over her forehead. "I always get him mixed up +with Cooper. Well, papa has got to get them. If we have a library, we +have got to have books in it. Pen says it's perfectly ridiculous +having one. But papa thinks whatever the architect says is right. He +fought him hard enough at first. I don't see how any one can keep the +poets and the historians and novelists separate in their mind. Of +course papa will buy them if we say so. But I don't see how I'm ever +going to tell him which ones." The joyous light faded out of her face +and left it pensive. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, if you like," said the young man, taking out his pencil, "I'll +put down the names we've been talking about." +</P> + +<P> +He clapped himself on his breast pockets to detect some lurking scrap +of paper. +</P> + +<P> +"Will you?" she cried delightedly. "Here! take one of my cards," and +she pulled out her card-case. "The carpenter writes on a three-cornered +block and puts it into his pocket, and it's so uncomfortable he can't +help remembering it. Pen says she's going to adopt the +three-cornered-block plan with papa." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," said Corey. "I believe I'll use your card." He crossed +over to her, and after a moment sat down on the trestle beside her. +She looked over the card as he wrote. "Those are the ones we +mentioned, but perhaps I'd better add a few others." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, thank you," she said, when he had written the card full on both +sides. "He has got to get them in the nicest binding, too. I shall +tell him about their helping to furnish the room, and then he can't +object." She remained with the card, looking at it rather wistfully. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps Corey divined her trouble of mind. "If he will take that to +any bookseller, and tell him what bindings he wants, he will fill the +order for him." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, thank you very much," she said, and put the card back into her +card-case with great apparent relief. Then she turned her lovely face +toward the young man, beaming with the triumph a woman feels in any bit +of successful manoeuvring, and began to talk with recovered gaiety of +other things, as if, having got rid of a matter annoying out of all +proportion to its importance, she was now going to indemnify herself. +</P> + +<P> +Corey did not return to his own trestle. She found another shaving +within reach of her parasol, and began poking that with it, and trying +to follow it through its folds. Corey watched her a while. +</P> + +<P> +"You seem to have a great passion for playing with shavings," he said. +"Is it a new one?" +</P> + +<P> +"New what?" +</P> + +<P> +"Passion." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," she said, dropping her eyelids, and keeping on with her +effort. She looked shyly aslant at him. "Perhaps you don't approve of +playing with shavings?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I do. I admire it very much. But it seems rather difficult. +I've a great ambition to put my foot on the shaving's tail and hold it +for you." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," said the young man. He did so, and now she ran her +parasol point easily through it. They looked at each other and +laughed. "That was wonderful. Would you like to try another?" he +asked. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I thank you," she replied. "I think one will do." +</P> + +<P> +They both laughed again, for whatever reason or no reason, and then the +young girl became sober. To a girl everything a young man does is of +significance; and if he holds a shaving down with his foot while she +pokes through it with her parasol, she must ask herself what he means +by it. +</P> + +<P> +"They seem to be having rather a long interview with the carpenter +to-day," said Irene, looking vaguely toward the ceiling. She turned +with polite ceremony to Corey. "I'm afraid you're letting them keep +you. You mustn't." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no. You're letting me stay," he returned. +</P> + +<P> +She bridled and bit her lip for pleasure. "I presume they will be down +before a great while. Don't you like the smell of the wood and the +mortar? It's so fresh." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it's delicious." He bent forward and picked up from the floor the +shaving with which they had been playing, and put it to his nose. +"It's like a flower. May I offer it to you?" he asked, as if it had +been one. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She took it from him and put it into her +belt, and then they both laughed once more. +</P> + +<P> +Steps were heard descending. When the elder people reached the floor +where they were sitting, Corey rose and presently took his leave. +</P> + +<P> +"What makes you so solemn, 'Rene?" asked Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Solemn?" echoed the girl. "I'm not a BIT solemn. What CAN you mean?" +</P> + +<P> +Corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking across the +table at his father, he said, "I wonder what the average literature of +non-cultivated people is." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," said the elder, "I suspect the average is pretty low even with +cultivated people. You don't read a great many books yourself, Tom." +</P> + +<P> +"No, I don't," the young man confessed. "I read more books when I was +with Stanton, last winter, than I had since I was a boy. But I read +them because I must--there was nothing else to do. It wasn't because I +was fond of reading. Still I think I read with some sense of +literature and the difference between authors. I don't suppose that +people generally do that; I have met people who had read books without +troubling themselves to find out even the author's name, much less +trying to decide upon his quality. I suppose that's the way the vast +majority of people read." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. If authors were not almost necessarily recluses, and ignorant of +the ignorance about them, I don't see how they could endure it. Of +course they are fated to be overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor +fellows; but to see it weltering all round them while they are in the +very act of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. I +don't suppose that we who have the habit of reading, and at least a +nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness +of the great mass of people--even people whose houses are rich and +whose linen is purple and fine. But occasionally we get glimpses of +it. I suppose you found the latest publications lying all about in +Lapham cottage when you were down there?" +</P> + +<P> +Young Corey laughed. "It wasn't exactly cumbered with them." +</P> + +<P> +"No?" +</P> + +<P> +"To tell the truth, I don't suppose they ever buy books. The young +ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating +library." +</P> + +<P> +"Had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, in certain ways--to a certain degree." +</P> + +<P> +"It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation," said the elder +musingly. "We think it is an affair of epochs and of nations. It's +really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilised and the +other a barbarian. I've occasionally met young girls who were so +brutally, insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make +civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the skins of wild +beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs over their shoulders. Yet +they were of polite origin, and their parents were at least respectful +of the things that these young animals despised." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think that is exactly the case with the Lapham family," said +the son, smiling. "The father and mother rather apologised about not +getting time to read, and the young ladies by no means scorned it." +</P> + +<P> +"They are quite advanced!" +</P> + +<P> +"They are going to have a library in their Beacon Street house." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, poor things! How are they ever going to get the books together?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, sir," said the son, colouring a little, "I have been indirectly +applied to for help." +</P> + +<P> +"You, Tom!" His father dropped back in his chair and laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"I recommended the standard authors," said the son. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I never supposed your PRUDENCE would be at fault, Tom!" +</P> + +<P> +"But seriously," said the young man, generously smiling in sympathy +with his father's enjoyment, "they're not unintelligent people. They +are very quick, and they are shrewd and sensible." +</P> + +<P> +"I have no doubt that some of the Sioux are so. But that is not saying +that they are civilised. All civilisation comes through literature +now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilisation by +talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. +But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we +must barbarise. Once we were softened, if not polished, by religion; +but I suspect that the pulpit counts for much less now in civilising." +</P> + +<P> +"They're enormous devourers of newspapers, and theatre-goers; and they +go a great deal to lectures. The Colonel prefers them with the +stereopticon." +</P> + +<P> +"They might get a something in that way," said the elder thoughtfully. +"Yes, I suppose one must take those things into account--especially the +newspapers and the lectures. I doubt if the theatre is a factor in +civilisation among us. I dare say it doesn't deprave a great deal, but +from what I've seen of it I should say that it was intellectually +degrading. Perhaps they might get some sort of lift from it; I don't +know. Tom!" he added, after a moment's reflection. "I really think I +ought to see this patron of yours. Don't you think it would be rather +decent in me to make his acquaintance?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you have the fancy, sir," said the young man. "But there's +no sort of obligation. Colonel Lapham would be the last man in the +world to want to give our relation any sort of social character. The +meeting will come about in the natural course of things." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, I didn't intend to propose anything immediate," said the father. +"One can't do anything in the summer, and I should prefer your mother's +superintendence. Still, I can't rid myself of the idea of a dinner. +It appears to me that there ought to be a dinner." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, pray don't feel that there's any necessity." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the elder, with easy resignation, "there's at least no +hurry." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"There is one thing I don't like," said Lapham, in the course of one of +those talks which came up between his wife and himself concerning +Corey, "or at least I don't understand it; and that's the way his +father behaves. I don't want to force myself on any man; but it seems +to me pretty queer the way he holds off. I should think he would take +enough interest in his son to want to know something about his +business. What is he afraid of?" demanded Lapham angrily. "Does he +think I'm going to jump at a chance to get in with him, if he gives me +one? He's mightily mistaken if he does. I don't want to know him." +</P> + +<P> +"Silas," said his wife, making a wife's free version of her husband's +words, and replying to their spirit rather than their letter, "I hope +you never said a word to Mr. Corey to let him know the way you feel." +</P> + +<P> +"I never mentioned his father to him!" roared the Colonel. "That's the +way I feel about it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Because it would spoil everything. I wouldn't have them think we +cared the least thing in the world for their acquaintance. We +shouldn't be a bit better off. We don't know the same people they do, +and we don't care for the same kind of things." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication. +"Don't I tell you," he gasped, "that I don't want to know them? Who +began it? They're friends of yours if they're anybody's." +</P> + +<P> +"They're distant acquaintances of mine," returned Mrs. Lapham quietly; +"and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I want we should hold +ourselves so that when they get ready to make the advances we can meet +them half-way or not, just as we choose." +</P> + +<P> +"That's what grinds me," cried her husband. "Why should we wait for +them to make the advances? Why shouldn't we make 'em? Are they any +better than we are? My note of hand would be worth ten times what +Bromfield Corey's is on the street to-day. And I made MY money. I +haven't loafed my life away." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've done exactly. +It's what you are." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, what's the difference?" +</P> + +<P> +"None that really amounts to anything, or that need give you any +trouble, if you don't think of it. But he's been all his life in +society, and he knows just what to say and what to do, and he can talk +about the things that society people like to talk about, and +you--can't." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham gave a furious snort. "And does that make him any better?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. But it puts him where he can make the advances without demeaning +himself, and it puts you where you can't. Now, look here, Silas Lapham! +You understand this thing as well as I do. You know that I appreciate +you, and that I'd sooner die than have you humble yourself to a living +soul. But I'm not going to have you coming to me, and pretending that +you can meet Bromfield Corey as an equal on his own ground. You can't. +He's got a better education than you, and if he hasn't got more brains +than you, he's got different. And he and his wife, and their fathers +and grandfathers before 'em, have always had a high position, and you +can't help it. If you want to know them, you've got to let them make +the advances. If you don't, all well and good." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess," said the chafed and vanquished Colonel, after a moment for +swallowing the pill, "that they'd have been in a pretty fix if you'd +waited to let them make the advances last summer." +</P> + +<P> +"That was a different thing altogether. I didn't know who they were, +or may be I should have waited. But all I say now is that if you've +got young Corey into business with you, in hopes of our getting into +society with his father, you better ship him at once. For I ain't +going to have it on that basis." +</P> + +<P> +"Who wants to have it on that basis?" retorted her husband. +</P> + +<P> +"Nobody, if you don't," said Mrs. Lapham tranquilly. +</P> + +<P> +Irene had come home with the shaving in her belt, unnoticed by her +father, and unquestioned by her mother. But her sister saw it at once, +and asked her what she was doing with it. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nothing," said Irene, with a joyful smile of self-betrayal, taking +the shaving carefully out, and laying it among the laces and ribbons in +her drawer. +</P> + +<P> +"Hadn't you better put it in water, 'Rene? It'll be all wilted by +morning," said Pen. +</P> + +<P> +"You mean thing!" cried the happy girl. "It isn't a flower!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I thought it was a whole bouquet. Who gave it to you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I shan't tell you," said Irene saucily. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well, never mind. Did you know Mr. Corey had been down here this +afternoon, walking on the beach with me?" +</P> + +<P> +"He wasn't--he wasn't at all! He was at the house with ME. There! I've +caught you fairly." +</P> + +<P> +"Is that so?" drawled Penelope. "Then I never could guess who gave you +that precious shaving." +</P> + +<P> +"No, you couldn't!" said Irene, flushing beautifully. "And you may +guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!" With her lovely eyes she +coaxed her sister to keep on teasing her, and Penelope continued the +comedy with the patience that women have for such things. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm not going to try, if it's no use. But I didn't know it had +got to be the fashion to give shavings instead of flowers. But there's +some sense in it. They can be used for kindlings when they get old, +and you can't do anything with old flowers. Perhaps he'll get to +sending 'em by the barrel." +</P> + +<P> +Irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. "O Pen, I want to tell +you how it all happened." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, he DID give it to you, then? Well, I guess I don't care to hear." +</P> + +<P> +"You shall, and you've got to!" Irene ran and caught her sister, who +feigned to be going out of the room, and pushed her into a chair. +"There, now!" She pulled up another chair, and hemmed her in with it. +"He came over, and sat down on the trestle alongside of me----" +</P> + +<P> +"What? As close as you are to me now?" +</P> + +<P> +"You wretch! I will GIVE it to you! No, at a proper distance. And here +was this shaving on the floor, that I'd been poking with my parasol----" +</P> + +<P> +"To hide your embarrassment." +</P> + +<P> +"Pshaw! I wasn't a bit embarrassed. I was just as much at my ease! And +then he asked me to let him hold the shaving down with his foot, while +I went on with my poking. And I said yes he might----" +</P> + +<P> +"What a bold girl! You said he might hold a shaving down for you?" +</P> + +<P> +"And then--and then----" continued Irene, lifting her eyes absently, +and losing herself in the beatific recollection, "and then----Oh yes! +Then I asked him if he didn't like the smell of pine shavings. And +then he picked it up, and said it smelt like a flower. And then he +asked if he might offer it to me--just for a joke, you know. And I +took it, and stuck it in my belt. And we had such a laugh! We got into +a regular gale. And O Pen, what do you suppose he meant by it?" She +suddenly caught herself to her sister's breast, and hid her burning +face on her shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. But I +never knew much about the language of shavings, and I can't say +exactly----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't--DON'T, Pen!" and here Irene gave over laughing, and began +to sob in her sister's arms. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, 'Rene!" cried the elder girl. +</P> + +<P> +"You KNOW he didn't mean anything. He doesn't care a bit about me. He +hates me! He despises me! Oh, what shall I do?" +</P> + +<P> +A trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently comforted +the child in her arms; then the drolling light came back into her eyes. +"Well, 'Rene, YOU haven't got to do ANYthing. That's one advantage +girls have got--if it IS an advantage. I'm not always sure." +</P> + +<P> +Irene's tears turned to laughing again. When she lifted her head it +was to look into the mirror confronting them, where her beauty showed +all the more brilliant for the shower that had passed over it. She +seemed to gather courage from the sight. +</P> + +<P> +"It must be awful to have to DO," she said, smiling into her own face. +"I don't see how they ever can." +</P> + +<P> +"Some of 'em can't--especially when there's such a tearing beauty +around." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, pshaw, Pen! you know that isn't so. You've got a real pretty +mouth, Pen," she added thoughtfully, surveying the feature in the +glass, and then pouting her own lips for the sake of that effect on +them. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a useful mouth," Penelope admitted; "I don't believe I could get +along without it now, I've had it so long." +</P> + +<P> +"It's got such a funny expression--just the mate of the look in your +eyes; as if you were just going to say something ridiculous. He said, +the very first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous." +</P> + +<P> +"Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. Why didn't +you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a +common person?" +</P> + +<P> +Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in +that way rather than another. +</P> + +<P> +"I've got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth," she said, drawing it down, +and then looking anxiously at it. +</P> + +<P> +"I hope you didn't put on that expression when he offered you the +shaving. If you did, I don't believe he'll ever give you another +splinter." +</P> + +<P> +The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in +a kiss against Penelope's cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"There! Be done, you silly thing! I'm not going to have you accepting +ME before I've offered myself, ANYWAY." She freed herself from her +sister's embrace, and ran from her round the room. +</P> + +<P> +Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder +again. "O Pen! O Pen!" she cried. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her +eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing that Penelope must +have already made it subject of inquiry: "What was Irene doing with +that shaving in her belt yesterday?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, just some nonsense of hers with Mr. Corey. He gave it to her at +the new house." Penelope did not choose to look up and meet her +mother's grave glance. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you think he meant by it?" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope repeated Irene's account of the affair, and her mother +listened without seeming to derive much encouragement from it. +</P> + +<P> +"He doesn't seem like one to flirt with her," she said at last. Then, +after a thoughtful pause: "Irene is as good a girl as ever breathed, +and she's a perfect beauty. But I should hate the day when a daughter +of mine was married for her beauty." +</P> + +<P> +"You're safe as far as I'm concerned, mother." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham smiled ruefully. "She isn't really equal to him, Pen. I +misdoubted that from the first, and it's been borne in upon me more and +more ever since. She hasn't mind enough." "I didn't know that a man +fell in love with a girl's intellect," said Penelope quietly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no. He hasn't fallen in love with Irene at all. If he had, it +wouldn't matter about the intellect." +</P> + +<P> +Penelope let the self-contradiction pass. +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps he has, after all." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Mrs. Lapham. "She pleases him when he sees her. But he +doesn't try to see her." +</P> + +<P> +"He has no chance. You won't let father bring him here." +</P> + +<P> +"He would find excuses to come without being brought, if he wished to +come," said the mother. "But she isn't in his mind enough to make him. +He goes away and doesn't think anything more about her. She's a child. +She's a good child, and I shall always say it; but she's nothing but a +child. No, she's got to forget him." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps that won't be so easy." +</P> + +<P> +"No, I presume not. And now your father has got the notion in his +head, and he will move heaven and earth to bring it to pass. I can see +that he's always thinking about it." +</P> + +<P> +"The Colonel has a will of his own," observed the girl, rocking to and +fro where she sat looking at her mother. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish we had never met them!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "I wish we had +never thought of building! I wish he had kept away from your father's +business!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it's too late now, mother," said the girl. "Perhaps it isn't so +bad as you think." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we must stand it, anyway," said Mrs. Lapham, with the grim +antique Yankee submission. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, we've got to stand it," said Penelope, with the quaint modern +American fatalism. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +X. +</H3> + +<P> +IT was late June, almost July, when Corey took up his life in Boston +again, where the summer slips away so easily. If you go out of town +early, it seems a very long summer when you come back in October; but +if you stay, it passes swiftly, and, seen foreshortened in its flight, +seems scarcely a month's length. It has its days of heat, when it is +very hot, but for the most part it is cool, with baths of the east wind +that seem to saturate the soul with delicious freshness. Then there +are stretches of grey westerly weather, when the air is full of the +sentiment of early autumn, and the frying, of the grasshopper in the +blossomed weed of the vacant lots on the Back Bay is intershot with the +carol of crickets; and the yellowing leaf on the long slope of Mt. +Vernon Street smites the sauntering observer with tender melancholy. +The caterpillar, gorged with the spoil of the lindens on Chestnut, and +weaving his own shroud about him in his lodgment on the brick-work, +records the passing of summer by mid-July; and if after that comes +August, its breath is thick and short, and September is upon the +sojourner before he has fairly had time to philosophise the character +of the town out of season. +</P> + +<P> +But it must have appeared that its most characteristic feature was the +absence of everybody he knew. This was one of the things that +commended Boston to Bromfield Corey during the summer; and if his son +had any qualms about the life he had entered upon with such vigour, it +must have been a relief to him that there was scarcely a soul left to +wonder or pity. By the time people got back to town the fact of his +connection with the mineral paint man would be an old story, heard afar +off with different degrees of surprise, and considered with different +degrees of indifference. A man has not reached the age of twenty-six +in any community where he was born and reared without having had his +capacity pretty well ascertained; and in Boston the analysis is +conducted with an unsparing thoroughness which may fitly impress the +un-Bostonian mind, darkened by the popular superstition that the +Bostonians blindly admire one another. A man's qualities are sifted as +closely in Boston as they doubtless were in Florence or Athens; and, if +final mercy was shown in those cities because a man was, with all his +limitations, an Athenian or Florentine, some abatement might as justly +be made in Boston for like reason. Corey's powers had been gauged in +college, and he had not given his world reason to think very +differently of him since he came out of college. He was rated as an +energetic fellow, a little indefinite in aim, with the smallest amount +of inspiration that can save a man from being commonplace. If he was +not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which +was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of +qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him +sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable +excellences. Some of the more nervous and excitable said that Tom +Corey was as sweet as he could live; but this perhaps meant no more +than the word alone. No man ever had a son less like him than +Bromfield Corey. If Tom Corey had ever said a witty thing, no one +could remember it; and yet the father had never said a witty thing to a +more sympathetic listener than his own son. The clear mind which +produced nothing but practical results reflected everything with +charming lucidity; and it must have been this which endeared Tom Corey +to every one who spoke ten words with him. In a city where people have +good reason for liking to shine, a man who did not care to shine must +be little short of universally acceptable without any other effort for +popularity; and those who admired and enjoyed Bromfield Corey loved his +son. Yet, when it came to accounting for Tom Corey, as it often did in +a community where every one's generation is known to the remotest +degrees of cousinship, they could not trace his sweetness to his +mother, for neither Anna Bellingham nor any of her family, though they +were so many blocks of Wenham ice for purity and rectangularity, had +ever had any such savour; and, in fact, it was to his father, whose +habit of talk wronged it in himself, that they had to turn for this +quality of the son's. They traced to the mother the traits of +practicality and common-sense in which he bordered upon the +commonplace, and which, when they had dwelt upon them, made him seem +hardly worth the close inquiry they had given him. +</P> + +<P> +While the summer wore away he came and went methodically about his +business, as if it had been the business of his life, sharing his +father's bachelor liberty and solitude, and expecting with equal +patience the return of his mother and sisters in the autumn. Once or +twice he found time to run down to Mt. Desert and see them; and then +he heard how the Philadelphia and New York people were getting in +everywhere, and was given reason to regret the house at Nahant which he +had urged to be sold. He came back and applied himself to his desk +with a devotion that was exemplary rather than necessary; for Lapham +made no difficulty about the brief absences which he asked, and set no +term to the apprenticeship that Corey was serving in the office before +setting off upon that mission to South America in the early winter, for +which no date had yet been fixed. +</P> + +<P> +The summer was a dull season for the paint as well as for everything +else. Till things should brisk up, as Lapham said, in the fall, he was +letting the new house take a great deal of his time. AEsthetic ideas +had never been intelligibly presented to him before, and he found a +delight in apprehending them that was very grateful to his imaginative +architect. At the beginning, the architect had foreboded a series of +mortifying defeats and disastrous victories in his encounters with his +client; but he had never had a client who could be more reasonably led +on from one outlay to another. It appeared that Lapham required but to +understand or feel the beautiful effect intended, and he was ready to +pay for it. His bull-headed pride was concerned in a thing which the +architect made him see, and then he believed that he had seen it +himself, perhaps conceived it. In some measure the architect seemed to +share his delusion, and freely said that Lapham was very suggestive. +Together they blocked out windows here, and bricked them up there; they +changed doors and passages; pulled down cornices and replaced them with +others of different design; experimented with costly devices of +decoration, and went to extravagant lengths in novelties of finish. +Mrs. Lapham, beginning with a woman's adventurousness in the unknown +region, took fright at the reckless outlay at last, and refused to let +her husband pass a certain limit. He tried to make her believe that a +far-seeing economy dictated the expense; and that if he put the money +into the house, he could get it out any time by selling it. She would +not be persuaded. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't want you should sell it. And you've put more money into it +now than you'll ever get out again, unless you can find as big a goose +to buy it, and that isn't likely. No, sir! You just stop at a hundred +thousand, and don't you let him get you a cent beyond. Why, you're +perfectly bewitched with that fellow! You've lost your head, Silas +Lapham, and if you don't look out you'll lose your money too." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel laughed; he liked her to talk that way, and promised he +would hold up a while. +</P> + +<P> +"But there's no call to feel anxious, Pert. It's only a question what +to do with the money. I can reinvest it; but I never had so much of it +to spend before." +</P> + +<P> +"Spend it, then," said his wife; "don't throw it away! And how came +you to have so much more money than you know what to do with, Silas +Lapham?" she added. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I've made a very good thing in stocks lately." +</P> + +<P> +"In stocks? When did you take up gambling for a living?" +</P> + +<P> +"Gambling? Stuff! What gambling? Who said it was gambling?" +</P> + +<P> +"You have; many a time." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, buying and selling on a margin. But this was a bona fide +transaction. I bought at forty-three for an investment, and I sold at +a hundred and seven; and the money passed both times." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you better let stocks alone," said his wife, with the +conservatism of her sex. "Next time you'll buy at a hundred and seven +and sell at forty three. Then where'll you be?" +</P> + +<P> +"Left," admitted the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"You better stick to paint a while yet." The Colonel enjoyed this too, +and laughed again with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. A +few days after that he came down to Nantasket with the radiant air +which he wore when he had done a good thing in business and wanted his +wife's sympathy. He did not say anything of what had happened till he +was alone with her in their own room; but he was very gay the whole +evening, and made several jokes which Penelope said nothing but very +great prosperity could excuse: they all understood these moods of his. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, what is it, Silas?" asked his wife when the time came. "Any +more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint business with you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Something better than that." +</P> + +<P> +"I could think of a good many better things," said his wife, with a +sigh of latent bitterness. "What's this one?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've had a visitor." +</P> + +<P> +"Who?" +</P> + +<P> +"Can't you guess?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't want to try. Who was it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared at the smile +on her husband's face, where he sat facing her. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, Si," she said, a +little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin about it unless you had some +good news. I don't know what the miracle is, but if you could tell +quick----" +</P> + +<P> +She stopped like one who can say no more. +</P> + +<P> +"I will, Persis," said her husband, and with that awed tone in which he +rarely spoke of anything but the virtues of his paint. "He came to +borrow money of me, and I lent him it. That's the short of it. The +long----" +</P> + +<P> +"Go on," said his wife, with gentle patience. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Pert, I was never so much astonished in my life as I was to see +that man come into my office. You might have knocked me down with--I +don't know what." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't wonder. Go on!" +</P> + +<P> +"And he was as much embarrassed as I was. There we stood, gaping at +each other, and I hadn't hardly sense enough to ask him to take a +chair. I don't know just how we got at it. And I don't remember just +how it was that he said he came to come to me. But he had got hold of +a patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, and there he +was wanting me to supply him the funds." +</P> + +<P> +"Go on!" said Mrs. Lapham, with her voice further in her throat. +</P> + +<P> +"I never felt the way you did about Rogers, but I know how you always +did feel, and I guess I surprised him with my answer. He had brought +along a lot of stock as security----" +</P> + +<P> +"You didn't take it, Silas!" his wife flashed out. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I did, though," said Lapham. "You wait. We settled our +business, and then we went into the old thing, from the very start. +And we talked it all over. And when we got through we shook hands. +Well, I don't know when it's done me so much good to shake hands with +anybody." +</P> + +<P> +"And you told him--you owned up to him that you were in the wrong, +Silas?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I didn't," returned the Colonel promptly; "for I wasn't. And +before we got through, I guess he saw it the same as I did." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no matter! so you had the chance to show how you felt." +</P> + +<P> +"But I never felt that way," persisted the Colonel. "I've lent him the +money, and I've kept his stocks. And he got what he wanted out of me." +</P> + +<P> +"Give him back his stocks!" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I shan't. Rogers came to borrow. He didn't come to beg. You +needn't be troubled about his stocks. They're going to come up in +time; but just now they're so low down that no bank would take them as +security, and I've got to hold them till they do rise. I hope you're +satisfied now, Persis," said her husband; and he looked at her with the +willingness to receive the reward of a good action which we all feel +when we have performed one. "I lent him the money you kept me from +spending on the house." +</P> + +<P> +"Truly, Si? Well, I'm satisfied," said Mrs. Lapham, with a deep +tremulous breath. "The Lord has been good to you, Silas," she +continued solemnly. "You may laugh if you choose, and I don't know as +I believe in his interfering a great deal; but I believe he's +interfered this time; and I tell you, Silas, it ain't always he gives +people a chance to make it up to others in this life. I've been afraid +you'd die, Silas, before you got the chance; but he's let you live to +make it up to Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad to be let live," said Lapham stubbornly, "but I hadn't +anything to make up to Milton K. Rogers. And if God has let me live +for that----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, say what you please, Si! Say what you please, now you've done it! +I shan't stop you. You've taken the one spot--the one SPECK--off you +that was ever there, and I'm satisfied." +</P> + +<P> +"There wa'n't ever any speck there," Lapham held out, lapsing more and +more into his vernacular; "and what I done I done for you, Persis." +</P> + +<P> +"And I thank you for your own soul's sake, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess my soul's all right," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"And I want you should promise me one thing more." +</P> + +<P> +"Thought you said you were satisfied?" +</P> + +<P> +"I am. But I want you should promise me this: that you won't let +anything tempt you--anything!--to ever trouble Rogers for that money +you lent him. No matter what happens--no matter if you lose it all. +Do you promise?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I don't ever EXPECT to press him for it. That's what I said to +myself when I lent it. And of course I'm glad to have that old trouble +healed up. I don't THINK I ever did Rogers any wrong, and I never did +think so; but if I DID do it--IF I did--I'm willing to call it square, +if I never see a cent of my money back again." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's all," said his wife. +</P> + +<P> +They did not celebrate his reconciliation with his old enemy--for such +they had always felt him to be since he ceased to be an ally--by any +show of joy or affection. It was not in their tradition, as stoical +for the woman as for the man, that they should kiss or embrace each +other at such a moment. She was content to have told him that he had +done his duty, and he was content with her saying that. But before she +slept she found words to add that she always feared the selfish part he +had acted toward Rogers had weakened him, and left him less able to +overcome any temptation that might beset him; and that was one reason +why she could never be easy about it. Now she should never fear for +him again. +</P> + +<P> +This time he did not explicitly deny her forgiving impeachment. "Well, +it's all past and gone now, anyway; and I don't want you should think +anything more about it." +</P> + +<P> +He was man enough to take advantage of the high favour in which he +stood when he went up to town, and to abuse it by bringing Corey down +to supper. His wife could not help condoning the sin of disobedience +in him at such a time. Penelope said that between the admiration she +felt for the Colonel's boldness and her mother's forbearance, she was +hardly in a state to entertain company that evening; but she did what +she could. +</P> + +<P> +Irene liked being talked to better than talking, and when her sister +was by she was always, tacitly or explicitly, referring to her for +confirmation of what she said. She was content to sit and look pretty +as she looked at the young man and listened to her sister's drolling. +She laughed and kept glancing at Corey to make sure that he was +understanding her. When they went out on the veranda to see the moon +on the water, Penelope led the way and Irene followed. +</P> + +<P> +They did not look at the moonlight long. The young man perched on the +rail of the veranda, and Irene took one of the red-painted +rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her +sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase +is. That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed +now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little, +had a fascination which kept his eye. Her talk was very unliterary, +and its effect seemed hardly conscious. She was far from epigram in +her funning. She told of this trifle and that; she sketched the +characters and looks of people who had interested her, and nothing +seemed to have escaped her notice; she mimicked a little, but not much; +she suggested, and then the affair represented itself as if without her +agency. She did not laugh; when Corey stopped she made a soft cluck in +her throat, as if she liked his being amused, and went on again. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel, left alone with his wife for the first time since he had +come from town, made haste to take the word. "Well, Pert, I've +arranged the whole thing with Rogers, and I hope you'll be satisfied to +know that he owes me twenty thousand dollars, and that I've got +security from him to the amount of a fourth of that, if I was to force +his stocks to a sale." +</P> + +<P> +"How came he to come down with you?" asked Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Who? Rogers?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Corey." +</P> + +<P> +"Corey? Oh!" said Lapham, affecting not to have thought she could mean +Corey. "He proposed it." +</P> + +<P> +"Likely!" jeered his wife, but with perfect amiability. +</P> + +<P> +"It's so," protested the Colonel. "We got talking about a matter just +before I left, and he walked down to the boat with me; and then he said +if I didn't mind he guessed he'd come along down and go back on the +return boat. Of course I couldn't let him do that." +</P> + +<P> +"It's well for you you couldn't." +</P> + +<P> +"And I couldn't do less than bring him here to tea." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, certainly not." +</P> + +<P> +"But he ain't going to stay the night--unless," faltered Lapham, "you +want him to." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, of course, I want him to! I guess he'll stay, probably." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you know how crowded that last boat always is, and he can't get +any other now." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham laughed at the simple wile. "I hope you'll be just as well +satisfied, Si, if it turns out he doesn't want Irene after all." +</P> + +<P> +"Pshaw, Persis! What are you always bringing that up for?" pleaded the +Colonel. Then he fell silent, and presently his rude, strong face was +clouded with an unconscious frown. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" cried his wife, startling him from his abstraction. "I see +how you'd feel; and I hope that you'll remember who you've got to +blame." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll risk it," said Lapham, with the confidence of a man used to +success. +</P> + +<P> +From the veranda the sound of Penelope's lazy tone came through the +closed windows, with joyous laughter from Irene and peals from Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen to that!" said her father within, swelling up with +inexpressible satisfaction. "That girl can talk for twenty, right +straight along. She's better than a circus any day. I wonder what +she's up to now." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, she's probably getting off some of those yarns of hers, or telling +about some people. She can't step out of the house without coming back +with more things to talk about than most folks would bring back from +Japan. There ain't a ridiculous person she's ever seen but what she's +got something from them to make you laugh at; and I don't believe we've +ever had anybody in the house since the girl could talk that she hain't +got some saying from, or some trick that'll paint 'em out so't you can +see 'em and hear 'em. Sometimes I want to stop her; but when she gets +into one of her gales there ain't any standing up against her. I guess +it's lucky for Irene that she's got Pen there to help entertain her +company. I can't ever feel down where Pen is." +</P> + +<P> +"That's so," said the Colonel. "And I guess she's got about as much +culture as any of them. Don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"She reads a great deal," admitted her mother. "She seems to be at it +the whole while. I don't want she should injure her health, and +sometimes I feel like snatchin' the books away from her. I don't know +as it's good for a girl to read so much, anyway, especially novels. I +don't want she should get notions." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I guess Pen'll know how to take care of herself," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"She's got sense enough. But she ain't so practical as Irene. She's +more up in the clouds--more of what you may call a dreamer. Irene's +wide-awake every minute; and I declare, any one to see these two +together when there's anything to be done, or any lead to be taken, +would say Irene was the oldest, nine times out of ten. It's only when +they get to talking that you can see Pen's got twice as much brains." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Lapham, tacitly granting this point, and leaning back in +his chair in supreme content. "Did you ever see much nicer girls +anywhere?" +</P> + +<P> +His wife laughed at his pride. "I presume they're as much swans as +anybody's geese." +</P> + +<P> +"No; but honestly, now!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, they'll do; but don't you be silly, if you can help it, Si." +</P> + +<P> +The young people came in, and Corey said it was time for his boat. +Mrs. Lapham pressed him to stay, but he persisted, and he would not let +the Colonel send him to the boat; he said he would rather walk. +Outside, he pushed along toward the boat, which presently he could see +lying at her landing in the bay, across the sandy tract to the left of +the hotels. From time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk, as +a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then he went forward +at a swifter pace. "She's charming!" he said, and he thought he had +spoken aloud. He found himself floundering about in the deep sand, +wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat just before +she started. The clerk came to take his fare, and Corey looked +radiantly up at him in his lantern-light, with a smile that he must +have been wearing a long time; his cheek was stiff with it. Once some +people who stood near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then +he suspected himself of having laughed outright. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XI. +</H3> + +<P> +COREY put off his set smile with the help of a frown, of which he first +became aware after reaching home, when his father asked-- +</P> + +<P> +"Anything gone wrong with your department of the fine arts to-day, Tom?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no--no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving his brows from the +strain upon them, and beaming again. "But I was thinking whether you +were not perhaps right in your impression that it might be well for you +to make Colonel Lapham's acquaintance before a great while." +</P> + +<P> +"Has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked Bromfield Corey, laying +aside his book and taking his lean knee between his clasped hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to reply. "I was merely +thinking whether it might not begin to seem intentional, your not doing +it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Tom, you know I have been leaving it altogether to you----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I understand, of course, and I didn't mean to urge anything of the +kind----" +</P> + +<P> +"You are so very much more of a Bostonian than I am, you know, that +I've been waiting your motion in entire confidence that you would know +just what to do, and when to do it. If I had been left quite to my own +lawless impulses, I think I should have called upon your padrone at +once. It seems to me that my father would have found some way of +showing that he expected as much as that from people placed in the +relation to him that we hold to Colonel Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think so?" asked the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. But you know I don't pretend to be an authority in such matters. +As far as they go, I am always in the hands of your mother and you +children." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm very sorry, sir. I had no idea I was over-ruling your judgment. +I only wanted to spare you a formality that didn't seem quite a +necessity yet. I'm very sorry," he said again, and this time with more +comprehensive regret. "I shouldn't like to have seemed remiss with a +man who has been so considerate of me. They are all very good-natured." +</P> + +<P> +"I dare say," said Bromfield Corey, with the satisfaction which no +elder can help feeling in disabling the judgment of a younger man, +"that it won't be too late if I go down to your office with you +to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no. I didn't imagine your doing it at once, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, but nothing can prevent me from doing a thing when once I take the +bit in my teeth," said the father, with the pleasure which men of weak +will sometimes take in recognising their weakness. "How does their new +house get on?" +</P> + +<P> +"I believe they expect to be in it before New Year." +</P> + +<P> +"Will they be a great addition to society?" asked Bromfield Corey, with +unimpeachable seriousness. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't quite know what you mean," returned the son, a little uneasily. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, I see that you do, Tom." +</P> + +<P> +"No one can help feeling that they are all people of good sense +and--right ideas." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, that won't do. If society took in all the people of right ideas +and good sense, it would expand beyond the calling capacity of its most +active members. Even your mother's social conscientiousness could not +compass it. Society is a very different sort of thing from good sense +and right ideas. It is based upon them, of course, but the airy, +graceful, winning superstructure which we all know demands different +qualities. Have your friends got these qualities,--which may be felt, +but not defined?" +</P> + +<P> +The son laughed. "To tell you the truth, sir, I don't think they have +the most elemental ideas of society, as we understand it. I don't +believe Mrs. Lapham ever gave a dinner." +</P> + +<P> +"And with all that money!" sighed the father. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe they have the habit of wine at table. I suspect that +when they don't drink tea and coffee with their dinner, they drink +ice-water." +</P> + +<P> +"Horrible!" said Bromfield Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"It appears to me that this defines them." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes. There are people who give dinners, and who are not +cognoscible. But people who have never yet given a dinner, how is +society to assimilate them?" +</P> + +<P> +"It digests a great many people," suggested the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; but they have always brought some sort of sauce piquante with +them. Now, as I understand you, these friends of yours have no such +sauce." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't know about that!" cried the son. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, rude, native flavours, I dare say. But that isn't what I mean. +Well, then, they must spend. There is no other way for them to win +their way to general regard. We must have the Colonel elected to the +Ten O'clock Club, and he must put himself down in the list of those +willing to entertain. Any one can manage a large supper. Yes, I see a +gleam of hope for him in that direction." +</P> + +<P> +In the morning Bromfield Corey asked his son whether he should find +Lapham at his place as early as eleven. +</P> + +<P> +"I think you might find him even earlier. I've never been there before +him. I doubt if the porter is there much sooner." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, suppose I go with you, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, if you like, sir," said the son, with some deprecation. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, the question is, will HE like?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think he will, sir;" and the father could see that his son was very +much pleased. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was rending an impatient course through the morning's news when +they appeared at the door of his inner room. He looked up from the +newspaper spread on the desk before him, and then he stood up, making +an indifferent feint of not knowing that he knew Bromfield Corey by +sight. +</P> + +<P> +"Good morning, Colonel Lapham," said the son, and Lapham waited for him +to say further, "I wish to introduce my father." Then he answered, +"Good morning," and added rather sternly for the elder Corey, "How do +you do, sir? Will you take a chair?" and he pushed him one. +</P> + +<P> +They shook hands and sat down, and Lapham said to his subordinate, +"Have a seat;" but young Corey remained standing, watching them in +their observance of each other with an amusement which was a little +uneasy. Lapham made his visitor speak first by waiting for him to do +so. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Colonel Lapham, and I ought to +have come sooner to do so. My father in your place would have expected +it of a man in my place at once, I believe. But I can't feel myself +altogether a stranger as it is. I hope Mrs. Lapham is well? And your +daughter?" +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," said Lapham, "they're quite well." +</P> + +<P> +"They were very kind to my wife----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, that was nothing!" cried Lapham. "There's nothing Mrs. Lapham +likes better than a chance of that sort. Mrs. Corey and the young +ladies well?" +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, when I heard from them. They're out of town." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, so I understood," said Lapham, with a nod toward the son. "I +believe Mr. Corey, here, told Mrs. Lapham." He leaned back in his +chair, stiffly resolute to show that he was not incommoded by the +exchange of these civilities. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Bromfield Corey. "Tom has had the pleasure which I hope +for of seeing you all. I hope you're able to make him useful to you +here?" Corey looked round Lapham's room vaguely, and then out at the +clerks in their railed enclosure, where his eye finally rested on an +extremely pretty girl, who was operating a type-writer. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, sir," replied Lapham, softening for the first time with this +approach to business, "I guess it will be our own fault if we don't. By +the way, Corey," he added, to the younger man, as he gathered up some +letters from his desk, "here's something in your line. Spanish or +French, I guess." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll run them over," said Corey, taking them to his desk. +</P> + +<P> +His father made an offer to rise. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't go," said Lapham, gesturing him down again. "I just wanted to +get him away a minute. I don't care to say it to his face,--I don't +like the principle,--but since you ask me about it, I'd just as lief +say that I've never had any young man take hold here equal to your son. +I don't know as you care." +</P> + +<P> +"You make me very happy," said Bromfield Corey. "Very happy indeed. +I've always had the idea that there was something in my son, if he +could only find the way to work it out. And he seems to have gone into +your business for the love of it." +</P> + +<P> +"He went to work in the right way, sir! He told me about it. He looked +into it. And that paint is a thing that will bear looking into." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes. You might think he had invented it, if you heard him +celebrating it." +</P> + +<P> +"Is that so?" demanded Lapham, pleased through and through. "Well, +there ain't any other way. You've got to believe in a thing before you +can put any heart in it. Why, I had a partner in this thing once, +along back just after the war, and he used to be always wanting to +tinker with something else. 'Why,' says I, 'you've got the best thing +in God's universe now. Why ain't you satisfied?' I had to get rid of +him at last. I stuck to my paint, and that fellow's drifted round +pretty much all over the whole country, whittling his capital down all +the while, till here the other day I had to lend him some money to +start him new. No, sir, you've got to believe in a thing. And I +believe in your son. And I don't mind telling you that, so far as he's +gone, he's a success." +</P> + +<P> +"That's very kind of you." +</P> + +<P> +"No kindness about it. As I was saying the other day to a friend of +mine, I've had many a fellow right out of the street that had to work +hard all his life, and didn't begin to take hold like this son of +yours." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham expanded with profound self-satisfaction. As he probably +conceived it, he had succeeded in praising, in a perfectly casual way, +the supreme excellence of his paint, and his own sagacity and +benevolence; and here he was sitting face to face with Bromfield Corey, +praising his son to him, and receiving his grateful acknowledgments as +if he were the father of some office-boy whom Lapham had given a place +half but of charity. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir, when your son proposed to take hold here, I didn't have much +faith in his ideas, that's the truth. But I had faith in him, and I +saw that he meant business from the start. I could see it was born in +him. Any one could." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid he didn't inherit it directly from me," said Bromfield +Corey; "but it's in the blood, on both sides." "Well, sir, we can't +help those things," said Lapham compassionately. "Some of us have got +it, and some of us haven't. The idea is to make the most of what we +HAVE got." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes; that is the idea. By all means." +</P> + +<P> +"And you can't ever tell what's in you till you try. Why, when I +started this thing, I didn't more than half understand my own strength. +I wouldn't have said, looking back, that I could have stood the wear +and tear of what I've been through. But I developed as I went along. +It's just like exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. You can lift +twice or three times as much after you've been in training a month as +you could before. And I can see that it's going to be just so with +your son. His going through college won't hurt him,--he'll soon slough +all that off,--and his bringing up won't; don't be anxious about it. I +noticed in the army that some of the fellows that had the most go-ahead +were fellows that hadn't ever had much more to do than girls before the +war broke out. Your son will get along." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," said Bromfield Corey, and smiled--whether because his +spirit was safe in the humility he sometimes boasted, or because it was +triply armed in pride against anything the Colonel's kindness could do. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll get along. He's a good business man, and he's a fine fellow. +MUST you go?" asked Lapham, as Bromfield Corey now rose more +resolutely. "Well, glad to see you. It was natural you should want to +come and see what he was about, and I'm glad you did. I should have +felt just so about it. Here is some of our stuff," he said, pointing +out the various packages in his office, including the Persis Brand. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that's very nice, very nice indeed," said his visitor. "That +colour through the jar--very rich--delicious. Is Persis Brand a name?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham blushed. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Persis is. I don't know as you saw an interview that fellow +published in the Events a while back?" +</P> + +<P> +"What is the Events?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it's that new paper Witherby's started." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Bromfield Corey, "I haven't seen it. I read The Daily," he +explained; by which he meant The Daily Advertiser, the only daily there +is in the old-fashioned Bostonian sense. +</P> + +<P> +"He put a lot of stuff in my mouth that I never said," resumed Lapham; +"but that's neither here nor there, so long as you haven't seen it. +Here's the department your son's in," and he showed him the foreign +labels. Then he took him out into the warehouse to see the large +packages. At the head of the stairs, where his guest stopped to nod to +his son and say "Good-bye, Tom," Lapham insisted upon going down to the +lower door with him "Well, call again," he said in hospitable +dismissal. "I shall always be glad to see you. There ain't a great +deal doing at this season." Bromfield Corey thanked him, and let his +hand remain perforce in Lapham's lingering grasp. "If you ever like to +ride after a good horse----" the Colonel began. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no, no, no; thank you! The better the horse, the more I should be +scared. Tom has told me of your driving!" +</P> + +<P> +"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Colonel. "Well! every one to his taste. +Well, good morning, sir!" and he suffered him to go. +</P> + +<P> +"Who is the old man blowing to this morning?" asked Walker, the +book-keeper, making an errand to Corey's desk. +</P> + +<P> +"My father." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! That your father? I thought he must be one of your Italian +correspondents that you'd been showing round, or Spanish." +</P> + +<P> +In fact, as Bromfield Corey found his way at his leisurely pace up +through the streets on which the prosperity of his native city was +founded, hardly any figure could have looked more alien to its life. +He glanced up and down the facades and through the crooked vistas like +a stranger, and the swarthy fruiterer of whom he bought an apple, +apparently for the pleasure of holding it in his hand, was not +surprised that the purchase should be transacted in his own tongue. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham walked back through the outer office to his own room without +looking at Corey, and during the day he spoke to him only of business +matters. That must have been his way of letting Corey see that he was +not overcome by the honour of his father's visit. But he presented +himself at Nantasket with the event so perceptibly on his mind that his +wife asked: "Well, Silas, has Rogers been borrowing any more money of +you? I don't want you should let that thing go too far. You've done +enough." +</P> + +<P> +"You needn't be afraid. I've seen the last of Rogers for one while." +He hesitated, to give the fact an effect of no importance. "Corey's +father called this morning." +</P> + +<P> +"Did he?" said Mrs. Lapham, willing to humour his feint of +indifference. "Did HE want to borrow some money too?" "Not as I +understood." Lapham was smoking at great ease, and his wife had some +crocheting on the other side of the lamp from him. +</P> + +<P> +The girls were on the piazza looking at the moon on the water again. +"There's no man in it to-night," Penelope said, and Irene laughed +forlornly. +</P> + +<P> +"What DID he want, then?" asked Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't know. Seemed to be just a friendly call. Said he ought +to have come before." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. Then she said: "Well, I hope you're +satisfied now." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham rejected the sympathy too openly offered. "I don't know about +being satisfied. I wa'n't in any hurry to see him." +</P> + +<P> +His wife permitted him this pretence also. "What sort of a person is +he, anyway?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, not much like his son. There's no sort of business about him. +I don't know just how you'd describe him. He's tall; and he's got +white hair and a moustache; and his fingers are very long and limber. +I couldn't help noticing them as he sat there with his hands on the top +of his cane. Didn't seem to be dressed very much, and acted just like +anybody. Didn't talk much. Guess I did most of the talking. Said he +was glad I seemed to be getting along so well with his son. He asked +after you and Irene; and he said he couldn't feel just like a stranger. +Said you had been very kind to his wife. Of course I turned it off. +Yes," said Lapham thoughtfully, with his hands resting on his knees, +and his cigar between the fingers of his left hand, "I guess he meant +to do the right thing, every way. Don't know as I ever saw a much +pleasanter man. Dunno but what he's about the pleasantest man I ever +did see." He was not letting his wife see in his averted face the +struggle that revealed itself there--the struggle of stalwart +achievement not to feel flattered at the notice of sterile elegance, +not to be sneakingly glad of its amiability, but to stand up and look +at it with eyes on the same level. God, who made us so much like +himself, but out of the dust, alone knows when that struggle will end. +The time had been when Lapham could not have imagined any worldly +splendour which his dollars could not buy if he chose to spend them for +it; but his wife's half discoveries, taking form again in his ignorance +of the world, filled him with helpless misgiving. A cloudy vision of +something unpurchasable, where he had supposed there was nothing, had +cowed him in spite of the burly resistance of his pride. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why he shouldn't be pleasant," said Mrs. Lapham. "He's +never done anything else." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy laugh. "Pshaw, Persis! +you never forget anything?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I've got more than that to remember. I suppose you asked him to +ride after the mare?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Lapham, reddening guiltily, "he said he was afraid of a +good horse." +</P> + +<P> +"Then, of course, you hadn't asked him." Mrs. Lapham crocheted in +silence, and her husband leaned back in his chair and smoked. +</P> + +<P> +At last he said, "I'm going to push that house forward. They're +loafing on it. There's no reason why we shouldn't be in it by +Thanksgiving. I don't believe in moving in the dead of winter." +</P> + +<P> +"We can wait till spring. We're very comfortable in the old place," +answered his wife. Then she broke out on him: "What are you in such a +hurry to get into that house for? Do you want to invite the Coreys to a +house-warming?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham looked at her without speaking. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you suppose I can see through you I declare, Silas Lapham, if I +didn't know different, I should say you were about the biggest fool! +Don't you know ANYthing? Don't you know that it wouldn't do to ask +those people to our house before they've asked us to theirs? They'd +laugh in our faces!" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe they'd laugh in our faces. What's the difference +between our asking them and their asking us?" demanded the Colonel +sulkily. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well! If you don t see!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I DON'T see. But I don't want to ask them to the house. I +suppose, if I want to, I can invite him down to a fish dinner at +Taft's." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham fell back in her chair, and let her work drop in her lap +with that "Tckk!" in which her sex knows how to express utter contempt +and despair. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you DO such a thing, Silas, I'll never speak to you again! +It's no USE! It's NO use! I did think, after you'd behaved so well +about Rogers, I might trust you a little. But I see I can't. I presume +as long as you live you'll have to be nosed about like a perfect--I +don't know what!" +</P> + +<P> +"What are you making such a fuss about?" demanded Lapham, terribly +crestfallen, but trying to pluck up a spirit. "I haven't done anything +yet. I can't ask your advice about anything any more without having +you fly out. Confound it! I shall do as I please after this." +</P> + +<P> +But as if he could not endure that contemptuous atmosphere, he got up, +and his wife heard him in the dining-room pouring himself out a glass +of ice-water, and then heard him mount the stairs to their room, and +slam its door after him. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know what your father's wanting to do now?" Mrs. Lapham asked +her eldest daughter, who lounged into the parlour a moment with her +wrap stringing from her arm, while the younger went straight to bed. +"He wants to invite Mr. Corey's father to a fish dinner at Taft's!" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope was yawning with her hand on her mouth; she stopped, and, with +a laugh of amused expectance, sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged +forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Why! what in the world has put the Colonel up to that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Put him up to it! There's that fellow, who ought have come to see him +long ago, drops into his office this morning, and talks five minutes +with him, and your father is flattered out of his five senses. He's +crazy to get in with those people, and I shall have a perfect battle to +keep him within bounds." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Persis, ma'am, you can't say but what you began it," said +Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I began it," confessed Mrs. Lapham. "Pen," she broke out, +"what do you suppose he means by it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Who? Mr. Corey's father? What does the Colonel think?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, the Colonel!" cried Mrs. Lapham. She added tremulously: "Perhaps +he IS right. He DID seem to take a fancy to her last summer, and now +if he's called in that way . . ." She left her daughter to distribute +the pronouns aright, and resumed: "Of course, I should have said once +that there wasn't any question about it. I should have said so last +year; and I don't know what it is keeps me from saying so now. I +suppose I know a little more about things than I did; and your father's +being so bent on it sets me all in a twitter. He thinks his money can +do everything. Well, I don't say but what it can, a good many. And +'Rene is as good a child as ever there was; and I don't see but what +she's pretty-appearing enough to suit any one. She's pretty-behaved, +too; and she IS the most capable girl. I presume young men don't care +very much for such things nowadays; but there ain't a great many girls +can go right into the kitchen, and make such a custard as she did +yesterday. And look at the way she does, through the whole house! She +can't seem to go into a room without the things fly right into their +places. And if she had to do it to-morrow, she could make all her own +dresses a great deal better than them we pay to do it. I don't say but +what he's about as nice a fellow as ever stepped. But there! I'm +ashamed of going on so." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, mother," said the girl after a pause, in which she looked as if +a little weary of the subject, "why do you worry about it? If it's to +be it'll be, and if it isn't----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's what I tell your father. But when it comes to myself, I +see how hard it is for him to rest quiet. I'm afraid we shall all do +something we'll repent of afterwards." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, "I don't intend to do anything wrong; but +if I do, I promise not to be sorry for it. I'll go that far. And I +think I wouldn't be sorry for it beforehand, if I were in your place, +mother. Let the Colonel go on! He likes to manoeuvre, and he isn't +going to hurt any one. The Corey family can take care of themselves, I +guess." +</P> + +<P> +She laughed in her throat, drawing down the corners of her mouth, and +enjoying the resolution with which her mother tried to fling off the +burden of her anxieties. "Pen! I believe you're right. You always do +see things in such a light! There! I don't care if he brings him down +every day." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, ma'am," said Pen, "I don't believe 'Rene would, either. She's +just so indifferent!" +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel slept badly that night, and in the morning Mrs. Lapham came +to breakfast without him. +</P> + +<P> +"Your father ain't well," she reported. "He's had one of his turns." +</P> + +<P> +"I should have thought he had two or three of them," said Penelope, "by +the stamping round I heard. Isn't he coming to breakfast?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not just yet," said her mother. "He's asleep, and he'll be all right +if he gets his nap out. I don't want you girls should make any great +noise." "Oh, we'll be quiet enough," returned Penelope. "Well, I'm +glad the Colonel isn't sojering. At first I thought he might be +sojering." She broke into a laugh, and, struggling indolently with it, +looked at her sister. "You don't think it'll be necessary for anybody +to come down from the office and take orders from him while he's laid +up, do you, mother?" she inquired. +</P> + +<P> +"Pen!" cried Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock boat," said the +mother sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"I think papa works too hard all through the summer. Why don't you +make him take a rest, mamma?" asked Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every year. It used to be so +that he'd take a little time off now and then; but I declare, he hardly +ever seems to breathe now away from his office. And this year he says +he doesn't intend to go down to Lapham, except to see after the works +for a few days. I don't know what to do with the man any more! Seems +as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. It scares me +to think what would happen to him if he lost it. I know one thing," +concluded Mrs. Lapham. "He shall not go back to the office to-day." +</P> + +<P> +"Then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat," Pen reminded her. +</P> + +<P> +"No, he won't. You can just drive over to the hotel as soon as you're +through, girls, and telegraph that he's not well, and won't be at the +office till to-morrow. I'm not going to have them send anybody down +here to bother him." +</P> + +<P> +"That's a blow," said Pen. "I didn't know but they might send----" she +looked demurely at her sister--"Dennis!" +</P> + +<P> +"Mamma!" cried Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I declare, there's no living with this family any more," said +Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"There, Pen, be done!" commanded her mother. But perhaps she did not +intend to forbid her teasing. It gave a pleasant sort of reality to +the affair that was in her mind, and made what she wished appear not +only possible but probable. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling as each boat +departed without him, through the day; before night he became very +cross, in spite of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and +grumbled that he had been kept from going up to town. "I might as well +have gone as not," he repeated, till his wife lost her patience. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you shall go to-morrow, Silas, if you have to be carried to the +boat." +</P> + +<P> +"I declare," said Penelope, "the Colonel don't pet worth a cent." +</P> + +<P> +The six o'clock boat brought Corey. The girls were sitting on the +piazza, and Irene saw him first. +</P> + +<P> +"O Pen!" she whispered, with her heart in her face; and Penelope had no +time for mockery before he was at the steps. +</P> + +<P> +"I hope Colonel Lapham isn't ill," he said, and they could hear their +mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors. +</P> + +<P> +"Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It don't matter HOW he sees +you at the office, shirt-sleeves or not. You're in a gentleman's house +now--or you ought to be--and you shan't see company in your +dressing-gown." +</P> + +<P> +Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother's anger. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, he's very much better, thank you!" said Irene, speaking up loudly +to drown the noise of the controversy. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad of that," said Corey, and when she led him indoors the +vanquished Colonel met his visitor in a double-breasted frock-coat, +which he was still buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at once +that Corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, and when he +was clear that he had come out of civility, surprise mingled with his +gratification that he should be the object of solicitude to the young +man. In Lapham's circle of acquaintance they complained when they were +sick, but they made no womanish inquiries after one another's health, +and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters were serious. He +would have enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he had +been allowed to do so; and after tea, which Corey took with them, he +would have remained to entertain him if his wife had not sent him to +bed. She followed him to see that he took some medicine she had +prescribed for him, but she went first to Penelope's room, where she +found the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading. +</P> + +<P> +"You better go down," said the mother. "I've got to go to your father, +and Irene is all alone with Mr. Corey; and I know she'll be on pins and +needles without you're there to help make it go off." +</P> + +<P> +"She'd better try to get along without me, mother," said Penelope +soberly. "I can't always be with them." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," replied Mrs. Lapham, "then I must. There'll be a perfect +Quaker meeting down there." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I guess 'Rene will find something to say if you leave her to +herself. Or if she don't, HE must. It'll be all right for you to go +down when you get ready; but I shan't go till toward the last. If he's +coming here to see Irene--and I don't believe he's come on father's +account--he wants to see her and not me. If she can't interest him +alone, perhaps he'd as well find it out now as any time. At any rate, +I guess you'd better make the experiment. You'll know whether it's a +success if he comes again." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the mother, "may be you're right. I'll go down directly. +It does seem as if he did mean something, after all." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham did not hasten to return to her guest. In her own girlhood +it was supposed that if a young man seemed to be coming to see a girl, +it was only common-sense to suppose that he wished to see her alone; +and her life in town had left Mrs. Lapham's simple traditions in this +respect unchanged. She did with her daughter as her mother would have +done with her. +</P> + +<P> +Where Penelope sat with her book, she heard the continuous murmur of +voices below, and after a long interval she heard her mother descend. +She did not read the open book that lay in her lap, though she kept her +eyes fast on the print. Once she rose and almost shut the door, so +that she could scarcely hear; then she opened it wide again with a +self-disdainful air, and resolutely went back to her book, which again +she did not read. But she remained in her room till it was nearly time +for Corey to return to his boat. +</P> + +<P> +When they were alone again, Irene made a feint of scolding her for +leaving her to entertain Mr. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Why! didn't you have a pleasant call?" asked Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +Irene threw her arms round her. "Oh, it was a SPLENDID call! I didn't +suppose I could make it go off so well. We talked nearly the whole +time about you!" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think THAT was a very interesting subject." +</P> + +<P> +"He kept asking about you. He asked everything. You don't know how +much he thinks of you, Pen. O Pen! what do you think made him come? +Do you think he really did come to see how papa was?" Irene buried her +face in her sister's neck. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting. "Well," she +said, "I don't think he did, altogether." +</P> + +<P> +Irene, all glowing, released her. "Don't you--don't you REALLY? O Pen! +don't you think he IS nice? Don't you think he's handsome? Don't you +think I behaved horridly when we first met him this evening, not +thanking him for coming? I know he thinks I've no manners. But it +seemed as if it would be thanking him for coming to see me. Ought I to +have asked him to come again, when he said good-night? I didn't; I +couldn't. Do you believe he'll think I don't want him to? You don't +believe he would keep coming if he didn't--want to----" +</P> + +<P> +"He hasn't kept coming a great deal, yet," suggested Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"No; I know he hasn't. But if he--if he should?" +</P> + +<P> +"Then I should think he wanted to." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, would you--WOULD you? Oh, how good you always are, Pen! And you +always say what you think. I wish there was some one coming to see you +too. That's all that I don't like about it. Perhaps----He was telling +about his friend there in Texas----" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Penelope, "his friend couldn't call often from Texas. You +needn't ask Mr. Corey to trouble about me, 'Rene. I think I can manage +to worry along, if you're satisfied." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I AM, Pen. When do you suppose he'll come again?" Irene pushed +some of Penelope's things aside on the dressing-case, to rest her elbow +and talk at ease. Penelope came up and put them back. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, not to-night," she said; "and if that's what you're sitting up +for----" +</P> + +<P> +Irene caught her round the neck again, and ran out of the room. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel was packed off on the eight o'clock boat the next morning; +but his recovery did not prevent Corey from repeating his visit in a +week. This time Irene came radiantly up to Penelope's room, where she +had again withdrawn herself. "You must come down, Pen," she said. +"He's asked if you're not well, and mamma says you've got to come." +</P> + +<P> +After that Penelope helped Irene through with her calls, and talked +them over with her far into the night after Corey was gone. But when +the impatient curiosity of her mother pressed her for some opinion of +the affair, she said, "You know as much as I do, mother." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't he ever say anything to you about her--praise her up, any?" +</P> + +<P> +"He's never mentioned Irene to me." +</P> + +<P> +"He hasn't to me, either," said Mrs. Lapham, with a sigh of trouble. +"Then what makes him keep coming?" +</P> + +<P> +"I can't tell you. One thing, he says there isn't a house open in +Boston where he's acquainted. Wait till some of his friends get back, +and then if he keeps coming, it'll be time to inquire." +</P> + +<P> +"Well!" said the mother; but as the weeks passed she was less and less +able to attribute Corey's visits to his loneliness in town, and turned +to her husband for comfort. +</P> + +<P> +"Silas, I don't know as we ought to let young Corey keep coming so. I +don't quite like it, with all his family away." +</P> + +<P> +"He's of age," said the Colonel. "He can go where he pleases. It +don't matter whether his family's here or not." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but if they don't want he should come? Should you feel just right +about letting him?" +</P> + +<P> +"How're you going to stop him? I swear, Persis, I don't know what's got +over you! What is it? You didn't use to be so. But to hear you talk, +you'd think those Coreys were too good for this world, and we wa'n't +fit for 'em to walk on." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not going to have 'em say we took an advantage of their being away +and tolled him on." +</P> + +<P> +"I should like to HEAR 'em say it!" cried Lapham. "Or anybody!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said his wife, relinquishing this point of anxiety, "I can't +make out whether he cares anything for her or not. And Pen can't tell +either; or else she won't." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I guess he cares for her, fast enough," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't make out that he's said or done the first thing to show it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I was better than a year getting my courage up." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, that was different," said Mrs. Lapham, in contemptuous dismissal +of the comparison, and yet with a certain fondness. "I guess, if he +cared for her, a fellow in his position wouldn't be long getting up his +courage to speak to Irene." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham brought his fist down on the table between them. +</P> + +<P> +"Look here, Persis! Once for all, now, don't you ever let me hear you +say anything like that again! I'm worth nigh on to a million, and I've +made it every cent myself; and my girls are the equals of anybody, I +don't care who it is. He ain't the fellow to take on any airs; but if +he ever tries it with me, I'll send him to the right about mighty +quick. I'll have a talk with him, if----" +</P> + +<P> +"No, no; don't do that!" implored his wife. "I didn't mean anything. +I don't know as I meant ANYthing. He's just as unassuming as he can +be, and I think Irene's a match for anybody. You just let things go +on. It'll be all right. You never can tell how it is with young +people. Perhaps SHE'S offish. Now you ain't--you ain't going to say +anything?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the more easily, no doubt, +because after his explosion he must have perceived that his pride +itself stood in the way of what his pride had threatened. He contented +himself with his wife's promise that she would never again present that +offensive view of the case, and she did not remain without a certain +support in his sturdy self-assertion. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XII. +</H3> + +<P> +MRS. COREY returned with her daughters in the early days of October, +having passed three or four weeks at Intervale after leaving Bar +Harbour. They were somewhat browner than they were when they left town +in June, but they were not otherwise changed. Lily, the elder of the +girls, had brought back a number of studies of kelp and toadstools, +with accessory rocks and rotten logs, which she would never finish up +and never show any one, knowing the slightness of their merit. Nanny, +the younger, had read a great many novels with a keen sense of their +inaccuracy as representations of life, and had seen a great deal of +life with a sad regret for its difference from fiction. They were both +nice girls, accomplished, well-dressed of course, and well enough +looking; but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains whom +their taste would allow to influence their fate, and they had come home +to the occupations they had left, with no hopes and no fears to +distract them. +</P> + +<P> +In the absence of these they were fitted to take the more vivid +interest in their brother's affairs, which they could see weighed upon +their mother's mind after the first hours of greeting. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it seems to have been going on, and your father has never written +a word about it," she said, shaking her head. +</P> + +<P> +"What good would it have done?" asked Nanny, who was little and fair, +with rings of light hair that filled a bonnet-front very prettily; she +looked best in a bonnet. "It would only have worried you. He could +not have stopped Tom; you couldn't, when you came home to do it." +</P> + +<P> +"I dare say papa didn't know much about it," suggested Lily. She was a +tall, lean, dark girl, who looked as if she were not quite warm enough, +and whom you always associated with wraps of different aesthetic effect +after you had once seen her. +</P> + +<P> +It is a serious matter always to the women of his family when a young +man gives them cause to suspect that he is interested in some other +woman. A son-in-law or brother-in-law does not enter the family; he +need not be caressed or made anything of; but the son's or brother's +wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they cannot deny. +Some convention of their sex obliges them to show her affection, to +like or to seem to like her, to take her to their intimacy, however +odious she may be to them. With the Coreys it was something more than +an affair of sentiment. They were by no means poor, and they were not +dependent money-wise upon Tom Corey; but the mother had come, without +knowing it, to rely upon his sense, his advice in everything, and the +sisters, seeing him hitherto so indifferent to girls, had insensibly +grown to regard him as altogether their own till he should be released, +not by his marriage, but by theirs, an event which had not approached +with the lapse of time. Some kinds of girls--they believed that they +could readily have chosen a kind--might have taken him without taking +him from them; but this generosity could not be hoped for in such a +girl as Miss Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps," urged their mother, "it would not be so bad. She seemed an +affectionate little thing with her mother, without a great deal of +character though she was so capable about some things." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, she'll be an affectionate little thing with Tom too, you may be +sure," said Nanny. "And that characterless capability becomes the most +in tense narrow-mindedness. She'll think we were against her from the +beginning." +</P> + +<P> +"She has no cause for that," Lily interposed, "and we shall not give +her any." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, we shall," retorted Nanny. "We can't help it; and if we can't, +her own ignorance would be cause enough." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't feel that she's altogether ignorant," said Mrs. Corey justly. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course she can read and write," admitted Nanny. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't imagine what he finds to talk about with her," said Lily. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, THAT'S very simple," returned her sister. +</P> + +<P> +"They talk about themselves, with occasional references to each other. +I have heard people 'going on' on the hotel piazzas. She's +embroidering, or knitting, or tatting, or something of that kind; and +he says she seems quite devoted to needlework, and she says, yes, she +has a perfect passion for it, and everybody laughs at her for it; but +she can't help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she +always shall be,--with remote and minute particulars. And she ends by +saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or +embroider, or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make +her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather +better, or if you're in the woods camping. Then she lets him take up +one corner of her work, and perhaps touch her fingers; and that +encourages him to say that he supposes nothing could induce her to drop +her work long enough to go down on the rocks, or out among the +huckleberry bushes; and she puts her head on one side, and says she +doesn't know really. And then they go, and he lies at her feet on the +rocks, or picks huckleberries and drops them in her lap, and they go on +talking about themselves, and comparing notes to see how they differ +from each other. And----" +</P> + +<P> +"That will do, Nanny," said her mother. +</P> + +<P> +Lily smiled autumnally. "Oh, disgusting!" +</P> + +<P> +"Disgusting? Not at all!" protested her sister. "It's very amusing +when you see it, and when you do it----" +</P> + +<P> +"It's always a mystery what people see in each other," observed Mrs. +Corey severely. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," Nanny admitted, "but I don't know that there is much comfort for +us in the application." "No, there isn't," said her mother. +</P> + +<P> +"The most that we can do is to hope for the best till we know the +worst. Of course we shall make the best of the worst when it comes." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, and perhaps it would not be so very bad. I was saying to your +father when I was here in July that those things can always be managed. +You must face them as if they were nothing out of the way, and try not +to give any cause for bitterness among ourselves." +</P> + +<P> +"That's true. But I don't believe in too much resignation beforehand. +It amounts to concession," said Nanny. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course we should oppose it in all proper ways," returned her mother. +</P> + +<P> +Lily had ceased to discuss the matter. In virtue of her artistic +temperament, she was expected not to be very practical. It was her +mother and her sister who managed, submitting to the advice and consent +of Corey what they intended to do. +</P> + +<P> +"Your father wrote me that he had called on Colonel Lapham at his place +of business," said Mrs. Corey, seizing her first chance of approaching +the subject with her son. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Corey. "A dinner was father's idea, but he came down to a +call, at my suggestion." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey, in a tone of relief, as if the statement threw a +new light on the fact that Corey had suggested the visit. "He said so +little about it in his letter that I didn't know just how it came +about." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought it was right they should meet," explained the son, "and so +did father. I was glad that I suggested it, afterward; it was +extremely gratifying to Colonel Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it was quite right in every way. I suppose you have seen +something of the family during the summer." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, a good deal. I've been down at Nantasket rather often." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey let her eyes droop. Then she asked: "Are they well?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, except Lapham himself, now and then. I went down once or twice +to see him. He hasn't given himself any vacation this summer; he has +such a passion for his business that I fancy he finds it hard being +away from it at any time, and he's made his new house an excuse for +staying." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, his house! Is it to be something fine?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; it's a beautiful house. Seymour is doing it." +</P> + +<P> +"Then, of course, it will be very handsome. I suppose the young ladies +are very much taken up with it; and Mrs. Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Lapham, yes. I don't think the young ladies care so much about +it." +</P> + +<P> +"It must be for them. Aren't they ambitious?" asked Mrs. Corey, +delicately feeling her way. +</P> + +<P> +Her son thought a while. Then he answered with a smile-- +</P> + +<P> +"No, I don't really think they are. They are unambitious, I should +say." Mrs. Corey permitted herself a long breath. But her son added, +"It's the parents who are ambitious for them," and her respiration +became shorter again. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"They're very simple, nice girls," pursued Corey. "I think you'll like +the elder, when you come to know her." +</P> + +<P> +When you come to know her. The words implied an expectation that the +two families were to be better acquainted. +</P> + +<P> +"Then she is more intellectual than her sister?" Mrs. Corey ventured. +</P> + +<P> +"Intellectual?" repeated her son. "No; that isn't the word, quite. +Though she certainly has more mind." +</P> + +<P> +"The younger seemed very sensible." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, sensible, yes. And as practical as she's pretty. She can do all +sorts of things, and likes to be doing them. Don't you think she's an +extraordinary beauty?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes--yes, she is," said Mrs. Corey, at some cost. +</P> + +<P> +"She's good, too," said Corey, "and perfectly innocent and transparent. +I think you will like her the better the more you know her." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought her very nice from the beginning," said the mother +heroically; and then nature asserted itself in her. "But I should be +afraid that she might perhaps be a little bit tiresome at last; her +range of ideas seemed so extremely limited." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's what I was afraid of. But, as a matter of fact, she +isn't. She interests you by her very limitations. You can see the +working of her mind, like that of a child. She isn't at all conscious +even of her beauty." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe young men can tell whether girls are conscious or +not," said Mrs. Corey. "But I am not saying the Miss Laphams are +not----" Her son sat musing, with an inattentive smile on his face. +"What is it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! nothing. I was thinking of Miss Lapham and something she was +saying. She's very droll, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"The elder sister? Yes, you told me that. Can you see the workings of +her mind too?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; she's everything that's unexpected." Corey fell into another +reverie, and smiled again; but he did not offer to explain what amused +him, and his mother would not ask. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what to make of his admiring the girl so frankly," she +said afterward to her husband. "That couldn't come naturally till +after he had spoken to her, and I feel sure that he hasn't yet." +</P> + +<P> +"You women haven't risen yet--it's an evidence of the backwardness of +your sex--to a conception of the Bismarck idea in diplomacy. If a man +praises one woman, you still think he's in love with another. Do you +mean that because Tom didn't praise the elder sister so much, he HAS +spoken to HER?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey refused the consequence, saying that it did not follow. +"Besides, he did praise her." +</P> + +<P> +"You ought to be glad that matters are in such good shape, then. At +any rate, you can do absolutely nothing." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! I know it," sighed Mrs. Corey. "I wish Tom would be a little +opener with me." +</P> + +<P> +"He's as open as it's in the nature of an American-born son to be with +his parents. I dare say if you'd asked him plumply what he meant in +regard to the young lady, he would have told you--if he knew." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, don't you think he does know, Bromfield?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not at all sure he does. You women think that because a young man +dangles after a girl, or girls, he's attached to them. It doesn't at +all follow. He dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to do +with his time, and because they seem to like it. I dare say that Tom +has dangled a good deal in this instance because there was nobody else +in town." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you really think so?" +</P> + +<P> +"I throw out the suggestion. And it strikes me that a young lady +couldn't do better than stay in or near Boston during the summer. Most +of the young men are here, kept by business through the week, with +evenings available only on the spot, or a few miles off. What was the +proportion of the sexes at the seashore and the mountains?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, twenty girls at least for even an excuse of a man. It's shameful." +</P> + +<P> +"You see, I am right in one part of my theory. Why shouldn't I be +right in the rest?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wish you were. And yet I can't say that I do. Those things are +very serious with girls. I shouldn't like Tom to have been going to +see those people if he meant nothing by it." +</P> + +<P> +"And you wouldn't like it if he did. You are difficult, my dear." Her +husband pulled an open newspaper toward him from the table. +</P> + +<P> +"I feel that it wouldn't be at all like him to do so," said Mrs. Corey, +going on to entangle herself in her words, as women often do when their +ideas are perfectly clear. "Don't go to reading, please, Bromfield! I +am really worried about this matter I must know how much it means. I +can't let it go on so. I don't see how you can rest easy without +knowing." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't in the least know what's going to become of me when I die; and +yet I sleep well," replied Bromfield Corey, putting his newspaper aside. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah! but this is a very different thing." +</P> + +<P> +"So much more serious? Well, what can you do? We had this out when you +were here in the summer, and you agreed with me then that we could do +nothing. The situation hasn't changed at all." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it has; it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, again +expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "I think I must ask +Tom outright." +</P> + +<P> +"You know you can't do that, my dear." +</P> + +<P> +"Then why doesn't he tell us?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that's what HE can't do, if he's making love to Miss Irene--that's +her name, I believe--on the American plan. He will tell us after he +has told HER. That was the way I did. Don't ignore our own youth, +Anna. It was a long while ago, I'll admit." +</P> + +<P> +"It was very different," said Mrs. Corey, a little shaken. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see how. I dare say Mamma Lapham knows whether Tom is in love +with her daughter or not; and no doubt Papa Lapham knows it at second +hand. But we shall not know it until the girl herself does. Depend +upon that. Your mother knew, and she told your father; but my poor +father knew nothing about it till we were engaged; and I had been +hanging about--dangling, as you call it----" +</P> + +<P> +"No, no; YOU called it that." +</P> + +<P> +"Was it I?--for a year or more." +</P> + +<P> +The wife could not refuse to be a little consoled by the image of her +young love which the words conjured up, however little she liked its +relation to her son's interest in Irene Lapham. She smiled pensively. +"Then you think it hasn't come to an understanding with them yet?" +</P> + +<P> +"An understanding? Oh, probably." +</P> + +<P> +"An explanation, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"The only logical inference from what we've been saying is that it +hasn't. But I don't ask you to accept it on that account. May I read +now, my dear?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you may read now," said Mrs. Corey, with one of those sighs which +perhaps express a feminine sense of the unsatisfactoriness of husbands +in general, rather than a personal discontent with her own. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you, my dear; then I think I'll smoke too," said Bromfield +Corey, lighting a cigar. +</P> + +<P> +She left him in peace, and she made no further attempt upon her son's +confidence. But she was not inactive for that reason. She did not, of +course, admit to herself, and far less to others, the motive with which +she went to pay an early visit to the Laphams, who had now come up from +Nantasket to Nankeen Square. She said to her daughters that she had +always been a little ashamed of using her acquaintance with them to get +money for her charity, and then seeming to drop it. Besides, it seemed +to her that she ought somehow to recognise the business relation that +Tom had formed with the father; they must not think that his family +disapproved of what he had done. "Yes, business is business," said +Nanny, with a laugh. "Do you wish us to go with you again?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; I will go alone this time," replied the mother with dignity. +</P> + +<P> +Her coupe now found its way to Nankeen Square without difficulty, and +she sent up a card, which Mrs. Lapham received in the presence of her +daughter Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"I presume I've got to see her," she gasped. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, don't look so guilty, mother," joked the girl; "you haven't been +doing anything so VERY wrong." +</P> + +<P> +"It seems as if I HAD. I don't know what's come over me. I wasn't +afraid of the woman before, but now I don't seem to feel as if I could +look her in the face. He's been coming here of his own accord, and I +fought against his coming long enough, goodness knows. I didn't want +him to come. And as far forth as that goes, we're as respectable as +they are; and your father's got twice their money, any day. We've no +need to go begging for their favour. I guess they were glad enough to +get him in with your father." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, those are all good points, mother," said the girl; "and if you +keep saying them over, and count a hundred every time before you speak, +I guess you'll worry through." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham had been fussing distractedly with her hair and ribbons, in +preparation for her encounter with Mrs. Corey. She now drew in a long +quivering breath, stared at her daughter without seeing her, and +hurried downstairs. It was true that when she met Mrs. Corey before +she had not been awed by her; but since then she had learned at least +her own ignorance of the world, and she had talked over the things she +had misconceived and the things she had shrewdly guessed so much that +she could not meet her on the former footing of equality. In spite of +as brave a spirit and as good a conscience as woman need have, Mrs. +Lapham cringed inwardly, and tremulously wondered what her visitor had +come for. She turned from pale to red, and was hardly coherent in her +greetings; she did not know how they got to where Mrs. Corey was saying +exactly the right things about her son's interest and satisfaction in +his new business, and keeping her eyes fixed on Mrs. Lapham's, reading +her uneasiness there, and making her feel, in spite of her indignant +innocence, that she had taken a base advantage of her in her absence to +get her son away from her and marry him to Irene. Then, presently, +while this was painfully revolving itself in Mrs. Lapham's mind, she +was aware of Mrs. Corey's asking if she was not to have the pleasure of +seeing Miss Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"No; she's out, just now," said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't know just when +she'll be in. She went to get a book." And here she turned red again, +knowing that Irene had gone to get the book because it was one that +Corey had spoken of. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! I'm sorry," said Mrs. Corey. "I had hoped to see her. And your +other daughter, whom I never met?" +</P> + +<P> +"Penelope?" asked Mrs. Lapham, eased a little. "She is at home. I +will go and call her." The Laphams had not yet thought of spending +their superfluity on servants who could be rung for; they kept two +girls and a man to look after the furnace, as they had for the last ten +years. If Mrs. Lapham had rung in the parlour, her second girl would +have gone to the street door to see who was there. She went upstairs +for Penelope herself, and the girl, after some rebellious derision, +returned with her. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey took account of her, as Penelope withdrew to the other side +of the room after their introduction, and sat down, indolently +submissive on the surface to the tests to be applied, and following +Mrs. Corey's lead of the conversation in her odd drawl. +</P> + +<P> +"You young ladies will be glad to be getting into your new house," she +said politely. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Penelope. "We're so used to this one." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey looked a little baffled, but she said sympathetically, "Of +course, you will be sorry to leave your old home." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham could not help putting in on behalf of her daughters: "I +guess if it was left to the girls to say, we shouldn't leave it at all." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey; "are they so much attached? But I can +quite understand it. My children would be heart-broken too if we were +to leave the old place." She turned to Penelope. "But you must think +of the lovely new house, and the beautiful position." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I suppose we shall get used to them too," said Penelope, in +response to this didactic consolation. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I could even imagine your getting very fond of them," pursued Mrs. +Corey patronisingly. "My son has told me of the lovely outlook you're +to have over the water. He thinks you have such a beautiful house. I +believe he had the pleasure of meeting you all there when he first came +home." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I think he was our first visitor." +</P> + +<P> +"He is a great admirer of your house," said Mrs. Corey, keeping her +eyes very sharply, however politely, on Penelope's face, as if to +surprise there the secret of any other great admiration of her son's +that might helplessly show itself. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the girl, "he's been there several times with father; and +he wouldn't be allowed to overlook any of its good points." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother took a little more courage from her daughter's tranquillity. +</P> + +<P> +"The girls make such fun of their father's excitement about his +building, and the way he talks it into everybody." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey, with civil misunderstanding and inquiry. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope flushed, and her mother went on: "I tell him he's more of a +child about it than any of them." +</P> + +<P> +"Young people are very philosophical nowadays," remarked Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Lapham. "I tell them they've always had +everything, so that nothing's a surprise to them. It was different +with us in our young days." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, without assenting. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean the Colonel and myself," explained Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes--yes!" said Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sure," the former went on, rather helplessly, "we had to work hard +enough for everything we got. And so we appreciated it." +</P> + +<P> +"So many things were not done for young people then," said Mrs. Corey, +not recognising the early-hardships standpoint of Mrs. Lapham. "But I +don't know that they are always the better for it now," she added +vaguely, but with the satisfaction we all feel in uttering a just +commonplace. +</P> + +<P> +"It's rather hard living up to blessings that you've always had," said +Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," replied Mrs. Corey distractedly, and coming back to her slowly +from the virtuous distance to which she had absented herself. She +looked at the girl searchingly again, as if to determine whether this +were a touch of the drolling her son had spoken of. But she only +added: "You will enjoy the sunsets on the Back Bay so much." "Well, not +unless they're new ones," said Penelope. "I don't believe I could +promise to enjoy any sunsets that I was used to, a great deal." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey looked at her with misgiving, hardening into dislike. "No," +she breathed vaguely. "My son spoke of the fine effect of the lights +about the hotel from your cottage at Nantasket," she said to Mrs. +Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, they're splendid!" exclaimed that lady. "I guess the girls went +down every night with him to see them from the rocks." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, a little dryly; and she permitted herself to +add: "He spoke of those rocks. I suppose both you young ladies spend a +great deal of your time on them when you're there. At Nahant my +children were constantly on them." +</P> + +<P> +"Irene likes the rocks," said Penelope. "I don't care much about +them,--especially at night." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed! I suppose you find it quite as well looking at the lights +comfortably from the veranda." +</P> + +<P> +"No; you can't see them from the house." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey. After a perceptible pause, she turned to Mrs. +Lapham. "I don't know what my son would have done for a breath of sea +air this summer, if you had not allowed him to come to Nantasket. He +wasn't willing to leave his business long enough to go anywhere else." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he's a born business man," responded Mrs. Lapham +enthusiastically. "If it's born in you, it's bound to come out. +That's what the Colonel is always saying about Mr. Corey. He says it's +born in him to be a business man, and he can't help it." She recurred +to Corey gladly because she felt that she had not said enough of him +when his mother first spoke of his connection with the business. "I +don't believe," she went on excitedly, "that Colonel Lapham has ever +had anybody with him that he thought more of." +</P> + +<P> +"You have all been very kind to my son," said Mrs. Corey in +acknowledgment, and stiffly bowing a little, "and we feel greatly +indebted to you. Very much so." At these grateful expressions Mrs. +Lapham reddened once more, and murmured that it had been very pleasant +to them, she was sure. She glanced at her daughter for support, but +Penelope was looking at Mrs. Corey, who doubtless saw her from the +corner of her eyes, though she went on speaking to her mother. +</P> + +<P> +"I was sorry to hear from him that Mr.--Colonel?--Lapham had not been +quite well this summer. I hope he's better now?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Lapham; "he's all right now. He's +hardly ever been sick, and he don't know how to take care of himself. +That's all. We don't any of us; we're all so well." +</P> + +<P> +"Health is a great blessing," sighed Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, so it is. How is your oldest daughter?" inquired Mrs. Lapham. +"Is she as delicate as ever?" +</P> + +<P> +"She seems to be rather better since we returned." And now Mrs. Corey, +as if forced to the point, said bunglingly that the young ladies had +wished to come with her, but had been detained. She based her +statement upon Nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple +a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. "But we shall +hope for some--some other occasion," she said vaguely, and she put on a +parting smile, and shook hands with Mrs. Lapham and Penelope, and then, +after some lingering commonplaces, got herself out of the house. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope and her mother were still looking at each other, and trying to +grapple with the effect or purport of the visit, when Irene burst in +upon them from the outside. +</P> + +<P> +"O mamma! wasn't that Mrs. Corey's carriage just drove away?" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope answered with her laugh. "Yes! You've just missed the most +delightful call, 'Rene. So easy and pleasant every way. Not a bit +stiff! Mrs. Corey was so friendly! She didn't make one feel at all as +if she'd bought me, and thought she'd given too much; and mother held +up her head as if she were all wool and a yard wide, and she would just +like to have anybody deny it." +</P> + +<P> +In a few touches of mimicry she dashed off a sketch of the scene: her +mother's trepidation, and Mrs. Corey's well-bred repose and polite +scrutiny of them both. She ended by showing how she herself had sat +huddled up in a dark corner, mute with fear. +</P> + +<P> +"If she came to make us say and do the wrong thing, she must have gone +away happy; and it's a pity you weren't here to help, Irene. I don't +know that I aimed to make a bad impression, but I guess I +succeeded--even beyond my deserts." She laughed; then suddenly she +flashed out in fierce earnest. "If I missed doing anything that could +make me as hateful to her as she made herself to me----" She checked +herself, and began to laugh. Her laugh broke, and the tears started +into her eyes; she ran out of the room, and up the stairs. +</P> + +<P> +"What--what does it mean?" asked Irene in a daze. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham was still in the chilly torpor to which Mrs. Corey's call +had reduced her. Penelope's vehemence did not rouse her. She only +shook her head absently, and said, "I don't know." +</P> + +<P> +"Why should Pen care what impression she made? I didn't suppose it +would make any difference to her whether Mrs. Corey liked her or not." +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't, either. But I could see that she was just as nervous as she +could be, every minute of the time. I guess she didn't like Mrs. Corey +any too well from the start, and she couldn't seem to act like herself." +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me about it, mamma," said Irene, dropping into a chair. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey described the interview to her husband on her return home. +"Well, and what are your inferences?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"They were extremely embarrassed and excited--that is, the mother. I +don't wish to do her injustice, but she certainly behaved consciously." +</P> + +<P> +"You made her feel so, I dare say, Anna. I can imagine how terrible +you must have been in the character of an accusing spirit, too +lady-like to say anything. What did you hint?" +</P> + +<P> +"I hinted nothing," said Mrs. Corey, descending to the weakness of +defending herself. "But I saw quite enough to convince me that the +girl is in love with Tom, and the mother knows it." +</P> + +<P> +"That was very unsatisfactory. I supposed you went to find out whether +Tom was in love with the girl. Was she as pretty as ever?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't see her; she was not at home; I saw her sister." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know that I follow you quite, Anna. But no matter. What was +the sister like?" +</P> + +<P> +"A thoroughly disagreeable young woman." +</P> + +<P> +"What did she do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing. She's far too sly for that. But that was the impression." +</P> + +<P> +"Then you didn't find her so amusing as Tom does?" +</P> + +<P> +"I found her pert. There's no other word for it. She says things to +puzzle you and put you out." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that was worse than pert, Anna; that was criminal. Well, let us +thank heaven the younger one is so pretty." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey did not reply directly. "Bromfield," she said, after a +moment of troubled silence, "I have been thinking over your plan, and I +don't see why it isn't the right thing." +</P> + +<P> +"What is my plan?" inquired Bromfield Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"A dinner." +</P> + +<P> +Her husband began to laugh. "Ah, you overdid the accusing-spirit +business, and this is reparation." But Mrs. Corey hurried on, with +combined dignity and anxiety-- +</P> + +<P> +"We can't ignore Tom's intimacy with them--it amounts to that; it will +probably continue even if it's merely a fancy, and we must seem to know +it; whatever comes of it, we can't disown it. They are very simple, +unfashionable people, and unworldly; but I can't say that they are +offensive, unless--unless," she added, in propitiation of her husband's +smile, "unless the father--how did you find the father?" she implored. +</P> + +<P> +"He will be very entertaining," said Corey, "if you start him on his +paint. What was the disagreeable daughter like? Shall you have her?" +</P> + +<P> +"She's little and dark. We must have them all," Mrs. Corey sighed. +"Then you don't think a dinner would do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I do. As you say, we can't disown Tom's relation to them, +whatever it is. We had much better recognise it, and make the best of +the inevitable. I think a Lapham dinner would be delightful." He +looked at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, and she +fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he laughed outright. +"Perhaps," he suggested, "it would be the best way of curing Tom of his +fancy, if he has one. He has been seeing her with the dangerous +advantages which a mother knows how to give her daughter in the family +circle, and with no means of comparing her with other girls. You must +invite several other very pretty girls." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you really think so, Bromfield?" asked Mrs. Corey, taking courage a +little. "That might do," But her spirits visibly sank again. "I don't +know any other girl half so pretty." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, better bred." +</P> + +<P> +"She is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, more cultivated." +</P> + +<P> +"Tom doesn't get on with such people." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you wish him to marry her, I see." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no." +</P> + +<P> +"Then you'd better give the dinner to bring them together, to promote +the affair." +</P> + +<P> +"You know I don't want to do that, Bromfield. But I feel that we must +do something. If we don't, it has a clandestine appearance. It isn't +just to them. A dinner won't leave us in any worse position, and may +leave us in a better. Yes," said Mrs. Corey, after another thoughtful +interval, "we must have them--have them all. It could be very simple." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, you can't give a dinner under a bushel, if I take your meaning, my +dear. If we do this at all, we mustn't do it as if we were ashamed of +it. We must ask people to meet them." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "There are not many people in town yet," she +added, with relief that caused her husband another smile. "There +really seems a sort of fatality about it," she concluded religiously. +</P> + +<P> +"Then you had better not struggle against it. Go and reconcile Lily +and Nanny to it as soon as possible." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey blanched a little. "But don't you think it will be the best +thing, Bromfield?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do indeed, my dear. The only thing that shakes my faith in the +scheme is the fact that I first suggested it. But if you have adopted +it, it must be all right, Anna. I can't say that I expected it." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said his wife, "it wouldn't do." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap13"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XIII. +</H3> + +<P> +HAVING distinctly given up the project of asking the Laphams to dinner, +Mrs. Corey was able to carry it out with the courage of sinners who +have sacrificed to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to +their intended transgression. She did not question but the Laphams +would come; and she only doubted as to the people whom she should +invite to meet them. She opened the matter with some trepidation to +her daughters, but neither of them opposed her; they rather looked at +the scheme from her own point of view, and agreed with her that nothing +had really yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams +helplessly contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that +ill-advised application to Mrs. Lapham for charity. Not only the +principal of their debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing +interest. They said, What harm could giving the dinner possibly do +them? They might ask any or all of their acquaintance without +disadvantage to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give the +dinner just the character they chose, and still flatter the ignorance +of the Laphams. The trouble would be with Tom, if he were really +interested in the girl; but he could not say anything if they made it a +family dinner; he could not feel anything. They had each turned in her +own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most +comprehensive of those cousinships which form the admiration and terror +of the adventurer in Boston society. He finds himself hemmed in and +left out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all hope of +safe personality in his comments on people; he is never less secure +than when he hears some given Bostonian denouncing or ridiculing +another. If he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring +in these criticisms, however just they appear, for the probability is +that their object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the +censor. When the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling one +another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, by the familiar +abbreviations of their Christian names, he must feel keenly the exile +to which he was born; but he is then, at least, in comparatively little +danger; while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls at every +step around him, in a society where Middlesexes have married Essexes +and produced Suffolks for two hundred and fifty years. +</P> + +<P> +These conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, are a source +of strength and security to those native to them. An uncertain +acquaintance may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such a +cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it and tremendous +stories are told of people who have spent a whole winter in Boston, in +a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of the Suffolks, +discover upon reflection that they have met no one but Essexes and +Middlesexes. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey's brother James came first into her mind, and she thought +with uncommon toleration of the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of +his wife. James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout, +and might be said to have actively promoted his connection with Lapham. +She thought next of the widow of her cousin, Henry Bellingham, who had +let her daughter marry that Western steamboat man, and was fond of her +son-in-law; she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king and +his family. The daughters insisted so strongly upon Mrs. Bellingham's +son Charles, that Mrs. Corey put him down--if he were in town; he might +be in Central America; he got on with all sorts of people. It seemed +to her that she might stop at this: four Laphams, five Coreys, and four +Bellinghams were enough. +</P> + +<P> +"That makes thirteen," said Nanny. "You can have Mr. and Mrs. Sewell." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that is a good idea," assented Mrs. Corey. "He is our minister, +and it is very proper." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why you don't have Robert Chase. It is a pity he +shouldn't see her--for the colour." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't quite like the idea of that," said Mrs. Corey; "but we can +have him too, if it won't make too many." The painter had married into +a poorer branch of the Coreys, and his wife was dead. "Is there any +one else?" +</P> + +<P> +"There is Miss Kingsbury." +</P> + +<P> +"We have had her so much. She will begin to think we are using her." +</P> + +<P> +"She won't mind; she's so good-natured." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four Laphams, five +Coreys, four Bellinghams, one Chase, and one Kingsbury--fifteen. Oh! +and two Sewells. Seventeen. Ten ladies and seven gentlemen. It +doesn't balance very well, and it's too large." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested Lily. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny. +</P> + +<P> +Their mother reflected. "Well, I will ask them. The ladies will +refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more +artists. Why! we must have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he's a +bachelor, and he's building their house, Tom says." +</P> + +<P> +Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, and she told +him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident +misgiving. +</P> + +<P> +"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his +honest eyes. +</P> + +<P> +She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I won't do it at all, my +dear," she said, "if you don't approve. But I thought--You know we +have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at +Baie St. Paul. Then in the winter, I'm ashamed to say, I got money +from her for a charity I was interested in; and I hate the idea of +merely USING people in that way. And now your having been at their +house this summer--we can't seem to disapprove of that; and your +business relations to him----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it amounts to a dinner?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I don't know," returned his mother. "We shall have hardly any +one out of our family connection." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," Corey assented, "it might do. I suppose what you wish is to +give them a pleasure." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, certainly. Don't you think they'd like to come?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure after they +were here is another thing. I should have said that if you wanted to +have them, they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet our own +immediate family." +</P> + +<P> +"That's what I thought of in the first place, but your father seemed to +think it implied a social distrust of them; and we couldn't afford to +have that appearance, even to ourselves." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps he was right." +</P> + +<P> +"And besides, it might seem a little significant." +</P> + +<P> +Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "Whom did you think of +asking?" His mother repeated the names. "Yes, that would do," he said, +with a vague dissatisfaction. +</P> + +<P> +"I won't have it at all, if you don't wish, Tom." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. Yes, I dare say it's right. What +did you mean by a family dinner seeming significant?" +</P> + +<P> +His mother hesitated. When it came to that, she did not like to +recognise in his presence the anxieties that had troubled her. But "I +don't know," she said, since she must. "I shouldn't want to give that +young girl, or her mother, the idea that we wished to make more of the +acquaintance than--than you did, Tom." +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did not take her meaning. +But he said, "Oh yes, of course," and Mrs. Corey, in the uncertainty in +which she seemed destined to remain concerning this affair, went off +and wrote her invitation to Mrs. Lapham. Later in the evening, when +they again found themselves alone, her son said, "I don't think I +understood you, mother, in regard to the Laphams. I think I do now. I +certainly don't wish you to make more of the acquaintance than I have +done. It wouldn't be right; it might be very unfortunate. Don't give +the dinner!" +</P> + +<P> +"It's too late now, my son," said Mrs. Corey. "I sent my note to Mrs. +Lapham an hour ago." Her courage rose at the trouble which showed in +Corey's face. "But don't be annoyed by it, Tom. It isn't a family +dinner, you know, and everything can be managed without embarrassment. +If we take up the affair at this point, you will seem to have been +merely acting for us; and they can't possibly understand anything more." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, well! Let it go! I dare say it's all right. At any rate, it can't +be helped now." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't wish to help it, Tom," said Mrs. Corey, with a cheerfullness +which the thought of the Laphams had never brought her before. "I am +sure it is quite fit and proper, and we can make them have a very +pleasant time. They are good, inoffensive people, and we owe it to +ourselves not to be afraid to show that we have felt their kindness to +us, and his appreciation of you." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," consented Corey. The trouble that his mother had suddenly cast +off was in his tone; but she was not sorry. It was quite time that he +should think seriously of his attitude toward these people if he had +not thought of it before, but, according to his father's theory, had +been merely dangling. +</P> + +<P> +It was a view of her son's character that could hardly have pleased her +in different circumstances, yet it was now unquestionably a consolation +if not wholly a pleasure. If she considered the Laphams at all, it was +with the resignation which we feel at the evils of others, even when +they have not brought them on themselves. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham, for her part, had spent the hours between Mrs. Corey's +visit and her husband's coming home from business in reaching the same +conclusion with regard to Corey; and her spirits were at the lowest +when they sat down to supper. Irene was downcast with her; Penelope +was purposely gay; and the Colonel was beginning, after his first plate +of the boiled ham,--which, bristling with cloves, rounded its bulk on a +wide platter before him,--to take note of the surrounding mood, when +the door-bell jingled peremptorily, and the girl left waiting on the +table to go and answer it. She returned at once with a note for Mrs. +Lapham, which she read, and then, after a helpless survey of her +family, read again. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what IS it, mamma?" asked Irene, while the Colonel, who had taken +up his carving-knife for another attack on the ham, held it drawn half +across it. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I don't know what it does mean," answered Mrs. Lapham +tremulously, and she let the girl take the note from her. +</P> + +<P> +Irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at the end with a joyful +cry and a flush that burned to the top of her forehead. Then she began +to read it once more. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently, and Mrs. Lapham +said, "You read it out loud, if you know what to make of it, Irene." +But Irene, with a nervous scream of protest, handed it to her father, +who performed the office. +</P> + +<P> +"DEAR MRS. LAPHAM: +</P> + +<P> +"Will you and General Lapham----" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know I was a general," grumbled Lapham. "I guess I shall +have to be looking up my back pay. Who is it writes this, anyway?" he +asked, turning the letter over for the signature. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, never mind. Read it through!" cried his wife, with a kindling +glance of triumph at Penelope, and he resumed-- +</P> + +<P> +"--and your daughters give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on +Thursday, the 28th, at half-past six. +</P> + +<P> +"Yours sincerely, +</P> + +<P> +"ANNA B. COREY." +</P> + +<P> +The brief invitation had been spread over two pages, and the Colonel +had difficulties with the signature which he did not instantly +surmount. When he had made out the name and pronounced it, he looked +across at his wife for an explanation. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what it all means," she said, shaking her head and +speaking with a pleased flutter. "She was here this afternoon, and I +should have said she had come to see how bad she could make us feel. I +declare I never felt so put down in my life by anybody." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what did she do? What did she say?" Lapham was ready, in his +dense pride, to resent any affront to his blood, but doubtful, with the +evidence of this invitation to the contrary, if any affront had been +offered. Mrs. Lapham tried to tell him, but there was really nothing +tangible; and when she came to put it into words, she could not make +out a case. Her husband listened to her excited attempt, and then he +said, with judicial superiority, "I guess nobody's been trying to make +you feel bad, Persis. What would she go right home and invite you to +dinner for, if she'd acted the way you say?" +</P> + +<P> +In this view it did seem improbable, and Mrs. Lapham was shaken. She +could only say, "Penelope felt just the way I did about it." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham looked at the girl, who said, "Oh, I can't prove it! I begin to +think it never happened. I guess it didn't." +</P> + +<P> +"Humph!" said her father, and he sat frowning thoughtfully a +while--ignoring her mocking irony, or choosing to take her seriously. +"You can't really put your finger on anything," he said to his wife, +"and it ain't likely there is anything. Anyway, she's done the proper +thing by you now." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham faltered between her lingering resentment and the appeals +of her flattered vanity. She looked from Penelope's impassive face to +the eager eyes of Irene. "Well--just as you say, Silas. I don't know +as she WAS so very bad. I guess may be she was embarrassed some----" +</P> + +<P> +"That's what I told you, mamma, from the start," interrupted Irene. +"Didn't I tell you she didn't mean anything by it? It's just the way +she acted at Baie St. Paul, when she got well enough to realise what +you'd done for her!" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope broke into a laugh. "Is that her way of showing her +gratitude? I'm sorry I didn't understand that before." +</P> + +<P> +Irene made no effort to reply. She merely looked from her mother to +her father with a grieved face for their protection, and Lapham said, +"When we've done supper, you answer her, Persis. Say we'll come." +</P> + +<P> +"With one exception," said Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean?" demanded her father, with a mouth full of ham. +"Oh, nothing of importance. Merely that I'm not going." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham gave himself time to swallow his morsel, and his rising wrath +went down with it. "I guess you'll change your mind when the time +comes," he said. "Anyway, Persis, you say we'll all come, and then, if +Penelope don't want to go, you can excuse her after we get there. +That's the best way." +</P> + +<P> +None of them, apparently, saw any reason why the affair should not be +left in this way, or had a sense of the awful and binding nature of a +dinner engagement. If she believed that Penelope would not finally +change her mind and go, no doubt Mrs. Lapham thought that Mrs. Corey +would easily excuse her absence. She did not find it so simple a +matter to accept the invitation. Mrs. Corey had said "Dear Mrs. +Lapham," but Mrs. Lapham had her doubts whether it would not be a +servile imitation to say "Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was +tormented as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise +temperature which she should impart to her politeness. She wrote an +unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, the same in which she used to +set the children's copies at school, and she subscribed herself, after +some hesitation between her husband's given name and her own, "Yours +truly, Mrs. S. Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +Penelope had gone to her room, without waiting to be asked to advise or +criticise; but Irene had decided upon the paper, and on the whole, Mrs. +Lapham's note made a very decent appearance on the page. +</P> + +<P> +When the furnace-man came, the Colonel sent him out to post it in the +box at the corner of the square. He had determined not to say anything +more about the matter before the girls, not choosing to let them see +that he was elated; he tried to give the effect of its being an +everyday sort of thing, abruptly closing the discussion with his order +to Mrs. Lapham to accept; but he had remained swelling behind his +newspaper during her prolonged struggle with her note, and he could no +longer hide his elation when Irene followed her sister upstairs. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Pers," he demanded, "what do you say now?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham had been sobered into something of her former misgiving by +her difficulties with her note. "Well, I don't know what TO say. I +declare, I'm all mixed up about it, and I don't know as we've begun as +we can carry out in promising to go. I presume," she sighed, "that we +can all send some excuse at the last moment, if we don't want to go." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess we can carry out, and I guess we shan't want to send any +excuse," bragged the Colonel. "If we're ever going to be anybody at +all, we've got to go and see how it's done. I presume we've got to +give some sort of party when we get into the new house, and this gives +the chance to ask 'em back again. You can't complain now but what +they've made the advances, Persis?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Mrs. Lapham lifelessly; "I wonder why they wanted to do it. +Oh, I suppose it's all right," she added in deprecation of the anger +with her humility which she saw rising in her husband's face; "but if +it's all going to be as much trouble as that letter, I'd rather be +whipped. I don't know what I'm going to wear; or the girls either. I +do wonder--I've heard that people go to dinner in low-necks. Do you +suppose it's the custom?" +</P> + +<P> +"How should I know?" demanded the Colonel. "I guess you've got clothes +enough. Any rate, you needn't fret about it. You just go round to +White's or Jordan & Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress. I guess +that'll settle it; they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I +see 'em in the window every time I pass; lots of 'em." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it ain't the dress!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't suppose but what +we could get along with that; and I want to do the best we can for the +children; but I don't know what we're going to talk about to those +people when we get there. We haven't got anything in common with them. +Oh, I don't say they're any better," she again made haste to say in +arrest of her husband's resentment. "I don't believe they are; and I +don't see why they should be. And there ain't anybody has got a better +right to hold up their head than you have, Silas. You've got plenty of +money, and you've made every cent of it." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I shouldn't amounted to much without you, Persis," interposed +Lapham, moved to this justice by her praise. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't talk about ME!" protested the wife. "Now that you've made +it all right about Rogers, there ain't a thing in this world against +you. But still, for all that, I can see--and I can feel it when I +can't see it--that we're different from those people. They're +well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it, I presume, but we're too old +to learn to be like them." +</P> + +<P> +"The children ain't," said Lapham shrewdly. +</P> + +<P> +"No, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and that's the only thing +that reconciles me to it." +</P> + +<P> +"You see how pleased Irene looked when I read it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, she was pleased." +</P> + +<P> +"And I guess Penelope'll think better of it before the time comes." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, we do it for them. But whether we're doing the best thing for +'em, goodness knows. I'm not saying anything against HIM. Irene'll be +a lucky girl to get him, if she wants him. But there! I'd ten times +rather she was going to marry such a fellow as you were, Si, that had +to make every inch of his own way, and she had to help him. It's in +her!" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's fondness; but neither +of them wished that he should respond directly to it. "I guess, if it +wa'n't for me, he wouldn't have a much easier time. But don't you +fret! It's all coming out right. That dinner ain't a thing for you to +be uneasy about. It'll pass off perfectly easy and natural." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite to the end of the week +that followed. It was his theory not to let Corey see that he was set +up about the invitation, and when the young man said politely that his +mother was glad they were able to come, Lapham was very short with him. +He said yes, he believed that Mrs. Lapham and the girls were going. +Afterward he was afraid Corey might not understand that he was coming +too; but he did not know how to approach the subject again, and Corey +did not, so he let it pass. It worried him to see all the preparation +that his wife and Irene were making, and he tried to laugh at them for +it; and it worried him to find that Penelope was making no preparation +at all for herself, but only helping the others. He asked her what +should she do if she changed her mind at the last moment and concluded +to go, and she said she guessed she should not change her mind, but if +she did, she would go to White's with him and get him to choose her an +imported dress, he seemed to like them so much. He was too proud to +mention the subject again to her. +</P> + +<P> +Finally, all that dress-making in the house began to scare him with +vague apprehensions in regard to his own dress. As soon as he had +determined to go, an ideal of the figure in which he should go +presented itself to his mind. He should not wear any dress-coat, +because, for one thing, he considered that a man looked like a fool in +a dress-coat, and, for another thing, he had none--had none on +principle. He would go in a frock-coat and black pantaloons, and +perhaps a white waistcoat, but a black cravat anyway. But as soon as +he developed this ideal to his family, which he did in pompous disdain +of their anxieties about their own dress, they said he should not go +so. Irene reminded him that he was the only person without a +dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner which he had taken her to some +years before, and she remembered feeling awfully about it at the time. +Mrs. Lapham, who would perhaps have agreed of herself, shook her head +with misgiving. "I don't see but what you'll have to get you one, Si," +she said. "I don't believe they ever go without 'em to a private +house." +</P> + +<P> +He held out openly, but on his way home the next day, in a sudden +panic, he cast anchor before his tailor's door and got measured for a +dress-coat. After that he began to be afflicted about his waist-coat, +concerning which he had hitherto been airily indifferent. He tried to +get opinion out of his family, but they were not so clear about it as +they were about the frock. It ended in their buying a book of +etiquette, which settled the question adversely to a white waistcoat. +The author, however, after being very explicit in telling them not to +eat with their knives, and above all not to pick their teeth with their +forks,--a thing which he said no lady or gentleman ever did,--was still +far from decided as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought to wear: +shaken on other points, Lapham had begun to waver also concerning the +black cravat. As to the question of gloves for the Colonel, which +suddenly flashed upon him one evening, it appeared never to have +entered the thoughts of the etiquette man, as Lapham called him. Other +authors on the same subject were equally silent, and Irene could only +remember having heard, in some vague sort of way, that gentlemen did +not wear gloves so much any more. +</P> + +<P> +Drops of perspiration gathered on Lapham's forehead in the anxiety of +the debate; he groaned, and he swore a little in the compromise +profanity which he used. +</P> + +<P> +"I declare," said Penelope, where she sat purblindly sewing on a bit of +dress for Irene, "the Colonel's clothes are as much trouble as +anybody's. Why don't you go to Jordan & Marsh's and order one of the +imported dresses for yourself, father?" That gave them all the relief +of a laugh over it, the Colonel joining in piteously. +</P> + +<P> +He had an awful longing to find out from Corey how he ought to go. He +formulated and repeated over to himself an apparently careless +question, such as, "Oh, by the way, Corey, where do you get your +gloves?" This would naturally lead to some talk on the subject, which +would, if properly managed, clear up the whole trouble. But Lapham +found that he would rather die than ask this question, or any question +that would bring up the dinner again. Corey did not recur to it, and +Lapham avoided the matter with positive fierceness. He shunned talking +with Corey at all, and suffered in grim silence. +</P> + +<P> +One night, before they fell asleep, his wife said to him, "I was +reading in one of those books to-day, and I don't believe but what +we've made a mistake if Pen holds out that she won't go." +</P> + +<P> +"Why?" demanded Lapham, in the dismay which beset him at every fresh +recurrence to the subject. +</P> + +<P> +"The book says that it's very impolite not to answer a dinner +invitation promptly. Well, we've done that all right,--at first I +didn't know but what we had been a little too quick, may be,--but then +it says if you're not going, that it's the height of rudeness not to +let them know at once, so that they can fill your place at the table." +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel was silent for a while. "Well, I'm dumned," he said +finally, "if there seems to be any end to this thing. If it was to do +over again, I'd say no for all of us." +</P> + +<P> +"I've wished a hundred times they hadn't asked us; but it's too late to +think about that now. The question is, what are we going to do about +Penelope?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I guess she'll go, at the last moment." +</P> + +<P> +"She says she won't. She took a prejudice against Mrs. Corey that day, +and she can't seem to get over it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, hadn't you better write in the morning, as soon as you're +up, that she ain't coming?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham sighed helplessly. "I shouldn't know how to get it in. +It's so late now; I don't see how I could have the face." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, she's got to go, that's all." +</P> + +<P> +"She's set she won't." +</P> + +<P> +"And I'm set she shall," said Lapham with the loud obstinacy of a man +whose women always have their way. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham was not supported by the sturdiness of his proclamation. +</P> + +<P> +But she did not know how to do what she knew she ought to do about +Penelope, and she let matters drift. After all, the child had a right +to stay at home if she did not wish to go. That was what Mrs. Lapham +felt, and what she said to her husband next morning, bidding him let +Penelope alone, unless she chose herself to go. She said it was too +late now to do anything, and she must make the best excuse she could +when she saw Mrs. Corey. She began to wish that Irene and her father +would go and excuse her too. She could not help saying this, and then +she and Lapham had some unpleasant words. +</P> + +<P> +"Look here!" he cried. "Who wanted to go in for these people in the +first place? Didn't you come home full of 'em last year, and want me to +sell out here and move somewheres else because it didn't seem to suit +'em? And now you want to put it all on me! I ain't going to stand it." +</P> + +<P> +"Hush!" said his wife. "Do you want to raise the house? I didn't put +it on you, as you say. You took it on yourself. Ever since that +fellow happened to come into the new house that day, you've been +perfectly crazy to get in with them. And now you're so afraid you +shall do something wrong before 'em, you don't hardly dare to say your +life's your own. I declare, if you pester me any more about those +gloves, Silas Lapham, I won't go." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you suppose I want to go on my own account?" he demanded furiously. +</P> + +<P> +"No," she admitted. "Of course I don't. I know very well that you're +doing it for Irene; but, for goodness gracious' sake, don't worry our +lives out, and make yourself a perfect laughing-stock before the +children." +</P> + +<P> +With this modified concession from her, the quarrel closed in sullen +silence on Lapham's part. The night before the dinner came, and the +question of his gloves was still unsettled, and in a fair way to remain +so. He had bought a pair, so as to be on the safe side, perspiring in +company with the young lady who sold them, and who helped him try them +on at the shop; his nails were still full of the powder which she had +plentifully peppered into them in order to overcome the resistance of +his blunt fingers. But he was uncertain whether he should wear them. +They had found a book at last that said the ladies removed their gloves +on sitting down at table, but it said nothing about gentlemen's gloves. +He left his wife where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass in her +new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he +shut his door he caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before +the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her +knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she +made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; +Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham +sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for the trouble they +were taking. But another glance gave him a sight of the young girl's +face in the mirror, beautiful and radiant with happiness, and his heart +melted again with paternal tenderness and pride. It was going to be a +great pleasure to Irene, and Lapham felt that she was bound to cut out +anything there. He was vexed with Penelope that she was not going too; +he would have liked to have those people hear her talk. He held his +door a little open, and listened to the things she was "getting off" +there to Irene. He showed that he felt really hurt and disappointed +about Penelope, and the girl's mother made her console him the next +evening before they all drove away without her. "You try to look on +the bright side of it, father. I guess you'll see that it's best I +didn't go when you get there. Irene needn't open her lips, and they +can all see how pretty she is; but they wouldn't know how smart I was +unless I talked, and maybe then they wouldn't." +</P> + +<P> +This thrust at her father's simple vanity in her made him laugh; and +then they drove away, and Penelope shut the door, and went upstairs +with her lips firmly shutting in a sob. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap14"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XIV. +</H3> + +<P> +THE Coreys were one of the few old families who lingered in Bellingham +Place, the handsome, quiet old street which the sympathetic observer +must grieve to see abandoned to boarding-houses. The dwellings are +stately and tall, and the whole place wears an air of aristocratic +seclusion, which Mrs. Corey's father might well have thought assured +when he left her his house there at his death. It is one of two +evidently designed by the same architect who built some houses in a +characteristic taste on Beacon Street opposite the Common. It has a +wooden portico, with slender fluted columns, which have always been +painted white, and which, with the delicate mouldings of the cornice, +form the sole and sufficient decoration of the street front; nothing +could be simpler, and nothing could be better. Within, the architect +has again indulged his preference for the classic; the roof of the +vestibule, wide and low, rests on marble columns, slim and fluted like +the wooden columns without, and an ample staircase climbs in a +graceful, easy curve from the tesselated pavement. Some carved +Venetian scrigni stretched along the wall; a rug lay at the foot of the +stairs; but otherwise the simple adequacy of the architectural +intention had been respected, and the place looked bare to the eyes of +the Laphams when they entered. The Coreys had once kept a man, but +when young Corey began his retrenchments the man had yielded to the +neat maid who showed the Colonel into the reception-room and asked the +ladies to walk up two flights. +</P> + +<P> +He had his charges from Irene not to enter the drawing-room without her +mother, and he spent five minutes in getting on his gloves, for he had +desperately resolved to wear them at last. When he had them on, and +let his large fists hang down on either side, they looked, in the +saffron tint which the shop-girl said his gloves should be of, like +canvased hams. He perspired with doubt as he climbed the stairs, and +while he waited on the landing for Mrs. Lapham and Irene to come down +from above before going into the drawing-room, he stood staring at his +hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard. He heard quiet +talking beyond the portiere within, and presently Tom Corey came out. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, Colonel Lapham! Very glad to see you." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham shook hands with him and gasped, "Waiting for Mis' Lapham," to +account for his presence. He had not been able to button his right +glove, and he now began, with as much indifference as he could assume, +to pull them both off, for he saw that Corey wore none. By the time he +had stuffed them into the pocket of his coat-skirt his wife and +daughter descended. +</P> + +<P> +Corey welcomed them very cordially too, but looked a little mystified. +Mrs. Lapham knew that he was silently inquiring for Penelope, and she +did not know whether she ought to excuse her to him first or not. She +said nothing, and after a glance toward the regions where Penelope +might conjecturably be lingering, he held aside the portiere for the +Laphams to pass, and entered the room with them. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham had decided against low-necks on her own responsibility, +and had entrenched herself in the safety of a black silk, in which she +looked very handsome. Irene wore a dress of one of those shades which +only a woman or an artist can decide to be green or blue, and which to +other eyes looks both or neither, according to their degrees of +ignorance. If it was more like a ball dress than a dinner dress, that +might be excused to the exquisite effect. She trailed, a delicate +splendour, across the carpet in her mother's sombre wake, and the +consciousness of success brought a vivid smile to her face. Lapham, +pallid with anxiety lest he should somehow disgrace himself, giving +thanks to God that he should have been spared the shame of wearing +gloves where no one else did, but at the same time despairing that +Corey should have seen him in them, had an unwonted aspect of almost +pathetic refinement. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey exchanged a quick glance of surprise and relief with her +husband as she started across the room to meet her guests, and in her +gratitude to them for being so irreproachable, she threw into her +manner a warmth that people did not always find there. "General +Lapham?" she said, shaking hands in quick succession with Mrs. Lapham +and Irene, and now addressing herself to him. +</P> + +<P> +"No, ma'am, only Colonel," said the honest man, but the lady did not +hear him. She was introducing her husband to Lapham's wife and +daughter, and Bromfield Corey was already shaking his hand and saying +he was very glad to see him again, while he kept his artistic eye on +Irene, and apparently could not take it off. Lily Corey gave the +Lapham ladies a greeting which was physically rather than socially +cold, and Nanny stood holding Irene's hand in both of hers a moment, +and taking in her beauty and her style with a generous admiration which +she could afford, for she was herself faultlessly dressed in the quiet +taste of her city, and looking very pretty. The interval was long +enough to let every man present confide his sense of Irene's beauty to +every other; and then, as the party was small, Mrs. Corey made +everybody acquainted. When Lapham had not quite understood, he held +the person's hand, and, leaning urbanely forward, inquired, "What +name?" He did that because a great man to whom he had been presented on +the platform at a public meeting had done so to him, and he knew it +must be right. +</P> + +<P> +A little lull ensued upon the introductions, and Mrs. Corey said +quietly to Mrs. Lapham, "Can I send any one to be of use to Miss +Lapham?" as if Penelope must be in the dressing-room. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham turned fire-red, and the graceful forms in which she had +been intending to excuse her daughter's absence went out of her head. +"She isn't upstairs," she said, at her bluntest, as country people are +when embarrassed. "She didn't feel just like coming to-night. I don't +know as she's feeling very well." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey emitted a very small "O!"--very small, very cold,--which +began to grow larger and hotter and to burn into Mrs. Lapham's soul +before Mrs. Corey could add, "I'm very sorry. It's nothing serious, I +hope?" +</P> + +<P> +Robert Chase, the painter, had not come, and Mrs. James Bellingham was +not there, so that the table really balanced better without Penelope; +but Mrs. Lapham could not know this, and did not deserve to know it. +Mrs. Corey glanced round the room, as if to take account of her guests, +and said to her husband, "I think we are all here, then," and he came +forward and gave his arm to Mrs. Lapham. She perceived then that in +their determination not to be the first to come they had been the last, +and must have kept the others waiting for them. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham had never seen people go down to dinner arm-in-arm before, but +he knew that his wife was distinguished in being taken out by the host, +and he waited in jealous impatience to see if Tom Corey would offer his +arm to Irene. He gave it to that big girl they called Miss Kingsbury, +and the handsome old fellow whom Mrs. Corey had introduced as her +cousin took Irene out. Lapham was startled from the misgiving in which +this left him by Mrs. Corey's passing her hand through his arm, and he +made a sudden movement forward, but felt himself gently restrained. +They went out the last of all; he did not know why, but he submitted, +and when they sat down he saw that Irene, although she had come in with +that Mr. Bellingham, was seated beside young Corey, after all. +</P> + +<P> +He fetched a long sigh of relief when he sank into his chair and felt +himself safe from error if he kept a sharp lookout and did only what +the others did. Bellingham had certain habits which he permitted +himself, and one of these was tucking the corner of his napkin into his +collar; he confessed himself an uncertain shot with a spoon, and +defended his practice on the ground of neatness and common-sense. +Lapham put his napkin into his collar too, and then, seeing that no one +but Bellingham did it, became alarmed and took it out again slyly. He +never had wine on his table at home, and on principle he was a +prohibitionist; but now he did not know just what to do about the +glasses at the right of his plate. He had a notion to turn them all +down, as he had read of a well-known politician's doing at a public +dinner, to show that he did not take wine; but, after twiddling with +one of them a moment, he let them be, for it seemed to him that would +be a little too conspicuous, and he felt that every one was looking. +He let the servant fill them all, and he drank out of each, not to +appear odd. Later, he observed that the young ladies were not taking +wine, and he was glad to see that Irene had refused it, and that Mrs. +Lapham was letting it stand untasted. He did not know but he ought to +decline some of the dishes, or at least leave most of some on his +plate, but he was not able to decide; he took everything and ate +everything. +</P> + +<P> +He noticed that Mrs. Corey seemed to take no more trouble about the +dinner than anybody, and Mr. Corey rather less; he was talking busily +to Mrs. Lapham, and Lapham caught a word here and there that convinced +him she was holding her own. He was getting on famously himself with +Mrs. Corey, who had begun with him about his new house; he was telling +her all about it, and giving her his ideas. Their conversation +naturally included his architect across the table; Lapham had been +delighted and secretly surprised to find the fellow there; and at +something Seymour said the talk spread suddenly, and the pretty house +he was building for Colonel Lapham became the general theme. Young +Corey testified to its loveliness, and the architect said laughingly +that if he had been able to make a nice thing of it, he owed it to the +practical sympathy of his client. +</P> + +<P> +"Practical sympathy is good," said Bromfield Corey; and, slanting his +head confidentially to Mrs. Lapham, he added, "Does he bleed your +husband, Mrs. Lapham? He's a terrible fellow for appropriations!" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham laughed, reddening consciously, and said she guessed the +Colonel knew how to take care of himself. This struck Lapham, then +draining his glass of sauterne, as wonderfully discreet in his wife. +Bromfield Corey leaned back in his chair a moment. "Well, after all, +you can't say, with all your modern fuss about it, that you do much +better now than the old fellows who built such houses as this." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," said the architect, "nobody can do better than well. Your house +is in perfect taste; you know I've always admired it; and I don't think +it's at all the worse for being old-fashioned. What we've done is +largely to go back of the hideous style that raged after they forgot +how to make this sort of house. But I think we may claim a better +feeling for structure. We use better material, and more wisely; and by +and by we shall work out something more characteristic and original." +</P> + +<P> +"With your chocolates and olives, and your clutter of bric-a-brac?" +</P> + +<P> +"All that's bad, of course, but I don't mean that. I don't wish to +make you envious of Colonel Lapham, and modesty prevents my saying, +that his house is prettier,--though I may have my convictions,--but +it's better built. All the new houses are better built. Now, your +house----" +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Corey's house," interrupted the host, with a burlesque haste in +disclaiming responsibility for it that made them all laugh. "My +ancestral halls are in Salem, and I'm told you couldn't drive a nail +into their timbers; in fact, I don't know that you would want to do it." +</P> + +<P> +"I should consider it a species of sacrilege," answered Seymour, "and I +shall be far from pressing the point I was going to make against a +house of Mrs. Corey's." +</P> + +<P> +This won Seymour the easy laugh, and Lapham silently wondered that the +fellow never got off any of those things to him. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Corey, "you architects and the musicians are the true and +only artistic creators. All the rest of us, sculptors, painters, +novelists, and tailors, deal with forms that we have before us; we try +to imitate, we try to represent. But you two sorts of artists create +form. If you represent, you fail. Somehow or other you do evolve the +camel out of your inner consciousness." +</P> + +<P> +"I will not deny the soft impeachment," said the architect, with a +modest air. +</P> + +<P> +"I dare say. And you'll own that it's very handsome of me to say this, +after your unjustifiable attack on Mrs. Corey's property." +</P> + +<P> +Bromfield Corey addressed himself again to Mrs. Lapham, and the talk +subdivided itself as before. It lapsed so entirely away from the +subject just in hand, that Lapham was left with rather a good idea, as +he thought it, to perish in his mind, for want of a chance to express +it. The only thing like a recurrence to what they had been saying was +Bromfield Corey's warning Mrs. Lapham, in some connection that Lapham +lost, against Miss Kingsbury. "She's worse," he was saying, "when it +comes to appropriations than Seymour himself. Depend upon it, Mrs. +Lapham, she will give you no peace of your mind, now she's met you, +from this out. Her tender mercies are cruel; and I leave you to supply +the content from your own scriptural knowledge. Beware of her, and all +her works. She calls them works of charity; but heaven knows whether +they are. It don't stand to reason that she gives the poor ALL the +money she gets out of people. I have my own belief"--he gave it in a +whisper for the whole table to hear--"that she spends it for champagne +and cigars." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham did not know about that kind of talking; but Miss Kingsbury +seemed to enjoy the fun as much as anybody, and he laughed with the +rest. +</P> + +<P> +"You shall be asked to the very next debauch of the committee, Mr. +Corey; then you won't dare expose us," said Miss Kingsbury. +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder you haven't been down upon Corey to go to the Chardon Street +home and talk with your indigent Italians in their native tongue," said +Charles Bellingham. "I saw in the Transcript the other night that you +wanted some one for the work." +</P> + +<P> +"We did think of Mr. Corey," replied Miss Kingsbury; "but we reflected +that he probably wouldn't talk with them at all; he would make them +keep still to be sketched, and forget all about their wants." +</P> + +<P> +Upon the theory that this was a fair return for Corey's pleasantry, the +others laughed again. +</P> + +<P> +"There is one charity," said Corey, pretending superiority to Miss +Kingsbury's point, "that is so difficult, I wonder it hasn't occurred +to a lady of your courageous invention." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" said Miss Kingsbury. "What is that?" +</P> + +<P> +"The occupation, by deserving poor of neat habits, of all the +beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand empty the whole summer +long, while their owners are away in their lowly cots beside the sea." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that is terrible," replied Miss Kingsbury, with quick +earnestness, while her eyes grew moist. "I have often thought of our +great, cool houses standing useless here, and the thousands of poor +creatures stifling in their holes and dens, and the little children +dying for wholesome shelter. How cruelly selfish we are!" +</P> + +<P> +"That is a very comfortable sentiment, Miss Kingsbury," said Corey, +"and must make you feel almost as if you had thrown open No. 31 to the +whole North End. But I am serious about this matter. I spend my +summers in town, and I occupy my own house, so that I can speak +impartially and intelligently; and I tell you that in some of my walks +on the Hill and down on the Back Bay, nothing but the surveillance of +the local policeman prevents my offering personal violence to those +long rows of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensible houses. If +I were a poor man, with a sick child pining in some garret or cellar at +the North End, I should break into one of them, and camp out on the +grand piano." +</P> + +<P> +"Surely, Bromfield," said his wife, "you don't consider what havoc such +people would make with the furniture of a nice house!" +</P> + +<P> +"That is true," answered Corey, with meek conviction. "I never thought +of that." +</P> + +<P> +"And if you were a poor man with a sick child, I doubt if you'd have so +much heart for burglary as you have now," said James Bellingham. +</P> + +<P> +"It's wonderful how patient they are," said the minister. "The +spectacle of the hopeless comfort the hard-working poor man sees must +be hard to bear." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham wanted to speak up and say that he had been there himself, and +knew how such a man felt. He wanted to tell them that generally a poor +man was satisfied if he could make both ends meet; that he didn't envy +any one his good luck, if he had earned it, so long as he wasn't +running under himself. But before he could get the courage to address +the whole table, Sewell added, "I suppose he don't always think of it." +</P> + +<P> +"But some day he WILL think about it," said Corey. "In fact, we rather +invite him to think about it, in this country." +</P> + +<P> +"My brother-in-law," said Charles Bellingham, with the pride a man +feels in a mentionably remarkable brother-in-law, "has no end of +fellows at work under him out there at Omaha, and he says it's the +fellows from countries where they've been kept from thinking about it +that are discontented. The Americans never make any trouble. They +seem to understand that so long as we give unlimited opportunity, +nobody has a right to complain." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you hear from Leslie?" asked Mrs. Corey, turning from these +profitless abstractions to Mrs. Bellingham. +</P> + +<P> +"You know," said that lady in a lower tone, "that there is another +baby?" +</P> + +<P> +"No! I hadn't heard of it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; a boy. They have named him after his uncle." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Charles Bellingham, joining in. "He is said to be a noble +boy, and to resemble me." +</P> + +<P> +"All boys of that tender age are noble," said Corey, "and look like +anybody you wish them to resemble. Is Leslie still home-sick for the +bean-pots of her native Boston?" +</P> + +<P> +"She is getting over it, I fancy," replied Mrs. Bellingham. "She's +very much taken up with Mr. Blake's enterprises, and leads a very +exciting life. She says she's like people who have been home from +Europe three years; she's past the most poignant stage of regret, and +hasn't reached the second, when they feel that they must go again." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham leaned a little toward Mrs. Corey, and said of a picture which +he saw on the wall opposite, "Picture of your daughter, I presume?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; my daughter's grandmother. It's a Stewart Newton; he painted a +great many Salem beauties. She was a Miss Polly Burroughs. My +daughter IS like her, don't you think?" They both looked at Nanny Corey +and then at the portrait. "Those pretty old-fashioned dresses are +coming in again. I'm not surprised you took it for her. The +others"--she referred to the other portraits more or less darkling on +the walls--"are my people; mostly Copleys." +</P> + +<P> +These names, unknown to Lapham, went to his head like the wine he was +drinking; they seemed to carry light for the moment, but a film of +deeper darkness followed. He heard Charles Bellingham telling funny +stories to Irene and trying to amuse the girl; she was laughing, and +seemed very happy. From time to time Bellingham took part in the +general talk between the host and James Bellingham and Miss Kingsbury +and that minister, Mr. Sewell. They talked of people mostly; it +astonished Lapham to hear with what freedom they talked. They +discussed these persons unsparingly; James Bellingham spoke of a man +known to Lapham for his business success and great wealth as not a +gentleman; his cousin Charles said he was surprised that the fellow had +kept from being governor so long. +</P> + +<P> +When the latter turned from Irene to make one of these excursions into +the general talk, young Corey talked to her; and Lapham caught some +words from which it seemed that they were speaking of Penelope. It +vexed him to think she had not come; she could have talked as well as +any of them; she was just as bright; and Lapham was aware that Irene +was not as bright, though when he looked at her face, triumphant in its +young beauty and fondness, he said to himself that it did not make any +difference. He felt that he was not holding up his end of the line, +however. When some one spoke to him he could only summon a few words +of reply, that seemed to lead to nothing; things often came into his +mind appropriate to what they were saying, but before he could get them +out they were off on something else; they jumped about so, he could not +keep up; but he felt, all the same, that he was not doing himself +justice. +</P> + +<P> +At one time the talk ran off upon a subject that Lapham had never heard +talked of before; but again he was vexed that Penelope was not there, +to have her say; he believed that her say would have been worth hearing. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Kingsbury leaned forward and asked Charles Bellingham if he had +read Tears, Idle Tears, the novel that was making such a sensation; and +when he said no, she said she wondered at him. "It's perfectly +heart-breaking, as you'll imagine from the name; but there's such a +dear old-fashioned hero and heroine in it, who keep dying for each +other all the way through, and making the most wildly satisfactory and +unnecessary sacrifices for each other. You feel as if you'd done them +yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that's the secret of its success," said Bromfield Corey. "It +flatters the reader by painting the characters colossal, but with his +limp and stoop, so that he feels himself of their supernatural +proportions. You've read it, Nanny?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said his daughter. "It ought to have been called Slop, Silly +Slop." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, not quite SLOP, Nanny," pleaded Miss Kingsbury. +</P> + +<P> +"It's astonishing," said Charles Bellingham, "how we do like the books +that go for our heart-strings. And I really suppose that you can't put +a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel. We do like to +see people suffering sublimely." +</P> + +<P> +"There was talk some years ago," said James Bellingham, "about novels +going out." "They're just coming in!" cried Miss Kingsbury. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Mr. Sewell, the minister. "And I don't think there ever +was a time when they formed the whole intellectual experience of more +people. They do greater mischief than ever." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't be envious, parson," said the host. +</P> + +<P> +"No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. But those +novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them--excuse me, Miss +Kingsbury--are ruinous!" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss Kingsbury?" asked the host. +</P> + +<P> +But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest possible help +to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true +proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are +altogether noxious." +</P> + +<P> +This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: "But what if +life as it is isn't amusing? Aren't we to be amused?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. "And the +self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----" +</P> + +<P> +"Slop, Silly Slop?" suggested the proud father of the inventor of the +phrase. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes--is nothing but psychical suicide, and is as wholly immoral as the +spectacle of a man falling upon his sword." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know but you're right, parson," said the host; and the +minister, who had apparently got upon a battle-horse of his, careered +onward in spite of some tacit attempts of his wife to seize the bridle. +</P> + +<P> +"Right? To be sure I am right. The whole business of love, and +love-making and marrying, is painted by the novelists in a monstrous +disproportion to the other relations of life. Love is very sweet, very +pretty----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, THANK you, Mr. Sewell," said Nanny Corey, in a way that set them +all laughing. +</P> + +<P> +"But it's the affair, commonly, of very young people, who have not yet +character and experience enough to make them interesting. In novels +it's treated, not only as if it were the chief interest of life, but +the sole interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons; and it +is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow of a true passion lasts +for ever; and that it is sacrilege to think or act otherwise." "Well, +but isn't that true, Mr. Sewell?" pleaded Miss Kingsbury. +</P> + +<P> +"I have known some most estimable people who had married a second +time," said the minister, and then he had the applause with him. +Lapham wanted to make some open recognition of his good sense, but +could not. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose the passion itself has been a good deal changed," said +Bromfield Corey, "since the poets began to idealise it in the days of +chivalry." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; and it ought to be changed again," said Mr. Sewell. +</P> + +<P> +"What! Back?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't say that. But it ought to be recognised as something natural +and mortal, and divine honours, which belong to righteousness alone, +ought not to be paid it." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you ask too much, parson," laughed his host, and the talk wandered +away to something else. +</P> + +<P> +It was not an elaborate dinner; but Lapham was used to having +everything on the table at once, and this succession of dishes +bewildered him; he was afraid perhaps he was eating too much. He now +no longer made any pretence of not drinking his wine, for he was +thirsty, and there was no more water, and he hated to ask for any. The +ice-cream came, and then the fruit. Suddenly Mrs. Corey rose, and said +across the table to her husband, "I suppose you will want your coffee +here." And he replied, "Yes; we'll join you at tea." +</P> + +<P> +The ladies all rose, and the gentlemen got up with them. Lapham +started to follow Mrs. Corey, but the other men merely stood in their +places, except young Corey, who ran and opened the door for his mother. +Lapham thought with shame that it was he who ought to have done that; +but no one seemed to notice, and he sat down again gladly, after +kicking out one of his legs which had gone to sleep. +</P> + +<P> +They brought in cigars with coffee, and Bromfield Corey advised Lapham +to take one that he chose for him. Lapham confessed that he liked a +good cigar about as well as anybody, and Corey said: "These are new. I +had an Englishman here the other day who was smoking old cigars in the +superstition that tobacco improved with age, like wine." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," said Lapham, "anybody who had ever lived off a tobacco country +could tell him better than that." With the fuming cigar between his +lips he felt more at home than he had before. He turned sidewise in +his chair and, resting one arm on the back, intertwined the fingers of +both hands, and smoked at large ease. James Bellingham came and sat +down by him. "Colonel Lapham, weren't you with the 96th Vermont when +they charged across the river in front of Pickensburg, and the rebel +battery opened fire on them in the water?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham slowly shut his eyes and slowly dropped his head for assent, +letting out a white volume of smoke from the corner of his mouth. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought so," said Bellingham. "I was with the 85th Massachusetts, +and I sha'n't forget that slaughter. We were all new to it still. +Perhaps that's why it made such an impression." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," suggested Charles Bellingham. "Was there anything much +more impressive afterward? I read of it out in Missouri, where I was +stationed at the time, and I recollect the talk of some old army men +about it. They said that death-rate couldn't be beaten. I don't know +that it ever was." +</P> + +<P> +"About one in five of us got out safe," said Lapham, breaking his +cigar-ash off on the edge of a plate. James Bellingham reached him a +bottle of Apollinaris. He drank a glass, and then went on smoking. +</P> + +<P> +They all waited, as if expecting him to speak, and then Corey said: +"How incredible those things seem already! You gentlemen KNOW that +they happened; but are you still able to believe it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, nobody FEELS that anything happened," said Charles Bellingham. +"The past of one's experience doesn't differ a great deal from the past +of one's knowledge. It isn't much more probable; it's really a great +deal less vivid than some scenes in a novel that one read when a boy." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not sure of that," said James Bellingham. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, James, neither am I," consented his cousin, helping himself from +Lapham's Apollinaris bottle. "There would be very little talking at +dinner if one only said the things that one was sure of." +</P> + +<P> +The others laughed, and Bromfield Corey remarked thoughtfully, "What +astonishes the craven civilian in all these things is the +abundance--the superabundance--of heroism. The cowards were the +exception; the men that were ready to die, the rule." +</P> + +<P> +"The woods were full of them," said Lapham, without taking his cigar +from his mouth. +</P> + +<P> +"That's a nice little touch in School," interposed Charles Bellingham, +"where the girl says to the fellow who was at Inkerman, 'I should think +you would be so proud of it,' and he reflects a while, and says, 'Well, +the fact is, you know, there were so many of us.'" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I remember that," said James Bellingham, smiling for pleasure in +it. "But I don't see why you claim the credit of being a craven +civilian, Bromfield," he added, with a friendly glance at his +brother-in-law, and with the willingness Boston men often show to turn +one another's good points to the light in company; bred so intimately +together at school and college and in society, they all know these +points. "A man who was out with Garibaldi in '48," continued James +Bellingham. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, a little amateur red-shirting," Corey interrupted in deprecation. +"But even if you choose to dispute my claim, what has become of all the +heroism? Tom, how many club men do you know who would think it sweet +and fitting to die for their country?" +</P> + +<P> +"I can't think of a great many at the moment, sir," replied the son, +with the modesty of his generation. +</P> + +<P> +"And I couldn't in '61," said his uncle. "Nevertheless they were +there." +</P> + +<P> +"Then your theory is that it's the occasion that is wanting," said +Bromfield Corey. "But why shouldn't civil service reform, and the +resumption of specie payment, and a tariff for revenue only, inspire +heroes? They are all good causes." +</P> + +<P> +"It's the occasion that's wanting," said James Bellingham, ignoring the +persiflage. "And I'm very glad of it." +</P> + +<P> +"So am I," said Lapham, with a depth of feeling that expressed itself +in spite of the haze in which his brain seemed to float. There was a +great deal of the talk that he could not follow; it was too quick for +him; but here was something he was clear of. "I don't want to see any +more men killed in my time." Something serious, something sombre must +lurk behind these words, and they waited for Lapham to say more; but +the haze closed round him again, and he remained silent, drinking +Apollinaris. +</P> + +<P> +"We non-combatants were notoriously reluctant to give up fighting," +said Mr. Sewell, the minister; "but I incline to think Colonel Lapham +and Mr. Bellingham may be right. I dare say we shall have the heroism +again if we have the occasion. Till it comes, we must content +ourselves with the every-day generosities and sacrifices. They make up +in quantity what they lack in quality, perhaps." "They're not so +picturesque," said Bromfield Corey. "You can paint a man dying for his +country, but you can't express on canvas a man fulfilling the duties of +a good citizen." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps the novelists will get at him by and by," suggested Charles +Bellingham. "If I were one of these fellows, I shouldn't propose to +myself anything short of that." +</P> + +<P> +"What? the commonplace?" asked his cousin. +</P> + +<P> +"Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light, impalpable, aerial +essence which they've never got into their confounded books yet. The +novelist who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people +would have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth' on his +tongue." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," said the host; and Lapham looked from +one to the other, trying to make out what they were at. He had never +been so up a tree before. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose it isn't well for us to see human nature at white heat +habitually," continued Bromfield Corey, after a while. "It would make +us vain of our species. Many a poor fellow in that war and in many +another has gone into battle simply and purely for his country's sake, +not knowing whether, if he laid down his life, he should ever find it +again, or whether, if he took it up hereafter, he should take it up in +heaven or hell. Come, parson!" he said, turning to the minister, "what +has ever been conceived of omnipotence, of omniscience, so sublime, so +divine as that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing," answered the minister quietly. "God has never been imagined +at all. But if you suppose such a man as that was Authorised, I think +it will help you to imagine what God must be." +</P> + +<P> +"There's sense in that," said Lapham. He took his cigar out of his +mouth, and pulled his chair a little toward the table, on which he +placed his ponderous fore-arms. "I want to tell you about a fellow I +had in my own company when we first went out. We were all privates to +begin with; after a while they elected me captain--I'd had the tavern +stand, and most of 'em knew me. But Jim Millon never got to be +anything more than corporal; corporal when he was killed." The others +arrested themselves in various attitudes of attention, and remained +listening to Lapham with an interest that profoundly flattered him. +Now, at last, he felt that he was holding up his end of the rope. "I +can't say he went into the thing from the highest motives, altogether; +our motives are always pretty badly mixed, and when there's such a +hurrah-boys as there was then, you can't tell which is which. I +suppose Jim Millon's wife was enough to account for his going, herself. +She was a pretty bad assortment," said Lapham, lowering his voice and +glancing round at the door to make sure that it was shut, "and she used +to lead Jim ONE kind of life. Well, sir," continued Lapham, +synthetising his auditors in that form of address, "that fellow used to +save every cent of his pay and send it to that woman. Used to get me +to do it for him. I tried to stop him. 'Why, Jim,' said I, 'you know +what she'll do with it.' 'That's so, Cap,' says he, 'but I don't know +what she'll do without it.' And it did keep her straight--straight as a +string--as long as Jim lasted. Seemed as if there was something +mysterious about it. They had a little girl,--about as old as my +oldest girl,--and Jim used to talk to me about her. Guess he done it +as much for her as for the mother; and he said to me before the last +action we went into, 'I should like to turn tail and run, Cap. I ain't +comin' out o' this one. But I don't suppose it would do.' 'Well, not +for you, Jim,' said I. 'I want to live,' he says; and he bust out +crying right there in my tent. 'I want to live for poor Molly and +Zerrilla'--that's what they called the little one; I dunno where they +got the name. 'I ain't ever had half a chance; and now she's doing +better, and I believe we should get along after this.' He set there +cryin' like a baby. But he wa'n't no baby when he went into action. I +hated to look at him after it was over, not so much because he'd got a +ball that was meant for me by a sharpshooter--he saw the devil takin' +aim, and he jumped to warn me--as because he didn't look like Jim; he +looked like--fun; all desperate and savage. I guess he died hard." +</P> + +<P> +The story made its impression, and Lapham saw it. "Now I say," he +resumed, as if he felt that he was going to do himself justice, and say +something to heighten the effect his story had produced. At the same +time he was aware of a certain want of clearness. He had the idea, but +it floated vague, elusive, in his brain. He looked about as if for +something to precipitate it in tangible shape. +</P> + +<P> +"Apollinaris?" asked Charles Bellingham, handing the bottle from the +other side. He had drawn his chair closer than the rest to Lapham's, +and was listening with great interest. When Mrs. Corey asked him to +meet Lapham, he accepted gladly. "You know I go in for that sort of +thing, Anna. Since Leslie's affair we're rather bound to do it. And I +think we meet these practical fellows too little. There's always +something original about them." He might naturally have believed that +the reward of his faith was coming. +</P> + +<P> +"Thanks, I will take some of this wine," said Lapham, pouring himself a +glass of Madeira from a black and dusty bottle caressed by a label +bearing the date of the vintage. He tossed off the wine, unconscious +of its preciousness, and waited for the result. That cloudiness in his +brain disappeared before it, but a mere blank remained. He not only +could not remember what he was going to say, but he could not recall +what they had been talking about. They waited, looking at him, and he +stared at them in return. After a while he heard the host saying, +"Shall we join the ladies?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham went, trying to think what had happened. It seemed to him a +long time since he had drunk that wine. +</P> + +<P> +Miss Corey gave him a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from his wife, +who was talking with Miss Kingsbury and Mrs. Sewell; Irene was with +Miss Nanny Corey. He could not hear what they were talking about; but +if Penelope had come, he knew that she would have done them all credit. +He meant to let her know how he felt about her behaviour when he got +home. It was a shame for her to miss such a chance. Irene was looking +beautiful, as pretty as all the rest of them put together, but she was +not talking, and Lapham perceived that at a dinner-party you ought to +talk. He was himself conscious of having, talked very well. He now +wore an air of great dignity, and, in conversing with the other +gentlemen, he used a grave and weighty deliberation. Some of them +wanted him to go into the library. There he gave his ideas of books. +He said he had not much time for anything but the papers; but he was +going to have a complete library in his new place. He made an +elaborate acknowledgment to Bromfield Corey of his son's kindness in +suggesting books for his library; he said that he had ordered them all, +and that he meant to have pictures. He asked Mr. Corey who was about +the best American painter going now. "I don't set up to be a judge of +pictures, but I know what I like," he said. He lost the reserve which +he had maintained earlier, and began to boast. He himself introduced +the subject of his paint, in a natural transition from pictures; he +said Mr. Corey must take a run up to Lapham with him some day, and see +the Works; they would interest him, and he would drive him round the +country; he kept most of his horses up there, and he could show Mr. +Corey some of the finest Jersey grades in the country. He told about +his brother William, the judge at Dubuque; and a farm he had out there +that paid for itself every year in wheat. As he cast off all fear, his +voice rose, and he hammered his arm-chair with the thick of his hand +for emphasis. Mr. Corey seemed impressed; he sat perfectly quiet, +listening, and Lapham saw the other gentlemen stop in their talk every +now and then to listen. After this proof of his ability to interest +them, he would have liked to have Mrs. Lapham suggest again that he was +unequal to their society, or to the society of anybody else. He +surprised himself by his ease among men whose names had hitherto +overawed him. He got to calling Bromfield Corey by his surname alone. +He did not understand why young Corey seemed so preoccupied, and he +took occasion to tell the company how he had said to his wife the first +time he saw that fellow that he could make a man of him if he had him +in the business; and he guessed he was not mistaken. He began to tell +stories of the different young men he had had in his employ. At last +he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, and he +talked unceasingly. It was a great time; it was a triumph. +</P> + +<P> +He was in this successful mood when word came to him that Mrs. Lapham +was going; Tom Corey seemed to have brought it, but he was not sure. +Anyway, he was not going to hurry. He made cordial invitations to each +of the gentlemen to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be +satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each. He told Charles +Bellingham that he liked him, and assured James Bellingham that it had +always been his ambition to know him, and that if any one had said when +he first came to Boston that in less than ten years he should be +hobnobbing with Jim Bellingham, he should have told that person he +lied. He would have told anybody he lied that had told him ten years +ago that a son of Bromfield Corey would have come and asked him to take +him into the business. Ten years ago he, Silas Lapham, had come to +Boston a little worse off than nothing at all, for he was in debt for +half the money that he had bought out his partner with, and here he was +now worth a million, and meeting you gentlemen like one of you. And +every cent of that was honest money,--no speculation,--every copper of +it for value received. And here, only the other day, his old partner, +who had been going to the dogs ever since he went out of the business, +came and borrowed twenty thousand dollars of him! Lapham lent it +because his wife wanted him to: she had always felt bad about the +fellow's having to go out of the business. +</P> + +<P> +He took leave of Mr. Sewell with patronising affection, and bade him +come to him if he ever got into a tight place with his parish work; he +would let him have all the money he wanted; he had more money than he +knew what to do with. "Why, when your wife sent to mine last fall," he +said, turning to Mr. Corey, "I drew my cheque for five hundred dollars, +but my wife wouldn't take more than one hundred; said she wasn't going +to show off before Mrs. Corey. I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs. +Corey. I must tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of a cool four +hundred dollars." +</P> + +<P> +He started toward the door of the drawing-room to take leave of the +ladies; but Tom Corey was at his elbow, saying, "I think Mrs. Lapham is +waiting for you below, sir," and in obeying the direction Corey gave +him toward another door he forgot all about his purpose, and came away +without saying good-night to his hostess. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham had not known how soon she ought to go, and had no idea +that in her quality of chief guest she was keeping the others. She +stayed till eleven o'clock, and was a little frightened when she found +what time it was; but Mrs. Corey, without pressing her to stay longer, +had said it was not at all late. She and Irene had had a perfect time. +Everybody had been very polite, on the way home they celebrated the +amiability of both the Miss Coreys and of Miss Kingsbury. Mrs. Lapham +thought that Mrs. Bellingham was about the pleasantest person she ever +saw; she had told her all about her married daughter who had married an +inventor and gone to live in Omaha--a Mrs. Blake. +</P> + +<P> +"If it's that car-wheel Blake," said Lapham proudly, "I know all about +him. I've sold him tons of the paint." +</P> + +<P> +"Pooh, papa! How you do smell of smoking!" cried Irene. +</P> + +<P> +"Pretty strong, eh?" laughed Lapham, letting down a window of the +carriage. His heart was throbbing wildly in the close air, and he was +glad of the rush of cold that came in, though it stopped his tongue, +and he listened more and more drowsily to the rejoicings that his wife +and daughter exchanged. He meant to have them wake Penelope up and +tell her what she had lost; but when he reached home he was too sleepy +to suggest it. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, +full of supreme triumph. +</P> + +<P> +But in the morning his skull was sore with the unconscious, night-long +ache; and he rose cross and taciturn. They had a silent breakfast. In +the cold grey light of the morning the glories of the night before +showed poorer. Here and there a painful doubt obtruded itself and +marred them with its awkward shadow. Penelope sent down word that she +was not well, and was not coming to breakfast, and Lapham was glad to +go to his office without seeing her. +</P> + +<P> +He was severe and silent all day with his clerks, and peremptory with +customers. Of Corey he was slyly observant, and as the day wore away +he grew more restively conscious. He sent out word by his office-boy +that he would like to see Mr. Corey for a few minutes after closing. +The type-writer girl had lingered too, as if she wished to speak with +him, and Corey stood in abeyance as she went toward Lapham's door. +</P> + +<P> +"Can't see you to-night, Zerrilla," he said bluffly, but not unkindly. +"Perhaps I'll call at the house, if it's important." +</P> + +<P> +"It is," said the girl, with a spoiled air of insistence. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Lapham, and, nodding to Corey to enter, he closed the door +upon her. Then he turned to the young, man and demanded: "Was I drunk +last night?" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap15"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XV. +</H3> + +<P> +LAPHAM'S strenuous face was broken up with the emotions that had forced +him to this question: shame, fear of the things that must have been +thought of him, mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, +which died out at the shocked and pitying look in Corey's eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Was I drunk?" he repeated. "I ask you, because I was never touched by +drink in my life before, and I don't know." He stood with his huge +hands trembling on the back of his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he +stared at Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"That is what every one understood, Colonel Lapham," said the young +man. "Every one saw how it was. Don't----" +</P> + +<P> +"Did they talk it over after I left?" asked Lapham vulgarly. +</P> + +<P> +"Excuse me," said Corey, blushing, "my father doesn't talk his guests +over with one another." He added, with youthful superfluity, "You were +among gentlemen." +</P> + +<P> +"I was the only one that wasn't a gentleman there!" lamented Lapham. +"I disgraced you! I disgraced my family! I mortified your father before +his friends!" His head dropped. "I showed that I wasn't fit to go with +you. I'm not fit for any decent place. What did I say? What did I +do?" he asked, suddenly lifting his head and confronting Corey. "Out +with it! If you could bear to see it and hear it, I had ought to bear +to know it!" +</P> + +<P> +"There was nothing--really nothing," said Corey. "Beyond the fact that +you were not quite yourself, there was nothing whatever. My father DID +speak of it to me," he confessed, "when we were alone. He said that he +was afraid we had not been thoughtful of you, if you were in the habit +of taking only water; I told him I had not seen wine at your table. +The others said nothing about you." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, but what did they think?" +</P> + +<P> +"Probably what we did: that it was purely a misfortune--an accident." +</P> + +<P> +"I wasn't fit to be there," persisted Lapham. "Do you want to leave?" +he asked, with savage abruptness. +</P> + +<P> +"Leave?" faltered the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; quit the business? Cut the whole connection?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't the remotest idea of it!" cried Corey in amazement. "Why in +the world should I?" "Because you're a gentleman, and I'm not, and it +ain't right I should be over you. If you want to go, I know some +parties that would be glad to get you. I will give you up if you want +to go before anything worse happens, and I shan't blame you. I can +help you to something better than I can offer you here, and I will." +</P> + +<P> +"There's no question of my going, unless you wish it," said Corey. "If +you do----" +</P> + +<P> +"Will you tell your father," interrupted Lapham, "that I had a notion +all the time that I was acting the drunken blackguard, and that I've +suffered for it all day? Will you tell him I don't want him to notice +me if we ever meet, and that I know I'm not fit to associate with +gentlemen in anything but a business way, if I am that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Corey. "I can't +listen to you any longer. What you say is shocking to me--shocking in +a way you can't think." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, man!" exclaimed Lapham, with astonishment; "if I can stand it, +YOU can!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Corey, with a sick look, "that doesn't follow. You may +denounce yourself, if you will; but I have my reasons for refusing to +hear you--my reasons why I CAN'T hear you. If you say another word I +must go away." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't understand you," faltered Lapham, in bewilderment, which +absorbed even his shame. +</P> + +<P> +"You exaggerate the effect of what has happened," said the young man. +"It's enough, more than enough, for you to have mentioned the matter to +me, and I think it's unbecoming in me to hear you." +</P> + +<P> +He made a movement toward the door, but Lapham stopped him with the +tragic humility of his appeal. "Don't go yet! I can't let you. I've +disgusted you,--I see that; but I didn't mean to. I--I take it back." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, there's nothing to take back," said Corey, with a repressed +shudder for the abasement which he had seen. "But let us say no more +about it--think no more. There wasn't one of the gentlemen present +last night who didn't understand the matter precisely as my father and +I did, and that fact must end it between us two." +</P> + +<P> +He went out into the larger office beyond, leaving Lapham helpless to +prevent his going. It had become a vital necessity with him to think +the best of Lapham, but his mind was in a whirl of whatever thoughts +were most injurious. He thought of him the night before in the company +of those ladies and gentlemen, and he quivered in resentment of his +vulgar, braggart, uncouth nature. He recognised his own allegiance to +the exclusiveness to which he was born and bred, as a man perceives his +duty to his country when her rights are invaded. His eye fell on the +porter going about in his shirt-sleeves to make the place fast for the +night, and he said to himself that Dennis was not more plebeian than +his master; that the gross appetites, the blunt sense, the purblind +ambition, the stupid arrogance were the same in both, and the +difference was in a brute will that probably left the porter the +gentler man of the two. The very innocence of Lapham's life in the +direction in which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's +mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience. Amidst the +stings and flashes of his wounded pride, all the social traditions, all +the habits of feeling, which he had silenced more and more by force of +will during the past months, asserted their natural sway, and he rioted +in his contempt of the offensive boor, who was even more offensive in +his shame than in his trespass. He said to himself that he was a +Corey, as if that were somewhat; yet he knew that at the bottom of his +heart all the time was that which must control him at last, and which +seemed sweetly to be suffering his rebellion, secure of his submission +in the end. It was almost with the girl's voice that it seemed to +plead with him, to undo in him, effect by effect, the work of his +indignant resentment, to set all things in another and fairer light, to +give him hopes, to suggest palliations, to protest against injustices. +It WAS in Lapham's favour that he was so guiltless in the past, and now +Corey asked himself if it were the first time he could have wished a +guest at his father's table to have taken less wine; whether Lapham was +not rather to be honoured for not knowing how to contain his folly +where a veteran transgressor might have held his tongue. He asked +himself, with a thrill of sudden remorse, whether, when Lapham humbled +himself in the dust so shockingly, he had shown him the sympathy to +which such ABANDON had the right; and he had to own that he had met him +on the gentlemanly ground, sparing himself and asserting the +superiority of his sort, and not recognising that Lapham's humiliation +came from the sense of wrong, which he had helped to accumulate upon +him by superfinely standing aloof and refusing to touch him. +</P> + +<P> +He shut his desk and hurried out into the early night, not to go +anywhere, but to walk up and down, to try to find his way out of the +chaos, which now seemed ruin, and now the materials out of which fine +actions and a happy life might be shaped. Three hours later he stood +at Lapham's door. +</P> + +<P> +At times what he now wished to do had seemed for ever impossible, and +again it had seemed as if he could not wait a moment longer. He had +not been careless, but very mindful of what he knew must be the +feelings of his own family in regard to the Laphams, and he had not +concealed from himself that his family had great reason and justice on +their side in not wishing him to alienate himself from their common +life and associations. The most that he could urge to himself was that +they had not all the reason and justice; but he had hesitated and +delayed because they had so much. Often he could not make it appear +right that he should merely please himself in what chiefly concerned +himself. He perceived how far apart in all their experiences and +ideals the Lapham girls and his sisters were; how different Mrs. Lapham +was from his mother; how grotesquely unlike were his father and Lapham; +and the disparity had not always amused him. +</P> + +<P> +He had often taken it very seriously, and sometimes he said that he +must forego the hope on which his heart was set. There had been many +times in the past months when he had said that he must go no further, +and as often as he had taken this stand he had yielded it, upon this or +that excuse, which he was aware of trumping up. It was part of the +complication that he should be unconscious of the injury he might be +doing to some one besides his family and himself; this was the defect +of his diffidence; and it had come to him in a pang for the first time +when his mother said that she would not have the Laphams think she +wished to make more of the acquaintance than he did; and then it had +come too late. Since that he had suffered quite as much from the fear +that it might not be as that it might be so; and now, in the mood, +romantic and exalted, in which he found himself concerning Lapham, he +was as far as might be from vain confidence. He ended the question in +his own mind by affirming to himself that he was there, first of all, +to see Lapham and give him an ultimate proof of his own perfect faith +and unabated respect, and to offer him what reparation this involved +for that want of sympathy--of humanity--which he had shown. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap16"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XVI. +</H3> + +<P> +THE Nova Scotia second-girl who answered Corey's ring said that Lapham +had not come home yet. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said the young man, hesitating on the outer step. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you better come in," said the girl, "I'll go and see when +they're expecting him." +</P> + +<P> +Corey was in the mood to be swayed by any chance. He obeyed the +suggestion of the second-girl's patronising friendliness, and let her +shut him into the drawing-room, while she went upstairs to announce him +to Penelope. "Did you tell him father wasn't at home?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. He seemed so kind of disappointed, I told him to come in, and I'd +see when he WOULD be in," said the girl, with the human interest which +sometimes replaces in the American domestic the servile deference of +other countries. +</P> + +<P> +A gleam of amusement passed over Penelope's face, as she glanced at +herself in the glass. "Well," she cried finally, dropping from her +shoulders the light shawl in which she had been huddled over a book +when Corey rang, "I will go down." +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said the girl, and Penelope began hastily to amend the +disarray of her hair, which she tumbled into a mass on the top of her +little head, setting off the pale dark of her complexion with a flash +of crimson ribbon at her throat. She moved across the carpet once or +twice with the quaint grace that belonged to her small figure, made a +dissatisfied grimace at it in the glass, caught a handkerchief out of a +drawer and slid it into her pocket, and then descended to Corey. +</P> + +<P> +The Lapham drawing-room in Nankeen Square was in the parti-coloured +paint which the Colonel had hoped to repeat in his new house: the trim +of the doors and windows was in light green and the panels in salmon; +the walls were a plain tint of French grey paper, divided by gilt +mouldings into broad panels with a wide stripe of red velvet paper +running up the corners; the chandelier was of massive imitation bronze; +the mirror over the mantel rested on a fringed mantel-cover of green +reps, and heavy curtains of that stuff hung from gilt lambrequin frames +at the window; the carpet was of a small pattern in crude green, which, +at the time Mrs. Lapham bought it, covered half the new floors in +Boston. In the panelled spaces on the walls were some stone-coloured +landscapes, representing the mountains and canyons of the West, which +the Colonel and his wife had visited on one of the early official +railroad excursions. In front of the long windows looking into the +Square were statues, kneeling figures which turned their backs upon the +company within-doors, and represented allegories of Faith and Prayer to +people without. A white marble group of several figures, expressing an +Italian conception of Lincoln Freeing the Slaves,--a Latin negro and +his wife,--with our Eagle flapping his wings in approval, at Lincoln's +feet, occupied one corner, and balanced the what-not of an earlier +period in another. These phantasms added their chill to that imparted +by the tone of the walls, the landscapes, and the carpets, and +contributed to the violence of the contrast when the chandelier was +lighted up full glare, and the heat of the whole furnace welled up from +the registers into the quivering atmosphere on one of the rare +occasions when the Laphams invited company. +</P> + +<P> +Corey had not been in this room before; the family had always received +him in what they called the sitting-room. Penelope looked into this +first, and then she looked into the parlour, with a smile that broke +into a laugh as she discovered him standing under the single burner +which the second-girl had lighted for him in the chandelier. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't understand how you came to be put in there," she said, as she +led the way to the cozier place, "unless it was because Alice thought +you were only here on probation, anyway. Father hasn't got home yet, +but I'm expecting him every moment; I don't know what's keeping him. +Did the girl tell you that mother and Irene were out?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, she didn't say. It's very good of you to see me." She had not +seen the exaltation which he had been feeling, he perceived with half a +sigh; it must all be upon this lower level; perhaps it was best so. +"There was something I wished to say to your father----I hope," he +broke off, "you're better to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, thank you," said Penelope, remembering that she had not been +well enough to go to dinner the night before. +</P> + +<P> +"We all missed you very much." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, thank you! I'm afraid you wouldn't have missed me if I had been +there." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, we should," said Corey, "I assure you." +</P> + +<P> +They looked at each other. +</P> + +<P> +"I really think I believed I was saying something," said the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"And so did I," replied the young man. They laughed rather wildly, and +then they both became rather grave. +</P> + +<P> +He took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, where she sat +on the other side of the hearth, in a chair lower than his, with her +hands dropped in her lap, and the back of her head on her shoulders as +she looked up at him. The soft-coal fire in the grate purred and +flickered; the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face. She let +her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant glance at the +clock on the mantel. +</P> + +<P> +"Mother and Irene have gone to the Spanish Students' concert." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, have they?" asked Corey; and he put his hat, which he had been +holding in his hand, on the floor beside his chair. +</P> + +<P> +She looked down at it for no reason, and then looked up at his face for +no other, and turned a little red. Corey turned a little red himself. +She who had always been so easy with him now became a little +constrained. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"No, is it warm? I haven't been out all day." +</P> + +<P> +"It's like a summer night." +</P> + +<P> +She turned her face towards the fire, and then started abruptly. +"Perhaps it's too warm for you here?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no, it's very comfortable." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose it's the cold of the last few days that's still in the +house. I was reading with a shawl on when you came." +</P> + +<P> +"I interrupted you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no. I had finished the book. I was just looking over it again." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you like to read books over?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; books that I like at all." +</P> + +<P> +"That was it?" asked Corey. +</P> + +<P> +The girl hesitated. "It has rather a sentimental name. Did you ever +read it?--Tears, Idle Tears." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous book with +ladies. They break their hearts over it. Did it make you cry?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said Penelope, laughing; +"and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. Then +the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I +guess it's rather forced." +</P> + +<P> +"Her giving him up to the other one?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared +for him first. Why should she have done it? What right had she?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice----" +</P> + +<P> +"But it WASN'T self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone. She was +sacrificing him too; and for some one who couldn't appreciate him half +as much as she could. I'm provoked with myself when I think how I +cried over that book--for I did cry. It's silly--it's wicked for any +one to do what that girl did. Why can't they let people have a chance +to behave reasonably in stories?" +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," suggested Corey, with a +smile. +</P> + +<P> +"It would be novel, at any rate," said the girl. "But so it would in +real life, I suppose," she added. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. Why shouldn't people in love behave sensibly?" +</P> + +<P> +"That's a very serious question," said Penelope gravely. "I couldn't +answer it," and she left him the embarrassment of supporting an inquiry +which she had certainly instigated herself. She seemed to have finally +recovered her own ease in doing this. "Do you admire our autumnal +display, Mr. Corey?" +</P> + +<P> +"Your display?" +</P> + +<P> +"The trees in the Square. WE think it's quite equal to an opening at +Jordan & Marsh's." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, I'm afraid you wouldn't let me be serious even about your maples." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, I should--if you like to be serious." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well not about serious matters. That's the reason that book made me +cry." +</P> + +<P> +"You make fun of everything. Miss Irene was telling me last night +about you." +</P> + +<P> +"Then it's no use for me to deny it so soon. I must give Irene a +talking to." +</P> + +<P> +"I hope you won't forbid her to talk about you!" +</P> + +<P> +She had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, now between her +face and the fire, and now between her face and him. Her little +visage, with that arch, lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky +hair, and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, had a +Japanese effect in the subdued light, and it had the charm which comes +to any woman with happiness. It would be hard to say how much of this +she perceived that he felt. They talked about other things a while, +and then she came back to what he had said. She glanced at him +obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it. "Does Irene talk about +me?" she asked. "I think so--yes. Perhaps it's only I who talk about +you. You must blame me if it's wrong," he returned. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I didn't say it was wrong," she replied. "But I hope if you said +anything very bad of me you'll let me know what it was, so that I can +reform----" +</P> + +<P> +"No, don't change, please!" cried the young man. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely,--"or rebuke you +for speaking evil of dignities." She looked down at the fan, now flat +in her lap, and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she +remained looking down. Again they let the talk stray, and then it was +he who brought it back to themselves, as if it had not left them. +</P> + +<P> +"I have to talk OF you," said Corey, "because I get to talk TO you so +seldom." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean that I do all the talking when we're--together?" She glanced +sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking the last word. +</P> + +<P> +"We're so seldom together," he pursued. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what you mean----" +</P> + +<P> +"Sometimes I've thought--I've been afraid that you avoided me." +</P> + +<P> +"Avoided you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes! Tried not to be alone with me." +</P> + +<P> +She might have told him that there was no reason why she should be +alone with him, and that it was very strange he should make this +complaint of her. But she did not. She kept looking down at the fan, +and then she lifted her burning face and looked at the clock again. +"Mother and Irene will be sorry to miss you," she gasped. +</P> + +<P> +He instantly rose and came towards her. She rose too, and mechanically +put out her hand. He took it as if to say good-night. "I didn't mean +to send you away," she besought him. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'm not going," he answered simply. "I wanted to say--to say that +it's I who make her talk about you. To say I----There is something I +want to say to you; I've said it so often to myself that I feel as if +you must know it." She stood quite still, letting him keep her hand, +and questioning his face with a bewildered gaze. "You MUST know--she +must have told you--she must have guessed----" Penelope turned white, +but outwardly quelled the panic that sent the blood to her heart. +"I--I didn't expect--I hoped to have seen your father--but I must speak +now, whatever----I love you!" +</P> + +<P> +She freed her hand from both of those he had closed upon it, and went +back from him across the room with a sinuous spring. "ME!" Whatever +potential complicity had lurked in her heart, his words brought her +only immeasurable dismay. +</P> + +<P> +He came towards her again. "Yes, you. Who else?" +</P> + +<P> +She fended him off with an imploring gesture. "I thought--I--it +was----" +</P> + +<P> +She shut her lips tight, and stood looking at him where he remained in +silent amaze. Then her words came again, shudderingly. "Oh, what have +you done?" +</P> + +<P> +"Upon my soul," he said, with a vague smile, "I don't know. I hope no +harm?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't laugh!" she cried, laughing hysterically herself. "Unless +you want me to think you the greatest wretch in the world!" +</P> + +<P> +"I?" he responded. "For heaven's sake tell me what you mean!" +</P> + +<P> +"You know I can't tell you. Can you say--can you put your hand on your +heart and say that--you--say you never meant--that you meant me--all +along?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes!--yes! Who else? I came here to see your father, and to tell him +that I wished to tell you this--to ask him----But what does it matter? +You must have known it--you must have seen--and it's for you to answer +me. I've been abrupt, I know, and I've startled you; but if you love +me, you can forgive that to my loving you so long before I spoke." +</P> + +<P> +She gazed at him with parted lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, mercy! What shall I do? If it's true--what you say--you must go!" +she said. "And you must never come any more. Do you promise that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly not," said the young man. "Why should I promise such a +thing--so abominably wrong? I could obey if you didn't love me----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't! Indeed I don't! Now will you obey." +</P> + +<P> +"No. I don't believe you." "Oh!" +</P> + +<P> +He possessed himself of her hand again. +</P> + +<P> +"My love--my dearest! What is this trouble, that you can't tell it? It +can't be anything about yourself. If it is anything about any one +else, it wouldn't make the least difference in the world, no matter +what it was. I would be only too glad to show by any act or deed I +could that nothing could change me towards you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you don't understand!" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I don't. You must tell me." +</P> + +<P> +"I will never do that." +</P> + +<P> +"Then I will stay here till your mother comes, and ask her what it is." +</P> + +<P> +"Ask HER?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes! Do you think I will give you up till I know why I must?" +</P> + +<P> +"You force me to it! Will you go if I tell you, and never let any human +creature know what you have said to me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not unless you give me leave." +</P> + +<P> +"That will be never. Well, then----" She stopped, and made two or +three ineffectual efforts to begin again. "No, no! I can't. You must +go!" +</P> + +<P> +"I will not go!" +</P> + +<P> +"You said you--loved me. If you do, you will go." +</P> + +<P> +He dropped the hands he had stretched towards her, and she hid her face +in her own. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" she said, turning it suddenly upon him. "Sit down there. And +will you promise me--on your honour--not to speak--not to try to +persuade me--not to--touch me? You won't touch me?" +</P> + +<P> +"I will obey you, Penelope." +</P> + +<P> +"As if you were never to see me again? As if I were dying?" +</P> + +<P> +"I will do what you say. But I shall see you again; and don't talk of +dying. This is the beginning of life----" +</P> + +<P> +"No. It's the end," said the girl, resuming at last something of the +hoarse drawl which the tumult of her feeling had broken into those +half-articulate appeals. She sat down too, and lifted her face towards +him. "It's the end of life for me, because I know now that I must have +been playing false from the beginning. You don't know what I mean, and +I can never tell you. It isn't my secret--it's some one else's. +You--you must never come here again. I can't tell you why, and you +must never try to know. Do you promise?" +</P> + +<P> +"You can forbid me. I must do what you say." +</P> + +<P> +"I do forbid you, then. And you shall not think I am cruel----" +</P> + +<P> +"How could I think that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, how hard you make it!" +</P> + +<P> +Corey laughed for very despair. "Can I make it easier by disobeying +you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I know I am talking crazily. But I'm not crazy." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no," he said, with some wild notion of comforting her; "but try to +tell me this trouble! There is nothing under heaven--no calamity, no +sorrow--that I wouldn't gladly share with you, or take all upon myself +if I could!" +</P> + +<P> +"I know! But this you can't. Oh, my----" +</P> + +<P> +"Dearest! Wait! Think! Let me ask your mother--your father----" +</P> + +<P> +She gave a cry. +</P> + +<P> +"No! If you do that, you will make me hate you! Will you----" +</P> + +<P> +The rattling of a latch-key was heard in the outer door. +</P> + +<P> +"Promise!" cried Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I promise!" +</P> + +<P> +"Good-bye!" She suddenly flung her arms round his neck, and, pressing +her cheek tight against his, flashed out of the room by one door as her +father entered it by another. +</P> + +<P> +Corey turned to him in a daze. "I--I called to speak with you--about a +matter----But it's so late now. I'll--I'll see you to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"No time like the present," said Lapham, with a fierceness that did not +seem referable to Corey. He had his hat still on, and he glared at the +young man out of his blue eyes with a fire that something else must +have kindled there. +</P> + +<P> +"I really can't now," said Corey weakly. "It will do quite as well +to-morrow. Good night, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Good night," answered Lapham abruptly, following him to the door, and +shutting it after him. "I think the devil must have got into pretty +much everybody to-night," he muttered, coming back to the room, where +he put down his hat. Then he went to the kitchen-stairs and called +down, "Hello, Alice! I want something to eat!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap17"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XVII. +</H3> + +<P> +"WHAT's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast any more?" +asked Lapham, when he met his wife at the table in the morning. He had +been up an hour and a half, and he spoke with the severity of a hungry +man. "It seems to me they don't amount to ANYthing. Here I am, at my +time of life, up the first one in the house. I ring the bell for the +cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the +table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but I never see +anybody but you till I go to the office." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, you do, Si," said his wife soothingly. "The girls are nearly +always down. But they're young, and it tires them more than it does us +to get up early." +</P> + +<P> +"They can rest afterwards. They don't do anything after they ARE up," +grumbled Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's your fault, ain't it? You oughtn't to have made so much +money, and then they'd have had to work." She laughed at Lapham's +Spartan mood, and went on to excuse the young people. "Irene's been up +two nights hand running, and Penelope says she ain't well. What makes +you so cross about the girls? Been doing something you're ashamed of?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell you when I've been doing anything to be ashamed of," growled +Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no, you won't!" said his wife jollily. "You'll only be hard on the +rest of us. Come now, Si; what is it?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham frowned into his coffee with sulky dignity, and said, without +looking up, "I wonder what that fellow wanted here last night?" "What +fellow?" +</P> + +<P> +"Corey. I found him here when I came home, and he said he wanted to see +me; but he wouldn't stop." +</P> + +<P> +"Where was he?" +</P> + +<P> +"In the sitting-room." +</P> + +<P> +"Was Pen there?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't see her." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham paused, with her hand on the cream-jug. "Why, what in the +land did he want? Did he say he wanted you?" +</P> + +<P> +"That's what he said." +</P> + +<P> +"And then he wouldn't stay?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, I'll tell you just what it is, Silas Lapham. He came +here"--she looked about the room and lowered her voice--"to see you +about Irene, and then he hadn't the courage." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess he's got courage enough to do pretty much what he wants to," +said Lapham glumly. "All I know is, he was here. You better ask Pen +about it, if she ever gets down." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I shan't wait for her," said Mrs. Lapham; and, as her husband +closed the front door after him, she opened that of her daughter's room +and entered abruptly. +</P> + +<P> +The girl sat at the window, fully dressed, and as if she had been +sitting there a long time. Without rising, she turned her face towards +her mother. It merely showed black against the light, and revealed +nothing till her mother came close to her with successive questions. +"Why, how long have you been up, Pen? Why don't you come to your +breakfast? Did you see Mr. Corey when he called last night? Why, what's +the matter with you? What have you been crying about?" +</P> + +<P> +"Have I been crying?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes! Your cheeks are all wet!" +</P> + +<P> +"I thought they were on fire. Well, I'll tell you what's happened." +She rose, and then fell back in her chair. "Lock the door!" she +ordered, and her mother mechanically obeyed. "I don't want Irene in +here. There's nothing the matter. Only, Mr. Corey offered himself to +me last night." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother remained looking at her, helpless, not so much with amaze, +perhaps, as dismay. "Oh, I'm not a ghost! I wish I was! You had better +sit down, mother. You have got to know all about it." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham dropped nervelessly into the chair at the other window, and +while the girl went slowly but briefly on, touching only the vital +points of the story, and breaking at times into a bitter drollery, she +sat as if without the power to speak or stir. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's all, mother. I should say I had dreamt, it, if I had +slept any last night; but I guess it really happened." +</P> + +<P> +The mother glanced round at the bed, and said, glad to occupy herself +delayingly with the minor care: "Why, you have been sitting up all +night! You will kill yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know about killing myself, but I've been sitting up all +night," answered the girl. Then, seeing that her mother remained +blankly silent again, she demanded, "Why don't you blame me, mother? +Why don't you say that I led him on, and tried to get him away from +her? Don't you believe I did?" +</P> + +<P> +Her mother made her no answer, as if these ravings of self-accusal +needed none. "Do you think," she asked simply, "that he got the idea +you cared for him?" +</P> + +<P> +"He knew it! How could I keep it from him? I said I didn't--at first!" +</P> + +<P> +"It was no use," sighed the mother. "You might as well said you did. +It couldn't help Irene any, if you didn't." +</P> + +<P> +"I always tried to help her with him, even when I----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know. But she never was equal to him. I saw that from the +start; but I tried to blind myself to it. And when he kept coming----" +</P> + +<P> +"You never thought of me!" cried the girl, with a bitterness that +reached her mother's heart. "I was nobody! I couldn't feel! No one +could care for me!" The turmoil of despair, of triumph, of remorse and +resentment, which filled her soul, tried to express itself in the words. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said the mother humbly. "I didn't think of you. Or I didn't +think of you enough. It did come across me sometimes that may +be----But it didn't seem as if----And your going on so for Irene----" +</P> + +<P> +"You let me go on. You made me always go and talk with him for her, +and you didn't think I would talk to him for myself. Well, I didn't!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm punished for it. When did you--begin to care for him!" +</P> + +<P> +"How do I know? What difference does it make? It's all over now, no +matter when it began. He won't come here any more, unless I let him." +She could not help betraying her pride in this authority of hers, but +she went on anxiously enough, "What will you say to Irene? She's safe +as far as I'm concerned; but if he don't care for her, what will you +do?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Lapham. She sat in an apathy from +which she apparently could not rouse herself. "I don't see as anything +can be done." +</P> + +<P> +Penelope laughed in a pitying derision. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, let things go on then. But they won't go on." +</P> + +<P> +"No, they won't go on," echoed her mother. "She's pretty enough, and +she's capable; and your father's got the money--I don't know what I'm +saying! She ain't equal to him, and she never was. I kept feeling it +all the time, and yet I kept blinding myself." +</P> + +<P> +"If he had ever cared for her," said Penelope, "it wouldn't have +mattered whether she was equal to him or not. I'M not equal to him +either." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother went on: "I might have thought it was you; but I had got +set----Well! I can see it all clear enough, now it's too late. I don't +know what to do." +</P> + +<P> +"And what do you expect me to do?" demanded the girl. "Do you want ME +to go to Irene and tell her that I've got him away from her?" +</P> + +<P> +"O good Lord!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "What shall I do? What do you want I +should do, Pen?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing for me," said Penelope. "I've had it out with myself. Now do +the best you can for Irene." +</P> + +<P> +"I couldn't say you had done wrong, if you was to marry him to-day." +</P> + +<P> +"Mother!" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I couldn't. I couldn't say but what you had been good and +faithfull all through, and you had a perfect right to do it. There +ain't any one to blame. He's behaved like a gentleman, and I can see +now that he never thought of her, and that it was you all the while. +Well, marry him, then! He's got the right, and so have you." +</P> + +<P> +"What about Irene? I don't want you to talk about me. I can take care +of myself." +</P> + +<P> +"She's nothing but a child. It's only a fancy with her. She'll get +over it. She hain't really got her heart set on him." +</P> + +<P> +"She's got her heart set on him, mother. She's got her whole life set +on him. You know that." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's so," said the mother, as promptly as if she had been +arguing to that rather than the contrary effect. +</P> + +<P> +"If I could give him to her, I would. But he isn't mine to give." She +added in a burst of despair, "He isn't mine to keep!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Mrs. Lapham, "she has got to bear it. I don't know what's +to come of it all. But she's got to bear her share of it." She rose +and went toward the door. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope ran after her in a sort of terror. "You're not going to tell +Irene?" she gasped, seizing her mother by either shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I am," said Mrs. Lapham. "If she's a woman grown, she can bear a +woman's burden." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't let you tell Irene," said the girl, letting fall her face on +her mother's neck. "Not Irene," she moaned. "I'm afraid to let you. +How can I ever look at her again?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, you haven't done anything, Pen," said her mother soothingly. +</P> + +<P> +"I wanted to! Yes, I must have done something. How could I help it? I +did care for him from the first, and I must have tried to make him like +me. Do you think I did? No, no! You mustn't tell Irene! Not-- +not--yet! Mother! Yes! I did try to get him from her!" she cried, +lifting her head, and suddenly looking her mother in the face with +those large dim eyes of hers. "What do you think? Even last night! It +was the first time I ever had him all to myself, for myself, and I know +now that I tried to make him think that I was pretty and--funny. And I +didn't try to make him think of her. I knew that I pleased him, and I +tried to please him more. Perhaps I could have kept him from saying +that he cared for me; but when I saw he did--I must have seen it--I +couldn't. I had never had him to myself, and for myself before. I +needn't have seen him at all, but I wanted to see him; and when I was +sitting there alone with him, how do I know what I did to let him feel +that I cared for him? Now, will you tell Irene? I never thought he did +care for me, and never expected him to. But I liked him. Yes--I did +like him! Tell her that! Or else I will." +</P> + +<P> +"If it was to tell her he was dead," began Mrs. Lapham absently. +</P> + +<P> +"How easy it would be!" cried the girl in self-mockery. "But he's +worse than dead to her; and so am I. I've turned it over a million +ways, mother; I've looked at it in every light you can put it in, and I +can't make anything but misery out of it. You can see the misery at +the first glance, and you can't see more or less if you spend your life +looking at it." She laughed again, as if the hopelessness of the thing +amused her. Then she flew to the extreme of self-assertion. "Well, I +HAVE a right to him, and he has a right to me. If he's never done +anything to make her think he cared for her,--and I know he hasn't; +it's all been our doing, then he's free and I'm free. We can't make +her happy whatever we do; and why shouldn't I----No, that won't do! I +reached that point before!" She broke again into her desperate laugh. +"You may try now, mother!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'd best speak to your father first----" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope smiled a little more forlornly than she had laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, yes; the Colonel will have to know. It isn't a trouble that I +can keep to myself exactly. It seems to belong to too many other +people." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother took a crazy encouragement from her return to her old way of +saying things. "Perhaps he can think of something." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't doubt but the Colonel will know just what to do!" +</P> + +<P> +"You mustn't be too down-hearted about it. It--it'll all come +right----" +</P> + +<P> +"You tell Irene that, mother." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham had put her hand on the door-key; she dropped it, and +looked at the girl with a sort of beseeching appeal for the comfort she +could not imagine herself. "Don't look at me, mother," said Penelope, +shaking her head. "You know that if Irene were to die without knowing +it, it wouldn't come right for me." +</P> + +<P> +"Pen!" +</P> + +<P> +"I've read of cases where a girl gives up the man that loves her so as +to make some other girl happy that the man doesn't love. That might be +done." +</P> + +<P> +"Your father would think you were a fool," said Mrs. Lapham, finding a +sort of refuge in her strong disgust for the pseudo heroism. "No! If +there's to be any giving up, let it be by the one that shan't make +anybody but herself suffer. There's trouble and sorrow enough in the +world, without MAKING it on purpose!" +</P> + +<P> +She unlocked the door, but Penelope slipped round and set herself +against it. "Irene shall not give up!" +</P> + +<P> +"I will see your father about it," said the mother. "Let me out +now----" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't let Irene come here!" +</P> + +<P> +"No. I will tell her that you haven't slept. Go to bed now, and try to +get some rest. She isn't up herself yet. You must have some +breakfast." +</P> + +<P> +"No; let me sleep if I can. I can get something when I wake up. I'll +come down if I can't sleep. Life has got to go on. It does when +there's a death in the house, and this is only a little worse." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you talk nonsense!" cried Mrs. Lapham, with angry authority. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, a little better, then," said Penelope, with meek concession. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham attempted to say something, and could not. She went out +and opened Irene's door. The girl lifted her head drowsily from her +pillow "Don't disturb your sister when you get up, Irene. She hasn't +slept well----" +</P> + +<P> +"PLEASE don't talk! I'm almost DEAD with sleep!" returned Irene. "Do +go, mamma! I shan't disturb her." She turned her face down in the +pillow, and pulled the covering up over her ears. +</P> + +<P> +The mother slowly closed the door and went downstairs, feeling +bewildered and baffled almost beyond the power to move. The time had +been when she would have tried to find out why this judgment had been +sent upon her. But now she could not feel that the innocent suffering +of others was inflicted for her fault; she shrank instinctively from +that cruel and egotistic misinterpretation of the mystery of pain and +loss. She saw her two children, equally if differently dear to her, +destined to trouble that nothing could avert, and she could not blame +either of them; she could not blame the means of this misery to them; +he was as innocent as they, and though her heart was sore against him +in this first moment, she could still be just to him in it. She was a +woman who had been used to seek the light by striving; she had hitherto +literally worked to it. But it is the curse of prosperity that it +takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of +spirit. In this house, where everything had come to be done for her, +she had no tasks to interpose between her and her despair. She sat +down in her own room and let her hands fall in her lap,--the hands that +had once been so helpful and busy,--and tried to think it all out. She +had never heard of the fate that was once supposed to appoint the +sorrows of men irrespective of their blamelessness or blame, before the +time when it came to be believed that sorrows were penalties; but in +her simple way she recognised something like that mythic power when she +rose from her struggle with the problem, and said aloud to herself, +"Well, the witch is in it." Turn which way she would, she saw no escape +from the misery to come--the misery which had come already to Penelope +and herself, and that must come to Irene and her father. She started +when she definitely thought of her husband, and thought with what +violence it would work in every fibre of his rude strength. She feared +that, and she feared something worse--the effect which his pride and +ambition might seek to give it; and it was with terror of this, as well +as the natural trust with which a woman must turn to her husband in any +anxiety at last, that she felt she could not wait for evening to take +counsel with him. When she considered how wrongly he might take it +all, it seemed as if it were already known to him, and she was +impatient to prevent his error. +</P> + +<P> +She sent out for a messenger, whom she despatched with a note to his +place of business: "Silas, I should like to ride with you this +afternoon. Can't you come home early? Persis." And she was at dinner +with Irene, evading her questions about Penelope, when answer came that +he would be at the house with the buggy at half-past two. It is easy +to put off a girl who has but one thing in her head; but though Mrs. +Lapham could escape without telling anything of Penelope, she could not +escape seeing how wholly Irene was engrossed with hopes now turned so +vain and impossible. She was still talking of that dinner, of nothing +but that dinner, and begging for flattery of herself and praise of him, +which her mother had till now been so ready to give. +</P> + +<P> +"Seems to me you don't take very much interest, mamma!" she said, +laughing and blushing at one point. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes,--yes, I do," protested Mrs. Lapham, and then the girl prattled on. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I shall get one of those pins that Nanny Corey had in her +hair. I think it would become me, don't you?" "Yes; but Irene--I don't +like to have you go on so, till--unless he's said something to +show--You oughtn't to give yourself up to thinking----" But at this the +girl turned so white, and looked such reproach at her, that she added +frantically: "Yes, get the pin. It is just the thing for you! But +don't disturb Penelope. Let her alone till I get back. I'm going out +to ride with your father. He'll be here in half an hour. Are you +through? Ring, then. Get yourself that fan you saw the other day. +Your father won't say anything; he likes to have you look well. I +could see his eyes on you half the time the other night." +</P> + +<P> +"I should have liked to have Pen go with me," said Irene, restored to +her normal state of innocent selfishness by these flatteries. "Don't +you suppose she'll be up in time? What's the matter with her that she +didn't sleep?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. Better let her alone." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," submitted Irene. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap18"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XVIII. +</H3> + +<P> +MRS. LAPHAM went away to put on her bonnet and cloak, and she was +waiting at the window when her husband drove up. She opened the door +and ran down the steps. "Don't get out; I can help myself in," and she +clambered to his side, while he kept the fidgeting mare still with +voice and touch. +</P> + +<P> +"Where do you want I should go?" he asked, turning the buggy. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't care. Out Brookline way, I guess. I wish you hadn't +brought this fool of a horse," she gave way petulantly. "I wanted to +have a talk." +</P> + +<P> +"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll sell out altogether," +said Lapham. "She'll be quiet enough when she's had her spin." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the +city to the Milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some +points in the new house. +</P> + +<P> +"I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she +answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his +horse's head westward when they struck Beacon Street. +</P> + +<P> +He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he left the +Brighton road and struck off under the low boughs that met above one of +the quiet streets of Brookline, where the stone cottages, with here and +there a patch of determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they +could to look English amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. The +smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered with flakes +of the red and yellow gold that made the air luminous around them, and +the perspective was gay with innumerable tints and tones. +</P> + +<P> +"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sigh, letting the reins lie +loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole +charge of the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis. +He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he +pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I +ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in +Rogers. And I told him so last night." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife broke in. "There's +something a good deal more important than Rogers in the world, and more +important than your business. It seems as if you couldn't think of +anything else--that and the new house. Did you suppose I wanted to +ride so as to talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to the +necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay for her suffering, +even if he has not inflicted it. "I declare----" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham. "What DO you want to talk about? +I'm listening." +</P> + +<P> +His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas Lapham!" and then she broke +off to say, "Well, you may wait, now--starting me wrong, when it's hard +enough anyway." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham silently turned his whip over and over in his hand and waited. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young Corey had been +coming to see Irene?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham sullenly. "You always +said so." He looked sharply at her under his lowering brows. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she replied to the frown that +blackened on her husband's face. "And I can tell you what, if you take +it in that way I shan't speak another word." +</P> + +<P> +"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham savagely. "What are you +drivin' at?" +</P> + +<P> +"I want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. I haven't said a word +yet." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, and looking +like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start. I've had to bear it, +and you've got to bear it too." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, let me have a chance at it, then." +</P> + +<P> +"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can see, and the only +question is, what's the best thing to do about it. There's only one +thing we can do; for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to +make him. If he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's +all there is to it." +</P> + +<P> +"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" protested his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what HAS he been coming for?" +</P> + +<P> +"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife. "NOW are you +satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but +at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect +comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her +broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. "O +Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid it'll kill Irene." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right hand with the +fingers of his left, in which the reins lay. He passed it over his +forehead, and then flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there. +He caught his breath once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle +with superior force and then remains passive in its grasp. +</P> + +<P> +His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt the need of +afflicting him. "I don't say but what it can be made to come out all +right in the end. All I say is, I don't see my way clear yet." +</P> + +<P> +"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked quietly. +</P> + +<P> +"He told her so last night, and she told me this morning. Was he at +the office to-day?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he was there. I haven't been there much myself. He didn't say +anything to me. Does Irene know?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping. She wants to get a +pin like the one Nanny Corey had on." "O my Lord!" groaned Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost from the start. I +don't say but what he was attracted some by Irene at the very first; +but I guess it's been Pen ever since he saw her; and we've taken up +with a notion, and blinded ourselves with it. Time and again I've had +my doubts whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare to goodness, +when he kept coming, I never hardly thought of Pen, and I couldn't help +believing at last he DID care for Irene. Did it ever strike you he +might be after Pen?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. I took what you said. I supposed you knew." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly. +</P> + +<P> +"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want anything but +the children's good. What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that? +That's what we've both slaved for all our lives." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know. Plenty of people LOSE their children," she suggested. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but that don't comfort me any. I never was one to feel good +because another man felt bad. How would you have liked it if some one +had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? No, I can't do +it. And this is worse than death, someways. That comes and it goes; +but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay. +The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody. Suppose we +don't want Pen to have him; will that help Irene any, if he don't want +her? Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help +either!" +</P> + +<P> +"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our say was going to settle +it. Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a +fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was +in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him? Don't you +believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the +breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease +Irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing +that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument. His huge head hung +forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the +mare took her own way. At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy +jaws. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" quavered his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, I don't see +what that's got to do with it." He looked straight forward, and not at +his wife. +</P> + +<P> +She laid her hands on the reins. "Now, you stop right here, Silas +Lapham! If I thought that--if I really believed you could be willing to +break that poor child's heart, and let Pen disgrace herself by marrying +a man that had as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted +Bromfield Corey's son for a son-in-law----" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look. "You had better NOT +believe that, Persis! Get up!" he called to the mare, without glancing +at her, and she sprang forward. "I see you've got past being any use +to yourself on this subject." +</P> + +<P> +"Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him. "Where the devil you goin' +to?" +</P> + +<P> +"Do you want to KILL somebody!" shrieked his wife. +</P> + +<P> +There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, and +separated their wheels from those of the open buggy in front which +Lapham had driven into. He made his excuses to the occupant; and the +accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and left them far from +the point of mutual injury which they had reached in their common +trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good. +</P> + +<P> +It was Lapham who resumed the talk. "I'm afraid we can't either of us +see this thing in the right light. We're too near to it. I wish to +the Lord there was somebody to talk to about it." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a moment; "why not talk to the +minister of your church? May be he could see some way out of it." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham shook her head hopelessly. "It wouldn't do. I've never +taken up my connection with the church, and I don't feel as if I'd got +any claim on him." +</P> + +<P> +"If he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, you HAVE got a +claim on him," urged Lapham; and he spoiled his argument by adding, +"I've contributed enough MONEY to his church." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs. Lapham. "I ain't well enough +acquainted with Dr. Langworthy, or else I'm TOO well. No; if I was to +ask any one, I should want to ask a total stranger. But what's the +use, Si? Nobody could make us see it any different from what it is, and +I don't know as I should want they should." +</P> + +<P> +It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed down their +hearts ever more heavily within them. They ceased to talk of it a +hundred times, and still came back to it. They drove on and on. It +began to be late. "I guess we better go back, Si," said his wife; and +as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil down and began to +cry softly behind it, with low little broken sobs. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward. At last his +wife stopped crying and began trying to find her pocket. "Here, take +mine, Persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief, and she +took it and dried her eyes with it. "There was one of those fellows +there the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned back +against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that I liked the looks of +about as well as any man I ever saw. I guess he was a pretty good man. +It was that Mr. Sewell." +</P> + +<P> +He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything. "Persis," he +resumed, "I can't bear to go back with nothing settled in our minds. I +can't bear to let you." +</P> + +<P> +"We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude. Lapham +groaned. "Where does he live?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"On Bolingbroke Street. He gave me his number." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it wouldn't do any good. What could he say to us?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said Lapham hopelessly; +and neither of them said anything more till they crossed the Milldam +and found themselves between the rows of city houses. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his wife. "I couldn't +bear to see it. Drive--drive up Bolingbroke Street. We might as well +see where he DOES live." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Lapham. He drove along slowly. "That's the place," he +said finally, stopping the mare and pointing with his whip. +</P> + +<P> +"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood +as well as he understood her words. He turned the mare up to the +curbstone. +</P> + +<P> +"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing them to his wife. +</P> + +<P> +He got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened; then he +came back and lifted his wife out. "He's in," he said. +</P> + +<P> +He got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat and made it fast +to the mare's bit. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think she'll stand with that?" asked Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess so. If she don't, no matter." +</P> + +<P> +"Ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted, trying to make +delay. +</P> + +<P> +"Let her!" said Lapham. He took his wife's trembling hand under his +arm, and drew her to the door. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her broken pride. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we ARE," said Lapham. "Tell him we'd like to see him alone a +while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and +she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant +confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they +did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery +like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to +himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of +wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the +foundation of the world. +</P> + +<P> +They were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister came in as +if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did so at last, and, with a +simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic +approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's +compassionate and reverent eye. He spared Corey's name, but he did not +pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their daughters who +were concerned. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble you with this thing," he +said, in the moment while Sewell sat pondering the case, "and I don't +know as I've got any warrant for doing it. But, as I told my wife +here, there was something about you--I don't know whether it was +anything you SAID exactly--that made me feel as if you could help us. +I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; but that's the way I felt. +And here we are. And if it ain't all right." +</P> + +<P> +"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right. I thank you for coming--for +trusting your trouble to me. A time comes to every one of us when we +can't help ourselves, and then we must get others to help us. If +people turn to me at such a time, I feel sure that I was put into the +world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, my sympathy." +</P> + +<P> +The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome in them that +these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe the tears again +under her veil. +</P> + +<P> +Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak. "We can +be of use to one another here, because we can always be wiser for some +one else than we can for ourselves. We can see another's sins and +errors in a more merciful light--and that is always a fairer +light--than we can our own; and we can look more sanely at others' +afflictions." He had addressed these words to Lapham; now he turned to +his wife. "If some one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this +perplexity, what would you have thought?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I understand you," faltered Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +Sewell repeated his words, and added, "I mean, what do you think some +one else ought to do in your place?" +</P> + +<P> +"Was there ever any poor creatures in such a strait before?" she asked, +with pathetic incredulity. +</P> + +<P> +"There's no new trouble under the sun," said the minister. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, if it was any one else, I should say--I should say--Why, of +course! I should say that their duty was to let----" She paused. +</P> + +<P> +"One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" suggested Sewell. +"That's sense, and that's justice. It's the economy of pain which +naturally suggests itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we +were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the +shallowest sentimentality. Tell me, Mrs. Lapham, didn't this come into +your mind when you first learned how matters stood?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, yes, it flashed across me. But I didn't think it could be right." +</P> + +<P> +"And how was it with you, Mr. Lapham?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, that's what I thought, of course. But I didn't see my way----" +</P> + +<P> +"No," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we are all weakened by a +false ideal of self-sacrifice. It wraps us round with its meshes, and +we can't fight our way out of it. Mrs. Lapham, what made you feel that +it might be better for three to suffer than one?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, she did herself. I know she would die sooner than take him away +from her." +</P> + +<P> +"I supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly. "And yet she is a +sensible girl, your daughter?" +</P> + +<P> +"She has more common-sense----" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course! But in such a case we somehow think it must be wrong to use +our common-sense. I don't know where this false ideal comes from, +unless it comes from the novels that befool and debauch almost every +intelligence in some degree. It certainly doesn't come from +Christianity, which instantly repudiates it when confronted with it. +Your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense, that she ought to +make herself and the man who loves her unhappy, in order to assure the +life-long wretchedness of her sister, whom he doesn't love, simply +because her sister saw him and fancied him first! And I'm sorry to say +that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred--oh, nine hundred and +ninety-nine out of a thousand!--would consider that noble and beautiful +and heroic; whereas you know at the bottom of your hearts that it would +be foolish and cruel and revolting. You know what marriage is! And +what it must be without love on both sides." +</P> + +<P> +The minister had grown quite heated and red in the face. +</P> + +<P> +"I lose all patience!" he went on vehemently. "This poor child of +yours has somehow been brought to believe that it will kill her sister +if her sister does not have what does not belong to her, and what it is +not in the power of all the world, or any soul in the world, to give +her. Her sister will suffer--yes, keenly!--in heart and in pride; but +she will not die. You will suffer too, in your tenderness for her; but +you must do your duty. You must help her to give up. You would be +guilty if you did less. Keep clearly in mind that you are doing right, +and the only possible good. And God be with you!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap19"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XIX. +</H3> + +<P> +"HE talked sense, Persis," said Lapham gently, as he mounted to his +wife's side in the buggy and drove slowly homeward through the dusk. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he talked sense," she admitted. But she added bitterly, "I +guess, if he had it to DO! Oh, he's right, and it's got to be done. +There ain't any other way for it. It's sense; and, yes, it's justice." +They walked to their door after they left the horse at the livery +stable around the corner, where Lapham kept it. "I want you should +send Irene up to our room as soon as we get in, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, ain't you going to have any supper first?" faltered Lapham with +his latch-key in the lock. +</P> + +<P> +"No. I can't lose a minute. If I do, I shan't do it at all." +</P> + +<P> +"Look here, Persis," said her husband tenderly, "let me do this thing." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, YOU!" said his wife, with a woman's compassionate scorn for a +man's helplessness in such a case. "Send her right up. And I shall +feel----" She stopped to spare him. +</P> + +<P> +Then she opened the door, and ran up to her room without waiting to +speak to Irene, who had come into the hall at the sound of her father's +key in the door. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess your mother wants to see you upstairs," said Lapham, looking +away. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother turned round and faced the girl's wondering look as Irene +entered the chamber, so close upon her that she had not yet had time to +lay off her bonnet; she stood with her wraps still on her arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Irene!" she said harshly, "there is something you have got to bear. +It's a mistake we've all made. He don't care anything for you. He +never did. He told Pen so last night. He cares for her." +</P> + +<P> +The sentences had fallen like blows. But the girl had taken them +without flinching. She stood up immovable, but the delicate rose-light +of her complexion went out and left her colourless. She did not offer +to speak. +</P> + +<P> +"Why don't you say something?" cried her mother. "Do you want to kill +me, Irene?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why should I want to hurt you, mamma?" the girl replied steadily, but +in an alien voice. "There's nothing to say. I want to see Pen a +minute." +</P> + +<P> +She turned and left the room. As she mounted the stairs that led to +her own and her sister's rooms on the floor above, her mother +helplessly followed. Irene went first to her own room at the front of +the house, and then came out leaving the door open and the gas flaring +behind her. The mother could see that she had tumbled many things out +of the drawers of her bureau upon the marble top. +</P> + +<P> +She passed her mother, where she stood in the entry. "You can come +too, if you want to, mamma," she said. +</P> + +<P> +She opened Penelope's door without knocking, and went in. Penelope sat +at the window, as in the morning. Irene did not go to her; but she +went and laid a gold hair-pin on her bureau, and said, without looking +at her, "There's a pin that I got to-day, because it was like his +sister's. It won't become a dark person so well, but you can have it." +</P> + +<P> +She stuck a scrap of paper in the side of Penelope's mirror. "There's +that account of Mr. Stanton's ranch. You'll want to read it, I +presume." +</P> + +<P> +She laid a withered boutonniere on the bureau beside the pin. "There's +his button-hole bouquet. He left it by his plate, and I stole it." +</P> + +<P> +She had a pine-shaving fantastically tied up with a knot of ribbon, in +her hand. She held it a moment; then, looking deliberately at +Penelope, she went up to her, and dropped it in her lap without a word. +She turned, and, advancing a few steps, tottered and seemed about to +fall. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother sprang forward with an imploring cry, "O 'Rene, 'Rene, +'Rene!" +</P> + +<P> +Irene recovered herself before her mother could reach her. "Don't +touch me," she said icily. "Mamma, I'm going to put on my things. I +want papa to walk with me. I'm choking here." +</P> + +<P> +"I--I can't let you go out, Irene, child," began her mother. +</P> + +<P> +"You've got to," replied the girl. "Tell papa ta hurry his supper." +</P> + +<P> +"O poor soul! He doesn't want any supper. HE knows it too." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't want to talk about that. Tell him to get ready." +</P> + +<P> +She left them once more. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham turned a hapless glance upon Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"Go and tell him, mother," said the girl. "I would, if I could. If +she can walk, let her. It's the only thing for her." She sat still; +she did not even brush to the floor the fantastic thing that lay in her +lap, and that sent up faintly the odour of the sachet powder with which +Irene liked to perfume her boxes. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham went out with the unhappy child, and began to talk with her, +crazily, incoherently, enough. +</P> + +<P> +She mercifully stopped him. "Don't talk, papa. I don't want any one +should talk with me." +</P> + +<P> +He obeyed, and they walked silently on and on. In their aimless course +they reached the new house on the water side of Beacon, and she made +him stop, and stood looking up at it. The scaffolding which had so +long defaced the front was gone, and in the light of the gas-lamp +before it all the architectural beauty of the facade was suggested, and +much of the finely felt detail was revealed. Seymour had pretty nearly +satisfied himself in that rich facade; certainly Lapham had not stinted +him of the means. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the girl, "I shall never live in it," and she began to +walk on. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham's sore heart went down, as he lumbered heavily after her. "Oh +yes, you will, Irene. You'll have lots of good times there yet." +</P> + +<P> +"No," she answered, and said nothing more about it. They had not +talked of their trouble at all, and they did not speak of it now. +Lapham understood that she was trying to walk herself weary, and he was +glad to hold his peace and let her have her way. She halted him once +more before the red and yellow lights of an apothecary's window. +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't there something they give you to make you sleep?" she asked +vaguely. "I've got to sleep to-night!" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham trembled. "I guess you don't want anything, Irene." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I do! Get me something!" she retorted wilfully. "If you don't, I +shall die. I MUST sleep." +</P> + +<P> +They went in, and Lapham asked for something to make a nervous person +sleep. Irene stood poring over the show-case full of brushes and +trinkets, while the apothecary put up the bromide, which he guessed +would be about the best thing. She did not show any emotion; her face +was like a stone, while her father's expressed the anguish of his +sympathy. He looked as if he had not slept for a week; his fat eyelids +drooped over his glassy eyes, and his cheeks and throat hung flaccid. +He started as the apothecary's cat stole smoothly up and rubbed itself +against his leg; and it was to him that the man said, "You want to take +a table-spoonful of that, as long as you're awake. I guess it won't +take a great many to fetch you." "All right," said Lapham, and paid and +went out. "I don't know but I SHALL want some of it," he said, with a +joyless laugh. +</P> + +<P> +Irene came closer up to him and took his arm. He laid his heavy paw on +her gloved fingers. After a while she said, "I want you should let me +go up to Lapham to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"To Lapham? Why, to-morrow's Sunday, Irene! You can't go to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Monday, then. I can live through one day here." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the father passively. He made no pretence of asking her +why she wished to go, nor any attempt to dissuade her. +</P> + +<P> +"Give me that bottle," she said, when he opened the door at home for +her, and she ran up to her own room. +</P> + +<P> +The next morning Irene came to breakfast with her mother; the Colonel +and Penelope did not appear, and Mrs. Lapham looked sleep-broken and +careworn. +</P> + +<P> +The girl glanced at her. "Don't you fret about me, mamma," she said. +"I shall get along." She seemed herself as steady and strong as rock. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't like to see you keeping up so, Irene," replied her mother. +"It'll be all the worse for you when you do break. Better give way a +little at the start." +</P> + +<P> +"I shan't break, and I've given way all I'm going to. I'm going to +Lapham to-morrow,--I want you should go with me, mamma,--and I guess I +can keep up one day here. All about it is, I don't want you should say +anything, or LOOK anything. And, whatever I do, I don't want you +should try to stop me. And, the first thing, I'm going to take her +breakfast up to her. Don't!" she cried, intercepting the protest on +her mother's lips. "I shall not let it hurt Pen, if I can help it. +She's never done a thing nor thought a thing to wrong me. I had to fly +out at her last night; but that's all over now, and I know just what +I've got to bear." +</P> + +<P> +She had her way unmolested. She carried Penelope's breakfast to her, +and omitted no care or attention that could make the sacrifice +complete, with an heroic pretence that she was performing no unusual +service. They did not speak, beyond her saying, in a clear dry note, +"Here's your breakfast, Pen," and her sister's answering, hoarsely and +tremulously, "Oh, thank you, Irene." And, though two or three times +they turned their faces toward each other while Irene remained in the +room, mechanically putting its confusion to rights, their eyes did not +meet. Then Irene descended upon the other rooms, which she set in +order, and some of which she fiercely swept and dusted. She made the +beds; and she sent the two servants away to church as soon as they had +eaten their breakfast, telling them that she would wash their dishes. +Throughout the morning her father and mother heard her about the work +of getting dinner, with certain silences which represented the moments +when she stopped and stood stock-still, and then, readjusting her +burden, forced herself forward under it again. +</P> + +<P> +They sat alone in the family room, out of which their two girls seemed +to have died. Lapham could not read his Sunday papers, and she had no +heart to go to church, as she would have done earlier in life when in +trouble. Just then she was obscurely feeling that the church was +somehow to blame for that counsel of Mr. Sewell's on which they had +acted. +</P> + +<P> +"I should like to know," she said, having brought the matter up, +"whether he would have thought it was such a light matter if it had +been his own children. Do you suppose he'd have been so ready to act +on his own advice if it HAD been?" +</P> + +<P> +"He told us the right thing to do, Persis,--the only thing. We +couldn't let it go on," urged her husband gently. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it makes me despise Pen! Irene's showing twice the character +that she is, this very minute." +</P> + +<P> +The mother said this so that the father might defend her daughter to +her. He did not fail. "Irene's got the easiest part, the way I look +at it. And you'll see that Pen'll know how to behave when the time +comes." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you want she should do?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't got so far as that yet. What are we going to do about +Irene?" +</P> + +<P> +"What do you want Pen should do," repeated Mrs. Lapham, "when it comes +to it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't want she should take him, for ONE thing," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +This seemed to satisfy Mrs. Lapham as to her husband, and she said in +defence of Corey, "Why, I don't see what HE'S done. It's all been our +doing." +</P> + +<P> +"Never mind that now. What about Irene?" +</P> + +<P> +"She says she's going to Lapham to-morrow. She feels that she's got to +get away somewhere. It's natural she should." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, and I presume it will be about the best thing FOR her. Shall you +go with her?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Well." He comfortlessly took up a newspaper again, and she rose with a +sigh, and went to her room to pack some things for the morrow's journey. +</P> + +<P> +After dinner, when Irene had cleared away the last trace of it in +kitchen and dining-room with unsparing punctilio, she came downstairs, +dressed to go out, and bade her father come to walk with her again. It +was a repetition of the aimlessness of the last night's wanderings. +They came back, and she got tea for them, and after that they heard her +stirring about in her own room, as if she were busy about many things; +but they did not dare to look in upon her, even after all the noises +had ceased, and they knew she had gone to bed. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; it's a thing she's got to fight out by herself," said Mrs Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess she'll get along," said Lapham. "But I don't want you should +misjudge Pen either. She's all right too. She ain't to blame." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know. But I can't work round to it all at once. I shan't +misjudge her, but you can't expect me to get over it right away." +</P> + +<P> +"Mamma," said Irene, when she was hurrying their departure the next +morning, "what did she tell him when he asked her?" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell him?" echoed the mother; and after a while she added, "She didn't +tell him anything." +</P> + +<P> +"Did she say anything, about me?" +</P> + +<P> +"She said he mustn't come here any more." +</P> + +<P> +Irene turned and went into her sister's room. "Good-bye, Pen," she +said, kissing her with an effect of not seeing or touching her. "I +want you should tell him all about it. If he's half a man, he won't +give up till he knows why you won't have him; and he has a right to +know." +</P> + +<P> +"It wouldn't make any difference. I couldn't have him after----" +</P> + +<P> +"That's for you to say. But if you don't tell him about me, I will." +</P> + +<P> +"'Rene!" "Yes! You needn't say I cared for him. But you can say that +you all thought he--cared for--me." +</P> + +<P> +"O Irene----" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't!" Irene escaped from the arms that tried to cast themselves +about her. "You are all right, Pen. You haven't done anything. +You've helped me all you could. But I can't--yet." +</P> + +<P> +She went out of the room and summoned Mrs. Lapham with a sharp "Now, +mamma!" and went on putting the last things into her trunks. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel went to the station with them, and put them on the train. +He got them a little compartment to themselves in the Pullman car; and +as he stood leaning with his lifted hands against the sides of the +doorway, he tried to say something consoling and hopeful: "I guess +you'll have an easy ride, Irene. I don't believe it'll be dusty, any, +after the rain last night." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you stay till the train starts, papa," returned the girl, in +rigid rejection of his futilities. "Get off, now." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you want I should," he said, glad to be able to please her in +anything. He remained on the platform till the cars started. He saw +Irene bustling about in the compartment, making her mother comfortable +for the journey; but Mrs. Lapham did not lift her head. The train +moved off, and he went heavily back to his business. +</P> + +<P> +From time to time during the day, when he caught a glimpse of him, +Corey tried to make out from his face whether he knew what had taken +place between him and Penelope. When Rogers came in about time of +closing, and shut himself up with Lapham in his room, the young man +remained till the two came out together and parted in their +salutationless fashion. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham showed no surprise at seeing Corey still there, and merely +answered, "Well!" when the young man said that he wished to speak with +him, and led the way back to his room. +</P> + +<P> +Corey shut the door behind them. "I only wish to speak to you in case +you know of the matter already; for otherwise I'm bound by a promise." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I know what you mean. It's about Penelope." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it's about Miss Lapham. I am greatly attached to her--you'll +excuse my saying it; I couldn't excuse myself if I were not." +</P> + +<P> +"Perfectly excusable," said Lapham. "It's all right." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that!" cried the young fellow joyfully. +"I want you to believe that this isn't a new thing or an unconsidered +thing with me--though it seemed so unexpected to her." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham fetched a deep sigh. "It's all right as far as I'm +concerned--or her mother. We've both liked you first-rate." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"But there seems to be something in Penelope's mind--I don't know--" +The Colonel consciously dropped his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"She referred to something--I couldn't make out what--but I hoped--I +hoped--that with your leave I might overcome it--the barrier--whatever +it was. Miss Lapham--Penelope--gave me the hope--that I +was--wasn't--indifferent to her----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I guess that's so," said Lapham. He suddenly lifted his head, +and confronted the young fellow's honest face with his own face, so +different in its honesty. "Sure you never made up to any one else at +the same time?" +</P> + +<P> +"NEVER! Who could imagine such a thing? If that's all, I can easily." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't say that's all, nor that that's it. I don't want you should +go upon that idea. I just thought, may be--you hadn't thought of it." +</P> + +<P> +"No, I certainly hadn't thought of it! Such a thing would have been so +impossible to me that I couldn't have thought of it; and it's so +shocking to me now that I don't know what to say to it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, don't take it too much to heart," said Lapham, alarmed at the +feeling he had excited; "I don't say she thought so. I was trying to +guess--trying to----" +</P> + +<P> +"If there is anything I can say or do to convince you----" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it ain't necessary to say anything. I'm all right." +</P> + +<P> +"But Miss Lapham! I may see her again? I may try to convince her +that----" +</P> + +<P> +He stopped in distress, and Lapham afterwards told his wife that he +kept seeing the face of Irene as it looked when he parted with her in +the car; and whenever he was going to say yes, he could not open his +lips. At the same time he could not help feeling that Penelope had a +right to what was her own, and Sewell's words came back to him. +Besides, they had already put Irene to the worst suffering. Lapham +compromised, as he imagined. "You can come round to-night and see ME, +if you want to," he said; and he bore grimly the gratitude that the +young man poured out upon him. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope came down to supper and took her mother's place at the head of +the table. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could bear it. Then he +asked, "How do you feel to-night, Pen?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, like a thief," said the girl. "A thief that hasn't been arrested +yet." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham waited a while before he said, "Well, now, your mother and I +want you should hold up on that a while." +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't for you to say. It's something I can't hold up on." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I guess you can. If I know what's happened, then what's happened +is a thing that nobody is to blame for. And we want you should make +the best of it and not the worst. Heigh? It ain't going to help Irene +any for you to hurt yourself--or anybody else; and I don't want you +should take up with any such crazy notion. As far as heard from, you +haven't stolen anything, and whatever you've got belongs to you." +</P> + +<P> +"Has he been speaking to you, father?" +</P> + +<P> +"Your mother's been speaking to me." +</P> + +<P> +"Has HE been speaking to you?" +</P> + +<P> +"That's neither here nor there." +</P> + +<P> +"Then he's broken his word, and I will never speak to him again!" +</P> + +<P> +"If he was any such fool as to promise that he wouldn't talk to me on a +subject"--Lapham drew a deep breath, and then made the plunge--"that I +brought up----" +</P> + +<P> +"Did you bring it up?" +</P> + +<P> +"The same as brought up--the quicker he broke his word the better; and +I want you should act upon that idea. Recollect that it's my business, +and your mother's business, as well as yours, and we're going to have +our say. He hain't done anything wrong, Pen, nor anything that he's +going to be punished for. Understand that. He's got to have a reason, +if you're not going to have him. I don't say you've got to have him; I +want you should feel perfectly free about that; but I DO say you've got +to give him a reason." +</P> + +<P> +"Is he coming here?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as you'd call it COMING----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you do, father!" said the girl, in forlorn amusement at his +shuffling. +</P> + +<P> +"He's coming here to see ME----" +</P> + +<P> +"When's he coming?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know but he's coming to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"And you want I should see him?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know but you'd better." +</P> + +<P> +"All right. I'll see him." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham drew a long deep breath of suspicion inspired by this +acquiescence. "What you going to do?" he asked presently. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know yet," answered the girl sadly. "It depends a good deal +upon what he does." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Lapham, with the hungriness of unsatisfied anxiety in his +tone. When Corey's card was brought into the family-room where he and +Penelope were sitting, he went into the parlour to find him. "I guess +Penelope wants to see you," he said; and, indicating the family-room, +he added, "She's in there," and did not go back himself. +</P> + +<P> +Corey made his way to the girl's presence with open trepidation, which +was not allayed by her silence and languor. She sat in the chair where +she had sat the other night, but she was not playing with a fan now. +</P> + +<P> +He came toward her, and then stood faltering. A faint smile quivered +over her face at the spectacle of his subjection. "Sit down, Mr. +Corey," she said. "There's no reason why we shouldn't talk it over +quietly; for I know you will think I'm right." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sure of that," he answered hopefully. "When I saw that your +father knew of it to-day, I asked him to let me see you again. I'm +afraid that I broke my promise to you--technically----" +</P> + +<P> +"It had to be broken." He took more courage at her words. "But I've +only come to do whatever you say, and not to be an--annoyance to +you----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you have to know; but I couldn't tell you before. Now they all +think I should." +</P> + +<P> +A tremor of anxiety passed over the young man's face, on which she kept +her eyes steadily fixed. +</P> + +<P> +"We supposed it--it was--Irene----" +</P> + +<P> +He remained blank a moment, and then he said with a smile of relief, of +deprecation, of protest, of amazement, of compassion-- +</P> + +<P> +"OH! Never! Never for an instant! How could you think such a thing? It +was impossible! I never thought of her. But I see--I see! I can +explain--no, there's nothing to explain! I have never knowingly done or +said a thing from first to last to make you think that. I see how +terrible it is!" he said; but he still smiled, as if he could not take +it seriously. "I admired her beauty--who could help doing that?--and I +thought her very good and sensible. Why, last winter in Texas, I told +Stanton about our meeting in Canada, and we agreed--I only tell you to +show you how far I always was from what you thought--that he must come +North and try to see her, and--and--of course, it all sounds very +silly!--and he sent her a newspaper with an account of his ranch in +it----" +</P> + +<P> +"She thought it came from you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, good heavens! He didn't tell me till after he'd done it. But he +did it for a part of our foolish joke. And when I met your sister +again, I only admired her as before. I can see, now, how I must have +seemed to be seeking her out; but it was to talk of you with her--I +never talked of anything else if I could help it, except when I changed +the subject because I was ashamed to be always talking of you. I see +how distressing it is for all of you. But tell me that you believe me!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I must. It's all been our mistake----" +</P> + +<P> +"It has indeed! But there's no mistake about my loving you, Penelope," +he said; and the old-fashioned name, at which she had often mocked, was +sweet to her from his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"That only makes it worse!" she answered. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no!" he gently protested. "It makes it better. It makes it right. +How is it worse? How is it wrong?" +</P> + +<P> +"Can't you see? You must understand all now! Don't you see that if she +believed so too, and if she----" She could not go on. +</P> + +<P> +"Did she--did your sister--think that too?" gasped Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"She used to talk with me about you; and when you say you care for me +now, it makes me feel like the vilest hypocrite in the world. That day +you gave her the list of books, and she came down to Nantasket, and +went on about you, I helped her to flatter herself--oh! I don't see how +she can forgive me. But she knows I can never forgive myself! That's +the reason she can do it. I can see now," she went on, "how I must +have been trying to get you from her. I can't endure it! The only way +is for me never to see you or speak to you again!" She laughed +forlornly. "That would be pretty hard on you, if you cared." +</P> + +<P> +"I do care--all the world!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, it would if you were going to keep on caring. You won't +long, if you stop coming now." +</P> + +<P> +"Is this all, then? Is it the end?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's--whatever it is. I can't get over the thought of her. Once I +thought I could, but now I see that I can't. It seems to grow worse. +Sometimes I feel as if it would drive me crazy." +</P> + +<P> +He sat looking at her with lacklustre eyes. The light suddenly came +back into them. "Do you think I could love you if you had been false +to her? I know you have been true to her, and truer still to yourself. +I never tried to see her, except with the hope of seeing you too. I +supposed she must know that I was in love with you. From the first +time I saw you there that afternoon, you filled my fancy. Do you think +I was flirting with the child, or--no, you don't think that! We have +not done wrong. We have not harmed any one knowingly. We have a right +to each other----" +</P> + +<P> +"No! no! you must never speak to me of this again. If you do, I shall +know that you despise me." +</P> + +<P> +"But how will that help her? I don't love HER." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't say that to me! I have said that to myself too much." +</P> + +<P> +"If you forbid me to love you, it won't make me love her," he persisted. +</P> + +<P> +She was about to speak, but she caught her breath without doing so, and +merely stared at him. "I must do what you say," he continued. "But +what good will it do her? You can't make her happy by making yourself +unhappy." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you ask me to profit by a wrong?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not for the world. But there is no wrong!" +</P> + +<P> +"There is something--I don't know what. There's a wall between us. I +shall dash myself against it as long as I live; but that won't break +it." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" he groaned. "We have done no wrong. Why should we suffer from +another's mistake as if it were our sin?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. But we must suffer." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, I WILL not, for my part, and I will not let you. If you +care for me----" +</P> + +<P> +"You had no right to know it." +</P> + +<P> +"You make it my privilege to keep you from doing wrong for the right's +sake. I'm sorry, with all my heart and soul, for this error; but I +can't blame myself, and I won't deny myself the happiness I haven't +done anything to forfeit. I will never give you up. I will wait as +long as you please for the time when you shall feel free from this +mistake; but you shall be mine at last. Remember that. I might go +away for months--a year, even; but that seems a cowardly and guilty +thing, and I'm not afraid, and I'm not guilty, and I'm going to stay +here and try to see you." +</P> + +<P> +She shook her head. "It won't change anything? Don't you see that +there's no hope for us?" +</P> + +<P> +"When is she coming back?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. Mother wants father to come and take her out West for a +while." +</P> + +<P> +"She's up there in the country with your mother yet?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +He was silent; then he said desperately-- +</P> + +<P> +"Penelope, she is very young; and perhaps--perhaps she might meet----" +</P> + +<P> +"It would make no difference. It wouldn't change it for me." +</P> + +<P> +"You are cruel--cruel to yourself, if you love me, and cruel to me. +Don't you remember that night--before I spoke--you were talking of that +book; and you said it was foolish and wicked to do as that girl did. +Why is it different with you, except that you give me nothing, and can +never give me anything when you take yourself away? If it were anybody +else, I am sure you would say----" +</P> + +<P> +"But it isn't anybody else, and that makes it impossible. Sometimes I +think it might be if I would only say so to myself, and then all that I +said to her about you comes up----" +</P> + +<P> +"I will wait. It can't always come up. I won't urge you any longer +now. But you will see it differently--more clearly. Good-bye--no! +Good night! I shall come again to-morrow. It will surely come right, +and, whatever happens, you have done no wrong. Try to keep that in +mind. I am so happy, in spite of all!" +</P> + +<P> +He tried to take her hand, but she put it behind her. "No, no! I can't +let you--yet!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap20"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XX. +</H3> + +<P> +AFTER a week Mrs. Lapham returned, leaving Irene alone at the old +homestead in Vermont. "She's comfortable there--as comfortable as she +can be anywheres, I guess," she said to her husband as they drove +together from the station, where he had met her in obedience to her +telegraphic summons. "She keeps herself busy helping about the house; +and she goes round amongst the hands in their houses. There's +sickness, and you know how helpful she is where there's sickness. She +don't complain any. I don't know as I've heard a word out of her mouth +since we left home; but I'm afraid it'll wear on her, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't look over and above well yourself, Persis," said her husband +kindly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't talk about me. What I want to know is whether you can't get +the time to run off with her somewhere. I wrote to you about Dubuque. +She'll work herself down, I'm afraid; and THEN I don't know as she'll +be over it. But if she could go off, and be amused--see new people----" +</P> + +<P> +"I could MAKE the time," said Lapham, "if I had to. But, as it +happens, I've got to go out West on business,--I'll tell you about +it,--and I'll take Irene along." +</P> + +<P> +"Good!" said his wife. "That's about the best thing I've heard yet. +Where you going?" +</P> + +<P> +"Out Dubuque way." +</P> + +<P> +"Anything the matter with Bill's folks?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. It's business." +</P> + +<P> +"How's Pen?" +</P> + +<P> +"I guess she ain't much better than Irene." +</P> + +<P> +"He been about any?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. But I can't see as it helps matters much." +</P> + +<P> +"Tchk!" Mrs. Lapham fell back against the carriage cushions. "I +declare, to see her willing to take the man that we all thought wanted +her sister! I can't make it seem right." +</P> + +<P> +"It's right," said Lapham stoutly; "but I guess she ain't willing; I +wish she was. But there don't seem to be any way out of the thing, +anywhere. It's a perfect snarl. But I don't want you should be +anyways ha'sh with Pen." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham answered nothing; but when she met Penelope she gave the +girl's wan face a sharp look, and began to whimper on her neck. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope's tears were all spent. "Well, mother," she said, "you come +back almost as cheerful as you went away. I needn't ask if 'Rene's in +good spirits. We all seem to be overflowing with them. I suppose this +is one way of congratulating me. Mrs. Corey hasn't been round to do it +yet." +</P> + +<P> +"Are you--are you engaged to him, Pen?" gasped her mother. +</P> + +<P> +"Judging by my feelings, I should say not. I feel as if it was a last +will and testament. But you'd better ask him when he comes." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't bear to look at him." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess he's used to that. He don't seem to expect to be looked at. +Well! we're all just where we started. I wonder how long it will keep +up." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham reported to her husband when he came home at night--he had +left his business to go and meet her, and then, after a desolate dinner +at the house, had returned to the office again--that Penelope was fully +as bad as Irene. "And she don't know how to work it off. Irene keeps +doing; but Pen just sits in her room and mopes. She don't even read. +I went up this afternoon to scold her about the state the house was +in--you can see that Irene's away by the perfect mess; but when I saw +her through the crack of the door I hadn't the heart. She sat there +with her hands in her lap, just staring. And, my goodness! she JUMPED +so when she saw me; and then she fell back, and began to laugh, and +said she, 'I thought it was my ghost, mother!' I felt as if I should +give way." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham listened jadedly, and answered far from the point. "I guess +I've got to start out there pretty soon, Persis." +</P> + +<P> +"How soon?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, to-morrow morning." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham sat silent. Then, "All right," she said. "I'll get you +ready." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall run up to Lapham for Irene, and then I'll push on through +Canada. I can get there about as quick." +</P> + +<P> +"Is it anything you can tell me about, Silas?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Lapham. "But it's a long story, and I guess you've got +your hands pretty full as it is. I've been throwing good money after +bad,--the usual way,--and now I've got to see if I can save the +pieces." +</P> + +<P> +After a moment Mrs. Lapham asked, "Is it--Rogers?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't want you should get in any deeper with him." +</P> + +<P> +"No. You didn't want I should press him either; and I had to do one or +the other. And so I got in deeper." +</P> + +<P> +"Silas," said his wife, "I'm afraid I made you!" +</P> + +<P> +"It's all right, Persis, as far forth as that goes. I was glad to make +it up with him--I jumped at the chance. I guess Rogers saw that he had +a soft thing in me, and he's worked it for all it was worth. But it'll +all come out right in the end." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham said this as if he did not care to talk any more about it. He +added casually, "Pretty near everybody but the fellows that owe ME seem +to expect me to do a cash business, all of a sudden." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you mean that you've got payments to make, and that people are not +paying YOU?" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham winced a little. "Something like that," he said, and he lighted +a cigar. "But when I tell you it's all right, I mean it, Persis. I +ain't going to let the grass grow under my feet, though,--especially +while Rogers digs the ground away from the roots." +</P> + +<P> +"What are you going to do?" +</P> + +<P> +"If it has to come to that, I'm going to squeeze him." Lapham's +countenance lighted up with greater joy than had yet visited it since +the day they had driven out to Brookline. "Milton K. Rogers is a +rascal, if you want to know; or else all the signs fail. But I guess +he'll find he's got his come-uppance." Lapham shut his lips so that the +short, reddish-grey beard stuck straight out on them. +</P> + +<P> +"What's he done?" +</P> + +<P> +"What's he done? Well, now, I'll tell you what he's done, Persis, since +you think Rogers is such a saint, and that I used him so badly in +getting him out of the business. He's been dabbling in every sort of +fool thing you can lay your tongue to,--wild-cat stocks, patent-rights, +land speculations, oil claims,--till he's run through about everything. +But he did have a big milling property out on the line of the P. Y. & +X.,--saw-mills and grist-mills and lands,--and for the last eight years +he's been doing a land-office business with 'em--business that would +have made anybody else rich. But you can't make Milton K. Rogers rich, +any more than you can fat a hide-bound colt. It ain't in him. He'd +run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott rolled into one in +less than six months, give him a chance, and come out and want to +borrow money of you. Well, he won't borrow any more money of ME; and +if he thinks I don't know as much about that milling property as he +does he's mistaken. I've taken his mills, but I guess I've got the +inside track; Bill's kept me posted; and now I'm going out there to see +how I can unload; and I shan't mind a great deal if Rogers is under the +load when it's off once." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't understand you, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, it's just this. The Great Lacustrine & Polar Railroad has leased +the P. Y. & X. for ninety-nine years,--bought it, practically,--and +it's going to build car-works right by those mills, and it may want +them. And Milton K. Rogers knew it when he turned 'em in on me." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if the road wants them, don't that make the mills valuable? You +can get what you ask for them!" +</P> + +<P> +"Can I? The P. Y. & X. is the only road that runs within fifty miles of +the mills, and you can't get a foot of lumber nor a pound of flour to +market any other way. As long as he had a little local road like the +P. Y. & X. to deal with, Rogers could manage; but when it come to a big +through line like the G. L. & P., he couldn't stand any chance at all. +If such a road as that took a fancy to his mills, do you think it would +pay what he asked? No, sir! He would take what the road offered, or +else the road would tell him to carry his flour and lumber to market +himself." +</P> + +<P> +"And do you suppose he knew the G. L. & P. wanted the mills when he +turned them in on you?" asked Mrs. Lapham aghast, and falling +helplessly into his alphabetical parlance. +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel laughed scoffingly. "Well, when Milton K. Rogers don't +know which side his bread's buttered on! I don't understand," he added +thoughtfully, "how he's always letting it fall on the buttered side. +But such a man as that is sure to have a screw loose in him somewhere." +Mrs. Lapham sat discomfited. All that she could say was, "Well, I want +you should ask yourself whether Rogers would ever have gone wrong, or +got into these ways of his, if it hadn't been for your forcing him out +of the business when you did. I want you should think whether you're +not responsible for everything he's done since." +</P> + +<P> +"You go and get that bag of mine ready," said Lapham sullenly. "I +guess I can take care of myself. And Milton K. Rogers too," he added. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That evening Corey spent the time after dinner in his own room, with +restless excursions to the library, where his mother sat with his +father and sisters, and showed no signs of leaving them. At last, in +coming down, he encountered her on the stairs, going up. They both +stopped consciously. +</P> + +<P> +"I would like to speak with you, mother. I have been waiting to see +you alone." +</P> + +<P> +"Come to my room," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"I have a feeling that you know what I want to say," he began there. +</P> + +<P> +She looked up at him where he stood by the chimney-piece, and tried to +put a cheerful note into her questioning "Yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; and I have a feeling that you won't like it--that you won't +approve of it. I wish you did--I wish you could!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm used to liking and approving everything you do, Tom. If I don't +like this at once, I shall try to like it--you know that--for your +sake, whatever it is." +</P> + +<P> +"I'd better be short," he said, with a quick sigh. "It's about Miss +Lapham." He hastened to add, "I hope it isn't surprising to you. I'd +have told you before, if I could." +</P> + +<P> +"No, it isn't surprising. I was afraid--I suspected something of the +kind." +</P> + +<P> +They were both silent in a painful silence. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, mother?" he asked at last. +</P> + +<P> +"If it's something you've quite made up mind to----" +</P> + +<P> +"It is!" +</P> + +<P> +"And if you've already spoken to her----" +</P> + +<P> +"I had to do that first, of course." +</P> + +<P> +"There would be no use of my saying anything, even if I disliked it." +</P> + +<P> +"You do dislike it!" +</P> + +<P> +"No--no! I can't say that. Of course I should have preferred it if you +had chosen some nice girl among those that you had been brought up +with--some friend or associate of your sisters, whose people we had +known----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I understand that, and I can assure you that I haven't been +indifferent to your feelings. I have tried to consider them from the +first, and it kept me hesitating in a way that I'm ashamed to think of; +for it wasn't quite right towards--others. But your feelings and my +sisters' have been in my mind, and if I couldn't yield to what I +supposed they must be, entirely----" +</P> + +<P> +Even so good a son and brother as this, when it came to his love +affair, appeared to think that he had yielded much in considering the +feelings of his family at all. +</P> + +<P> +His mother hastened to comfort him. "I know--I know. I've seen for +some time that this might happen, Tom, and I have prepared myself for +it. I have talked it over with your father, and we both agreed from +the beginning that you were not to be hampered by our feeling. +Still--it is a surprise. It must be." +</P> + +<P> +"I know it. I can understand your feeling. But I'm sure that it's one +that will last only while you don't know her well." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'm sure of that, Tom. I'm sure that we shall all be fond of +her,--for your sake at first, even--and I hope she'll like us." +</P> + +<P> +"I am quite certain of that," said Corey, with that confidence which +experience does not always confirm in such cases. "And your taking it +as you do lifts a tremendous load off me." +</P> + +<P> +But he sighed so heavily, and looked so troubled, that his mother said, +"Well, now, you mustn't think of that any more. We wish what is for +your happiness, my son, and we will gladly reconcile ourselves to +anything that might have been disagreeable. I suppose we needn't speak +of the family. We must both think alike about them. They have +their--drawbacks, but they are thoroughly good people, and I satisfied +myself the other night that they were not to be dreaded." She rose, and +put her arm round his neck. "And I wish you joy, Tom! If she's half as +good as you are, you will both be very happy." She was going to kiss +him, but something in his looks stopped her--an absence, a trouble, +which broke out in his words. +</P> + +<P> +"I must tell you, mother! There's been a complication--a +mistake--that's a blight on me yet, and that it sometimes seems as if +we couldn't escape from. I wonder if you can help us! They all thought +I meant--the other sister." +</P> + +<P> +"O Tom! But how COULD they?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. It seemed so glaringly plain--I was ashamed of making +it so outright from the beginning. But they did. Even she did, +herself!" +</P> + +<P> +"But where could they have thought your eyes were--your taste? It +wouldn't be surprising if any one were taken with that wonderful +beauty; and I'm sure she's good too. But I'm astonished at them! To +think you could prefer that little, black, odd creature, with her +joking and----" +</P> + +<P> +"MOTHER!" cried the young man, turning a ghastly face of warning upon +her. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean, Tom?" +</P> + +<P> +"Did you--did--did you think so too--that it was IRENE I meant?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, of course!" +</P> + +<P> +He stared at her hopelessly. +</P> + +<P> +"O my son!" she said, for all comment on the situation. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't reproach me, mother! I couldn't stand it." +</P> + +<P> +"No. I didn't mean to do that. But how--HOW could it happen?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. When she first told me that they had understood it so, +I laughed--almost--it was so far from me. But now when you seem to +have had the same idea--Did you all think so?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +They remained looking at each other. Then Mrs. Corey began: "It did +pass through my mind once--that day I went to call upon them--that it +might not be as we thought; but I knew so little of--of----" +</P> + +<P> +"Penelope," Corey mechanically supplied. +</P> + +<P> +"Is that her name?--I forgot--that I only thought of you in relation to +her long enough to reject the idea; and it was natural after our seeing +something of the other one last year, that I might suppose you had +formed some--attachment----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; that's what they thought too. But I never thought of her as +anything but a pretty child. I was civil to her because you wished it; +and when I met her here again, I only tried to see her so that I could +talk with her about her sister." +</P> + +<P> +"You needn't defend yourself to ME, Tom," said his mother, proud to say +it to him in his trouble. "It's a terrible business for them, poor +things," she added. "I don't know how they could get over it. But, of +course, sensible people must see----" +</P> + +<P> +"They haven't got over it. At least she hasn't. Since it's happened, +there's been nothing that hasn't made me prouder and fonder of her! At +first I WAS charmed with her--my fancy was taken; she delighted me--I +don't know how; but she was simply the most fascinating person I ever +saw. Now I never think of that. I only think how good she is--how +patient she is with me, and how unsparing she is of herself. If she +were concerned alone--if I were not concerned too--it would soon end. +She's never had a thought for anything but her sister's feeling and +mine from the beginning. I go there,--I know that I oughtn't, but I +can't help it,--and she suffers it, and tries not to let me see that +she is suffering it. There never was any one like her--so brave, so +true, so noble. I won't give her up--I can't. But it breaks my heart +when she accuses herself of what was all MY doing. We spend our time +trying to reason out of it, but we always come back to it at last, and +I have to hear her morbidly blaming herself. Oh!" +</P> + +<P> +Doubtless Mrs. Corey imagined some reliefs to this suffering, some +qualifications of this sublimity in a girl she had disliked so +distinctly; but she saw none in her son's behaviour, and she gave him +her further sympathy. She tried to praise Penelope, and said that it +was not to be expected that she could reconcile herself at once to +everything. "I shouldn't have liked it in her if she had. But time +will bring it all right. And if she really cares for you----" +</P> + +<P> +"I extorted that from her." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, you must look at it in the best light you can. There is +no blame anywhere, and the mortification and pain is something that +must be lived down. That's all. And don't let what I said grieve you, +Tom. You know I scarcely knew her, and I--I shall be sure to like any +one you like, after all." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know," said the young man drearily. "Will you tell father?" +</P> + +<P> +"If you wish." +</P> + +<P> +"He must know. And I couldn't stand any more of this, just yet--any +more mistake." +</P> + +<P> +"I will tell him," said Mrs. Corey; and it was naturally the next thing +for a woman who dwelt so much on decencies to propose: "We must go to +call on her--your sisters and I. They have never seen her even; and +she mustn't be allowed to think we're indifferent to her, especially +under the circumstances." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no! Don't go--not yet," cried Corey, with an instinctive perception +that nothing could be worse for him. "We must wait--we must be +patient. I'm afraid it would be painful to her now." +</P> + +<P> +He turned away without speaking further; and his mother's eyes followed +him wistfully to the door. There were some questions that she would +have liked to ask him; but she had to content herself with trying to +answer them when her husband put them to her. +</P> + +<P> +There was this comfort for her always in Bromfield Corey, that he never +was much surprised at anything, however shocking or painful. His +standpoint in regard to most matters was that of the sympathetic +humorist who would be glad to have the victim of circumstance laugh +with him, but was not too much vexed when the victim could not. He +laughed now when his wife, with careful preparation, got the facts of +his son's predicament fully under his eye. +</P> + +<P> +"Really, Bromfield," she said, "I don't see how you can laugh. Do you +see any way out of it?" +</P> + +<P> +"It seems to me that the way has been found already. Tom has told his +love to the right one, and the wrong one knows it. Time will do the +rest." +</P> + +<P> +"If I had so low an opinion of them all as that, it would make me very +unhappy. It's shocking to think of it." +</P> + +<P> +"It is upon the theory of ladies and all young people," said her +husband, with a shrug, feeling his way to the matches on the mantel, +and then dropping them with a sign, as if recollecting that he must not +smoke there. "I've no doubt Tom feels himself an awful sinner. But +apparently he's resigned to his sin; he isn't going to give her up." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad to say, for the sake of human nature, that SHE isn't +resigned--little as I like her," cried Mrs. Corey. +</P> + +<P> +Her husband shrugged again. "Oh, there mustn't be any indecent haste. +She will instinctively observe the proprieties. But come, now, Anna! +you mustn't pretend to me here, in the sanctuary of home, that +practically the human affections don't reconcile themselves to any +situation that the human sentiments condemn. Suppose the wrong sister +had died: would the right one have had any scruple in marrying Tom, +after they had both 'waited a proper time,' as the phrase is?" +</P> + +<P> +"Bromfield, you're shocking!" +</P> + +<P> +"Not more shocking than reality. You may regard this as a second +marriage." He looked at her with twinkling eyes, full of the triumph +the spectator of his species feels in signal exhibitions of human +nature. "Depend upon it, the right sister will be reconciled; the +wrong one will be consoled; and all will go merry as a marriage bell--a +second marriage bell. Why, it's quite like a romance!" Here he laughed +outright again. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," sighed the wife, "I could almost wish the right one, as you +call her, would reject Tom, I dislike her so much." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, now you're talking business, Anna," said her husband, with his +hands spread behind the back he turned comfortably to the fire. "The +whole Lapham tribe is distasteful to me. As I don't happen to have +seen our daughter-in-law elect, I have still the hope--which you're +disposed to forbid me--that she may not be quite so unacceptable as the +others." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" anxiously inquired his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes--I think I do;" and he sat down, and stretched out his long legs +toward the fire. +</P> + +<P> +"But it's very inconsistent of you to oppose the matter now, when +you've shown so much indifference up to this time. You've told me, all +along, that it was of no use to oppose it." +</P> + +<P> +"So I have. I was convinced of that at the beginning, or my reason +was. You know very well that I am equal to any trial, any sacrifice, +day after to-morrow; but when it comes to-day it's another thing. As +long as this crisis decently kept its distance, I could look at it with +an impartial eye; but now that it seems at hand, I find that, while my +reason is still acquiescent, my nerves are disposed to--excuse the +phrase--kick. I ask myself, what have I done nothing for, all my life, +and lived as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, in +the possession of every polite taste and feeling that adorns leisure, +if I'm to come to this at last? And I find no satisfactory answer. I +say to myself that I might as well have yielded to the pressure all +round me, and gone to work, as Tom has." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey looked at him forlornly, divining the core of real +repugnance that existed in his self-satire. +</P> + +<P> +"I assure you, my dear," he continued, "that the recollection of what I +suffered from the Laphams at that dinner of yours is an anguish still. +It wasn't their behaviour,--they behaved well enough--or ill enough; +but their conversation was terrible. Mrs. Lapham's range was strictly +domestic; and when the Colonel got me in the library, he poured mineral +paint all over me, till I could have been safely warranted not to crack +or scale in any climate. I suppose we shall have to see a good deal of +them. They will probably come here every Sunday night to tea. It's a +perspective without a vanishing-point." +</P> + +<P> +"It may not be so bad, after all," said his wife; and she suggested for +his consolation that he knew very little about the Laphams yet. +</P> + +<P> +He assented to the fact. "I know very little about them, and about my +other fellow-beings. I dare say that I should like the Laphams better +if I knew them better. But in any case, I resign myself. And we must +keep in view the fact that this is mainly Tom's affair, and if his +affections have regulated it to his satisfaction, we must be content." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "And perhaps it won't turn out so badly. +It's a great comfort to know that you feel just as I do about it." +</P> + +<P> +"I do," said her husband, "and more too." +</P> + +<P> +It was she and her daughters who would be chiefly annoyed by the Lapham +connection; she knew that. But she had to begin to bear the burden by +helping her husband to bear his light share of it. To see him so +depressed dismayed her, and she might well have reproached him more +sharply than she did for showing so much indifference, when she was so +anxious, at first. But that would not have served any good end now. +She even answered him patiently when he asked her, "What did you say to +Tom when he told you it was the other one?" +</P> + +<P> +"What could I say? I could do nothing, but try to take back what I had +said against her." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you had quite enough to do, I suppose. It's an awkward business. +If it had been the pretty one, her beauty would have been our excuse. +But the plain one--what do you suppose attracted him in her?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey sighed at the futility of the question. "Perhaps I did her +injustice. I only saw her a few moments. Perhaps I got a false +impression. I don't think she's lacking in sense, and that's a great +thing. She'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness, and +can't, by anything we say or do, when she's Tom's wife." She pronounced +the distasteful word with courage, and went on: "The pretty one might +not have been able to see that. She might have got it into her head +that we were looking down on her; and those insipid people are terribly +stubborn. We can come to some understanding with this one; I'm sure of +that." She ended by declaring that it was now their duty to help Tom +out of his terrible predicament. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, even the Lapham cloud has a silver lining," said Corey. "In fact, +it seems really to have all turned out for the best, Anna; though it's +rather curious to find you the champion of the Lapham side, at last. +Confess, now, that the right girl has secretly been your choice all +along, and that while you sympathise with the wrong one, you rejoice in +the tenacity with which the right one is clinging to her own!" He added +with final seriousness, "It's just that she should, and, so far as I +understand the case, I respect her for it." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "It's natural, and it's right." But she +added, "I suppose they're glad of him on any terms." +</P> + +<P> +"That is what I have been taught to believe," said her husband. "When +shall we see our daughter-in-law elect? I find myself rather impatient +to have that part of it over." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey hesitated. "Tom thinks we had better not call, just yet." +</P> + +<P> +"She has told him of your terrible behaviour when you called before?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, Bromfield! She couldn't be so vulgar as that?" +</P> + +<P> +"But anything short of it?" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap21"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXI. +</H3> + +<P> +LAPHAM was gone a fortnight. He was in a sullen humour when he came +back, and kept himself shut close within his own den at the office the +first day. He entered it in the morning without a word to his clerks +as he passed through the outer room, and he made no sign throughout the +forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell from time to time, +and send out to Walker for some book of accounts or a letter-file. His +boy confidentially reported to Walker that the old man seemed to have +got a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper said to Corey, +at the little table which they had taken in a corner together, in +default of seats at the counter, "Well, sir, I guess there's a cold +wave coming." +</P> + +<P> +Corey looked up innocently, and said, "I haven't read the weather +report." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir," Walker continued, "it's coming. Areas of rain along the +whole coast, and increased pressure in the region of the private +office. Storm-signals up at the old man's door now." +</P> + +<P> +Corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, and that his +meteorology was entirely personal to Lapham. "What do you mean?" he +asked, without vivid interest in the allegory, his mind being full of +his own tragi-comedy. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, just this: I guess the old man's takin' in sail. And I guess +he's got to. As I told you the first time we talked about him, there +don't any one know one-quarter as much about the old man's business as +the old man does himself; and I ain't betraying any confidence when I +say that I guess that old partner of his has got pretty deep into his +books. I guess he's over head and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone +in after him, and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck. There +seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, I call it--in the +paint market just now; and then again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man +don't build a hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain, +unless there's a regular boom. And just now there ain't any boom at +all. Oh, I don't say but what the old man's got anchors to windward; +guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN' to leave me his money, I wish he'd left +it six weeks ago. Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but +you can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, where the old +man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess." Walker began to feed in his +breaded chop with the same nervous excitement with which he abandoned +himself to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks. Corey had +listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain +moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him. It came from +Lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had +hitherto seemed so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster +would befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the +unselfishness of his constancy. He thought of the sum of money that +was his own, and that he might offer to lend, or practically give, if +the time came; and with his crude hopes and purposes formlessly +exulting in his heart, he kept on listening with an unchanged +countenance. +</P> + +<P> +Walker could not rest till he had developed the whole situation, so far +as he knew it. "Look at the stock we've got on hand. There's going to +be an awful shrinkage on that, now! And when everybody is shutting +down, or running half-time, the works up at Lapham are going full chip, +just the same as ever. Well, it's his pride. I don't say but what +it's a good sort of pride, but he likes to make his brags that the +fire's never been out in the works since they started, and that no +man's work or wages has ever been cut down yet at Lapham, it don't +matter WHAT the times are. Of course," explained Walker, "I shouldn't +talk so to everybody; don't know as I should talk so to anybody but +you, Mr. Corey." +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," assented Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Little off your feed to-day," said Walker, glancing at Corey's plate. +</P> + +<P> +"I got up with a headache." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, sir, if you're like me you'll carry it round all day, then. I +don't know a much meaner thing than a headache--unless it's earache, or +toothache, or some other kind of ache I'm pretty hard to suit, when it +comes to diseases. Notice how yellow the old man looked when he came +in this morning? I don't like to see a man of his build look +yellow--much." About the middle of the afternoon the dust-coloured face +of Rogers, now familiar to Lapham's clerks, showed itself among them. +"Has Colonel Lapham returned yet?" he asked, in his dry, wooden tones, +of Lapham's boy. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he's in his office," said the boy; and as Rogers advanced, he +rose and added, "I don't know as you can see him to-day. His orders are +not to let anybody in." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed!" said Rogers; "I think he will see ME!" and he pressed +forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'll have to ask," returned the boy; and hastily preceding +Rogers, he put his head in at Lapham's door, and then withdrew it. +"Please to sit down," he said; "he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with +an air of some surprise, Rogers obeyed. His sere, dull-brown whiskers +and the moustache closing over both lips were incongruously and +illogically clerical in effect, and the effect was heightened for no +reason by the parchment texture of his skin; the baldness extending to +the crown of his head was like a baldness made up for the stage. What +his face expressed chiefly was a bland and beneficent caution. Here, +you must have said to yourself, is a man of just, sober, and prudent +views, fixed purposes, and the good citizenship that avoids debt and +hazard of every kind. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you want?" asked Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair as +Rogers entered his room, and pushing the door shut with his foot, +without rising. +</P> + +<P> +Rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat with his +hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed towards Lapham. "I want +to know what you are going to do," he answered with sufficient +self-possession. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell you, first, what I've done," said Lapham. "I've been to +Dubuque, and I've found out all about that milling property you turned +in on me. Did you know that the G. L. & P. had leased the P. Y. & X.?" +</P> + +<P> +"I some suspected that it might." +</P> + +<P> +"Did you know it when you turned the property in on me? Did you know +that the G. L. & P. wanted to buy the mills?" +</P> + +<P> +"I presumed the road would give a fair price for them," said Rogers, +winking his eyes in outward expression of inwardly blinking the point. +</P> + +<P> +"You lie," said Lapham, as quietly as if correcting him in a slight +error; and Rogers took the word with equal sang froid. "You knew the +road wouldn't give a fair price for the mills. You knew it would give +what it chose, and that I couldn't help myself, when you let me take +them. You're a thief, Milton K. Rogers, and you stole money I lent +you." Rogers sat listening, as if respectfully considering the +statements. "You knew how I felt about that old matter--or my wife +did; and that I wanted to make it up to you, if you felt anyway badly +used. And you took advantage of it. You've got money out of me, in +the first place, on securities that wa'n't worth thirty-five cents on +the dollar, and you've let me in for this thing, and that thing, and +you've bled me every time. And all I've got to show for it is a +milling property on a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it +wants to, as dry as it pleases. And you want to know what I'm going to +do? I'm going to squeeze YOU. I'm going to sell these collaterals of +yours,"--he touched a bundle of papers among others that littered his +desk,--"and I'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch. I +ain't going to fight the G. L. & P." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his +visitor, who sat wholly unmoved. +</P> + +<P> +"There are some parties," he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring +Lapham's words, as if they had been an outburst against some third +person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little +interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his +condemnation,--"there are some English parties who have been making +inquiries in regard to those mills." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you're lying, Rogers," said Lapham, without looking round. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not act hastily." +</P> + +<P> +"I see you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, facing fiercely +about. "You think I'm fooling, do you?" He struck his bell, and +"William," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting +while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the +bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to Gallop & +Paddock's, in State Street, right away. Now go!" he said to Rogers, +when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to +his desk. +</P> + +<P> +Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand. He was +not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was +impartial. He wore the air of a man who was ready to return to +business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted. +"Then I understand," he said, "that you will take no action in regard +to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of +Rogers in silence. "I wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "I +should like to know." But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his +curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham's as of the +irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party +that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll +talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll +give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again." +</P> + +<P> +Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking +thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly +withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, during the +afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the +sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed +swearing, penetrated to the outer office. Somewhat earlier than the +usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat on and his +overcoat buttoned about him. He said briefly to his boy, "William, I +shan't be back again this afternoon," and then went to Miss Dewey and +left a number of letters on her table to be copied, and went out. +Nothing had been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself +through those who saw him go out. +</P> + +<P> +That evening as he sat down with his wife alone at tea, he asked, +"Ain't Pen coming to supper?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, she ain't," said his wife. "I don't know as I like the way she's +going on, any too well. I'm afraid, if she keeps on, she'll be down +sick. She's got deeper feelings than Irene." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham said nothing, but having helped himself to the abundance of his +table in his usual fashion, he sat and looked at his plate with an +indifference that did not escape the notice of his wife. "What's the +matter with YOU?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing. I haven't got any appetite." +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" she persisted. +</P> + +<P> +"Trouble's the matter; bad luck and lots of it's the matter," said +Lapham. "I haven't ever hid anything from you, Persis, well you asked +me, and it's too late to begin now. I'm in a fix. I'll tell you what +kind of a fix, if you think it'll do you any good; but I guess you'll +be satisfied to know that it's a fix." +</P> + +<P> +"How much of a one?" she asked with a look of grave, steady courage in +her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know as I can tell, just yet," said Lapham, avoiding +this look. "Things have been dull all the fall, but I thought they'd +brisk up come winter. They haven't. There have been a lot of +failures, and some of 'em owed me, and some of 'em had me on their +paper; and----" Lapham stopped. +</P> + +<P> +"And what?" prompted his wife. +</P> + +<P> +He hesitated before he added, "And then--Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm to blame for that," said Mrs. Lapham. "I forced you to it." +</P> + +<P> +"No; I was as willing to go into it as what you were," answered Lapham. +"I don't want to blame anybody." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham had a woman's passion for fixing responsibility; she could +not help saying, as soon as acquitted, "I warned you against him, +Silas. I told you not to let him get in any deeper with you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes. I had to help him to try to get my money back. I might as +well poured water into a sieve. And now--" Lapham stopped. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't be afraid to speak out to me, Silas Lapham. If it comes to the +worst, I want to know it--I've got to know it. What did I ever care +for the money? I've had a happy home with you ever since we were +married, and I guess I shall have as long as you live, whether we go on +to the Back Bay, or go back to the old house at Lapham. I know who's +to blame, and I blame myself. It was my forcing Rogers on to you." She +came back to this with her helpless longing, inbred in all Puritan +souls, to have some one specifically suffer for the evil in the world, +even if it must be herself. +</P> + +<P> +"It hasn't come to the worst yet, Persis," said her husband. "But I +shall have to hold up on the new house a little while, till I can see +where I am." +</P> + +<P> +"I shouldn't care if we had to sell it," cried his wife, in passionate +self-condemnation. "I should be GLAD if we had to, as far as I'm +concerned." +</P> + +<P> +"I shouldn't," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"I know!" said his wife; and she remembered ruefully how his heart was +set on it. +</P> + +<P> +He sat musing. "Well, I guess it's going to come out all right in the +end. Or, if it ain't," he sighed, "we can't help it. May be Pen +needn't worry so much about Corey, after all," he continued, with a +bitter irony new to him. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. +And there's a chance," he ended, with a still bitterer laugh, "that +Rogers will come to time, after all." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, with a gleam of hope in +her eyes. "What chance?" +</P> + +<P> +"One in ten million," said Lapham; and her face fell again. "He says +there are some English parties after him to buy these mills." +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I gave him twenty-four hours to prove himself a liar." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't believe there are any such parties?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not in THIS world." +</P> + +<P> +"But if there were?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if there were, Persis----But pshaw!" +</P> + +<P> +"No, no!" she pleaded eagerly. "It don't seem as if he COULD be such a +villain. What would be the use of his pretending? If he brought the +parties to you." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Lapham scornfully, "I'd let them have the mills at the +price Rogers turned 'em in on me at. I don't want to make anything on +'em. But guess I shall hear from the G. L. & P. first. And when they +make their offer, I guess I'll have to accept it, whatever it is. I +don't think they'll have a great many competitors." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham could not give up her hope. "If you could get your price +from those English parties before they knew that the G. L. & P. wanted +to buy the mills, would it let you out with Rogers?" +</P> + +<P> +"Just about," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Then I know he'll move heaven and earth to bring it about. I KNOW you +won't be allowed to suffer for doing him a kindness, Silas. He CAN'T +be so ungrateful! Why, why SHOULD he pretend to have any such parties +in view when he hasn't? Don't you be down-hearted, Si. You'll see that +he'll be round with them to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham laughed, but she urged so many reasons for her belief in Rogers +that Lapham began to rekindle his own faith a little. He ended by +asking for a hot cup of tea; and Mrs. Lapham sent the pot out and had a +fresh one steeped for him. After that he made a hearty supper in the +revulsion from his entire despair; and they fell asleep that night +talking hopefully of his affairs, which he laid before her fully, as he +used to do when he first started in business. That brought the old +times back, and he said: "If this had happened then, I shouldn't have +cared much. I was young then, and I wasn't afraid of anything. But I +noticed that after I passed fifty I began to get scared easier. I +don't believe I could pick up, now, from a regular knock-down." +</P> + +<P> +"Pshaw! YOU scared, Silas Lapham?" cried his wife proudly. "I should +like to see the thing that ever scared you; or the knockdown that YOU +couldn't pick up from!" +</P> + +<P> +"Is that so, Persis?" he asked, with the joy her courage gave him. +</P> + +<P> +In the middle of the night she called to him, in a voice which the +darkness rendered still more deeply troubled: "Are you awake, Silas?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; I'm awake." +</P> + +<P> +"I've been thinking about those English parties, Si----" +</P> + +<P> +"So've I." +</P> + +<P> +"And I can't make it out but what you'd be just as bad as Rogers, every +bit and grain, if you were to let them have the mills----" +</P> + +<P> +"And not tell 'em what the chances were with the G. L. & P.? I thought +of that, and you needn't be afraid." +</P> + +<P> +She began to bewail herself, and to sob convulsively: "O Silas! O +Silas!" Heaven knows in what measure the passion of her soul was mired +with pride in her husband's honesty, relief from an apprehended +struggle, and pity for him. +</P> + +<P> +"Hush, hush, Persis!" he besought her. "You'll wake Pen if you keep on +that way. Don't cry any more! You mustn't." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, let me cry, Silas! It'll help me. I shall be all right in a +minute. Don't you mind." She sobbed herself quiet. "It does seem too +hard," she said, when she could speak again, "that you have to give up +this chance when Providence had fairly raised it up for you." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess it wa'n't Providence raised it up," said Lapham. "Any rate, +it's got to go. Most likely Rogers was lyin', and there ain't any such +parties; but if there were, they couldn't have the mills from me +without the whole story. Don't you be troubled, Persis. I'm going to +pull through all right." "Oh, I ain't afraid. I don't suppose but what +there's plenty would help you, if they knew you needed it, Si." +</P> + +<P> +"They would if they knew I DIDN'T need it," said Lapham sardonically. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you tell Bill how you stood?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I couldn't bear to. I've been the rich one so long, that I +couldn't bring myself to own up that I was in danger." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Besides, it didn't look so ugly till to-day. But I guess we shan't let +ugly looks scare us." +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap22"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXII. +</H3> + +<P> +THE morning postman brought Mrs. Lapham a letter from Irene, which was +chiefly significant because it made no reference whatever to the writer +or her state of mind. It gave the news of her uncle's family; it told +of their kindness to her; her cousin Will was going to take her and his +sisters ice-boating on the river, when it froze. +</P> + +<P> +By the time this letter came, Lapham had gone to his business, and the +mother carried it to Penelope to talk over. "What do you make out of +it?" she asked; and without waiting to be answered she said, "I don't +know as I believe in cousins marrying, a great deal; but if Irene and +Will were to fix it up between 'em----" She looked vaguely at Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"It wouldn't make any difference as far as I was concerned," replied +the girl listlessly. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham lost her patience. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, I'll tell you what, Penelope!" she exclaimed. "Perhaps +it'll make a difference to you if you know that your father's in REAL +trouble. He's harassed to death, and he was awake half the night, +talking about it. That abominable Rogers has got a lot of money away +from him; and he's lost by others that he's helped,"--Mrs. Lapham put +it in this way because she had no time to be explicit,--"and I want you +should come out of your room now, and try to be of some help and +comfort to him when he comes home to-night. I guess Irene wouldn't +mope round much, if she was here," she could not help adding. +</P> + +<P> +The girl lifted herself on her elbow. "What's that you say about +father?" she demanded eagerly. "Is he in trouble? Is he going to lose +his money? Shall we have to stay in this house?" +</P> + +<P> +"We may be very GLAD to stay in this house," said Mrs. Lapham, half +angry with herself for having given cause for the girl's conjectures, +and half with the habit of prosperity in her child, which could +conceive no better of what adversity was. "And I want you should get +up and show that you've got some feeling for somebody in the world +besides yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'll get UP!" said the girl promptly, almost cheerfully. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't say it's as bad now as it looked a little while ago," said her +mother, conscientiously hedging a little from the statement which she +had based rather upon her feelings than her facts. "Your father thinks +he'll pull through all right, and I don't know but what he will. But I +want you should see if you can't do something to cheer him up and keep +him from getting so perfectly down-hearted as he seems to get, under +the load he's got to carry. And stop thinking about yourself a while, +and behave yourself like a sensible girl." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, yes," said the girl; "I will. You needn't be troubled about me +any more." +</P> + +<P> +Before she left her room she wrote a note, and when she came down she +was dressed to go out-of-doors and post it herself. The note was to +Corey:-- +</P> + +<P> +"Do not come to see me any more till you hear from me. I have a reason +which I cannot give you now; and you must not ask what it is." +</P> + +<P> +All day she went about in a buoyant desperation, and she came down to +meet her father at supper. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Persis," he said scornfully, as he sat down, "we might as well +saved our good resolutions till they were wanted. I guess those +English parties have gone back on Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you mean he didn't come?" +</P> + +<P> +"He hadn't come up to half-past five," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Tchk!" uttered his wife. "But I guess I shall pull through without +Mr. Rogers," continued Lapham. "A firm that I didn't think COULD +weather it is still afloat, and so far forth as the danger goes of +being dragged under with it, I'm all right." Penelope came in. "Hello, +Pen!" cried her father. "It ain't often I meet YOU nowadays." He put +up his hand as she passed his chair, and pulled her down and kissed her. +</P> + +<P> +"No," she said; "but I thought I'd come down to-night and cheer you up +a little. I shall not talk; the sight of me will be enough." +</P> + +<P> +Her father laughed out. "Mother been telling you? Well, I WAS pretty +blue last night; but I guess I was more scared than hurt. How'd you +like to go to the theatre to-night? Sellers at the Park. Heigh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know. Don't you think they could get along without me +there?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; couldn't work it at all," cried the Colonel. "Let's all go. +Unless," he added inquiringly, "there's somebody coming here?" +</P> + +<P> +"There's nobody coming," said Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +"Good! Then we'll go. Mother, don't you be late now." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I shan't keep you waiting," said Mrs. Lapham. She had thought of +telling what a cheerful letter she had got from Irene; but upon the +whole it seemed better not to speak of Irene at all just then. After +they returned from the theatre, where the Colonel roared through the +comedy, with continual reference of his pleasure to Penelope, to make +sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the whole +affair had been for the girl's distraction rather than his, "I don't +believe but what it's going to come out all right about the children;" +and then she told him of the letter, and the hopes she had founded upon +it. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, perhaps you're right, Persis," he consented. +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't seen Pen so much like herself since it happened. I declare, +when I see the way she came out to-night, just to please you, I don't +know as I want you should get over all your troubles right away." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess there'll be enough to keep Pen going for a while yet," said +the Colonel, winding up his watch. +</P> + +<P> +But for a time there was a relief, which Walker noted, in the +atmosphere at the office, and then came another cold wave, slighter +than the first, but distinctly felt there, and succeeded by another +relief. It was like the winter which was wearing on to the end of the +year, with alternations of freezing weather, and mild days stretching +to weeks, in which the snow and ice wholly disappeared. It was none +the less winter, and none the less harassing for these fluctuations, +and Lapham showed in his face and temper the effect of like +fluctuations in his affairs. He grew thin and old, and both at home +and at his office he was irascible to the point of offence. In these +days Penelope shared with her mother the burden of their troubled home, +and united with her in supporting the silence or the petulance of the +gloomy, secret man who replaced the presence of jolly prosperity there. +Lapham had now ceased to talk of his troubles, and savagely resented +his wife's interference. "You mind your own business, Persis," he said +one day, "if you've got any;" and after that she left him mainly to +Penelope, who did not think of asking him questions. +</P> + +<P> +"It's pretty hard on you, Pen," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"That makes it easier for me," returned the girl, who did not otherwise +refer to her own trouble. +</P> + +<P> +In her heart she had wondered a little at the absolute obedience of +Corey, who had made no sign since receiving her note. She would have +liked to ask her father if Corey was sick; she would have liked him to +ask her why Corey did not come any more. Her mother went on-- +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe your father knows WHERE he stands. He works away at +those papers he brings home here at night, as if he didn't half know +what he was about. He always did have that close streak in him, and I +don't suppose but what he's been going into things he don't want +anybody else to know about, and he's kept these accounts of his own." +</P> + +<P> +Sometimes he gave Penelope figures to work at, which he would not +submit to his wife's nimbler arithmetic. Then she went to bed and left +them sitting up till midnight, struggling with problems in which they +were both weak. But she could see that the girl was a comfort to her +father, and that his troubles were a defence and shelter to her. Some +nights she could hear them going out together, and then she lay awake +for their return from their long walk. When the hour or day of respite +came again, the home felt it first. Lapham wanted to know what the +news from Irene was; he joined his wife in all her cheerful +speculations, and tried to make her amends for his sullen reticence and +irritability. Irene was staying on at Dubuque. There came a letter +from her, saying that her uncle's people wanted her to spend the winter +there. "Well, let her," said Lapham. "It'll be the best thing for +her." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham himself had letters from his brother at frequent intervals. His +brother was watching the G. L. & P., which as yet had made no offer for +the mills. Once, when one of these letters came, he submitted to his +wife whether, in the absence of any positive information that the road +wanted the property, he might not, with a good conscience, dispose of +it to the best advantage to anybody who came along. +</P> + +<P> +She looked wistfully at him; it was on the rise from a season of deep +depression with him. "No, Si," she said; "I don't see how you could do +that." +</P> + +<P> +He did not assent and submit, as he had done at first, but began to +rail at the unpracticality of women; and then he shut some papers he +had been looking over into his desk, and flung out of the room. +</P> + +<P> +One of the papers had slipped through the crevice of the lid, and lay +upon the floor. Mrs. Lapham kept on at her sewing, but after a while +she picked the paper up to lay it on the desk. Then she glanced at it, +and saw that it was a long column of dates and figures, recording +successive sums, never large ones, paid regularly to "Wm. M." The dates +covered a year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham laid the paper down on the desk, and then she took it up +again and put it into her work-basket, meaning to give it to him. When +he came in she saw him looking absent-mindedly about for something, and +then going to work upon his papers, apparently without it. She thought +she would wait till he missed it definitely, and then give him the +scrap she had picked up. It lay in her basket, and after some days it +found its way under the work in it, and she forgot it. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap23"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXIII. +</H3> + +<P> +SINCE New Year's there had scarcely been a mild day, and the streets +were full of snow, growing foul under the city feet and hoofs, and +renewing its purity from the skies with repeated falls, which in turn +lost their whiteness, beaten down, and beaten black and hard into a +solid bed like iron. The sleighing was incomparable, and the air was +full of the din of bells; but Lapham's turnout was not of those that +thronged the Brighton road every afternoon; the man at the +livery-stable sent him word that the mare's legs were swelling. +</P> + +<P> +He and Corey had little to do with each other. He did not know how +Penelope had arranged it with Corey; his wife said she knew no more +than he did, and he did not like to ask the girl herself, especially as +Corey no longer came to the house. He saw that she was cheerfuller +than she had been, and helpfuller with him and her mother. Now and +then Lapham opened his troubled soul to her a little, letting his +thought break into speech without preamble or conclusion. Once he +said-- +</P> + +<P> +"Pen, I presume you know I'm in trouble." +</P> + +<P> +"We all seem to be there," said the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but there's a difference between being there by your own fault +and being there by somebody else's." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't call it his fault," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"I call it mine," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +The girl laughed. Her thought was of her own care, and her father's +wholly of his. She must come to his ground. "What have you been doing +wrong?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as you'd call it wrong. It's what people do all the +time. But I wish I'd let stocks alone. It's what I always promised +your mother I would do. But there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or +watered stock, either." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think there's much use crying about anything. If it could +have been cried straight, it would have been all right from the start," +said the girl, going back to her own affair; and if Lapham had not been +so deeply engrossed in his, he might have seen how little she cared for +all that money could do or undo. He did not observe her enough to see +how variable her moods were in those days, and how often she sank from +some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely +defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably humble and +patient. But no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by his +wife, to whom Lapham said one day, when he came home, "Persis, what's +the reason Pen don't marry Corey?" +</P> + +<P> +"You know as well as I do, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham, with an inquiring +look at him for what lay behind his words. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's going on. There +ain't any rhyme nor reason to it." He stopped, and his wife waited. +"If she said the word, I could have some help from them." He hung his +head, and would not meet his wife's eye. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you're in a pretty bad way, Si," she said pityingly, "or you +wouldn't have come to that." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm in a hole," said Lapham, "and I don't know where to turn. You +won't let me do anything about those mills----" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I'll let you," said his wife sadly. +</P> + +<P> +He gave a miserable cry. "You know I can't do anything, if you do. O +my Lord!" +</P> + +<P> +She had not seen him so low as that before. She did not know what to +say. She was frightened, and could only ask, "Has it come to the +worst?" +</P> + +<P> +"The new house has got to go," he answered evasively. +</P> + +<P> +She did not say anything. She knew that the work on the house had been +stopped since the beginning of the year. Lapham had told the architect +that he preferred to leave it unfinished till the spring, as there was +no prospect of their being able to get into it that winter; and the +architect had agreed with him that it would not hurt it to stand. Her +heart was heavy for him, though she could not say so. They sat +together at the table, where she had come to be with him at his belated +meal. She saw that he did not eat, and she waited for him to speak +again, without urging him to take anything. They were past that. +</P> + +<P> +"And I've sent orders to shut down at the Works," he added. +</P> + +<P> +"Shut down at the Works!" she echoed with dismay. She could not take +it in. The fire at the Works had never been out before since it was +first kindled. She knew how he had prided himself upon that; how he +had bragged of it to every listener, and had always lugged the fact in +as the last expression of his sense of success. "O Silas!" +</P> + +<P> +"What's the use?" he retorted. "I saw it was coming a month ago. +There are some fellows out in West Virginia that have been running the +paint as hard as they could. They couldn't do much; they used to put +it on the market raw. But lately they got to baking it, and now +they've struck a vein of natural gas right by their works, and they pay +ten cents for fuel, where I pay a dollar, and they make as good a +paint. Anybody can see where it's going to end. Besides, the market's +over-stocked. It's glutted. There wa'n't anything to do but to shut +DOWN, and I've SHUT down." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what's going to become of the hands in the middle of the +winter, this way," said Mrs. Lapham, laying hold of one definite +thought which she could grasp in the turmoil of ruin that whirled +before her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't care what becomes of the hands," cried Lapham. "They've +shared my luck; now let 'em share the other thing. And if you're so +very sorry for the hands, I wish you'd keep a little of your pity for +ME. Don't you know what shutting down the Works means?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, indeed I do, Silas," said his wife tenderly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then!" He rose, leaving his supper untasted, and went into the +sitting-room, where she presently found him, with that everlasting +confusion of papers before him on the desk. That made her think of the +paper in her work-basket, and she decided not to make the careworn, +distracted man ask her for it, after all. She brought it to him. +</P> + +<P> +He glanced blankly at it and then caught it from her, turning red and +looking foolish. "Where'd you get that?" +</P> + +<P> +"You dropped it on the floor the other night, and I picked it up. Who +is 'Wm. M.'?" +</P> + +<P> +"'Wm. M.'!" he repeated, looking confusedly at her, and then at the +paper. "Oh,--it's nothing." He tore the paper into small pieces, and +went and dropped them into the fire. When Mrs. Lapham came into the +room in the morning, before he was down, she found a scrap of the +paper, which must have fluttered to the hearth; and glancing at it she +saw that the words were "Mrs. M." She wondered what dealings with a +woman her husband could have, and she remembered the confusion he had +shown about the paper, and which she had thought was because she had +surprised one of his business secrets. She was still thinking of it +when he came down to breakfast, heavy-eyed, tremulous, with deep seams +and wrinkles in his face. +</P> + +<P> +After a silence which he did not seem inclined to break, "Silas," she +asked, "who is 'Mrs. M.'?" +</P> + +<P> +He stared at her. "I don't know what you're talking about." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you?" she returned mockingly. "When you do, you tell me. Do +you want any more coffee?" +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, you can ring for Alice when you've finished. I've got +some things to attend to." She rose abruptly, and left the room. +Lapham looked after her in a dull way, and then went on with his +breakfast. While he still sat at his coffee, she flung into the room +again, and dashed some papers down beside his plate. "Here are some +more things of yours, and I'll thank you to lock them up in your desk +and not litter my room with them, if you please." Now he saw that she +was angry, and it must be with him. It enraged him that in such a time +of trouble she should fly out at him in that way. He left the house +without trying to speak to her. That day Corey came just before +closing, and, knocking at Lapham's door, asked if he could speak with +him a few moments. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair and kicking +another towards Corey. "Sit down. I want to talk to you. I'd ought +to tell you you're wasting your time here. I spoke the other day about +your placin' yourself better, and I can help you to do it, yet. There +ain't going to be the out-come for the paint in the foreign markets +that we expected, and I guess you better give it up." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't wish to give it up," said the young fellow, setting his lips. +"I've as much faith in it as ever; and I want to propose now what I +hinted at in the first place. I want to put some money into the +business." +</P> + +<P> +"Some money!" Lapham leaned towards him, and frowned as if he had not +quite understood, while he clutched the arms of his chair. +</P> + +<P> +"I've got about thirty thousand dollars that I could put in, and if you +don't want to consider me a partner--I remember that you objected to a +partner--you can let me regard it as an investment. But I think I see +the way to doing something at once in Mexico, and I should like to feel +that I had something more than a drummer's interest in the venture." +</P> + +<P> +The men sat looking into each other's eyes. Then Lapham leaned back in +his chair, and rubbed his hand hard and slowly over his face. His +features were still twisted with some strong emotion when he took it +away. "Your family know about this?" +</P> + +<P> +"My Uncle James knows." +</P> + +<P> +"He thinks it would be a good plan for you?" +</P> + +<P> +"He thought that by this time I ought to be able to trust my own +judgment." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you suppose I could see your uncle at his office?" +</P> + +<P> +"I imagine he's there." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I want to have a talk with him, one of these days." He sat +pondering a while, and then rose, and went with Corey to his door. "I +guess I shan't change my mind about taking you into the business in +that way," he said coldly. "If there was any reason why I shouldn't at +first, there's more now." +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, sir," answered the young man, and went to close his desk. +The outer office was empty; but while Corey was putting his papers in +order it was suddenly invaded by two women, who pushed by the +protesting porter on the stairs and made their way towards Lapham's +room. One of them was Miss Dewey, the type-writer girl, and the other +was a woman whom she would resemble in face and figure twenty years +hence, if she led a life of hard work varied by paroxysms of hard +drinking. +</P> + +<P> +"That his room, Z'rilla?" asked this woman, pointing towards Lapham's +door with a hand that had not freed itself from the fringe of dirty +shawl under which it had hung. She went forward without waiting for +the answer, but before she could reach it the door opened, and Lapham +stood filling its space. +</P> + +<P> +"Look here, Colonel Lapham!" began the woman, in a high key of +challenge. "I want to know if this is the way you're goin' back on me +and Z'rilla?" +</P> + +<P> +"What do you want?" asked Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"What do I want? What do you s'pose I want? I want the money to pay my +month's rent; there ain't a bite to eat in the house; and I want some +money to market." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham bent a frown on the woman, under which she shrank back a step. +"You've taken the wrong way to get it. Clear out!" +</P> + +<P> +"I WON'T clear out!" said the woman, beginning to whimper. +</P> + +<P> +"Corey!" said Lapham, in the peremptory voice of a master,--he had +seemed so indifferent to Corey's presence that the young man thought he +must have forgotten he was there,--"Is Dennis anywhere round?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yissor," said Dennis, answering for himself from the head of the +stairs, and appearing in the ware-room. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham spoke to the woman again. "Do you want I should call a hack, or +do you want I should call an officer?" +</P> + +<P> +The woman began to cry into an end of her shawl. "I don't know what +we're goin' to do." +</P> + +<P> +"You're going to clear out," said Lapham. "Call a hack, Dennis. If +you ever come here again, I'll have you arrested. Mind that! Zerrilla, +I shall want you early to-morrow morning." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her mother shrank out after +the porter. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham shut his door without a word. +</P> + +<P> +At lunch the next day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence +by talking a great deal. He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, +more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination +of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see +that little circus last night?" +</P> + +<P> +"What little circus?" asked Corey in his turn. +</P> + +<P> +"Those two women and the old man. Dennis told me about it. I told him +if he liked his place he'd better keep his mouth shut." +</P> + +<P> +"That was very good advice," said Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, all right, if you don't want to talk. Don't know as I should in +your place," returned Walker, in the easy security he had long felt +that Corey had no intention of putting on airs with him. "But I'll +tell you what: the old man can't expect it of everybody. If he keeps +this thing up much longer, it's going to be talked about. You can't +have a woman walking into your place of business, and trying to +bulldoze you before your porter, without setting your porter to +thinking. And the last thing you want a porter to do is to think; for +when a porter thinks, he thinks wrong." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why even a porter couldn't think right about that affair," +replied Corey. "I don't know who the woman was, though I believe she +was Miss Dewey's mother; but I couldn't see that Colonel Lapham showed +anything but a natural resentment of her coming to him in that way. I +should have said she was some rather worthless person whom he'd been +befriending, and that she had presumed upon his kindness." +</P> + +<P> +"Is that so? What do you think of his never letting Miss Dewey's name +go on the books?" +</P> + +<P> +"That it's another proof it's a sort of charity of his. That's the +only way to look at it." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'M all right." Walker lighted a cigar and began to smoke, with +his eyes closed to a fine straight line. "It won't do for a +book-keeper to think wrong, any more than a porter, I suppose. But I +guess you and I don't think very different about this thing." +</P> + +<P> +"Not if you think as I do," replied Corey steadily; "and I know you +would do that if you had seen the 'circus' yourself. A man doesn't +treat people who have a disgraceful hold upon him as he treated them." +</P> + +<P> +"It depends upon who he is," said Walker, taking his cigar from his +mouth. "I never said the old man was afraid of anything." +</P> + +<P> +"And character," continued Corey, disdaining to touch the matter +further, except in generalities, "must go for something. If it's to be +the prey of mere accident and appearance, then it goes for nothing." +</P> + +<P> +"Accidents will happen in the best regulated families," said Walker, +with vulgar, good-humoured obtuseness that filled Corey with +indignation. Nothing, perhaps, removed his matter-of-fact nature +further from the commonplace than a certain generosity of instinct, +which I should not be ready to say was always infallible. +</P> + +<P> +That evening it was Miss Dewey's turn to wait for speech with Lapham +after the others were gone. He opened his door at her knock, and stood +looking at her with a worried air. "Well, what do you want, Zerrilla?" +he asked, with a sort of rough kindness. +</P> + +<P> +"I want to know what I'm going to do about Hen. He's back again; and +he and mother have made it up, and they both got to drinking last night +after I went home, and carried on so that the neighbours came in." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham passed his hand over his red and heated face. "I don't know +what I'm going to do. You're twice the trouble that my own family is, +now. But I know what I'd do, mighty quick, if it wasn't for you, +Zerrilla," he went on relentingly. "I'd shut your mother up +somewheres, and if I could get that fellow off for a three years' +voyage----" +</P> + +<P> +"I declare," said Miss Dewey, beginning to whimper, "it seems as if he +came back just so often to spite me. He's never gone more than a year +at the furthest, and you can't make it out habitual drunkenness, +either, when it's just sprees. I'm at my wit's end." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well, you mustn't cry around here," said Lapham soothingly. +</P> + +<P> +"I know it," said Miss Dewey. "If I could get rid of Hen, I could +manage well enough with mother. Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could +get the divorce. He's said so over and over again." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I like that very well," said Lapham, frowning. "I +don't know as I want you should get married in any hurry again. I +don't know as I like your going with anybody else just yet." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you needn't be afraid but what it'll be all right. It'll be the +best thing all round, if I can marry him." +</P> + +<P> +"Well!" said Lapham impatiently; "I can't think about it now. I +suppose they've cleaned everything out again?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, they have," said Zerrilla; "there isn't a cent left." +</P> + +<P> +"You're a pretty expensive lot," said Lapham. "Well, here!" He took +out his pocket-book and gave her a note. "I'll be round to-night and +see what can be done." +</P> + +<P> +He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla dried her tears, put +the note into her bosom, and went her way. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. It was then six o'clock, +the hour at which the Laphams usually had tea; but all custom had been +broken up with him during the past months, and he did not go home now. +He determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man finds relief in +combating one care with another, to keep his promise to Miss Dewey, and +at the moment when he might otherwise have been sitting down at his own +table he was climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned +dwelling which had been portioned off into flats. It was in a region +of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and "ladies' and gents'" +dining-rooms, and restaurants with bars, which abound near depots; and +Lapham followed to Miss Dewey's door a waiter from one of these, who +bore on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin. Zerrilla +had admitted them, and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby +shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue +flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one +side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of +receiving the visitor. The woman who sat on the other side did not +rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't suppose but what you'll think we're livin' on the fat o' +the land, right straight along, all the while. But it's just like +this. When that child came in from her work, she didn't seem to have +the spirit to go to cookin' anything, and I had such a bad night last +night I was feelin' all broke up, and s'd I, what's the use, anyway? By +the time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' bone, and made you pay for +the suet he cuts away, it comes to the same thing, and why not GIT it +from the rest'rant first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd I." +</P> + +<P> +"What have you got there under your apron? A bottle?" demanded Lapham, +who stood with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent +alike to the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair Zerrilla +had set him. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with an assumption of +virtuous frankness. "It's whisky; I got to have something to rub my +rheumatism with." +</P> + +<P> +"Humph!" grumbled Lapham. "You've been rubbing HIS rheumatism too, I +see." +</P> + +<P> +He twisted his head in the direction of the sailor, now softly and +rhythmically waving to and fro on his feet. +</P> + +<P> +"He hain't had a drop to-day in THIS house!" cried the woman. +</P> + +<P> +"What are you doing around here?" said Lapham, turning fiercely upon +him. "You've got no business ashore. Where's your ship? Do you think +I'm going to let you come here and eat your wife out of house and home, +and then give money to keep the concern going?" +</P> + +<P> +"Just the very words I said when he first showed his face here, +yist'day. Didn't I, Z'rilla?" said the woman, eagerly joining in the +rebuke of her late boon companion. "You got no business here, Hen, s'd +I. You can't come here to live on me and Z'rilla, s'd I. You want to go +back to your ship, s'd I. That's what I said." +</P> + +<P> +The sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability for Lapham, +something about the crew being discharged. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," the woman broke in, "that's always the way with these coasters. +Why don't you go off on some them long v'y'ges? s'd I. It's pretty hard +when Mr. Wemmel stands ready to marry Z'rilla and provide a comfortable +home for us both--I hain't got a great many years more to live, and I +SHOULD like to get some satisfaction out of 'em, and not be beholden +and dependent all my days,--to have Hen, here, blockin' the way. I +tell him there'd be more money for him in the end; but he can't seem to +make up his mind to it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, now, look here," said Lapham. "I don't care anything about all +that. It's your own business, and I'm not going to meddle with it. +But it's my business who lives off me; and so I tell you all three, I'm +willing to take care of Zerrilla, and I'm willing to take care of her +mother----" +</P> + +<P> +"I guess if it hadn't been for that child's father," the mother +interpolated, "you wouldn't been here to tell the tale, Colonel Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"I know all about that," said Lapham. "But I'll tell you what, Mr. +Dewey, I'm not going to support YOU." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see what Hen's done," said the old woman impartially. +</P> + +<P> +"He hasn't done anything, and I'm going to stop it. He's got to get a +ship, and he's got to get out of this. And Zerrilla needn't come back +to work till he does. I'm done with you all." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I vow," said the mother, "if I ever heard anything like it! +Didn't that child's father lay down his life for you? Hain't you said +it yourself a hundred times? And don't she work for her money, and +slave for it mornin', noon, and night? You talk as if we was beholden +to you for the very bread in our mouths. I guess if it hadn't been for +Jim, you wouldn't been here crowin' over us." +</P> + +<P> +"You mind what I say. I mean business this time," said Lapham, turning +to the door. +</P> + +<P> +The woman rose and followed him, with her bottle in her hand. "Say, +Colonel! what should you advise Z'rilla to do about Mr. Wemmel? I tell +her there ain't any use goin' to the trouble to git a divorce without +she's sure about him. Don't you think we'd ought to git him to sign a +paper, or something, that he'll marry her if she gits it? I don't like +to have things going at loose ends the way they are. It ain't sense. +It ain't right." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham made no answer to the mother anxious for her child's future, and +concerned for the moral questions involved. He went out and down the +stairs, and on the pavement at the lower door he almost struck against +Rogers, who had a bag in his hand, and seemed to be hurrying towards +one of the depots. He halted a little, as if to speak to Lapham; but +Lapham turned his back abruptly upon him, and took the other direction. +</P> + +<P> +The days were going by in a monotony of adversity to him, from which he +could no longer escape, even at home. He attempted once or twice to +talk of his troubles to his wife, but she repulsed him sharply; she +seemed to despise and hate him; but he set himself doggedly to make a +confession to her, and he stopped her one night, as she came into the +room where he sat--hastily upon some errand that was to take her +directly away again. +</P> + +<P> +"Persis, there's something I've got to tell you." +</P> + +<P> +She stood still, as if fixed against her will, to listen. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess you know something about it already, and I guess it set you +against me." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I guess not, Colonel Lapham. You go your way, and I go mine. +That's all." +</P> + +<P> +She waited for him to speak, listening with a cold, hard smile on her +face. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't say it to make favour with you, because I don't want you to +spare me, and I don't ask you; but I got into it through Milton K. +Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" said Mrs. Lapham contemptuously. +</P> + +<P> +"I always felt the way I said about it--that it wa'n't any better than +gambling, and I say so now. It's like betting on the turn of a card; +and I give you my word of honour, Persis, that I never was in it at all +till that scoundrel began to load me up with those wild-cat securities +of his. Then it seemed to me as if I ought to try to do something to +get somewhere even. I know it's no excuse; but watching the market to +see what the infernal things were worth from day to day, and seeing it +go up, and seeing it go down, was too much for me; and, to make a long +story short, I began to buy and sell on a margin--just what I told you +I never would do. I seemed to make something--I did make something; +and I'd have stopped, I do believe, if I could have reached the figure +I'd set in my own mind to start with; but I couldn't fetch it. I began +to lose, and then I began to throw good money after bad, just as I +always did with everything that Rogers ever came within a mile of. +Well, what's the use? I lost the money that would have carried me out +of this, and I shouldn't have had to shut down the Works, or sell the +house, or----" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham stopped. His wife, who at first had listened with +mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of +relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity. "Silas +Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started to +tell me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, of course it is. What did you suppose I started to tell you?" +</P> + +<P> +"And--look me in the eyes!--you haven't got anything else on your mind +now?" +</P> + +<P> +"No! There's trouble enough, the Lord knows; but there's nothing else +to tell you. I suppose Pen gave you a hint about it. I dropped +something to her. I've been feeling bad about it, Persis, a good +while, but I hain't had the heart to speak of it. I can't expect you +to say you like it. I've been a fool, I'll allow, and I've been +something worse, if you choose to say so; but that's all. I haven't +hurt anybody but myself--and you and the children." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham rose and said, with her face from him, as she turned +towards the door, "It's all right, Silas. I shan't ever bring it up +against you." +</P> + +<P> +She fled out of the room, but all that evening she was very sweet with +him, and seemed to wish in all tacit ways to atone for her past +unkindness. +</P> + +<P> +She made him talk of his business, and he told her of Corey's offer, +and what he had done about it. She did not seem to care for his part +in it, however; at which Lapham was silently disappointed a little, for +he would have liked her to praise him. +</P> + +<P> +"He did it on account of Pen!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said Lapham, who must have +obscurely expected that Corey would recognise his own magnanimity by +repeating his offer. If the doubt that follows a self-devoted +action--the question whether it was not after all a needless folly--is +mixed, as it was in Lapham's case, with the vague belief that we might +have done ourselves a good turn without great risk of hurting any one +else by being a little less unselfish, it becomes a regret that is hard +to bear. Since Corey spoke to him, some things had happened that gave +Lapham hope again. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and she showed herself +impatient to make up for the time she had lost. "Why didn't you tell +me before, Silas?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know we were on speaking terms before," said Lapham sadly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious flush. "I hope he +won't think Pen's known about it all this while." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap24"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXIV. +</H3> + +<P> +THAT evening James Bellingham came to see Corey after dinner, and went +to find him in his own room. +</P> + +<P> +"I've come at the instance of Colonel Lapham," said the uncle. "He was +at my office to-day, and I had a long talk with him. Did you know that +he was in difficulties?" +</P> + +<P> +"I fancied that he was in some sort of trouble. And I had the +book-keeper's conjectures--he doesn't really know much about it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he thinks it time--on all accounts--that you should know how he +stands, and why he declined that proposition of yours. I must say he +has behaved very well--like a gentleman." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not surprised." +</P> + +<P> +"I am. It's hard to behave like a gentleman where your interest is +vitally concerned. And Lapham doesn't strike me as a man who's in the +habit of acting from the best in him always." +</P> + +<P> +"Do any of us?" asked Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"Not all of us, at any rate," said Bellingham. "It must have cost him +something to say no to you, for he's just in that state when he +believes that this or that chance, however small, would save him." +</P> + +<P> +Corey was silent. "Is he really in such a bad way?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's hard to tell just where he stands. I suspect that a hopeful +temperament and fondness for round numbers have always caused him to +set his figures beyond his actual worth. I don't say that he's been +dishonest about it, but he's had a loose way of estimating his assets; +he's reckoned his wealth on the basis of his capital, and some of his +capital is borrowed. He's lost heavily by some of the recent failures, +and there's been a terrible shrinkage in his values. I don't mean +merely in the stock of paint on hand, but in a kind of competition +which has become very threatening. You know about that West Virginian +paint?" +</P> + +<P> +Corey nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he tells me that they've struck a vein of natural gas out there +which will enable them to make as good a paint as his own at a cost of +manufacturing so low that they can undersell him everywhere. If this +proves to be the case, it will not only drive his paint out of the +market, but will reduce the value of his Works--the whole plant--at +Lapham to a merely nominal figure." +</P> + +<P> +"I see," said Corey dejectedly. "I've understood that he had put a +great deal of money into his Works." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, and he estimated his mine there at a high figure. Of course it +will be worth little or nothing if the West Virginia paint drives his +out. Then, besides, Lapham has been into several things outside of his +own business, and, like a good many other men who try outside things, +he's kept account of them himself; and he's all mixed up about them. +He's asked me to look into his affairs with him, and I've promised to +do so. Whether he can be tided over his difficulties remains to be +seen. I'm afraid it will take a good deal of money to do it--a great +deal more than he thinks, at least. He believes comparatively little +would do it. I think differently. I think that anything less than a +great deal would be thrown away on him. If it were merely a question +of a certain sum--even a large sum--to keep him going, it might be +managed; but it's much more complicated. And, as I say, it must have +been a trial to him to refuse your offer." +</P> + +<P> +This did not seem to be the way in which Bellingham had meant to +conclude. But he said no more; and Corey made him no response. +</P> + +<P> +He remained pondering the case, now hopefully, now doubtfully, and +wondering, whatever his mood was, whether Penelope knew anything of the +fact with which her mother went nearly at the same moment to acquaint +her. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course, he's done it on your account," Mrs. Lapham could not help +saying. +</P> + +<P> +"Then he was very silly. Does he think I would let him give father +money? And if father lost it for him, does he suppose it would make it +any easier for me? I think father acted twice as well. It was very +silly." +</P> + +<P> +In repeating the censure, her look was not so severe as her tone; she +even smiled a little, and her mother reported to her father that she +acted more like herself than she had yet since Corey's offer. +</P> + +<P> +"I think, if he was to repeat his offer, she would have him now," said +Mrs. Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'll let her know if he does," said the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess he won't do it to you!" she cried. +</P> + +<P> +"Who else will he do it to?" he demanded. +</P> + +<P> +They perceived that they had each been talking of a different offer. +</P> + +<P> +After Lapham went to his business in the morning the postman brought +another letter from Irene, which was full of pleasant things that were +happening to her; there was a great deal about her cousin Will, as she +called him. At the end she had written, "Tell Pen I don't want she +should be foolish." "There!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I guess it's going to +come out right, all round;" and it seemed as if even the Colonel's +difficulties were past. "When your father gets through this, Pen," she +asked impulsively, "what shall you do?" +</P> + +<P> +"What have you been telling Irene about me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing much. What should you do?" +</P> + +<P> +"It would be a good deal easier to say what I should do if father +didn't," said the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"I know you think it was nice in him to make your father that offer," +urged the mother. +</P> + +<P> +"It was nice, yes; but it was silly," said the girl. "Most nice things +are silly, I suppose," she added. +</P> + +<P> +She went to her room and wrote a letter. It was very long, and very +carefully written; and when she read it over, she tore it into small +pieces. She wrote another one, short and hurried, and tore that up +too. Then she went back to her mother, in the family room, and asked +to see Irene's letter, and read it over to herself. "Yes, she seems to +be having a good time," she sighed. "Mother, do you think I ought to +let Mr. Corey know that I know about it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I should think it would be a pleasure to him," said Mrs. Lapham +judicially. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not so sure of that the way I should have to tell him. I should +begin by giving him a scolding. Of course, he meant well by it, but +can't you see that it wasn't very flattering! How did he expect it +would change me?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe he ever thought of that." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you? Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"Because you can see that he isn't one of that kind. He might want to +please you without wanting to change you by what he did." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. He must have known that nothing would change me,--at least, +nothing that he could do. I thought of that. I shouldn't like him to +feel that I couldn't appreciate it, even if I did think it was silly. +Should you write to him?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why not." +</P> + +<P> +"It would be too pointed. No, I shall just let it go. I wish he +hadn't done it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he has done it." "And I've tried to write to him about it--two +letters: one so humble and grateful that it couldn't stand up on its +edge, and the other so pert and flippant. Mother, I wish you could +have seen those two letters! I wish I had kept them to look at if I +ever got to thinking I had any sense again. They would take the +conceit out of me." +</P> + +<P> +"What's the reason he don't come here any more?" +</P> + +<P> +"Doesn't he come?" asked Penelope in turn, as if it were something she +had not noticed particularly. +</P> + +<P> +"You'd ought to know." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." She sat silent a while. "If he doesn't come, I suppose it's +because he's offended at something I did." +</P> + +<P> +"What did you do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing. I--wrote to him--a little while ago. I suppose it was very +blunt, but I didn't believe he would be angry at it. But this--this +that he's done shows he was angry, and that he wasn't just seizing the +first chance to get out of it." +</P> + +<P> +"What have you done, Pen?" demanded her mother sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't know. All the mischief in the world, I suppose. I'll +tell you. When you first told me that father was in trouble with his +business, I wrote to him not to come any more till I let him. I said I +couldn't tell him why, and he hasn't been here since. I'm sure I don't +know what it means." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother looked at her with angry severity. "Well, Penelope Lapham! +For a sensible child, you ARE the greatest goose I ever saw. Did you +think he would come here and SEE if you wouldn't let him come?" +</P> + +<P> +"He might have written," urged the girl. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother made that despairing "Tchk!" with her tongue, and fell back +in her chair. "I should have DESPISED him if he had written. He's +acted just exactly right, and you--you've acted--I don't know HOW +you've acted. I'm ashamed of you. A girl that could be so sensible +for her sister, and always say and do just the right thing, and then +when it comes to herself to be such a DISGUSTING simpleton!" +</P> + +<P> +"I thought I ought to break with him at once, and not let him suppose +that there was any hope for him or me if father was poor. It was my +one chance, in this whole business, to do anything heroic, and I jumped +at it. You mustn't think, because I can laugh at it now, that I wasn't +in earnest, mother! I WAS--dead! But the Colonel has gone to ruin so +gradually, that he's spoilt everything. I expected that he would be +bankrupt the next day, and that then HE would understand what I meant. +But to have it drag along for a fortnight seems to take all the heroism +out of it, and leave it as flat!" She looked at her mother with a smile +that shone through her tears, and a pathos that quivered round her +jesting lips. "It's easy enough to be sensible for other people. But +when it comes to myself, there I am! Especially, when I want to do what +I oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing what I didn't want to do +MUST be doing what I ought! But it's been a great success one way, +mother. It's helped me to keep up before the Colonel. If it hadn't +been for Mr. Corey's staying away, and my feeling so indignant with him +for having been badly treated by me, I shouldn't have been worth +anything at all." +</P> + +<P> +The tears started down her cheeks, but her mother said, "Well, now, go +along, and write to him. It don't matter what you say, much; and don't +be so very particular." +</P> + +<P> +Her third attempt at a letter pleased her scarcely better than the +rest, but she sent it, though it seemed so blunt and awkward. She +wrote:-- +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +DEAR FRIEND,--I expected when I sent you that note, that you would +understand, almost the next day, why I could not see you any more. You +must know now, and you must not think that if anything happened to my +father, I should wish you to help him. But that is no reason why I +should not thank you, and I do thank you, for offering. It was like +you, I will say that. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Yours sincerely, PENELOPE LAPHAM. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +She posted her letter, and he sent his reply in the evening, by hand:-- +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +DEAREST,--What I did was nothing, till you praised it. Everything I +have and am is yours. Won't you send a line by the bearer, to say that +I may come to see you? I know how you feel; but I am sure that I can +make you think differently. You must consider that I loved you without +a thought of your father's circumstances, and always shall. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +T. C. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The generous words were blurred to her eyes by the tears that sprang +into them. But she could only write in answer:-- +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Please do not come; I have made up my mind. As long as this trouble +is hanging over us, I cannot see you. And if father is unfortunate, +all is over between us." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +She brought his letter to her mother, and told her what she had written +in reply. Her mother was thoughtful a while before she said, with a +sigh, "Well, I hope you've begun as you can carry out, Pen." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I shall not have to carry out at all. I shall not have to do +anything. That's one comfort--the only comfort." She went away to her +own room, and when Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the affair, he was +silent at first, as she had been. Then he said, "I don't know as I +should have wanted her to done differently; I don't know as she could. +If I ever come right again, she won't have anything to feel meeching +about; and if I don't, I don't want she should be beholden to anybody. +And I guess that's the way she feels." +</P> + +<P> +The Coreys in their turn sat in judgment on the fact which their son +felt bound to bring to their knowledge. +</P> + +<P> +"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Corey, to whom her son had +spoken. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear," said her husband, with his laugh, "she has behaved TOO well. +If she had studied the whole situation with the most artful eye to its +mastery, she could not possibly have behaved better." +</P> + +<P> +The process of Lapham's financial disintegration was like the course of +some chronic disorder, which has fastened itself upon the constitution, +but advances with continual reliefs, with apparent amelioration, and at +times seems not to advance at all, when it gives hope of final recovery +not only to the sufferer, but to the eye of science itself. There were +moments when James Bellingham, seeing Lapham pass this crisis and that, +began to fancy that he might pull through altogether; and at these +moments, when his adviser could not oppose anything but experience and +probability to the evidence of the fact, Lapham was buoyant with +courage, and imparted his hopefulness to his household. Our theory of +disaster, of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets and +novelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage in our own lives +and in the lives of others, so far as we have witnessed them, teaches +us that this is false. The house of mourning is decorously darkened to +the world, but within itself it is also the house of laughing. Bursts +of gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve the gloom, and the +stricken survivors have their jests together, in which the thought of +the dead is tenderly involved, and a fond sense, not crazier than many +others, of sympathy and enjoyment beyond the silence, justifies the +sunnier mood before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing, and +making it all up again with the conventional fitness of things. +Lapham's adversity had this quality in common with bereavement. It was +not always like the adversity we figure in allegory; it had its moments +of being like prosperity, and if upon the whole it was continual, it +was not incessant. Sometimes there was a week of repeated reverses, +when he had to keep his teeth set and to hold on hard to all his +hopefulness; and then days came of negative result or slight success, +when he was full of his jokes at the tea-table, and wanted to go to the +theatre, or to do something to cheer Penelope up. In some miraculous +way, by some enormous stroke of success which should eclipse the +brightest of his past prosperity, he expected to do what would +reconcile all difficulties, not only in his own affairs, but in hers +too. "You'll see," he said to his wife; "it's going to come out all +right. Irene'll fix it up with Bill's boy, and then she'll be off +Pen's mind; and if things go on as they've been going for the last two +days, I'm going to be in a position to do the favours myself, and Pen +can feel that SHE'S makin' a sacrifice, and then I guess may be she'll +do it. If things turn out as I expect now, and times ever do get any +better generally, I can show Corey that I appreciate his offer. I can +offer him the partnership myself then." +</P> + +<P> +Even in the other moods, which came when everything had been going +wrong, and there seemed no way out of the net, there were points of +consolation to Lapham and his wife. They rejoiced that Irene was safe +beyond the range of their anxieties, and they had a proud satisfaction +that there had been no engagement between Corey and Penelope, and that +it was she who had forbidden it. In the closeness of interest and +sympathy in which their troubles had reunited them, they confessed to +each other that nothing would have been more galling to their pride +than the idea that Lapham should not have been able to do everything +for his daughter that the Coreys might have expected. Whatever +happened now, the Coreys could not have it to say that the Laphams had +tried to bring any such thing about. +</P> + +<P> +Bellingham had lately suggested an assignment to Lapham, as the best +way out of his difficulties. It was evident that he had not the money +to meet his liabilities at present, and that he could not raise it +without ruinous sacrifices, that might still end in ruin after all. If +he made the assignment, Bellingham argued, he could gain time and make +terms; the state of things generally would probably improve, since it +could not be worse, and the market, which he had glutted with his +paint, might recover and he could start again. Lapham had not agreed +with him. When his reverses first began it had seemed easy for him to +give up everything, to let the people he owed take all, so only they +would let him go out with clean hands; and he had dramatised this +feeling in his talk with his wife, when they spoke together of the +mills on the G. L. & P. But ever since then it had been growing harder, +and he could not consent even to seem to do it now in the proposed +assignment. He had not found other men so very liberal or faithful +with him; a good many of them appeared to have combined to hunt him +down; a sense of enmity towards all his creditors asserted itself in +him; he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too. Above +all, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment. It was open +confession that he had been a fool in some way; he could not bear to +have his family--his brother the judge, especially, to whom he had +always appeared the soul of business wisdom--think him imprudent or +stupid. He would make any sacrifice before it came to that. He +determined in parting with Bellingham to make the sacrifice which he +had oftenest in his mind, because it was the hardest, and to sell his +new house. That would cause the least comment. Most people would +simply think that he had got a splendid offer, and with his usual luck +had made a very good thing of it; others who knew a little more about +him would say that he was hauling in his horns, but they could not +blame him; a great many other men were doing the same in those hard +times--the shrewdest and safest men: it might even have a good effect. +He went straight from Bellingham's office to the real-estate broker in +whose hands he meant to put his house, for he was not the sort of man +to shilly-shally when he had once made up his mind. But he found it +hard to get his voice up out of his throat, when he said he guessed he +would get the broker to sell that new house of his on the water side of +Beacon. The broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed Colonel +Lapham knew it was a pretty dull time in real estate? and Lapham said +yes, he knew that, but he should not sell at a sacrifice, and he did +not care to have the broker name him or describe the house definitely +unless parties meant business. Again the broker said yes; and he +added, as a joke Lapham would appreciate, that he had half a dozen +houses on the water side of Beacon, on the same terms; that nobody +wanted to be named or to have his property described. +</P> + +<P> +It did, in fact, comfort Lapham a little to find himself in the same +boat with so many others; he smiled grimly, and said in his turn, yes, +he guessed that was about the size of it with a good many people. But +he had not the heart to tell his wife what he had done, and he sat +taciturn that whole evening, without even going over his accounts, and +went early to bed, where he lay tossing half the night before he fell +asleep. He slept at last only upon the promise he made himself that he +would withdraw the house from the broker's hands; but he went heavily +to his own business in the morning without doing so. There was no such +rush, anyhow, he reflected bitterly; there would be time to do that a +month later, probably. +</P> + +<P> +It struck him with a sort of dismay when a boy came with a note from a +broker, saying that a party who had been over the house in the fall had +come to him to know whether it could be bought, and was willing to pay +the cost of the house up to the time he had seen it. Lapham took +refuge in trying to think who the party could be; he concluded that it +must have been somebody who had gone over it with the architect, and he +did not like that; but he was aware that this was not an answer to the +broker, and he wrote that he would give him an answer in the morning. +</P> + +<P> +Now that it had come to the point, it did not seem to him that he could +part with the house. So much of his hope for himself and his children +had gone into it that the thought of selling it made him tremulous and +sick. He could not keep about his work steadily, and with his nerves +shaken by want of sleep, and the shock of this sudden and unexpected +question, he left his office early, and went over to look at the house +and try to bring himself to some conclusion here. The long procession +of lamps on the beautiful street was flaring in the clear red of the +sunset towards which it marched, and Lapham, with a lump in his throat, +stopped in front of his house and looked at their multitude. They were +not merely a part of the landscape; they were a part of his pride and +glory, his success, his triumphant life's work which was fading into +failure in his helpless hands. He ground his teeth to keep down that +lump, but the moisture in his eyes blurred the lamps, and the keen pale +crimson against which it made them flicker. He turned and looked up, +as he had so often done, at the window-spaces, neatly glazed for the +winter with white linen, and recalled the night when he had stopped +with Irene before the house, and she had said that she should never +live there, and he had tried to coax her into courage about it. There +was no such facade as that on the whole street, to his thinking. +Through his long talks with the architect, he had come to feel almost +as intimately and fondly as the architect himself the satisfying +simplicity of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail. It +appealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearned +ear, and he recognised the difference between this fine work and the +obstreperous pretentiousness of the many overloaded house-fronts which +Seymour had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere on the Back +Bay. Now, in the depths of his gloom, he tried to think what Italian +city it was where Seymour said he had first got the notion of treating +brick-work in that way. +</P> + +<P> +He unlocked the temporary door with the key he always carried, so that +he could let himself in and out whenever he liked, and entered the +house, dim and very cold with the accumulated frigidity of the whole +winter in it, and looking as if the arrest of work upon it had taken +place a thousand years before. It smelt of the unpainted woods and the +clean, hard surfaces of the plaster, where the experiments in +decoration had left it untouched; and mingled with these odours was +that of some rank pigments and metallic compositions which Seymour had +used in trying to realise a certain daring novelty of finish, which had +not proved successful. Above all, Lapham detected the peculiar odour +of his own paint, with which the architect had been greatly interested +one day, when Lapham showed it to him at the office. He had asked +Lapham to let him try the Persis Brand in realising a little idea he +had for the finish of Mrs. Lapham's room. If it succeeded they could +tell her what it was, for a surprise. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham glanced at the bay-window in the reception-room, where he sat +with his girls on the trestles when Corey first came by; and then he +explored the whole house to the attic, in the light faintly admitted +through the linen sashes. The floors were strewn with shavings and +chips which the carpenters had left, and in the music-room these had +been blown into long irregular windrows by the draughts through a wide +rent in the linen sash. Lapham tried to pin it up, but failed, and +stood looking out of it over the water. The ice had left the river, +and the low tide lay smooth and red in the light of the sunset. The +Cambridge flats showed the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bare +after a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked trees, the spires +and roofs had a black outline, as if they were objects in a landscape +of the French school. +</P> + +<P> +The whim seized Lapham to test the chimney in the music-room; it had +been tried in the dining-room below, and in his girls' fireplaces +above, but here the hearth was still clean. He gathered some shavings +and blocks together, and kindled them, and as the flame mounted gaily +from them, he pulled up a nail-keg which he found there and sat down to +watch it. Nothing could have been better; the chimney was a perfect +success; and as Lapham glanced out of the torn linen sash he said to +himself that that party, whoever he was, who had offered to buy his +house might go to the devil; he would never sell it as long as he had a +dollar. He said that he should pull through yet; and it suddenly came +into his mind that, if he could raise the money to buy out those West +Virginia fellows, he should be all right, and would have the whole game +in his own hand. He slapped himself on the thigh, and wondered that he +had never thought of that before; and then, lighting a cigar with a +splinter from the fire, he sat down again to work the scheme out in his +own mind. He did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the stairs, and +coming towards the room where he sat; and the policeman to whom the +feet belonged had to call out to him, smoking at his chimney-corner, +with his back turned to the door, "Hello! what are you doing here?" +</P> + +<P> +"What's that to you?" retorted Lapham, wheeling half round on his +nail-keg. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon him, and then +stopping short as he recognised him. "Why, Colonel Lapham! I thought +it was some tramp got in here!" +</P> + +<P> +"Have a cigar?" said Lapham hospitably. "Sorry there ain't another +nail-keg." +</P> + +<P> +The officer took the cigar. "I'll smoke it outside. I've just come +on, and I can't stop. Tryin' your chimney?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I thought I'd see how it would draw, in here. It seems to go +first-rate." +</P> + +<P> +The policeman looked about him with an eye of inspection. "You want to +get that linen window, there, mended up." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I'll speak to the builder about that. It can go for one night." +</P> + +<P> +The policeman went to the window and failed to pin the linen together +where Lapham had failed before. "I can't fix it." He looked round once +more, and saying, "Well, good night," went out and down the stairs. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked his cigar; then he rose +and stamped upon the embers that still burned with his heavy boots, and +went home. He was very cheerful at supper. He told his wife that he +guessed he had a sure thing of it now, and in another twenty-four hours +he should tell her just how. He made Penelope go to the theatre with +him, and when they came out, after the play, the night was so fine that +he said they must walk round by the new house and take a look at it in +the starlight. He said he had been there before he came home, and +tried Seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like a charm. +</P> + +<P> +As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware of unwonted stir and +tumult, and presently the still air transmitted a turmoil of sound, +through which a powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt. The +sky had reddened above them, and turning the corner at the Public +Garden, they saw a black mass of people obstructing the perspective of +the brightly-lighted street, and out of this mass a half-dozen engines, +whose strong heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes of +fire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels. Ladders were planted +against the facade of a building, from the roof of which a mass of +flame burnt smoothly upward, except where here and there it seemed to +pull contemptuously away from the heavy streams of water which the +firemen, clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in upon +it. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing and +gossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter, before the +burning house, to make sure that it was his. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said. +</P> + +<P> +Among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed to have +run out from dinner in some neighbouring house; the ladies were +fantastically wrapped up, as if they had flung on the first things they +could seize. +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl. "I wouldn't +have missed it on any account. Thank you so much, Mr. Symington, for +bringing us out!" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, I thought you'd like it," said this Mr. Symington, who must have +been the host; "and you can enjoy it without the least compunction, +Miss Delano, for I happen to know that the house belongs to a man who +could afford to burn one up for you once a year." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, do you think he would, if I came again?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't the least doubt of it. We don't do things by halves in +Boston." +</P> + +<P> +"He ought to have had a coat of his noncombustible paint on it," said +another gentleman of the party. +</P> + +<P> +Penelope pulled her father away toward the first carriage she could +reach of a number that had driven up. "Here, father! get into this." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no; I couldn't ride," he answered heavily, and he walked home in +silence. He greeted his wife with, "Well, Persis, our house is gone! +And I guess I set it on fire myself;" and while he rummaged among the +papers in his desk, still with his coat and hat on, his wife got the +facts as she could from Penelope. She did not reproach him. Here was +a case in which his self-reproach must be sufficiently sharp without +any edge from her. Besides, her mind was full of a terrible thought. +</P> + +<P> +"O Silas," she faltered, "they'll think you set it on fire to get the +insurance!" +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was staring at a paper which he held in his hand. "I had a +builder's risk on it, but it expired last week. It's a dead loss." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, thank the merciful Lord!" cried his wife. +</P> + +<P> +"Merciful!" said Lapham. "Well, it's a queer way of showing it." +</P> + +<P> +He went to bed, and fell into the deep sleep which sometimes follows a +great moral shock. It was perhaps rather a torpor than a sleep. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap25"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXV. +</H3> + +<P> +LAPHAM awoke confused, and in a kind of remoteness from the loss of the +night before, through which it loomed mistily. But before he lifted +his head from the pillow, it gathered substance and weight against +which it needed all his will to bear up and live. In that moment he +wished that he had not wakened, that he might never have wakened; but +he rose, and faced the day and its cares. +</P> + +<P> +The morning papers brought the report of the fire, and the conjectured +loss. The reporters somehow had found out the fact that the loss fell +entirely upon Lapham; they lighted up the hackneyed character of their +statements with the picturesque interest OF the coincidence that the +policy had expired only the week before; heaven knows how they knew it. +They said that nothing remained of the building but the walls; and +Lapham, on his way to business, walked up past the smoke-stained shell. +The windows looked like the eye-sockets of a skull down upon the +blackened and trampled snow of the street; the pavement was a sheet of +ice, and the water from the engines had frozen, like streams of tears, +down the face of the house, and hung in icy tags from the window-sills +and copings. +</P> + +<P> +He gathered himself up as well as he could, and went on to his office. +The chance of retrieval that had flashed upon him, as he sat smoking by +that ruined hearth the evening before, stood him in such stead now as a +sole hope may; and he said to himself that, having resolved not to sell +his house, he was no more crippled by its loss than he would have been +by letting his money lie idle in it; what he might have raised by +mortgage on it could be made up in some other way; and if they would +sell he could still buy out the whole business of that West Virginia +company, mines, plant, stock on hand, good-will, and everything, and +unite it with his own. He went early in the afternoon to see +Bellingham, whose expressions of condolence for his loss he cut short +with as much politeness as he knew how to throw into his impatience. +Bellingham seemed at first a little dazzled with the splendid courage +of his scheme; it was certainly fine in its way; but then he began to +have his misgivings. +</P> + +<P> +"I happen to know that they haven't got much money behind them," urged +Lapham. "They'll jump at an offer." +</P> + +<P> +Bellingham shook his head. "If they can show profit on the old +manufacture, and prove they can make their paint still cheaper and +better hereafter, they can have all the money they want. And it will +be very difficult for you to raise it if you're threatened by them. +With that competition, you know what your plant at Lapham would be +worth, and what the shrinkage on your manufactured stock would be. +Better sell out to them," he concluded, "if they will buy." +</P> + +<P> +"There ain't money enough in this country to buy out my paint," said +Lapham, buttoning up his coat in a quiver of resentment. "Good +afternoon, sir." Men are but grown-up boys after all. Bellingham +watched this perversely proud and obstinate child fling petulantly out +of his door, and felt a sympathy for him which was as truly kind as it +was helpless. +</P> + +<P> +But Lapham was beginning to see through Bellingham, as he believed. +Bellingham was, in his way, part of that conspiracy by which Lapham's +creditors were trying to drive him to the wall. More than ever now he +was glad that he had nothing to do with that cold-hearted, +self-conceited race, and that the favours so far were all from his +side. He was more than ever determined to show them, every one of +them, high and low, that he and his children could get along without +them, and prosper and triumph without them. He said to himself that if +Penelope were engaged to Corey that very minute, he would make her +break with him. +</P> + +<P> +He knew what he should do now, and he was going to do it without loss +of time. He was going on to New York to see those West Virginia +people; they had their principal office there, and he intended to get +at their ideas, and then he intended to make them an offer. He managed +this business better than could possibly have been expected of a man in +his impassioned mood. But when it came really to business, his +practical instincts, alert and wary, came to his aid against the +passions that lay in wait to betray after they ceased to dominate him. +He found the West Virginians full of zeal and hope, but in ten minutes +he knew that they had not yet tested their strength in the money +market, and had not ascertained how much or how little capital they +could command. Lapham himself, if he had had so much, would not have +hesitated to put a million dollars into their business. He saw, as +they did not see, that they had the game in their own hands, and that +if they could raise the money to extend their business, they could ruin +him. It was only a question of time, and he was on the ground first. +He frankly proposed a union of their interests. He admitted that they +had a good thing, and that he should have to fight them hard; but he +meant to fight them to the death unless they could come to some sort of +terms. Now, the question was whether they had better go on and make a +heavy loss for both sides by competition, or whether they had better +form a partnership to run both paints and command the whole market. +Lapham made them three propositions, each of which was fair and open: +to sell out to them altogether; to buy them out altogether; to join +facilities and forces with them, and go on in an invulnerable alliance. +Let them name a figure at which they would buy, a figure at which they +would sell, a figure at which they would combine,--or, in other words, +the amount of capital they needed. +</P> + +<P> +They talked all day, going out to lunch together at the Astor House, +and sitting with their knees against the counter on a row of stools +before it for fifteen minutes of reflection and deglutition, with their +hats on, and then returning to the basement from which they emerged. +The West Virginia company's name was lettered in gilt on the wide low +window, and its paint, in the form of ore, burnt, and mixed, formed a +display on the window shelf Lapham examined it and praised it; from +time to time they all recurred to it together; they sent out for some +of Lapham's paint and compared it, the West Virginians admitting its +former superiority. They were young fellows, and country persons, like +Lapham, by origin, and they looked out with the same amused, undaunted +provincial eyes at the myriad metropolitan legs passing on the pavement +above the level of their window. He got on well with them. At last, +they said what they would do. They said it was nonsense to talk of +buying Lapham out, for they had not the money; and as for selling out, +they would not do it, for they knew they had a big thing. But they +would as soon use his capital to develop it as anybody else's, and if +he could put in a certain sum for this purpose, they would go in with +him. He should run the works at Lapham and manage the business in +Boston, and they would run the works at Kanawha Falls and manage the +business in New York. The two brothers with whom Lapham talked named +their figure, subject to the approval of another brother at Kanawha +Falls, to whom they would write, and who would telegraph his answer, so +that Lapham could have it inside of three days. But they felt +perfectly sure that he would approve; and Lapham started back on the +eleven o'clock train with an elation that gradually left him as he drew +near Boston, where the difficulties of raising this sum were to be over +come. It seemed to him, then, that those fellows had put it up on him +pretty steep, but he owned to himself that they had a sure thing, and +that they were right in believing they could raise the same sum +elsewhere; it would take all OF it, he admitted, to make their paint +pay on the scale they had the right to expect. At their age, he would +not have done differently; but when he emerged, old, sore, and +sleep-broken, from the sleeping-car in the Albany depot at Boston, he +wished with a pathetic self-pity that they knew how a man felt at his +age. A year ago, six months ago, he would have laughed at the notion +that it would be hard to raise the money. But he thought ruefully of +that immense stock of paint on hand, which was now a drug in the +market, of his losses by Rogers and by the failures of other men, of +the fire that had licked up so many thousands in a few hours; he +thought with bitterness of the tens of thousands that he had gambled +away in stocks, and of the commissions that the brokers had pocketed +whether he won or lost; and he could not think of any securities on +which he could borrow, except his house in Nankeen Square, or the mine +and works at Lapham. He set his teeth in helpless rage when he thought +of that property out on the G. L. & P., that ought to be worth so much, +and was worth so little if the Road chose to say so. +</P> + +<P> +He did not go home, but spent most of the day shining round, as he +would have expressed it, and trying to see if he could raise the money. +But he found that people of whom he hoped to get it were in the +conspiracy which had been formed to drive him to the wall. Somehow, +there seemed a sense of his embarrassments abroad. Nobody wanted to +lend money on the plant at Lapham without taking time to look into the +state of the business; but Lapham had no time to give, and he knew that +the state of the business would not bear looking into. He could raise +fifteen thousand on his Nankeen Square house, and another fifteen on +his Beacon Street lot, and this was all that a man who was worth a +million by rights could do! He said a million, and he said it in +defiance of Bellingham, who had subjected his figures to an analysis +which wounded Lapham more than he chose to show at the time, for it +proved that he was not so rich and not so wise as he had seemed. His +hurt vanity forbade him to go to Bellingham now for help or advice; and +if he could have brought himself to ask his brothers for money, it +would have been useless; they were simply well-to-do Western people, +but not capitalists on the scale he required. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham stood in the isolation to which adversity so often seems to +bring men. When its test was applied, practically or theoretically, to +all those who had seemed his friends, there was none who bore it; and +he thought with bitter self-contempt of the people whom he had +befriended in their time of need. He said to himself that he had been +a fool for that; and he scorned himself for certain acts of +scrupulosity by which he had lost money in the past. Seeing the moral +forces all arrayed against him, Lapham said that he would like to have +the chance offered him to get even with them again; he thought he +should know how to look out for himself. As he understood it, he had +several days to turn about in, and he did not let one day's failure +dishearten him. The morning after his return he had, in fact, a gleam +of luck that gave him the greatest encouragement for the moment. A man +came in to inquire about one of Rogers's wild-cat patents, as Lapham +called them, and ended by buying it. He got it, of course, for less +than Lapham took it for, but Lapham was glad to be rid of it for +something, when he had thought it worth nothing; and when the +transaction was closed, he asked the purchaser rather eagerly if he +knew where Rogers was; it was Lapham's secret belief that Rogers had +found there was money in the thing, and had sent the man to buy it. +But it appeared that this was a mistake; the man had not come from +Rogers, but had heard of the patent in another way; and Lapham was +astonished in the afternoon, when his boy came to tell him that Rogers +was in the outer office, and wished to speak with him. +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Lapham, and he could not command at once the severity +for the reception of Rogers which he would have liked to use. He found +himself, in fact, so much relaxed towards him by the morning's touch of +prosperity that he asked him to sit down, gruffly, of course, but +distinctly; and when Rogers said in his lifeless way, and with the +effect of keeping his appointment of a month before, "Those English +parties are in town, and would like to talk with you in reference to +the mills," Lapham did not turn him out-of-doors. +</P> + +<P> +He sat looking at him, and trying to make out what Rogers was after; +for he did not believe that the English parties, if they existed, had +any notion of buying his mills. +</P> + +<P> +"What if they are not for sale?" he asked. "You know that I've been +expecting an offer from the G. L. & P." +</P> + +<P> +"I've kept watch of that. They haven't made you any offer," said +Rogers quietly. +</P> + +<P> +"And did you think," demanded Lapham, firing up, "that I would turn +them in on somebody else as you turned them in on me, when the chances +are that they won't be worth ten cents on the dollar six months from +now?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know what you would do," said Rogers non-committally. "I've +come here to tell you that these parties stand ready to take the mills +off your hands at a fair valuation--at the value I put upon them when I +turned them in." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe you!" cried Lapham brutally, but a wild predatory hope +made his heart leap so that it seemed to turn over in his breast. "I +don't believe there are any such parties to begin with; and in the next +place, I don't believe they would buy at any such figure; +unless--unless you've lied to them, as you've lied to me. Did you tell +them about the G. L. & P.?" +</P> + +<P> +Rogers looked compassionately at him, but he answered, with unvaried +dryness, "I did not think that necessary." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham had expected this answer, and he had expected or intended to +break out in furious denunciation of Rogers when he got it; but he only +found himself saying, in a sort of baffled gasp, "I wonder what your +game is!" +</P> + +<P> +Rogers did not reply categorically, but he answered, with his impartial +calm, and as if Lapham had said nothing to indicate that he differed at +all with him as to disposing of the property in the way he had +suggested: "If we should succeed in selling, I should be able to repay +you your loans, and should have a little capital for a scheme that I +think of going into." +</P> + +<P> +"And do you think that I am going to steal these men's money to help +you plunder somebody in a new scheme?" answered Lapham. The sneer was +on behalf of virtue, but it was still a sneer. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose the money would be useful to you too, just now." +</P> + +<P> +"Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"Because I know that you have been trying to borrow." +</P> + +<P> +At this proof of wicked omniscience in Rogers, the question whether he +had better not regard the affair as a fatality, and yield to his +destiny, flashed upon Lapham; but he answered, "I shall want money a +great deal worse than I've ever wanted it yet, before I go into such +rascally business with you. Don't you know that we might as well knock +these parties down on the street, and take the money out of their +pockets?" +</P> + +<P> +"They have come on," answered Rogers, "from Portland to see you. I +expected them some weeks ago, but they disappointed me. They arrived +on the Circassian last night; they expected to have got in five days +ago, but the passage was very stormy." +</P> + +<P> +"Where are they?" asked Lapham, with helpless irrelevance, and feeling +himself somehow drifted from his moorings by Rogers's shipping +intelligence. +</P> + +<P> +"They are at Young's. I told them we would call upon them after dinner +this evening; they dine late." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you did, did you?" asked Lapham, trying to drop another anchor for +a fresh clutch on his underlying principles. "Well, now, you go and +tell them that I said I wouldn't come." +</P> + +<P> +"Their stay is limited," remarked Rogers. "I mentioned this evening +because they were not certain they could remain over another night. +But if to-morrow would suit you better----" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell 'em I shan't come at all," roared Lapham, as much in terror as +defiance, for he felt his anchor dragging. "Tell 'em I shan't come at +all! Do you understand that?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see why you should stickle as to the matter of going to them," +said Rogers; "but if you think it will be better to have them approach +you, I suppose I can bring them to you." +</P> + +<P> +"No, you can't! I shan't let you! I shan't see them! I shan't have +anything to do with them. NOW do you understand?" +</P> + +<P> +"I inferred from our last interview," persisted Rogers, unmoved by all +this violent demonstration of Lapham's, "that you wished to meet these +parties. You told me that you would give me time to produce them; and +I have promised them that you would meet them; I have committed myself." +</P> + +<P> +It was true that Lapham had defied Rogers to bring on his men, and had +implied his willingness to negotiate with them. That was before he had +talked the matter over with his wife, and perceived his moral +responsibility in it; even she had not seen this at once. He could not +enter into this explanation with Rogers; he could only say, "I said I'd +give you twenty-four hours to prove yourself a liar, and you did it. I +didn't say twenty-four days." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see the difference," returned Rogers. "The parties are here +now, and that proves that I was acting in good faith at the time. +There has been no change in the posture of affairs. You don't know now +any more than you knew then that the G. L. & P. is going to want the +property. If there's any difference, it's in favour of the Road's +having changed its mind." +</P> + +<P> +There was some sense in this, and Lapham felt it--felt it only too +eagerly, as he recognised the next instant. +</P> + +<P> +Rogers went on quietly: "You're not obliged to sell to these parties +when you meet them; but you've allowed me to commit myself to them by +the promise that you would talk with them." +</P> + +<P> +"'Twan't a promise," said Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +"It was the same thing; they have come out from England on my guaranty +that there was such and such an opening for their capital; and now what +am I to say to them? It places me in a ridiculous position." Rogers +urged his grievance calmly, almost impersonally, making his appeal to +Lapham's sense of justice. "I CAN'T go back to those parties and tell +them you won't see them. It's no answer to make. They've got a right +to know why you won't see them." +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, then!" cried Lapham; "I'll come and TELL them why. Who +shall I ask for? When shall I be there?" +</P> + +<P> +"At eight o'clock, please," said Rogers, rising, without apparent alarm +at his threat, if it was a threat. "And ask for me; I've taken a room +at the hotel for the present." +</P> + +<P> +"I won't keep you five minutes when I get there," said Lapham; but he +did not come away till ten o'clock. +</P> + +<P> +It appeared to him as if the very devil was in it. The Englishmen +treated his downright refusal to sell as a piece of bluff, and talked +on as though it were merely the opening of the negotiation. When he +became plain with them in his anger, and told them why he would not +sell, they seemed to have been prepared for this as a stroke of +business, and were ready to meet it. +</P> + +<P> +"Has this fellow," he demanded, twisting his head in the direction of +Rogers, but disdaining to notice him otherwise, "been telling you that +it's part of my game to say this? Well, sir, I can tell you, on my +side, that there isn't a slipperier rascal unhung in America than +Milton K. Rogers!" +</P> + +<P> +The Englishmen treated this as a piece of genuine American humour, and +returned to the charge with unabated courage. They owned now, that a +person interested with them had been out to look at the property, and +that they were satisfied with the appearance of things. They developed +further the fact that they were not acting solely, or even principally, +in their own behalf, but were the agents of people in England who had +projected the colonisation of a sort of community on the spot, somewhat +after the plan of other English dreamers, and that they were satisfied, +from a careful inspection, that the resources and facilities were those +best calculated to develop the energy and enterprise of the proposed +community. They were prepared to meet Mr. Lapham--Colonel, they begged +his pardon, at the instance of Rogers--at any reasonable figure, and +were quite willing to assume the risks he had pointed out. Something +in the eyes of these men, something that lurked at an infinite depth +below their speech, and was not really in their eyes when Lapham looked +again, had flashed through him a sense of treachery in them. He had +thought them the dupes of Rogers; but in that brief instant he had seen +them--or thought he had seen them--his accomplices, ready to betray the +interests of which they went on to speak with a certain comfortable +jocosity, and a certain incredulous slight of his show of integrity. +It was a deeper game than Lapham was used to, and he sat looking with a +sort of admiration from one Englishman to the other, and then to +Rogers, who maintained an exterior of modest neutrality, and whose air +said, "I have brought you gentlemen together as the friend of all +parties, and I now leave you to settle it among yourselves. I ask +nothing, and expect nothing, except the small sum which shall accrue to +me after the discharge of my obligations to Colonel Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +While Rogers's presence expressed this, one of the Englishmen was +saying, "And if you have any scruple in allowin' us to assume this +risk, Colonel Lapham, perhaps you can console yourself with the fact +that the loss, if there is to be any, will fall upon people who are +able to bear it--upon an association of rich and charitable people. +But we're quite satisfied there will be no loss," he added savingly. +"All you have to do is to name your price, and we will do our best to +meet it." +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing in the Englishman's sophistry very shocking to +Lapham. It addressed itself in him to that easy-going, not evilly +intentioned, potential immorality which regards common property as +common prey, and gives us the most corrupt municipal governments under +the sun--which makes the poorest voter, when he has tricked into place, +as unscrupulous in regard to others' money as an hereditary prince. +Lapham met the Englishman's eye, and with difficulty kept himself from +winking. Then he looked away, and tried to find out where he stood, or +what he wanted to do. He could hardly tell. He had expected to come +into that room and unmask Rogers, and have it over. But he had +unmasked Rogers without any effect whatever, and the play had only +begun. He had a whimsical and sarcastic sense of its being very +different from the plays at the theatre. He could not get up and go +away in silent contempt; he could not tell the Englishmen that he +believed them a pair of scoundrels and should have nothing to do with +them; he could no longer treat them as innocent dupes. He remained +baffled and perplexed, and the one who had not spoken hitherto +remarked-- +</P> + +<P> +"Of course we shan't 'aggle about a few pound, more or less. If +Colonel Lapham's figure should be a little larger than ours, I've no +doubt 'e'll not be too 'ard upon us in the end." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham appreciated all the intent of this subtle suggestion, and +understood as plainly as if it had been said in so many words, that if +they paid him a larger price, it was to be expected that a certain +portion of the purchase-money was to return to their own hands. Still +he could not move; and it seemed to him that he could not speak. +</P> + +<P> +"Ring that bell, Mr. Rogers," said the Englishman who had last spoken, +glancing at the annunciator button in the wall near Rogers's head, "and +'ave up something 'of, can't you? I should like TO wet me w'istle, as +you say 'ere, and Colonel Lapham seems to find it rather dry work." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham jumped to his feet, and buttoned his overcoat about him. He +remembered with terror the dinner at Corey's where he had disgraced and +betrayed himself, and if he went into this thing at all, he was going +into it sober. "I can't stop," he said, "I must be going." +</P> + +<P> +"But you haven't given us an answer yet, Mr. Lapham," said the first +Englishman with a successful show of dignified surprise. +</P> + +<P> +"The only answer I can give you now is, NO," said Lapham. "If you want +another, you must let me have time to think it over." +</P> + +<P> +"But 'ow much time?" said the other Englishman. "We're pressed for +time ourselves, and we hoped for an answer--'oped for a hanswer," he +corrected himself, "at once. That was our understandin' with Mr. +Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't let you know till morning, anyway," said Lapham, and he went +out, as his custom often was, without any parting salutation. He +thought Rogers might try to detain him; but Rogers had remained seated +when the others got to their feet, and paid no attention to his +departure. +</P> + +<P> +He walked out into the night air, every pulse throbbing with the strong +temptation. He knew very well those men would wait, and gladly wait, +till the morning, and that the whole affair was in his hands. It made +him groan in spirit to think that it was. If he had hoped that some +chance might take the decision from him, there was no such chance, in +the present or future, that he could see. It was for him alone to +commit this rascality--if it was a rascality--or not. +</P> + +<P> +He walked all the way home, letting one car after another pass him on +the street, now so empty of other passing, and it was almost eleven +o'clock when he reached home. A carriage stood before his house, and +when he let himself in with his key, he heard talking in the +family-room. It came into his head that Irene had got back +unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it +harder for him; then he thought it might be Corey, come upon some +desperate pretext to see Penelope; but when he opened the door he saw, +with a certain absence of surprise, that it was Rogers. He was +standing with his back to the fireplace, talking to Mrs. Lapham, and he +had been shedding tears; dry tears they seemed, and they had left a +sort of sandy, glistening trace on his cheeks. Apparently he was not +ashamed of them, for the expression with which he met Lapham was that +of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, which was +identical with that of humanity, if not that of justice. +</P> + +<P> +"I some expected," began Rogers, "to find you here----" +</P> + +<P> +"No, you didn't," interrupted Lapham; "you wanted to come here and make +a poor mouth to Mrs. Lapham before I got home." +</P> + +<P> +"I knew that Mrs. Lapham would know what was going on," said Rogers +more candidly, but not more virtuously, for that he could not, "and I +wished her to understand a point that I hadn't put to you at the hotel, +and that I want you should consider. And I want you should consider me +a little in this business too; you're not the only one that's +concerned, I tell you, and I've been telling Mrs. Lapham that it's my +one chance; that if you don't meet me on it, my wife and children will +be reduced to beggary." +</P> + +<P> +"So will mine," said Lapham, "or the next thing to it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, I want you to give me this chance to get on my feet again. +You've no right to deprive me of it; it's unchristian. In our dealings +with each other we should be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying +to Mrs. Lapham before you came in. I told her that if I knew myself, I +should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who +had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obligations to me, and had +patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. I should consider that man's +family, I told Mrs. Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"Did you tell her that if I went in with you and those fellows, I +should be robbing the people who trusted them?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see what you've got to do with the people that sent them here. +They are rich people, and could bear it if it came to the worst. But +there's no likelihood, now, that it will come to the worst; you can see +yourself that the Road has changed its mind about buying. And here am +I without a cent in the world; and my wife is an invalid. She needs +comforts, she needs little luxuries, and she hasn't even the +necessaries; and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! You don't +know in the first place that the Road will ever want to buy; and if it +does, the probability is that with a colony like that planted on its +line, it would make very different terms from what it would with you or +me. These agents are not afraid, and their principals are rich people; +and if there was any loss, it would be divided up amongst them so that +they wouldn't any of them feel it." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham stole a troubled glance at his wife, and saw that there was no +help in her. Whether she was daunted and confused in her own +conscience by the outcome, so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to +Rogers which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her +perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which Rogers +had now used, it would be difficult to say. Probably there was a +mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and +from which he turned, girding himself anew, to Rogers. +</P> + +<P> +"I have no wish to recur to the past," continued Rogers, with growing +superiority. "You have shown a proper spirit in regard to that, and +you have done what you could to wipe it out." +</P> + +<P> +"I should think I had," said Lapham. "I've used up about a hundred and +fifty thousand dollars trying." +</P> + +<P> +"Some of my enterprises," Rogers admitted, "have been unfortunate, +seemingly; but I have hopes that they will yet turn out well--in time. +I can't understand why you should be so mindful of others now, when you +showed so little regard for me then. I had come to your aid at a time +when you needed help, and when you got on your feet you kicked me out +of the business. I don't complain, but that is the fact; and I had to +begin again, after I had supposed myself settled in life, and establish +myself elsewhere." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham glanced again at his wife; her head had fallen; he could see +that she was so rooted in her old remorse for that questionable act of +his, amply and more than fully atoned for since, that she was helpless, +now in the crucial moment, when he had the utmost need of her insight. +He had counted upon her; he perceived now that when he had thought it +was for him alone to decide, he had counted upon her just spirit to +stay his own in its struggle to be just. He had not forgotten how she +held out against him only a little while ago, when he asked her whether +he might not rightfully sell in some such contingency as this; and it +was not now that she said or even looked anything in favour of Rogers, +but that she was silent against him, which dismayed Lapham. He +swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, the self-pity, the pity for +her, the despair, and said gently, "I guess you better go to bed, +Persis. It's pretty late." +</P> + +<P> +She turned towards the door, when Rogers said, with the obvious +intention of detaining her through her curiosity-- +</P> + +<P> +"But I let that pass. And I don't ask now that you should sell to +these men." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham paused, irresolute. +</P> + +<P> +"What are you making this bother for, then?" demanded Lapham. "What DO +you want?" +</P> + +<P> +"What I've been telling your wife here. I want you should sell to me. +I don't say what I'm going to do with the property, and you will not +have an iota of responsibility, whatever happens." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham was staggered, and he saw his wife's face light up with eager +question. +</P> + +<P> +"I want that property," continued Rogers, "and I've got the money to +buy it. What will you take for it? If it's the price you're standing +out for----" +</P> + +<P> +"Persis," said Lapham, "go to bed," and he gave her a look that meant +obedience for her. She went out of the door, and left him with his +tempter. +</P> + +<P> +"If you think I'm going to help you whip the devil round the stump, +you're mistaken in your man, Milton Rogers," said Lapham, lighting a +cigar. "As soon as I sold to you, you would sell to that other pair of +rascals. I smelt 'em out in half a minute." +</P> + +<P> +"They are Christian gentlemen," said Rogers. "But I don't purpose +defending them; and I don't purpose telling you what I shall or shall +not do with the property when it is in my hands again. The question +is, Will you sell, and, if so, what is your figure? You have got +nothing whatever to do with it after you've sold." +</P> + +<P> +It was perfectly true. Any lawyer would have told him the same. He +could not help admiring Rogers for his ingenuity, and every selfish +interest of his nature joined with many obvious duties to urge him to +consent. He did not see why he should refuse. There was no longer a +reason. He was standing out alone for nothing, any one else would say. +He smoked on as if Rogers were not there, and Rogers remained before +the fire as patient as the clock ticking behind his head on the mantel, +and showing the gleam of its pendulum beyond his face on either side. +But at last he said, "Well?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," answered Lapham, "you can't expect me to give you an answer +to-night, any more than before. You know that what you've said now +hasn't changed the thing a bit. I wish it had. The Lord knows, I want +to be rid of the property fast enough." "Then why don't you sell to me? +Can't you see that you will not be responsible for what happens after +you have sold?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I can't see that; but if I can by morning, I'll sell." +</P> + +<P> +"Why do you expect to know any better by morning? You're wasting time +for nothing!" cried Rogers, in his disappointment. "Why are you so +particular? When you drove me out of the business you were not so very +particular." +</P> + +<P> +Lapham winced. It was certainly ridiculous for man who had once so +selfishly consulted his own interests to be stickling now about the +rights of others. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess nothing's going to happen overnight," he answered sullenly. +"Anyway, I shan't say what I shall do till morning." +</P> + +<P> +"What time can I see you in the morning?" +</P> + +<P> +"Half-past nine." +</P> + +<P> +Rogers buttoned his coat, and went out of the room without another +word. Lapham followed him to close the street-door after him. +</P> + +<P> +His wife called down to him from above as he approached the room again, +"Well?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've told him I'd let him know in the morning." +</P> + +<P> +"Want I should come down and talk with you?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," answered Lapham, in the proud bitterness which his isolation +brought, "you couldn't do any good." He went in and shut the door, and +by and by his wife heard him begin walking up and down; and then the +rest of the night she lay awake and listened to him walking up and +down. But when the first light whitened the window, the words of the +Scripture came into her mind: "And there wrestled a man with him until +the breaking of the day.... And he said, Let me go, for the day +breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." +</P> + +<P> +She could not ask him anything when they met, but he raised his dull +eyes after the first silence, and said, "I don't know what I'm going to +say to Rogers." +</P> + +<P> +She could not speak; she did not know what to say, and she saw her +husband when she followed him with her eyes from the window, drag +heavily down toward the corner, where he was to take, the horse-car. +</P> + +<P> +He arrived rather later than usual at his office, and he found his +letters already on his table. There was one, long and +official-looking, with a printed letter-heading on the outside, and +Lapham had no need to open it in order to know that it was the offer of +the Great Lacustrine & Polar Railroad for his mills. But he went +mechanically through the verification of his prophetic fear, which was +also his sole hope, and then sat looking blankly at it. +</P> + +<P> +Rogers came promptly at the appointed time, and Lapham handed him the +letter. He must have taken it all in at a glance, and seen the +impossibility of negotiating any further now, even with victims so +pliant and willing as those Englishmen. +</P> + +<P> +"You've ruined me!" Rogers broke out. "I haven't a cent left in the +world! God help my poor wife!" +</P> + +<P> +He went out, and Lapham remained staring at the door which closed upon +him. This was his reward for standing firm for right and justice to +his own destruction: to feel like a thief and a murderer. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap26"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXVI. +</H3> + +<P> +LATER in the forenoon came the despatch from the West Virginians in New +York, saying their brother assented to their agreement; and it now +remained for Lapham to fulfil his part of it. He was ludicrously far +from able to do this; and unless he could get some extension of time +from them, he must lose this chance, his only chance, to retrieve +himself. He spent the time in a desperate endeavour to raise the +money, but he had not raised the half of it when the banks closed. +With shame in his heart he went to Bellingham, from whom he had parted +so haughtily, and laid his plan before him. He could not bring himself +to ask Bellingham's help, but he told him what he proposed to do. +Bellingham pointed out that the whole thing was an experiment, and that +the price asked was enormous, unless a great success were morally +certain. He advised delay, he advised prudence; he insisted that +Lapham ought at least to go out to Kanawha Falls, and see the mines and +works before he put any such sum into the development of the enterprise. +</P> + +<P> +"That's all well enough," cried Lapham; "but if I don't clinch this +offer within twenty-four hours, they'll withdraw it, and go into the +market; and then where am I?" +</P> + +<P> +"Go on and see them again," said Bellingham. "They can't be so +peremptory as that with you. They must give you time to look at what +they want to sell. If it turns out what you hope, then--I'll see what +can be done. But look into it thoroughly." +</P> + +<P> +"Well!" cried Lapham, helplessly submitting. He took out his watch, +and saw that he had forty minutes to catch the four o'clock train. He +hurried back to his office, and put together some papers preparatory to +going, and despatched a note by his boy to Mrs. Lapham saying that he +was starting for New York, and did not know just when he should get +back. +</P> + +<P> +The early spring day was raw and cold. As he went out through the +office he saw the clerks at work with their street-coats and hats on; +Miss Dewey had her jacket dragged up on her shoulders, and looked +particularly comfortless as she operated her machine with her red +fingers. "What's up?" asked Lapham, stopping a moment. +</P> + +<P> +"Seems to be something the matter with the steam," she answered, with +the air of unmerited wrong habitual with so many pretty women who have +to work for a living. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, take your writer into my room. There's a fire in the stove +there," said Lapham, passing out. +</P> + +<P> +Half an hour later his wife came into the outer office. She had passed +the day in a passion of self-reproach, gradually mounting from the +mental numbness in which he had left her, and now she could wait no +longer to tell him that she saw how she had forsaken him in his hour of +trial and left him to bear it alone. She wondered at herself in shame +and dismay; she wondered that she could have been so confused as to the +real point by that old wretch of a Rogers, that she could have let him +hoodwink her so, even for a moment. It astounded her that such a thing +should have happened, for if there was any virtue upon which this good +woman prided herself, in which she thought herself superior to her +husband, it was her instant and steadfast perception of right and +wrong, and the ability to choose the right to her own hurt. But she +had now to confess, as each of us has had likewise to confess in his +own case, that the very virtue on which she had prided herself was the +thing that had played her false; that she had kept her mind so long +upon that old wrong which she believed her husband had done this man +that she could not detach it, but clung to the thought of reparation +for it when she ought to have seen that he was proposing a piece of +roguery as the means. The suffering which Lapham must inflict on him +if he decided against him had been more to her apprehension than the +harm he might do if he decided for him. But now she owned her +limitations to herself, and above everything in the world she wished +the man whom her conscience had roused and driven on whither her +intelligence had not followed, to do right, to do what he felt to be +right, and nothing else. She admired and revered him for going beyond +her, and she wished to tell him that she did not know what he had +determined to do about Rogers, but that she knew it was right, and +would gladly abide the consequences with him, whatever they were. +</P> + +<P> +She had not been near his place of business for nearly a year, and her +heart smote her tenderly as she looked about her there, and thought of +the early days when she knew as much about the paint as he did; she +wished that those days were back again. She saw Corey at his desk, and +she could not bear to speak to him; she dropped her veil that she need +not recognise him, and pushed on to Lapham's room, and opening the door +without knocking, shut it behind her. +</P> + +<P> +Then she became aware with intolerable disappointment that her husband +was not there. Instead, a very pretty girl sat at his desk, operating +a typewriter. She seemed quite at home, and she paid Mrs. Lapham the +scant attention which such young women often bestow upon people not +personally interesting to them. It vexed the wife that any one else +should seem to be helping her husband about business that she had once +been so intimate with; and she did not at all like the girl's +indifference to her presence. Her hat and sack hung on a nail in one +corner, and Lapham's office coat, looking intensely like him to his +wife's familiar eye, hung on a nail in the other corner; and Mrs. +Lapham liked even less than the girl's good looks this domestication of +her garments in her husband's office. She began to ask herself +excitedly why he should be away from his office when she happened to +come; and she had not the strength at the moment to reason herself out +of her unreasonableness. +</P> + +<P> +"When will Colonel Lapham be in, do you suppose?" she sharply asked of +the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"I couldn't say exactly," replied the girl, without looking round. +</P> + +<P> +"Has he been out long?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I noticed," said the girl, looking up at the clock, +without looking at Mrs. Lapham. She went on working her machine. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I can't wait any longer," said the wife abruptly. "When Colonel +Lapham comes in, you please tell him Mrs. Lapham wants to see him." +</P> + +<P> +The girl started to her feet and turned toward Mrs. Lapham with a red +and startled face, which she did not lift to confront her. +"Yes--yes--I will," she faltered. +</P> + +<P> +The wife went home with a sense of defeat mixed with an irritation +about this girl which she could not quell or account for. She found +her husband's message, and it seemed intolerable that he should have +gone to New York without seeing her; she asked herself in vain what the +mysterious business could be that took him away so suddenly. She said +to herself that he was neglecting her; he was leaving her out a little +too much; and in demanding of herself why he had never mentioned that +girl there in his office, she forgot how much she had left herself out +of his business life. That was another curse of their prosperity. +Well, she was glad the prosperity was going; it had never been +happiness. After this she was going to know everything as she used. +</P> + +<P> +She tried to dismiss the whole matter till Lapham returned; and if +there had been anything for her to do in that miserable house, as she +called it in her thought, she might have succeeded. But again the +curse was on her; there was nothing to do; and the looks of that girl +kept coming back to her vacancy, her disoccupation. She tried to make +herself something to do, but that beauty, which she had not liked, +followed her amid the work of overhauling the summer clothing, which +Irene had seen to putting away in the fall. Who was the thing, anyway? +It was very strange, her being there; why did she jump up in that +frightened way when Mrs. Lapham had named herself? +</P> + +<P> +After dark, that evening, when the question had worn away its poignancy +from mere iteration, a note for Mrs. Lapham was left at the door by a +messenger who said there was no answer. "A note for me?" she said, +staring at the unknown, and somehow artificial-looking, handwriting of +the superscription. Then she opened it and read: "Ask your husband +about his lady copying-clerk. A Friend and Well-wisher," who signed +the note, gave no other name. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham sat helpless with it in her hand. Her brain reeled; she +tried to fight the madness off; but before Lapham came back the second +morning, it had become, with lessening intervals of sanity and release, +a demoniacal possession. She passed the night without sleep, without +rest, in the frenzy of the cruellest of the passions, which covers with +shame the unhappy soul it possesses, and murderously lusts for the +misery of its object. If she had known where to find her husband in +New York, she would have followed him; she waited his return in an +ecstasy of impatience. In the morning he came back, looking spent and +haggard. She saw him drive up to the door, and she ran to let him in +herself. +</P> + +<P> +"Who is that girl you've got in your office, Silas Lapham?" she +demanded, when her husband entered. +</P> + +<P> +"Girl in my office?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes! Who is she? What is she doing there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what have you heard about her?" +</P> + +<P> +"Never you mind what I've heard. Who is she? IS IT MRS. M. THAT YOU +GAVE THAT MONEY TO? I want to know who she is! I want to know what a +respectable man, with grown-up girls of his own, is doing with such a +looking thing as that in his office? I want to know how long she's been +there? I want to know what she's there at all for?" +</P> + +<P> +He had mechanically pushed her before him into the long, darkened +parlour, and he shut himself in there with her now, to keep the +household from hearing her lifted voice. For a while he stood +bewildered, and could not have answered if he would, and then he would +not. He merely asked, "Have I ever accused you of anything wrong, +Persis?" +</P> + +<P> +"You no need to!" she answered furiously, placing herself against the +closed door. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you ever know me to do anything out of the way?" +</P> + +<P> +"That isn't what I asked you." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I guess you may find out about that girl yourself. Get away +from the door." +</P> + +<P> +"I won't get away from the door." +</P> + +<P> +She felt herself set lightly aside, and her husband opened the door and +went out. "I WILL find out about her," she screamed after him. "I'll +find out, and I'll disgrace you. I'll teach you how to treat me----" +</P> + +<P> +The air blackened round her: she reeled to the sofa and then she found +herself waking from a faint. She did not know how long she had lain +there, she did not care. In a moment her madness came whirling back +upon her. She rushed up to his room; it was empty; the closet-doors +stood ajar and the drawers were open; he must have packed a bag hastily +and fled. She went out and wandered crazily up and down till she found +a hack. She gave the driver her husband's business address, and told +him to drive there as fast as he could; and three times she lowered the +window to put her head out and ask him if he could not hurry. A +thousand things thronged into her mind to support her in her evil will. +She remembered how glad and proud that man had been to marry her, and +how everybody said she was marrying beneath her when she took him. She +remembered how good she had always been to him, how perfectly devoted, +slaving early and late to advance him, and looking out for his +interests in all things, and sparing herself in nothing. If it had not +been for her, he might have been driving stage yet; and since their +troubles had begun, the troubles which his own folly and imprudence had +brought on them, her conduct had been that of a true and faithful wife. +Was HE the sort of man to be allowed to play her false with impunity? +She set her teeth and drew her breath sharply through them when she +thought how willingly she had let him befool her, and delude her about +that memorandum of payments to Mrs. M., because she loved him so much, +and pitied him for his cares and anxieties. She recalled his +confusion, his guilty looks. +</P> + +<P> +She plunged out of the carriage so hastily when she reached the office +that she did not think of paying the driver; and he had to call after +her when she had got half-way up the stairs. Then she went straight to +Lapham's room, with outrage in her heart. There was again no one there +but that type-writer girl; she jumped to her feet in a fright, as Mrs. +Lapham dashed the door to behind her and flung up her veil. +</P> + +<P> +The two women confronted each other. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, the good land!" cried Mrs. Lapham, "ain't you Zerrilla Millon?" +</P> + +<P> +"I--I'm married," faltered the girl "My name's Dewey, now." +</P> + +<P> +"You're Jim Millon's daughter, anyway. How long have you been here?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't been here regularly; I've been here off and on ever since +last May." +</P> + +<P> +"Where's your mother?" +</P> + +<P> +"She's here--in Boston." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham kept her eyes on the girl, but she dropped, trembling, into +her husband's chair, and a sort of amaze and curiosity were in her +voice instead of the fury she had meant to put there. +</P> + +<P> +"The Colonel," continued Zerrilla, "he's been helping us, and he's got +me a type-writer, so that I can help myself a little. Mother's doing +pretty well now; and when Hen isn't around we can get along." +</P> + +<P> +"That your husband?" +</P> + +<P> +"I never wanted to marry him; but he promised to try to get something +to do on shore; and mother was all for it, because he had a little +property then, and I thought may be I'd better. But it's turned out +just as I said and if he don't stay away long enough this time to let +me get the divorce,--he's agreed to it, time and again,--I don't know +what we're going to do." Zerrilla's voice fell, and the trouble which +she could keep out of her face usually, when she was comfortably warmed +and fed and prettily dressed, clouded it in the presence of a +sympathetic listener. "I saw it was you, when you came in the other +day," she went on; "but you didn't seem to know me. I suppose the +Colonel's told you that there's a gentleman going to marry me--Mr. +Wemmel's his name--as soon as I get the divorce; but sometimes I'm +completely discouraged; it don't seem as if I ever could get it." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Lapham would not let her know that she was ignorant of the fact +attributed to her knowledge. She remained listening to Zerrilla, and +piecing out the whole history of her presence there from the facts of +the past, and the traits of her husband's character. One of the things +she had always had to fight him about was that idea of his that he was +bound to take care of Jim Millon's worthless wife and her child because +Millon had got the bullet that was meant for him. It was a perfect +superstition of his; she could not beat it out of him; but she had made +him promise the last time he had done anything for that woman that it +should BE the last time. He had then got her a little house in one of +the fishing ports, where she could take the sailors to board and wash +for, and earn an honest living if she would keep straight. That was +five or six years ago, and Mrs. Lapham had heard nothing of Mrs. Millon +since; she had heard quite enough of her before; and had known her idle +and baddish ever since she was the worst little girl at school in +Lumberville, and all through her shameful girlhood, and the married +days which she had made so miserable to the poor fellow who had given +her his decent name and a chance to behave herself. Mrs. Lapham had no +mercy on Moll Millon, and she had quarrelled often enough with her +husband for befriending her. As for the child, if the mother would put +Zerrilla out with some respectable family, that would be ONE thing; but +as long as she kept Zerrilla with her, she was against letting her +husband do anything for either of them. He had done ten times as much +for them now as he had any need to, and she had made him give her his +solemn word that he would do no more. She saw now that she was wrong +to make him give it, and that he must have broken it again and again +for the reason that he had given when she once scolded him for throwing +away his money on that hussy-- +</P> + +<P> +"When I think of Jim Millon, I've got to; that's all." +</P> + +<P> +She recalled now that whenever she had brought up the subject of Mrs. +Millon and her daughter, he had seemed shy of it, and had dropped it +with some guess that they were getting along now. She wondered that +she had not thought at once of Mrs. Millon when she saw that memorandum +about Mrs. M.; but the woman had passed so entirely out of her life, +that she had never dreamt of her in connection with it. Her husband +had deceived her, yet her heart was no longer hot against him, but +rather tenderly grateful that his deceit was in this sort, and not in +that other. All cruel and shameful doubt of him went out of it. She +looked at this beautiful girl, who had blossomed out of her knowledge +since she saw her last, and she knew that she was only a blossomed +weed, of the same worthless root as her mother, and saved, if saved, +from the same evil destiny, by the good of her father in her; but so +far as the girl and her mother were concerned, Mrs. Lapham knew that +her husband was to blame for nothing but his wilful, wrong-headed, +kind-heartedness, which her own exactions had turned into deceit. She +remained a while, questioning the girl quietly about herself and her +mother, and then, with a better mind towards Zerrilla, at least, than +she had ever had before, she rose up and went out. There must have +been some outer hint of the exhaustion in which the subsidence of her +excitement had left her within, for before she had reached the head of +the stairs, Corey came towards her. +</P> + +<P> +"Can I be of any use to you, Mrs. Lapham? The Colonel was here just +before you came in, on his way to the train." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes,--yes. I didn't know--I thought perhaps I could catch him here. +But it don't matter. I wish you would let some one go with me to get a +carriage," she begged feebly. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll go with you myself," said the young fellow, ignoring the +strangeness in her manner. He offered her his arm in the twilight of +the staircase, and she was glad to put her trembling hand through it, +and keep it there till he helped her into a hack which he found for +her. He gave the driver her direction, and stood looking a little +anxiously at her. +</P> + +<P> +"I thank you; I am all right now," she said, and he bade the man drive +on. +</P> + +<P> +When she reached home she went to bed, spent with the tumult of her +emotions and sick with shame and self-reproach. She understood now, as +clearly as if he had told her in as many words, that if he had +befriended those worthless jades--the Millons characterised themselves +so, even to Mrs. Lapham's remorse--secretly and in defiance of her, it +was because he dreaded her blame, which was so sharp and bitter, for +what he could not help doing. It consoled her that he had defied her, +deceived her; when he came back she should tell him that; and then it +flashed upon her that she did not know where he was gone, or whether he +would ever come again. If he never came, it would be no more than she +deserved; but she sent for Penelope, and tried to give herself hopes of +escape from this just penalty. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham had not told his daughter where he was going; she had heard him +packing his bag, and had offered to help him; but he had said he could +do it best, and had gone off, as he usually did, without taking leave +of any one. +</P> + +<P> +"What were you talking about so loud, down in the parlour," she asked +her mother, "just before he came up. Is there any new trouble?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; it was nothing." +</P> + +<P> +"I couldn't tell. Once I thought you were laughing." She went about, +closing the curtains on account of her mother's headache, and doing +awkwardly and imperfectly the things that Irene would have done so +skilfully for her comfort. +</P> + +<P> +The day wore away to nightfall, and then Mrs. Lapham said she MUST +know. Penelope said there was no one to ask; the clerks would all be +gone home, and her mother said yes, there was Mr. Corey; they could +send and ask him; he would know. +</P> + +<P> +The girl hesitated. "Very well," she said, then, scarcely above a +whisper, and she presently laughed huskily. "Mr. Corey seems fated to +come in, somewhere. I guess it's a Providence, mother." +</P> + +<P> +She sent off a note, inquiring whether he could tell her just where her +father had expected to be that night; and the answer came quickly back +that Corey did not know, but would look up the book-keeper and inquire. +This office brought him in person, an hour later, to tell Penelope that +the Colonel was to be at Lapham that night and next day. +</P> + +<P> +"He came in from New York, in a great hurry, and rushed off as soon as +he could pack his bag," Penelope explained, "and we hadn't a chance to +ask him where he was to be to-night. And mother wasn't very well, +and----" +</P> + +<P> +"I thought she wasn't looking well when she was at the office to-day. +And so I thought I would come rather than send," Corey explained in his +turn. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, thank you!" +</P> + +<P> +"If there is anything I can do--telegraph Colonel Lapham, or anything?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no, thank you; mother's better now. She merely wanted to be sure +where he was." +</P> + +<P> +He did not offer to go, upon this conclusion of his business, but hoped +he was not keeping her from her mother. She thanked him once again, +and said no, that her mother was much better since she had had a cup of +tea; and then they looked at each other, and without any apparent +exchange of intelligence he remained, and at eleven o'clock he was +still there. He was honest in saying he did not know it was so late; +but he made no pretence of being sorry, and she took the blame to +herself. +</P> + +<P> +"I oughtn't to have let you stay," she said. "But with father gone, +and all that trouble hanging over us----" +</P> + +<P> +She was allowing him to hold her hand a moment at the door, to which +she had followed him. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm so glad you could let me!" he said, "and I want to ask you now +when I may come again. But if you need me, you'll----" +</P> + +<P> +A sharp pull at the door-bell outside made them start asunder, and at a +sign from Penelope, who knew that the maids were abed by this time, he +opened it. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Irene!" shrieked the girl. +</P> + +<P> +Irene entered with the hackman, who had driven her unheard to the door, +following with her small bags, and kissed her sister with resolute +composure. "That's all," she said to the hackman. "I gave my checks +to the expressman," she explained to Penelope. +</P> + +<P> +Corey stood helpless. Irene turned upon him, and gave him her hand. +"How do you do, Mr. Corey?" she said, with a courage that sent a thrill +of admiring gratitude through him. "Where's mamma, Pen? Papa gone to +bed?" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope faltered out some reply embodying the facts, and Irene ran up +the stairs to her mother's room. Mrs. Lapham started up in bed at her +apparition. +</P> + +<P> +"Irene Lapham." +</P> + +<P> +"Uncle William thought he ought to tell me the trouble papa was in; and +did you think I was going to stay off there junketing, while you were +going through all this at home, and Pen acting so silly, too? You ought +to have been ashamed to let me stay so long! I started just as soon as +I could pack. Did you get my despatch? I telegraphed from Springfield. +But it don't matter, now. Here I am. And I don't think I need have +hurried on Pen's account," she added, with an accent prophetic of the +sort of old maid she would become, if she happened not to marry. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you see him?" asked her mother. "It's the first time he's been +here since she told him he mustn't come." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess it isn't the last time, by the looks," said Irene, and before +she took off her bonnet she began to undo some of Penelope's mistaken +arrangements of the room. +</P> + +<P> +At breakfast, where Corey and his mother met the next morning before +his father and sisters came down, he told her, with embarrassment which +told much more, that he wished now that she would go and call upon the +Laphams. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey turned a little pale, but shut her lips tight and mourned in +silence whatever hopes she had lately permitted herself. She answered +with Roman fortitude: "Of course, if there's anything between you and +Miss Lapham, your family ought to recognise it." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Corey. +</P> + +<P> +"You were reluctant to have me call at first, but now if the affair is +going on----" +</P> + +<P> +"It is! I hope--yes, it is!" +</P> + +<P> +"Then I ought to go and see her, with your sisters; and she ought to +come here and--we ought all to see her and make the matter public. We +can't do so too soon. It will seem as if we were ashamed if we don't." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, you are quite right, mother," said the young man gratefully, "and +I feel how kind and good you are. I have tried to consider you in this +matter, though I don't seem to have done so; I know what your rights +are, and I wish with all my heart that I were meeting even your tastes +perfectly. But I know you will like her when you come to know her. +It's been very hard for her every way--about her sister,--and she's +made a great sacrifice for me. She's acted nobly." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey, whose thoughts cannot always be reported, said she was sure +of it, and that all she desired was her son's happiness. +</P> + +<P> +"She's been very unwilling to consider it an engagement on that +account, and on account of Colonel Lapham's difficulties. I should +like to have you go, now, for that very reason. I don't know just how +serious the trouble is; but it isn't a time when we can seem +indifferent." +</P> + +<P> +The logic of this was not perhaps so apparent to the glasses of fifty +as to the eyes of twenty-six; but Mrs. Corey, however she viewed it, +could not allow herself to blench before the son whom she had taught +that to want magnanimity was to be less than gentlemanly. She +answered, with what composure she could, "I will take your sisters," +and then she made some natural inquiries about Lapham's affairs. "Oh, +I hope it will come out all right," Corey said, with a lover's vague +smile, and left her. When his father came down, rubbing his long hands +together, and looking aloof from all the cares of the practical world, +in an artistic withdrawal, from which his eye ranged over the +breakfast-table before he sat down, Mrs. Corey told him what she and +their son had been saying. +</P> + +<P> +He laughed, with a delicate impersonal appreciation of the predicament. +"Well, Anna, you can't say but if you ever were guilty of supposing +yourself porcelain, this is a just punishment of your arrogance. Here +you are bound by the very quality on which you've prided yourself to +behave well to a bit of earthenware who is apparently in danger of +losing the gilding that rendered her tolerable." +</P> + +<P> +"We never cared for the money," said Mrs. Corey. "You know that." +</P> + +<P> +"No; and now we can't seem to care for the loss of it. That would be +still worse. Either horn of the dilemma gores us. Well, we still have +the comfort we had in the beginning; we can't help ourselves; and we +should only make bad worse by trying. Unless we can look to Tom's +inamorata herself for help." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Corey shook her head so gloomily that her husband broke off with +another laugh. But at the continued trouble of her face, he said, +sympathetically: "My dear, I know it's a very disagreeable affair; and +I don't think either of us has failed to see that it was so from the +beginning. I have had my way of expressing my sense of it, and you +yours, but we have always been of the same mind about it. We would +both have preferred to have Tom marry in his own set; the Laphams are +about the last set we could have wished him to marry into. They ARE +uncultivated people, and so far as I have seen them, I'm not able to +believe that poverty will improve them. Still, it may. Let us hope +for the best, and let us behave as well as we know how. I'm sure YOU +will behave well, and I shall try. I'm going with you to call on Miss +Lapham. This is a thing that can't be done by halves!" +</P> + +<P> +He cut his orange in the Neapolitan manner, and ate it in quarters. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap27"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XXVII. +</H3> + +<P> +IRENE did not leave her mother in any illusion concerning her cousin +Will and herself. She said they had all been as nice to her as they +could be, and when Mrs. Lapham hinted at what had been in her +thoughts,--or her hopes, rather,--Irene severely snubbed the notion. +She said that he was as good as engaged to a girl out there, and that +he had never dreamt of her. Her mother wondered at her severity; in +these few months the girl had toughened and hardened; she had lost all +her babyish dependence and pliability; she was like iron; and here and +there she was sharpened to a cutting edge. It had been a life and +death struggle with her; she had conquered, but she had also +necessarily lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth +keeping; but at any rate she had lost it. +</P> + +<P> +She required from her mother a strict and accurate account of her +father's affairs, so far as Mrs Lapham knew them; and she showed a +business-like quickness in comprehending them that Penelope had never +pretended to. With her sister she ignored the past as completely as it +was possible to do; and she treated both Corey and Penelope with the +justice which their innocence of voluntary offence deserved. It was a +difficult part, and she kept away from them as much as she could. She +had been easily excused, on a plea of fatigue from her journey, when +Mr. and Mrs. Corey had called the day after her arrival, and Mrs. +Lapham being still unwell, Penelope received them alone. +</P> + +<P> +The girl had instinctively judged best that they should know the worst +at once, and she let them have the full brunt of the drawing-room, +while she was screwing her courage up to come down and see them. She +was afterwards--months afterwards--able to report to Corey that when +she entered the room his father was sitting with his hat on his knees, +a little tilted away from the Emancipation group, as if he expected the +Lincoln to hit him, with that lifted hand of benediction; and that Mrs. +Corey looked as if she were not sure but the Eagle pecked. But for the +time being Penelope was as nearly crazed as might be by the +complications of her position, and received her visitors with a piteous +distraction which could not fail of touching Bromfield Corey's +Italianised sympatheticism. He was very polite and tender with her at +first, and ended by making a joke with her, to which Penelope +responded, in her sort. He said he hoped they parted friends, if not +quite acquaintances; and she said she hoped they would be able to +recognise each other if they ever met again. +</P> + +<P> +"That is what I meant by her pertness," said Mrs Corey, when they were +driving away. +</P> + +<P> +"Was it very pert?" he queried. "The child had to answer something." +</P> + +<P> +"I would much rather she had answered nothing, under the +circumstances," said Mrs. Corey. "However!" she added hopelessly. +"Oh, she's a merry little grig, you can see that, and there's no harm +in her. I can understand a little why a formal fellow like Tom should +be taken with her. She hasn't the least reverence, I suppose, and +joked with the young man from the beginning. You must remember, Anna, +that there was a time when you liked my joking." +</P> + +<P> +"It was a very different thing!" +</P> + +<P> +"But that drawing-room," pursued Corey; "really, I don't see how Tom +stands that. Anna, a terrible thought occurs to me! Fancy Tom being +married in front of that group, with a floral horse-shoe in tuberoses +coming down on either side of it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Bromfield!" cried his wife, "you are unmerciful." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, my dear," he argued; "merely imaginative. And I can even +imagine that little thing finding Tom just the least bit slow, at +times, if it were not for his goodness. Tom is so kind that I'm +convinced he sometimes feels your joke in his heart when his head isn't +quite clear about it. Well, we will not despond, my dear." +</P> + +<P> +"Your father seemed actually to like her," Mrs. Corey reported to her +daughters, very much shaken in her own prejudices by the fact. If the +girl were not so offensive to his fastidiousness, there might be some +hope that she was not so offensive as Mrs. Corey had thought. "I +wonder how she will strike YOU," she concluded, looking from one +daughter to another, as if trying to decide which of them would like +Penelope least. +</P> + +<P> +Irene's return and the visit of the Coreys formed a distraction for the +Laphams in which their impending troubles seemed to hang further aloof; +but it was only one of those reliefs which mark the course of +adversity, and it was not one of the cheerful reliefs. At any other +time, either incident would have been an anxiety and care for Mrs. +Lapham which she would have found hard to bear; but now she almost +welcomed them. At the end of three days Lapham returned, and his wife +met him as if nothing unusual had marked their parting; she reserved +her atonement for a fitter time; he would know now from the way she +acted that she felt all right towards him. He took very little note of +her manner, but met his family with an austere quiet that puzzled her, +and a sort of pensive dignity that refined his rudeness to an effect +that sometimes comes to such natures after long sickness, when the +animal strength has been taxed and lowered. He sat silent with her at +the table after their girls had left them alone, and seeing that he did +not mean to speak, she began to explain why Irene had come home, and to +praise her. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, she done right," said Lapham. "It was time for her to come," he +added gently. +</P> + +<P> +Then he was silent again, and his wife told him of Corey's having been +there, and of his father's and mother's calling. "I guess Pen's +concluded to make it up," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we'll see about that," said Lapham; and now she could no longer +forbear to ask him about his affairs. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know as I've got any right to know anything about it," she +said humbly, with remote allusion to her treatment of him. "But I +can't help wanting to know. How ARE things going, Si?" +</P> + +<P> +"Bad," he said, pushing his plate from him, and tilting himself back in +his chair. "Or they ain't going at all. They've stopped." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean, Si?" she persisted, tenderly. +</P> + +<P> +"I've got to the end of my string. To-morrow I shall call a meeting of +my creditors, and put myself in their hands. If there's enough left to +satisfy them, I'm satisfied." His voice dropped in his throat; he +swallowed once or twice, and then did not speak. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you mean that it's all over with you?" she asked fearfully. +</P> + +<P> +He bowed his big head, wrinkled and grizzled; and after awhile he said, +"It's hard to realise it; but I guess there ain't any doubt about it." +He drew a long breath, and then he explained to her about the West +Virginia people, and how he had got an extension of the first time they +had given him, and had got a man to go up to Lapham with him and look +at the works,--a man that had turned up in New York, and wanted to put +money in the business. His money would have enabled Lapham to close +with the West Virginians. "The devil was in it, right straight along," +said Lapham. "All I had to do was to keep quiet about that other +company. It was Rogers and his property right over again. He liked +the look of things, and he wanted to go into the business, and he had +the money--plenty; it would have saved me with those West Virginia +folks. But I had to tell him how I stood. I had to tell him all about +it, and what I wanted to do. He began to back water in a minute, and +the next morning I saw that it was up with him. He's gone back to New +York. I've lost my last chance. Now all I've got to do is to save the +pieces." +</P> + +<P> +"Will--will--everything go?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't tell, yet. But they shall have a chance at everything--every +dollar, every cent. I'm sorry for you, Persis--and the girls." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't talk of US!" She was trying to realise that the simple, rude +soul to which her heart clove in her youth, but which she had put to +such cruel proof, with her unsparing conscience and her unsparing +tongue, had been equal to its ordeals, and had come out unscathed and +unstained. He was able in his talk to make so little of them; he +hardly seemed to see what they were; he was apparently not proud of +them, and certainly not glad; if they were victories of any sort, he +bore them with the patience of defeat. His wife wished to praise him, +but she did not know how; so she offered him a little reproach, in +which alone she touched the cause of her behaviour at parting. +"Silas," she asked, after a long gaze at him, "why didn't you tell me +you had Jim Millon's girl there?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't suppose you'd like it, Persis," he answered. "I did intend +to tell you at first, but then I put--I put it off. I thought you'd +come round some day, and find it out for yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm punished," said his wife, "for not taking enough interest in your +business to even come near it. If we're brought back to the day of +small things, I guess it's a lesson for me, Silas." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I don't know about the lesson," he said wearily. +</P> + +<P> +That night she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her +fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess +I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you +do too, Persis." +</P> + +<P> +"But how--how could he----" +</P> + +<P> +"Mebbe he believed it," said Lapham, with patience that cut her more +keenly than any reproach. "YOU did." +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps because the process of his ruin had been so gradual, perhaps +because the excitement of preceding events had exhausted their capacity +for emotion, the actual consummation of his bankruptcy brought a +relief, a repose to Lapham and his family, rather than a fresh +sensation of calamity. In the shadow of his disaster they returned to +something like their old, united life; they were at least all together +again; and it will be intelligible to those whom life has blessed with +vicissitude, that Lapham should come home the evening after he had +given up everything, to his creditors, and should sit down to his +supper so cheerful that Penelope could joke him in the old way, and +tell him that she thought from his looks they had concluded to pay him +a hundred cents on every dollar he owed them. +</P> + +<P> +As James Bellingham had taken so much interest in his troubles from the +first, Lapham thought he ought to tell him, before taking the final +step, just how things stood with him, and what he meant to do. +Bellingham made some futile inquiries about his negotiations with the +West Virginians, and Lapham told him they had come to nothing. He +spoke of the New York man, and the chance that he might have sold out +half his business to him. "But, of course, I had to let him know how +it was about those fellows." +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," said Bellingham, not seeing till afterwards the full +significance of Lapham's action. +</P> + +<P> +Lapham said nothing about Rogers and the Englishmen. He believed that +he had acted right in that matter, and he was satisfied; but he did not +care to have Bellingham, or anybody, perhaps, think he had been a fool. +</P> + +<P> +All those who were concerned in his affairs said he behaved well, and +even more than well, when it came to the worst. The prudence, the good +sense, which he had shown in the first years of his success, and of +which his great prosperity seemed to have bereft him, came back, and +these qualities, used in his own behalf, commended him as much to his +creditors as the anxiety he showed that no one should suffer by him; +this even made some of them doubtful of his sincerity. They gave him +time, and there would have been no trouble in his resuming on the old +basis, if the ground had not been cut from under him by the competition +of the West Virginia company. He saw himself that it was useless to +try to go on in the old way, and he preferred to go back and begin the +world anew where he had first begun it, in the hills at Lapham. He put +the house at Nankeen Square, with everything else he had, into the +payment of his debts, and Mrs. Lapham found it easier to leave it for +the old farmstead in Vermont than it would have been to go from that +home of many years to the new house on the water side of Beacon. This +thing and that is embittered to us, so that we may be willing to +relinquish it; the world, life itself, is embittered to most of us, so +that we are glad to have done with them at last; and this home was +haunted with such memories to each of those who abandoned it that to go +was less exile than escape. Mrs. Lapham could not look into Irene's +room without seeing the girl there before her glass, tearing the poor +little keep-sakes of her hapless fancy from their hiding-places to take +them and fling them in passionate renunciation upon her sister; she +could not come into the sitting-room, where her little ones had grown +up, without starting at the thought of her husband sitting so many +weary nights at his desk there, trying to fight his way back to hope +out of the ruin into which he was slipping. When she remembered that +night when Rogers came, she hated the place. Irene accepted her +release from the house eagerly, and was glad to go before and prepare +for the family at Lapham. Penelope was always ashamed of her +engagement there; it must seem better somewhere else and she was glad +to go too. No one but Lapham in fact, felt the pang of parting in all +its keenness. Whatever regret the others had was softened to them by +the likeness of their flitting to many of those removals for the summer +which they made in the late spring when they left Nankeen Square; they +were going directly into the country instead of to the seaside first; +but Lapham, who usually remained in town long after they had gone, knew +all the difference. For his nerves there was no mechanical sense of +coming back; this was as much the end of his proud, prosperous life as +death itself could have been. He was returning to begin life anew, but +he knew as well as he knew that he should not find his vanished youth +in his native hills, that it could never again be the triumph that it +had been. That was impossible, not only in his stiffened and weakened +forces, but in the very nature of things. He was going back, by grace +of the man whom he owed money, to make what he could out of the one +chance which his successful rivals had left him. +</P> + +<P> +In one phase his paint had held its own against bad times and ruinous +competition, and it was with the hope of doing still more with the +Persis Brand that he now set himself to work. The West Virginia people +confessed that they could not produce those fine grades, and they +willingly left the field to him. A strange, not ignoble friendliness +existed between Lapham and the three brothers; they had used him +fairly; it was their facilities that had conquered him, not their +ill-will; and he recognised in them without enmity the necessity to +which he had yielded. If he succeeded in his efforts to develop his +paint in this direction, it must be for a long time on a small scale +compared with his former business, which it could never equal, and he +brought to them the flagging energies of an elderly man. He was more +broken than he knew by his failure; it did not kill, as it often does, +but it weakened the spring once so strong and elastic. He lapsed more +and more into acquiescence with his changed condition, and that +bragging note of his was rarely sounded. He worked faithfully enough +in his enterprise, but sometimes he failed to seize occasions that in +his younger days he would have turned to golden account. His wife saw +in him a daunted look that made her heart ache for him. +</P> + +<P> +One result of his friendly relations with the West Virginia people was +that Corey went in with them, and the fact that he did so solely upon +Lapham's advice, and by means of his recommendation, was perhaps the +Colonel's proudest consolation. Corey knew the business thoroughly, +and after half a year at Kanawha Falls and in the office at New York, +he went out to Mexico and Central America, to see what could be done +for them upon the ground which he had theoretically studied with Lapham. +</P> + +<P> +Before he went he came up to Vermont, and urged Penelope to go with +him. He was to be first in the city of Mexico, and if his mission was +successful he was to be kept there and in South America several years, +watching the new railroad enterprises and the development of mechanical +agriculture and whatever other undertakings offered an opening for the +introduction of the paint. They were all young men together, and +Corey, who had put his money into the company, had a proprietary +interest in the success which they were eager to achieve. +</P> + +<P> +"There's no more reason now and no less than ever there was," mused +Penelope, in counsel with her mother, "why I should say Yes, or why I +should say No. Everything else changes, but this is just where it was a +year ago. It don't go backward, and it don't go forward. Mother, I +believe I shall take the bit in my teeth--if anybody will put it there!" +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't the same as it was," suggested her mother. "You can see that +Irene's all over it." +</P> + +<P> +"That's no credit to me," said Penelope. "I ought to be just as much +ashamed as ever." +</P> + +<P> +"You no need ever to be ashamed." +</P> + +<P> +"That's true, too," said the girl. "And I can sneak off to Mexico with +a good conscience if I could make up my mind to it." She laughed. +"Well, if I could be SENTENCED to be married, or somebody would up and +forbid the banns! I don't know what to do about it." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother left her to carry her hesitation back to Corey, and she said +now, they had better go all over it and try to reason it out. "And I +hope that whatever I do, it won't be for my own sake, but for--others!" +</P> + +<P> +Corey said he was sure of that, and looked at her with eyes of patient +tenderness. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't say it is wrong," she proceeded, rather aimlessly, "but I +can't make it seem right. I don't know whether I can make you +understand, but the idea of being happy, when everybody else is so +miserable, is more than I can endure. It makes me wretched." +</P> + +<P> +"Then perhaps that's your share of the common suffering," suggested +Corey, smiling. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you know it isn't! You know it's nothing. Oh! One of the reasons +is what I told you once before, that as long as father is in trouble I +can't let you think of me. Now that he's lost everything--?" She bent +her eyes inquiringly upon him, as if for the effect of this argument. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think that's a very good reason," he answered seriously, but +smiling still. "Do you believe me when I tell you that I love you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I suppose I must," she said, dropping her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Then why shouldn't I think all the more of you on account of your +father's loss? You didn't suppose I cared for you because he was +prosperous?" +</P> + +<P> +There was a shade of reproach, ever so delicate and gentle, in his +smiling question, which she felt. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I couldn't think such a thing of you. I--I don't know what I +meant. I meant that----" She could not go on and say that she had felt +herself more worthy of him because of her father's money; it would not +have been true; yet there was no other explanation. She stopped, and +cast a helpless glance at him. +</P> + +<P> +He came to her aid. "I understand why you shouldn't wish me to suffer +by your father's misfortunes." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that was it; and there is too great a difference every way. We +ought to look at that again. You mustn't pretend that you don't know +it, for that wouldn't be true. Your mother will never like me, and +perhaps--perhaps I shall not like her." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Corey, a little daunted, "you won't have to marry my +family." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, that isn't the point!" +</P> + +<P> +"I know it," he admitted. "I won't pretend that I don't see what you +mean; but I'm sure that all the differences would disappear when you +came to know my family better. I'm not afraid but you and my mother +will like each other--she can't help it!" he exclaimed, less judicially +than he had hitherto spoken, and he went on to urge some points of +doubtful tenability. "We have our ways, and you have yours; and while +I don't say but what you and my mother and sisters would be a little +strange together at first, it would soon wear off, on both sides. +There can't be anything hopelessly different in you all, and if there +were it wouldn't be any difference to me." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think it would be pleasant to have you on my side against your +mother?" +</P> + +<P> +"There won't be any sides. Tell me just what it is you're afraid of." +</P> + +<P> +"Afraid?" +</P> + +<P> +"Thinking of, then." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. It isn't anything they say or do," she explained, with +her eyes intent on his. "It's what they are. I couldn't be natural +with them, and if I can't be natural with people, I'm disagreeable." +</P> + +<P> +"Can you be natural with me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'm not afraid of you. I never was. That was the trouble, from +the beginning." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, that's all that's necessary. And it never was the least +trouble to me!" +</P> + +<P> +"It made me untrue to Irene." +</P> + +<P> +"You mustn't say that! You were always true to her." +</P> + +<P> +"She cared for you first." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, but I never cared for her at all!" he besought her. +</P> + +<P> +"She thought you did." +</P> + +<P> +"That was nobody's fault, and I can't let you make it yours. My +dear----" +</P> + +<P> +"Wait. We must understand each other," said Penelope, rising from her +seat to prevent an advance he was making from his; "I want you to +realise the whole affair. Should you want a girl who hadn't a cent in +the world, and felt different in your mother's company, and had cheated +and betrayed her own sister?" +</P> + +<P> +"I want you!" +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, then, you can't have me. I should always despise myself. +I ought to give you up for all these reasons. Yes, I must." She looked +at him intently, and there was a tentative quality in her affirmations. +</P> + +<P> +"Is this your answer?" he said. "I must submit. If I asked too much +of you, I was wrong. And--good-bye." +</P> + +<P> +He held out his hand, and she put hers in it. "You think I'm +capricious and fickle!" she said. "I can't help it--I don't know +myself. I can't keep to one thing for half a day at a time. But it's +right for us to part--yes, it must be. It must be," she repeated; "and +I shall try to remember that. Good-bye! I will try to keep that in my +mind, and you will too--you won't care, very soon! I didn't mean +THAT--no; I know how true you are; but you will soon look at me +differently; and see that even IF there hadn't been this about Irene, I +was not the one for you. You do think so, don't you?" she pleaded, +clinging to his hand. "I am not at all what they would like--your +family; I felt that. I am little, and black, and homely, and they +don't understand my way of talking, and now that we've lost +everything--No, I'm not fit. Good-bye. You're quite right, not to have +patience with me any longer. I've tried you enough. I ought to be +willing to marry you against their wishes if you want me to, but I +can't make the sacrifice--I'm too selfish for that----" All at once she +flung herself on his breast. "I can't even give you up! I shall never +dare look any one in the face again. Go, go! But take me with you! I +tried to do without you! I gave it a fair trial, and it was a dead +failure. O poor Irene! How could she give you up?" +</P> + +<P> +Corey went back to Boston immediately, and left Penelope, as he must, +to tell her sister that they were to be married. She was spared from +the first advance toward this by an accident or a misunderstanding. +Irene came straight to her after Corey was gone, and demanded, +"Penelope Lapham, have you been such a ninny as to send that man away +on my account?" +</P> + +<P> +Penelope recoiled from this terrible courage; she did not answer +directly, and Irene went on, "Because if you did, I'll thank you to +bring him back again. I'm not going to have him thinking that I'm +dying for a man that never cared for me. It's insulting, and I'm not +going to stand it. Now, you just send for him!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I will, 'Rene," gasped Penelope. And then she added, shamed out +of her prevarication by Irene's haughty magnanimity, "I have. That +is--he's coming back----" +</P> + +<P> +Irene looked at her a moment, and then, whatever thought was in her +mind, said fiercely, "Well!" and left her to her dismay--her dismay and +her relief, for they both knew that this was the last time they should +ever speak of that again. +</P> + +<P> +The marriage came after so much sorrow and trouble, and the fact was +received with so much misgiving for the past and future, that it +brought Lapham none of the triumph in which he had once exulted at the +thought of an alliance with the Coreys. Adversity had so far been his +friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for +which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and +doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly +stolen from him. Neither he nor his wife thought now that their +daughter was marrying a Corey; they thought only that she was giving +herself to the man who loved her, and their acquiescence was sobered +still further by the presence of Irene. Their hearts were far more +with her. +</P> + +<P> +Again and again Mrs. Lapham said she did not see how she could go +through it. "I can't make it seem right," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"It IS right," steadily answered the Colonel. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know. But it don't SEEM so." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It would be easy to point out traits in Penelope's character which +finally reconciled all her husband's family and endeared her to them. +These things continually happen in novels; and the Coreys, as they had +always promised themselves to do, made the best, and not the worst of +Tom's marriage. +</P> + +<P> +They were people who could value Lapham's behaviour as Tom reported it +to them. They were proud of him, and Bromfield Corey, who found a +delicate, aesthetic pleasure in the heroism with which Lapham had +withstood Rogers and his temptations--something finely dramatic and +unconsciously effective,--wrote him a letter which would once have +flattered the rough soul almost to ecstasy, though now he affected to +slight it in showing it. "It's all right if it makes it more +comfortable for Pen," he said to his wife. +</P> + +<P> +But the differences remained uneffaced, if not uneffaceable, between +the Coreys and Tom Corey's wife. "If he had only married the Colonel!" +subtly suggested Nanny Corey. +</P> + +<P> +There was a brief season of civility and forbearance on both sides, +when he brought her home before starting for Mexico, and her +father-in-law made a sympathetic feint of liking Penelope's way of +talking, but it is questionable if even he found it so delightful as +her husband did. Lily Corey made a little, ineffectual sketch of her, +which she put by with other studies to finish up, sometime, and found +her rather picturesque in some ways. Nanny got on with her better than +the rest, and saw possibilities for her in the country to which she was +going. "As she's quite unformed, socially," she explained to her +mother, "there is a chance that she will form herself on the Spanish +manner, if she stays there long enough, and that when she comes back +she will have the charm of, not olives, perhaps, but tortillas, +whatever they are: something strange and foreign, even if it's +borrowed. I'm glad she's going to Mexico. At that distance we +can--correspond." +</P> + +<P> +Her mother sighed, and said bravely that she was sure they all got on +very pleasantly as it was, and that she was perfectly satisfied if Tom +was. +</P> + +<P> +There was, in fact, much truth in what she said of their harmony with +Penelope. Having resolved, from the beginning, to make the best of the +worst, it might almost be said that they were supported and consoled in +their good intentions by a higher power. This marriage had not, thanks +to an over-ruling Providence, brought the succession of Lapham teas +upon Bromfield Corey which he had dreaded; the Laphams were far off in +their native fastnesses, and neither Lily nor Nanny Corey was obliged +to sacrifice herself to the conversation of Irene; they were not even +called upon to make a social demonstration for Penelope at a time when, +most people being still out of town, it would have been so easy; she +and Tom had both begged that there might be nothing of that kind; and +though none of the Coreys learned to know her very well in the week she +spent with them, they did not find it hard to get on with her. There +were even moments when Nanny Corey, like her father, had glimpses of +what Tom had called her humour, but it was perhaps too unlike their own +to be easily recognisable. +</P> + +<P> +Whether Penelope, on her side, found it more difficult to harmonise, I +cannot say. She had much more of the harmonising to do, since they +were four to one; but then she had gone through so much greater trials +before. When the door of their carriage closed and it drove off with +her and her husband to the station, she fetched a long sigh. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it?" asked Corey, who ought to have known better. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, nothing. I don't think I shall feel strange amongst the Mexicans +now." +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her with a puzzled smile, which grew a little graver, and +then he put his arm round her and drew her closer to him. This made +her cry on his shoulder. "I only meant that I should have you all to +myself." There is no proof that she meant more, but it is certain that +our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. The +price that we pay for civilisation is the fine yet impassable +differentiation of these. Perhaps we pay too much; but it will not be +possible to persuade those who have the difference in their favour that +this is so. They may be right; and at any rate, the blank misgiving, +the recurring sense of disappointment to which the young people's +departure left the Coreys is to be considered. That was the end of +their son and brother for them; they felt that; and they were not mean +or unamiable people. +</P> + +<P> +He remained three years away. Some changes took place in that time. +One of these was the purchase by the Kanawha Falls Company of the mines +and works at Lapham. The transfer relieved Lapham of the load of debt +which he was still labouring under, and gave him an interest in the +vaster enterprise of the younger men, which he had once vainly hoped to +grasp all in his own hand. He began to tell of this coincidence as +something very striking; and pushing on more actively the special +branch of the business left to him, he bragged, quite in his old way, +of its enormous extension. His son-in-law, he said, was pushing it in +Mexico and Central America: an idea that they had originally had in +common. Well, young blood was what was wanted in a thing of that kind. +Now, those fellows out in West Virginia: all young, and a perfect team! +</P> + +<P> +For himself, he owned that he had made mistakes; he could see just +where the mistakes were--put his finger right on them. But one thing +he could say: he had been no man's enemy but his own; every dollar, +every cent had gone to pay his debts; he had come out with clean hands. +He said all this, and much more, to Mr. Sewell the summer after he sold +out, when the minister and his wife stopped at Lapham on their way +across from the White Mountains to Lake Champlain; Lapham had found +them on the cars, and pressed them to stop off. +</P> + +<P> +There were times when Mrs. Lapham had as great pride in the +clean-handedness with which Lapham had come out as he had himself, but +her satisfaction was not so constant. At those times, knowing the +temptations he had resisted, she thought him the noblest and grandest +of men; but no woman could endure to live in the same house with a +perfect hero, and there were other times when she reminded him that if +he had kept his word to her about speculating in stocks, and had looked +after the insurance of his property half as carefully as he had looked +after a couple of worthless women who had no earthly claim on him, they +would not be where they were now. He humbly admitted it all, and left +her to think of Rogers herself. She did not fail to do so, and the +thought did not fail to restore him to her tenderness again. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I do not know how it is that clergymen and physicians keep from telling +their wives the secrets confided to them; perhaps they can trust their +wives to find them out for themselves whenever they wish. Sewell had +laid before his wife the case of the Laphams after they came to consult +with him about Corey's proposal to Penelope, for he wished to be +confirmed in his belief that he had advised them soundly; but he had +not given her their names, and he had not known Corey's himself. Now +he had no compunctions in talking the affair over with her without the +veil of ignorance which she had hitherto assumed, for she declared that +as soon as she heard of Corey's engagement to Penelope, the whole thing +had flashed upon her. "And that night at dinner I could have told the +child that he was in love with her sister by the way he talked about +her; I heard him; and if she had not been so blindly in love with him +herself, she would have known it too. I must say, I can't help feeling +a sort of contempt for her sister." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, but you must not!" cried Sewell. "That is wrong, cruelly wrong. +I'm sure that's out of your novel-reading, my dear, and not out of your +heart. Come! It grieves me to hear you say such a thing as that." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I dare say this pretty thing has got over it--how much character +she has got!--and I suppose she'll see somebody else." +</P> + +<P> +Sewell had to content himself with this partial concession. As a +matter of fact, unless it was the young West Virginian who had come on +to arrange the purchase of the Works, Irene had not yet seen any one, +and whether there was ever anything between them is a fact that would +need a separate inquiry. It is certain that at the end of five years +after the disappointment which she met so bravely, she was still +unmarried. But she was even then still very young, and her life at +Lapham had been varied by visits to the West. It had also been varied +by an invitation, made with the politest resolution by Mrs. Corey, to +visit in Boston, which the girl was equal to refusing in the same +spirit. +</P> + +<P> +Sewell was intensely interested in the moral spectacle which Lapham +presented under his changed conditions. The Colonel, who was more the +Colonel in those hills than he could ever have been on the Back Bay, +kept him and Mrs. Sewell over night at his house; and he showed the +minister minutely round the Works and drove him all over his farm. For +this expedition he employed a lively colt which had not yet come of +age, and an open buggy long past its prime, and was no more ashamed of +his turnout than of the finest he had ever driven on the Milldam. He +was rather shabby and slovenly in dress, and he had fallen unkempt, +after the country fashion, as to his hair and beard and boots. The +house was plain, and was furnished with the simpler moveables out of +the house in Nankeen Square. There were certainly all the necessaries, +but no luxuries unless the statues of Prayer and Faith might be so +considered. The Laphams now burned kerosene, of course, and they had +no furnace in the winter; these were the only hardships the Colonel +complained of; but he said that as soon as the company got to paying +dividends again,--he was evidently proud of the outlays that for the +present prevented this,--he should put in steam heat and naphtha-gas. +He spoke freely of his failure, and with a confidence that seemed +inspired by his former trust in Sewell, whom, indeed, he treated like +an intimate friend, rather than an acquaintance of two or three +meetings. He went back to his first connection with Rogers, and he put +before Sewell hypothetically his own conclusions in regard to the +matter. +</P> + +<P> +"Sometimes," he said, "I get to thinking it all over, and it seems to +me I done wrong about Rogers in the first place; that the whole trouble +came from that. It was just like starting a row of bricks. I tried to +catch up and stop 'em from going, but they all tumbled, one after +another. It wa'n't in the nature of things that they could be stopped +till the last brick went. I don't talk much with my wife, any more +about it; but I should like to know how it strikes you." +</P> + +<P> +"We can trace the operation of evil in the physical world," replied the +minister, "but I'm more and more puzzled about it in the moral world. +There its course is often so very obscure; and often it seems to +involve, so far as we can see, no penalty whatever. And in your own +case, as I understand, you don't admit--you don't feel sure--that you +ever actually did wrong this man----" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, no; I don't. That is to say----" +</P> + +<P> +He did not continue, and after a while Sewell said, with that subtle +kindness of his, "I should be inclined to think--nothing can be thrown +quite away; and it can't be that our sins only weaken us--that your +fear of having possibly behaved selfishly toward this man kept you on +your guard, and strengthened you when you were brought face to face +with a greater"--he was going to say temptation, but he saved Lapham's +pride, and said--"emergency." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think so?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think that there may be truth in what I suggest." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know what it was," said Lapham; "all I know is that when +it came to the point, although I could see that I'd got to go under +unless I did it--that I couldn't sell out to those Englishmen, and I +couldn't let that man put his money into my business without I told him +just how things stood." +</P> + +<P> +As Sewell afterwards told his wife, he could see that the loss of his +fortune had been a terrible trial to Lapham, just because his +prosperity had been so gross and palpable; and he had now a burning +desire to know exactly how, at the bottom of his heart, Lapham still +felt. "And do you ever have any regrets?" he delicately inquired of +him. +</P> + +<P> +"About what I done? Well, it don't always seem as if I done it," +replied Lapham. "Seems sometimes as if it was a hole opened for me, +and I crept out of it. I don't know," he added thoughtfully, biting +the corner of his stiff moustache. "I don't know as I should always +say it paid; but if I done it, and the thing was to do over again, +right in the same way, I guess I should have to do it." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM *** + +***** This file should be named 154-h.htm or 154-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/154/ + +Produced by John Hamm. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Rise of Silas Lapham + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #154] +[Last updated: June 25, 2014] +[Last updated: May 13, 2017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM *** + + + + +Produced by John Hamm. HTML version by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM + + +by + +William Dean Howells + + +JTABLE 5 27 1 + + + +I. + + +WHEN Bartley Hubbard went to interview Silas Lapham for the "Solid Men +of Boston" series, which he undertook to finish up in The Events, after +he replaced their original projector on that newspaper, Lapham received +him in his private office by previous appointment. + +"Walk right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he caught sight +of through the door of the counting-room. + +He did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, but he gave +Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in the +direction of a vacant chair. "Sit down! I'll be with you in just half +a minute." + +"Take your time," said Bartley, with the ease he instantly felt. "I'm +in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on his knee, +and began to sharpen a pencil. + +"There!" Lapham pounded with his great hairy fist on the envelope he +had been addressing. + +"William!" he called out, and he handed the letter to a boy who came to +get it. "I want that to go right away. Well, sir," he continued, +wheeling round in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing +Bartley, seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you want +my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do you, young man?" + +"That's what I'm after," said Bartley. "Your money or your life." + +"I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money," said Lapham, as +if he were willing to prolong these moments of preparation. + +"Take 'em both," Bartley suggested. "Don't want your money without +your life, if you come to that. But you're just one million times more +interesting to the public than if you hadn't a dollar; and you know +that as well as I do, Mr. Lapham. There's no use beating about the +bush." + +"No," said Lapham, somewhat absently. He put out his huge foot and +pushed the ground-glass door shut between his little den and the +book-keepers, in their larger den outside. + +"In personal appearance," wrote Bartley in the sketch for which he now +studied his subject, while he waited patiently for him to continue, +"Silas Lapham is a fine type of the successful American. He has a +square, bold chin, only partially concealed by the short reddish-grey +beard, growing to the edges of his firmly closing lips. His nose is +short and straight; his forehead good, but broad rather than high; his +eyes blue, and with a light in them that is kindly or sharp according +to his mood. He is of medium height, and fills an average arm-chair +with a solid bulk, which on the day of our interview was +unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue serge. His head droops +somewhat from a short neck, which does not trouble itself to rise far +from a pair of massive shoulders." + +"I don't know as I know just where you want me to begin," said Lapham. + +"Might begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin," replied +Bartley. + +A gleam of humorous appreciation shot into Lapham's blue eyes. + +"I didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that," +he said. "But there's no disgrace in having been born, and I was born +in the State of Vermont, pretty well up under the Canada line--so well +up, in fact, that I came very near being an adoptive citizen; for I was +bound to be an American of SOME sort, from the word Go! That was +about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty years ago: this is '75, and +that was '20. Well, say I'm fifty-five years old; and I've LIVED 'em, +too; not an hour of waste time about ME, anywheres! I was born on a +farm, and----" + +"Worked in the fields summers and went to school winters: regulation +thing?" Bartley cut in. + +"Regulation thing," said Lapham, accepting this irreverent version of +his history somewhat dryly. + +"Parents poor, of course," suggested the journalist. "Any barefoot +business? Early deprivations of any kind, that would encourage the +youthful reader to go and do likewise? Orphan myself, you know," said +Bartley, with a smile of cynical good-comradery. + +Lapham looked at him silently, and then said with quiet self-respect, +"I guess if you see these things as a joke, my life won't interest you." + +"Oh yes, it will," returned Bartley, unabashed. "You'll see; it'll +come out all right." And in fact it did so, in the interview which +Bartley printed. + +"Mr. Lapham," he wrote, "passed rapidly over the story of his early +life, its poverty and its hardships, sweetened, however, by the +recollections of a devoted mother, and a father who, if somewhat her +inferior in education, was no less ambitious for the advancement of his +children. They were quiet, unpretentious people, religious, after the +fashion of that time, and of sterling morality, and they taught their +children the simple virtues of the Old Testament and Poor Richard's +Almanac." + +Bartley could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted to Lapham's +unliterary habit of mind for his security in making it, and most other +people would consider it sincere reporter's rhetoric. + +"You know," he explained to Lapham, "that we have to look at all these +facts as material, and we get the habit of classifying them. Sometimes +a leading question will draw out a whole line of facts that a man +himself would never think of." He went on to put several queries, and +it was from Lapham's answers that he generalised the history of his +childhood. "Mr. Lapham, although he did not dwell on his boyish trials +and struggles, spoke of them with deep feeling and an abiding sense of +their reality." This was what he added in the interview, and by the +time he had got Lapham past the period where risen Americans are all +pathetically alike in their narrow circumstances, their sufferings, and +their aspirations, he had beguiled him into forgetfulness of the check +he had received, and had him talking again in perfect enjoyment of his +autobiography. + +"Yes, sir," said Lapham, in a strain which Bartley was careful not to +interrupt again, "a man never sees all that his mother has been to him +till it's too late to let her know that he sees it. Why, my mother--" +he stopped. "It gives me a lump in the throat," he said +apologetically, with an attempt at a laugh. Then he went on: "She was +a little frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized intermediate +school-girl; but she did the whole work of a family of boys, and +boarded the hired men besides. She cooked, swept, washed, ironed, made +and mended from daylight till dark--and from dark till daylight, I was +going to say; for I don't know how she got any time for sleep. But I +suppose she did. She got time to go to church, and to teach us to read +the Bible, and to misunderstand it in the old way. She was GOOD. But +it ain't her on her knees in church that comes back to me so much like +the sight of an angel as her on her knees before me at night, washing +my poor, dirty little feet, that I'd run bare in all day, and making me +decent for bed. There were six of us boys; it seems to me we were all +of a size; and she was just so careful with all of us. I can feel her +hands on my feet yet!" Bartley looked at Lapham's No. 10 boots, and +softly whistled through his teeth. "We were patched all over; but we +wa'n't ragged. I don't know how she got through it. She didn't seem +to think it was anything; and I guess it was no more than my father +expected of her. HE worked like a horse in doors and out--up at +daylight, feeding the stock, and groaning round all day with his +rheumatism, but not stopping." + +Bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, if he could have +spoken his mind, he would have suggested to Lapham that he was not +there for the purpose of interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had +learned to practise a patience with his victims which he did not always +feel, and to feign an interest in their digressions till he could bring +them up with a round turn. + +"I tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife into the +writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear women complaining +nowadays that their lives are stunted and empty, I want to tell 'em +about my MOTHER'S life. I could paint it out for 'em." + +Bartley saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in. "And you +say, Mr. Lapham, that you discovered this mineral paint on the old farm +yourself?" + +Lapham acquiesced in the return to business. "I didn't discover it," +he said scrupulously. "My father found it one day, in a hole made by a +tree blowing down. There it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking +to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't +know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did +think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those +days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was +trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he +couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their +houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a +kind of joke with us; and I guess that paint-mine did as much as any +one thing to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old enough. All +my brothers went West, and took up land; but I hung on to New England +and I hung on to the old farm, not because the paint-mine was on it, +but because the old house was--and the graves. Well," said Lapham, as +if unwilling to give himself too much credit, "there wouldn't been any +market for it, anyway. You can go through that part of the State and +buy more farms than you can shake a stick at for less money than it +cost to build the barns on 'em. Of course, it's turned out a good +thing. I keep the old house up in good shape, and we spend a month or +so there every summer. M' wife kind of likes it, and the girls. +Pretty place; sightly all round it. I've got a force of men at work +there the whole time, and I've got a man and his wife in the house. +Had a family meeting there last year; the whole connection from out +West. There!" Lapham rose from his seat and took down a large warped, +unframed photograph from the top of his desk, passing his hand over it, +and then blowing vigorously upon it, to clear it of the dust. "There +we are, ALL of us." + +"I don't need to look twice at YOU," said Bartley, putting his finger +on one of the heads. + +"Well, that's Bill," said Lapham, with a gratified laugh. "He's about +as brainy as any of us, I guess. He's one of their leading lawyers, +out Dubuque way; been judge of the Common Pleas once or twice. That's +his son--just graduated at Yale--alongside of my youngest girl. +Good-looking chap, ain't he?" + +"SHE'S a good-looking chap," said Bartley, with prompt irreverence. He +hastened to add, at the frown which gathered between Lapham's eyes, +"What a beautiful creature she is! What a lovely, refined, sensitive +face! And she looks GOOD, too." + +"She is good," said the father, relenting. + +"And, after all, that's about the best thing in a woman," said the +potential reprobate. "If my wife wasn't good enough to keep both of us +straight, I don't know what would become of me." "My other daughter," +said Lapham, indicating a girl with eyes that showed large, and a face +of singular gravity. "Mis' Lapham," he continued, touching his wife's +effigy with his little finger. "My brother Willard and his +family--farm at Kankakee. Hazard Lapham and his wife--Baptist preacher +in Kansas. Jim and his three girls--milling business at Minneapolis. +Ben and his family--practising medicine in Fort Wayne." + +The figures were clustered in an irregular group in front of an old +farm-house, whose original ugliness had been smartened up with a coat +of Lapham's own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza. The +photographer had not been able to conceal the fact that they were all +decent, honest-looking, sensible people, with a very fair share of +beauty among the young girls; some of these were extremely pretty, in +fact. He had put them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of +course; and they all looked as if they had the instrument of torture +which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs. Here and +there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur; and some of the younger +children had twitched themselves into wavering shadows, and might have +passed for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts. It was the +standard family-group photograph, in which most Americans have figured +at some time or other; and Lapham exhibited a just satisfaction in it. +"I presume," he mused aloud, as he put it back on top of his desk, +"that we sha'n't soon get together again, all of us." + +"And you say," suggested Bartley, "that you stayed right along on the +old place, when the rest cleared out West?" + +"No o-o-o," said Lapham, with a long, loud drawl; "I cleared out West +too, first off. Went to Texas. Texas was all the cry in those days. +But I got enough of the Lone Star in about three months, and I come +back with the idea that Vermont was good enough for me." + +"Fatted calf business?" queried Bartley, with his pencil poised above +his note-book. + +"I presume they were glad to see me," said Lapham, with dignity. +"Mother," he added gently, "died that winter, and I stayed on with +father. I buried him in the spring; and then I came down to a little +place called Lumberville, and picked up what jobs I could get. I +worked round at the saw-mills, and I was ostler a while at the hotel--I +always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T exactly a college +graduate, and I went to school odd times. I got to driving the stage +after while, and by and by I BOUGHT the stage and run the business +myself. Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long story +short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham, with pride, "I married +the school-teacher. We did pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she +was always at me to paint up. Well, I put it off, and PUT it off, as a +man will, till one day I give in, and says I, 'Well, let's paint up. +Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out +on the farm. Let's go out and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let +the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less kind of a +Kanuck that had come down that way; and I'd hated to see the house with +him in it; but we drove out one Saturday afternoon, and we brought back +about a bushel of the stuff in the buggy-seat, and I tried it crude, +and I tried it burnt; and I liked it. M'wife she liked it too. There +wa'n't any painter by trade in the village, and I mixed it myself. +Well, sir, that tavern's got that coat of paint on it yet, and it +hain't ever had any other, and I don't know's it ever will. Well, you +know, I felt as if it was a kind of harumscarum experiment, all the +while; and I presume I shouldn't have tried it but I kind of liked to +do it because father'd always set so much store by his paint-mine. And +when I'd got the first coat on,"--Lapham called it CUT,--"I presume I +must have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and thinking how +he would have enjoyed it. I've had my share of luck in this world, and +I ain't a-going to complain on my OWN account, but I've noticed that +most things get along too late for most people. It made me feel bad, +and it took all the pride out my success with the paint, thinking of +father. Seemed to me I might 'a taken more interest in it when he was +by to see; but we've got to live and learn. Well, I called my wife +out,--I'd tried it on the back of the house, you know,--and she left +her dishes,--I can remember she came out with her sleeves rolled up and +set down alongside of me on the trestle,--and says I, 'What do you +think, Persis?' And says she, 'Well, you hain't got a paint-mine, Silas +Lapham; you've got a GOLD-mine.' She always was just so enthusiastic +about things. Well, it was just after two or three boats had burnt up +out West, and a lot of lives lost, and there was a great cry about +non-inflammable paint, and I guess that was what was in her mind. +'Well, I guess it ain't any gold-mine, Persis,' says I; 'but I guess it +IS a paint-mine. I'm going to have it analysed, and if it turns out +what I think it is, I'm going to work it. And if father hadn't had +such a long name, I should call it the Nehemiah Lapham Mineral Paint. +But, any rate, every barrel of it, and every keg, and every bottle, and +every package, big or little, has got to have the initials and figures +N.L.f. 1835, S.L.t. 1855, on it. Father found it in 1835, and I tried +it in 1855.'" + +"'S.T.--1860--X.' business," said Bartley. + +"Yes," said Lapham, "but I hadn't heard of Plantation Bitters then, and +I hadn't seen any of the fellow's labels. I set to work and I got a +man down from Boston; and I carried him out to the farm, and he +analysed it--made a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and +we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; kept the +Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence of iron in the ore +showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to test it, he +found out that it contained about seventy-five per cent. of the +peroxide of iron." + +Lapham pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort of reverent +satisfaction, as if awed through his pride by a little lingering +uncertainty as to what peroxide was. He accented it as if it were +purr-ox-EYED; and Bartley had to get him to spell it. + +"Well, and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note of the +percentage. + +"What then?" echoed Lapham. "Well, then, the fellow set down and told +me, 'You've got a paint here,' says he, 'that's going to drive every +other mineral paint out of the market. Why' says he, 'it'll drive 'em +right into the Back Bay!' Of course, I didn't know what the Back Bay +was then, but I begun to open my eyes; thought I'd had 'em open before, +but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint has got hydraulic cement in +it, and it can stand fire and water and acids;' he named over a lot of +things. Says he, 'It'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you want +to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going to crack nor fade any; +and it ain't a-going to scale. When you've got your arrangements for +burning it properly, you're going to have a paint that will stand like +the everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.' Then he went +into a lot of particulars, and I begun to think he was drawing a +long-bow, and meant to make his bill accordingly. So I kept pretty +cool; but the fellow's bill didn't amount to anything hardly--said I +might pay him after I got going; young chap, and pretty easy; but every +word he said was gospel. Well, I ain't a-going to brag up my paint; I +don't suppose you came here to hear me blow." + +"Oh yes, I did," said Bartley. "That's what I want. Tell all there is +to tell, and I can boil it down afterward. A man can't make a greater +mistake with a reporter than to hold back anything out of modesty. It +may be the very thing we want to know. What we want is the whole +truth; and more; we've got so much modesty of our own that we can +temper almost any statement." + +Lapham looked as if he did not quite like this tone, and he resumed a +little more quietly. "Oh, there isn't really very much more to say +about the paint itself. But you can use it for almost anything where a +paint is wanted, inside or out. It'll prevent decay, and it'll stop +it, after it's begun, in tin or iron. You can paint the inside of a +cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it; and you can +paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't. You can cover a brick +wall with it, or a railroad car, or the deck of a steamboat, and you +can't do a better thing for either." + +"Never tried it on the human conscience, I suppose," suggested Bartley. + +"No, sir," replied Lapham gravely. "I guess you want to keep that as +free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it. I never cared +to try any of it on mine." Lapham suddenly lifted his bulk up out of +his swivel-chair, and led the way out into the wareroom beyond the +office partitions, where rows and ranks of casks, barrels, and kegs +stretched dimly back to the rear of the building, and diffused an +honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint. They were labelled +and branded as containing each so many pounds of Lapham's Mineral +Paint, and each bore the mystic devices, N.L.f. 1835--S.L.t. 1855. +"There!" said Lapham, kicking one of the largest casks with the toe of +his boot, "that's about our biggest package; and here," he added, +laying his hand affectionately on the head of a very small keg, as if +it were the head of a child, which it resembled in size, "this is the +smallest. We used to put the paint on the market dry, but now we grind +every ounce of it in oil--very best quality of linseed oil--and warrant +it. We find it gives more satisfaction. Now, come back to the office, +and I'll show you our fancy brands." + +It was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom, with the rafters +showing overhead in a cloudy perspective, and darkening away into the +perpetual twilight at the rear of the building; and Bartley had found +an agreeable seat on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he +was reluctant to leave. But he rose and followed the vigorous lead of +Lapham back to the office, where the sun of a long summer afternoon was +just beginning to glare in at the window. On shelves opposite Lapham's +desk were tin cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders, +and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top, the same label +borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom. Lapham merely waved +his hand toward these; but when Bartley, after a comprehensive glance +at them, gave his whole attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where +different tints of the paint showed through flawless glass, Lapham +smiled, and waited in pleased expectation. + +"Hello!" said Bartley. "That's pretty!" + +"Yes," assented Lapham, "it is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and +we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking +down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label. + +Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked at Lapham and +smiled. + +"After HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and put the first of +it on the market her last birthday. She was pleased." + +"I should think she might have been," said Bartley, while he made a +note of the appearance of the jars. + +"I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said Lapham +dubiously. + +"That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing else does. +Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel." It was in the dawn of +Bartley's prosperity on the Boston Events, before his troubles with +Marcia had seriously begun. + +"Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile another of the vast +majority of married Americans; a few underrate their wives, but the +rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability. "Well," he +added, "we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?" + +"We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place." + +"Well, we've all got to commence that way," suggested Lapham +consolingly. + +"Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. I expect to be +under a roof of my own on Clover Street before long. I suppose," said +Bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass grow +under your feet much after you found out what was in your paint-mine?" + +"No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at +Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in the +first days of his married life. "I went right back to Lumberville and +sold out everything, and put all I could rake and scrape together into +paint. And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back about +HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!" + +Bartley laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry." + +"No, we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly little girls +grown up to LOOK like women." + +"Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, as if upon second +thought. + +"If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint wouldn't have +come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the seventy-five per +cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it +was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER." + +"Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that." + +"In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder, +nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region +that didn't have 'Lapham's Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three +colours we begun by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the +window-sill, and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge foot +close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that. + +"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--X. man, and the +stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they advertised in +that way; and I've read articles about it in the papers; but I don't +see where the joke comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own +the barns and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has got +to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred about a big +rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't do to put mineral +paint on it in three colours. I wish some of the people that talk +about the landscape, and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks +OUT of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, as we +used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd sing a little +different tune about the profanation of scenery. There ain't any man +enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a +dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do. But I ain't +a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock I come across, as if we +were all a set of dumn Druids. I say the landscape was made for man, +and not man for the landscape." + +"Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man +and the kidney-cure man." + +"It was made for any man that knows how to use it," Lapham returned, +insensible to Bartley's irony. "Let 'em go and live with nature in the +WINTER, up there along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough +of her for one while. Well--where was I?" + +"Decorating the landscape," said Bartley. + +"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville, and it give the place +a start too. You won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it +in the gazetteer. I give a pretty good lump of money to build a +town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held in it +they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T a name,--and it's +Lapham now." + +"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get the old Brandon +red?" asked Bartley. + +"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's a good paint," +said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show you round up at our place +some odd time, if you get off." + +"Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?" + +"Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time I got started, the +war broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. The thing +dropped perfectly dead. I presume that if I'd had any sort of +influence, I might have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages +and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels. But I hadn't, +and we had to face the music. I was about broken-hearted, but m'wife +she looked at it another way. 'I guess it's a providence,' says she. +'Silas, I guess you've got a country that's worth fighting for. Any +rate, you better go out and give it a chance.' Well, sir, I went. I +knew she meant business. It might kill her to have me go, but it would +kill her sure if I stayed. She was one of that kind. I went. Her +last words was, 'I'll look after the paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one +little girl then,--boy'd died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother was livin' +with us; and I knew if times DID anyways come up again, m'wife'd know +just what to do. So I went. I got through; and you can call me +Colonel, if you want to. Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and +forefinger and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee. +"Anything hard?" + +"Ball?" + +Lapham nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer. If it wa'n't for +that, I shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains." + +Bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "And +when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed it." + +"I took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could," said Lapham, +with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his autobiography. +"But I found that I had got back to another world. The day of small +things was past, and I don't suppose it will ever come again in this +country. My wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody +with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear the idea. That paint was +like my own blood to me. To have anybody else concerned in it was +like--well, I don't know what. I saw it was the thing to do; but I +tried to fight it off, and I tried to joke it off. I used to say, 'Why +didn't you take a partner yourself, Persis, while I was away?' And +she'd say, 'Well, if you hadn't come back, I should, Si.' Always DID +like a joke about as well as any woman I ever saw. Well, I had to come +to it. I took a partner." Lapham dropped the bold blue eyes with which +he had been till now staring into Bartley's face, and the reporter knew +that here was a place for asterisks in his interview, if interviews +were faithful. "He had money enough," continued Lapham, with a +suppressed sigh; "but he didn't know anything about paint. We hung on +together for a year or two. And then we quit." + +"And he had the experience," suggested Bartley, with companionable ease. + +"I had some of the experience too," said Lapham, with a scowl; and +Bartley divined, through the freemasonry of all who have sore places in +their memories, that this was a point which he must not touch again. + +"And since that, I suppose, you've played it alone." + +"I've played it alone." + +"You must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries, +Colonel?" suggested Bartley, putting on a professional air. + +"We ship it to all parts of the world. It goes to South America, lots +of it. It goes to Australia, and it goes to India, and it goes to +China, and it goes to the Cape of Good Hope. It'll stand any climate. +Of course, we don't export these fancy brands much. They're for home +use. But we're introducing them elsewhere. Here." Lapham pulled open +a drawer, and showed Bartley a lot of labels in different +languages--Spanish, French, German, and Italian. "We expect to do a +good business in all those countries. We've got our agencies in Cadiz +now, and in Paris, and in Hamburg, and in Leghorn. It's a thing that's +bound to make its way. Yes, sir. Wherever a man has got a ship, or a +bridge, or a lock, or a house, or a car, or a fence, or a pig-pen +anywhere in God's universe to paint, that's the paint for him, and he's +bound to find it out sooner or later. You pass a ton of that paint dry +through a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig-iron. +I believe in my paint. I believe it's a blessing to the world. When +folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me what I mix it with, +I always say, 'Well, in the first place, I mix it with FAITH, and after +that I grind it up with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that +money will buy.'" + +Lapham took out his watch and looked at it, and Bartley perceived that +his audience was drawing to a close. "'F you ever want to run down and +take a look at our works, pass you over the road,"--he called it +RUD--"and it sha'n't cost you a cent." "Well, may be I shall, +sometime," said Bartley. "Good afternoon, Colonel." + +"Good afternoon. Or--hold on! My horse down there yet, William?" he +called to the young man in the counting-room who had taken his letter +at the beginning of the interview. "Oh! All right!" he added, in +response to something the young man said. + +"Can't I set you down somewhere, Mr. Hubbard? I've got my horse at the +door, and I can drop you on my way home. I'm going to take Mis' Lapham +to look at a house I'm driving piles for, down on the New Land." + +"Don't care if I do," said Bartley. + +Lapham put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying on his desk, +pulled down its rolling cover, turned the key in it, and gave the +papers to an extremely handsome young woman at one of the desks in the +outer office. She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her +smooth, yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white +forehead. "Here," said Lapham, with the same prompt gruff kindness +that he had used in addressing the young man, "I want you should put +these in shape, and give me a type-writer copy to-morrow." + +"What an uncommonly pretty girl!" said Bartley, as they descended the +rough stairway and found their way out to the street, past the dangling +rope of a block and tackle wandering up into the cavernous darkness +overhead. + +"She does her work," said Lapham shortly. + +Bartley mounted to the left side of the open buggy standing at the +curb-stone, and Lapham, gathering up the hitching-weight, slid it under +the buggy-seat and mounted beside him. + +"No chance to speed a horse here, of course," said Lapham, while the +horse with a spirited gentleness picked her way, with a high, long +action, over the pavement of the street. The streets were all narrow, +and most of them crooked, in that quarter of the town; but at the end +of one the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately against +the cool blue of the afternoon sky. The air was full of a smell +pleasantly compounded of oakum, of leather, and of oil. It was not the +busy season, and they met only two or three trucks heavily straggling +toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the cobble-stones of +the pavement were worn with the dint of ponderous wheels, and +discoloured with iron-rust from them; here and there, in wandering +streaks over its surface, was the grey stain of the salt water with +which the street had been sprinkled. + +After an interval of some minutes, which both men spent in looking +round the dash-board from opposite sides to watch the stride of the +horse, Bartley said, with a light sigh, "I had a colt once down in +Maine that stepped just like that mare." + +"Well!" said Lapham, sympathetically recognising the bond that this +fact created between them. "Well, now, I tell you what you do. You +let me come for you 'most any afternoon, now, and take you out over the +Milldam, and speed this mare a little. I'd like to show you what this +mare can do. Yes, I would." + +"All right," answered Bartley; "I'll let you know my first day off." + +"Good," cried Lapham. + +"Kentucky?" queried Bartley. + +"No, sir. I don't ride behind anything but Vermont; never did. Touch +of Morgan, of course; but you can't have much Morgan in a horse if you +want speed. Hambletonian mostly. Where'd you say you wanted to get +out?" + +"I guess you may put me down at the Events Office, just round the +corner here. I've got to write up this interview while it's fresh." + +"All right," said Lapham, impersonally assenting to Bartley's use of +him as material. + +He had not much to complain of in Bartley's treatment, unless it was +the strain of extravagant compliment which it involved. But the +flattery was mainly for the paint, whose virtues Lapham did not believe +could be overstated, and himself and his history had been treated with +as much respect as Bartley was capable of showing any one. He made a +very picturesque thing of the discovery of the paint-mine. "Deep in the +heart of the virgin forests of Vermont, far up toward the line of the +Canadian snows, on a desolate mountain-side, where an autumnal storm +had done its wild work, and the great trees, strewn hither and thither, +bore witness to its violence, Nehemiah Lapham discovered, just forty +years ago, the mineral which the alchemy of his son's enterprise and +energy has transmuted into solid ingots of the most precious of metals. +The colossal fortune of Colonel Silas Lapham lay at the bottom of a +hole which an uprooted tree had dug for him, and which for many years +remained a paint-mine of no more appreciable value than a soap-mine." + +Here Bartley had not been able to forego another grin; but he +compensated for it by the high reverence with which he spoke of Colonel +Lapham's record during the war of the rebellion, and of the motives +which impelled him to turn aside from an enterprise in which his whole +heart was engaged, and take part in the struggle. "The Colonel bears +embedded in the muscle of his right leg a little memento of the period +in the shape of a minie-ball, which he jocularly referred to as his +thermometer, and which relieves him from the necessity of reading 'The +Probabilities' in his morning paper. This saves him just so much time; +and for a man who, as he said, has not a moment of waste time on him +anywhere, five minutes a day are something in the course of a year. +Simple, clear, bold, and straightforward in mind and action, Colonel +Silas Lapham, with a prompt comprehensiveness and a never-failing +business sagacity, is, in the best sense of that much-abused term, one +of nature's noblemen, to the last inch of his five eleven and a half. +His life affords an example of single-minded application and unwavering +perseverance which our young business men would do well to emulate. +There is nothing showy or meretricious about the man. He believes in +mineral paint, and he puts his heart and soul into it. He makes it a +religion; though we would not imply that it IS his religion. Colonel +Lapham is a regular attendant at the Rev. Dr. Langworthy's church. He +subscribes liberally to the Associated Charities, and no good object or +worthy public enterprise fails to receive his support. He is not now +actively in politics, and his paint is not partisan; but it is an open +secret that he is, and always has been, a staunch Republican. Without +violating the sanctities of private life, we cannot speak fully of +various details which came out in the free and unembarrassed interview +which Colonel Lapham accorded our representative. But we may say that +the success of which he is justly proud he is also proud to attribute +in great measure to the sympathy and energy of his wife--one of those +women who, in whatever walk of life, seem born to honour the name of +American Woman, and to redeem it from the national reproach of Daisy +Millerism. Of Colonel Lapham's family, we will simply add that it +consists of two young lady daughters. + +"The subject of this very inadequate sketch is building a house on the +water side of Beacon Street, after designs by one of our leading +architectural firms, which, when complete, will be one of the finest +ornaments of that exclusive avenue. It will, we believe, be ready for +the occupancy of the family sometime in the spring." + +When Bartley had finished his article, which he did with a good deal of +inward derision, he went home to Marcia, still smiling over the thought +of Lapham, whose burly simplicity had peculiarly amused him. "He +regularly turned himself inside out to me," he said, as he sat +describing his interview to Marcia. + +"Then I know you could make something nice out of it," said his wife; +"and that will please Mr. Witherby." + +"Oh yes, I've done pretty well; but I couldn't let myself loose on him +the way I wanted to. Confound the limitations of decency, anyway! I +should like to have told just what Colonel Lapham thought of landscape +advertising in Colonel Lapham's own words. I'll tell you one thing, +Marsh: he had a girl there at one of the desks that you wouldn't let ME +have within gunshot of MY office. Pretty? It ain't any name for it!" +Marcia's eyes began to blaze, and Bartley broke out into a laugh, in +which he arrested himself at sight of a formidable parcel in the corner +of the room. + +"Hello! What's that?" + +"Why, I don't know what it is," replied Marcia tremulously. "A man +brought it just before you came in, and I didn't like to open it." + +"Think it was some kind of infernal machine?" asked Bartley, getting +down on his knees to examine the package. "MRS. B. Hubbard, heigh?" He +cut the heavy hemp string with his penknife. "We must look into this +thing. I should like to know who's sending packages to Mrs. Hubbard in +my absence." He unfolded the wrappings of paper, growing softer and +finer inward, and presently pulled out a handsome square glass jar, +through which a crimson mass showed richly. "The Persis Brand!" he +yelled. "I knew it!" + +"Oh, what is it, Bartley?" quavered Marcia. Then, courageously drawing +a little nearer: "Is it some kind of jam?" she implored. "Jam? No!" +roared Bartley. "It's PAINT! It's mineral paint--Lapham's paint!" + +"Paint?" echoed Marcia, as she stood over him while he stripped their +wrappings from the jars which showed the dark blue, dark green, light +brown, dark brown, and black, with the dark crimson, forming the gamut +of colour of the Lapham paint. "Don't TELL me it's paint that I can +use, Bartley!" + +"Well, I shouldn't advise you to use much of it--all at once," replied +her husband. "But it's paint that you can use in moderation." + +Marcia cast her arms round his neck and kissed him. "O Bartley, I +think I'm the happiest girl in the world! I was just wondering what I +should do. There are places in that Clover Street house that need +touching up so dreadfully. I shall be very careful. You needn't be +afraid I shall overdo. But, this just saves my life. Did you BUY it, +Bartley? You know we couldn't afford it, and you oughtn't to have done +it! And what does the Persis Brand mean?" + +"Buy it?" cried Bartley. "No! The old fool's sent it to you as a +present. You'd better wait for the facts before you pitch into me for +extravagance, Marcia. Persis is the name of his wife; and he named it +after her because it's his finest brand. You'll see it in my +interview. Put it on the market her last birthday for a surprise to +her." + +"What old fool?" faltered Marcia. + +"Why, Lapham--the mineral paint man." + +"Oh, what a good man!" sighed Marcia from the bottom of her soul. +"Bartley! you WON'T make fun of him as you do of some of those people? +WILL you?" + +"Nothing that HE'LL ever find out," said Bartley, getting up and +brushing off the carpet-lint from his knees. + + + +II. + + +AFTER dropping Bartley Hubbard at the Events building, Lapham drove on +down Washington Street to Nankeen Square at the South End, where he had +lived ever since the mistaken movement of society in that direction +ceased. He had not built, but had bought very cheap of a terrified +gentleman of good extraction who discovered too late that the South End +was not the thing, and who in the eagerness of his flight to the Back +Bay threw in his carpets and shades for almost nothing. Mrs. Lapham +was even better satisfied with their bargain than the Colonel himself, +and they had lived in Nankeen Square for twelve years. They had seen +the saplings planted in the pretty oval round which the houses were +built flourish up into sturdy young trees, and their two little girls +in the same period had grown into young ladies; the Colonel's tough +frame had expanded into the bulk which Bartley's interview indicated; +and Mrs. Lapham, while keeping a more youthful outline, showed the +sharp print of the crow's-foot at the corners of her motherly eyes, and +certain slight creases in her wholesome cheeks. The fact that they +lived in an unfashionable neighbourhood was something that they had +never been made to feel to their personal disadvantage, and they had +hardly known it till the summer before this story opens, when Mrs. +Lapham and her daughter Irene had met some other Bostonians far from +Boston, who made it memorable. They were people whom chance had +brought for the time under a singular obligation to the Lapham ladies, +and they were gratefully recognisant of it. They had ventured--a +mother and two daughters--as far as a rather wild little Canadian +watering-place on the St. Lawrence, below Quebec, and had arrived some +days before their son and brother was expected to join them. Two of +their trunks had gone astray, and on the night of their arrival the +mother was taken violently ill. Mrs. Lapham came to their help, with +her skill as nurse, and with the abundance of her own and her +daughter's wardrobe, and a profuse, single-hearted kindness. When a +doctor could be got at, he said that but for Mrs. Lapham's timely care, +the lady would hardly have lived. He was a very effusive little +Frenchman, and fancied he was saying something very pleasant to +everybody. + +A certain intimacy inevitably followed, and when the son came he was +even more grateful than the others. Mrs. Lapham could not quite +understand why he should be as attentive to her as to Irene; but she +compared him with other young men about the place, and thought him +nicer than any of them. She had not the means of a wider comparison; +for in Boston, with all her husband's prosperity, they had not had a +social life. Their first years there were given to careful getting on +Lapham's part, and careful saving on his wife's. Suddenly the money +began to come so abundantly that she need not save; and then they did +not know what to do with it. A certain amount could be spent on +horses, and Lapham spent it; his wife spent on rich and rather ugly +clothes and a luxury of household appointments. Lapham had not yet +reached the picture-buying stage of the rich man's development, but +they decorated their house with the costliest and most abominable +frescoes; they went upon journeys, and lavished upon cars and hotels; +they gave with both hands to their church and to all the charities it +brought them acquainted with; but they did not know how to spend on +society. Up to a certain period Mrs. Lapham had the ladies of her +neighbourhood in to tea, as her mother had done in the country in her +younger days. Lapham's idea of hospitality was still to bring a +heavy-buying customer home to pot-luck; neither of them imagined +dinners. + +Their two girls had gone to the public schools, where they had not got +on as fast as some of the other girls; so that they were a year behind +in graduating from the grammar-school, where Lapham thought that they +had got education enough. His wife was of a different mind; she would +have liked them to go to some private school for their finishing. But +Irene did not care for study; she preferred house-keeping, and both the +sisters were afraid of being snubbed by the other girls, who were of a +different sort from the girls of the grammar-school; these were mostly +from the parks and squares, like themselves. It ended in their going +part of a year. But the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, +and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the +circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she +read, and rather proud of it. + +They were not girls who embroidered or abandoned themselves to +needle-work. Irene spent her abundant leisure in shopping for herself +and her mother, of whom both daughters made a kind of idol, buying her +caps and laces out of their pin-money, and getting her dresses far +beyond her capacity to wear. Irene dressed herself very stylishly, and +spent hours on her toilet every day. Her sister had a simpler taste, +and, if she had done altogether as she liked, might even have slighted +dress. They all three took long naps every day, and sat hours together +minutely discussing what they saw out of the window. In her +self-guided search for self-improvement, the elder sister went to many +church lectures on a vast variety of secular subjects, and usually came +home with a comic account of them, and that made more matter of talk +for the whole family. She could make fun of nearly everything; Irene +complained that she scared away the young men whom they got acquainted +with at the dancing-school sociables. They were, perhaps, not the +wisest young men. + +The girls had learned to dance at Papanti's; but they had not belonged +to the private classes. They did not even know of them, and a great +gulf divided them from those who did. Their father did not like +company, except such as came informally in their way; and their mother +had remained too rustic to know how to attract it in the sophisticated +city fashion. None of them had grasped the idea of European travel; +but they had gone about to mountain and sea-side resorts, the mother +and the two girls, where they witnessed the spectacle which such +resorts present throughout New England, of multitudes of girls, lovely, +accomplished, exquisitely dressed, humbly glad of the presence of any +sort of young man; but the Laphams had no skill or courage to make +themselves noticed, far less courted by the solitary invalid, or +clergyman, or artist. They lurked helplessly about in the hotel +parlours, looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward. +Perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so. They had not a +conceit of themselves, but a sort of content in their own ways that one +may notice in certain families. The very strength of their mutual +affection was a barrier to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one +another; they equipped their house for their own satisfaction; they +lived richly to themselves, not because they were selfish, but because +they did not know how to do otherwise. The elder daughter did not care +for society, apparently. The younger, who was but three years younger, +was not yet quite old enough to be ambitious of it. With all her +wonderful beauty, she had an innocence almost vegetable. When her +beauty, which in its immaturity was crude and harsh, suddenly ripened, +she bloomed and glowed with the unconsciousness of a flower; she not +merely did not feel herself admired, but hardly knew herself +discovered. If she dressed well, perhaps too well, it was because she +had the instinct of dress; but till she met this young man who was so +nice to her at Baie St. Paul, she had scarcely lived a detached, +individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother and her +sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. She took account of +everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out +exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest +movement or gesture. In this way she began for the first time to form +ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the +less her own because they were often mistaken. + +Some of the things that he partly said, partly looked, she reported to +her mother, and they talked them over, as they did everything relating +to these new acquaintances, and wrought them into the novel point of +view which they were acquiring. When Mrs. Lapham returned home, she +submitted all the accumulated facts of the case, and all her own +conjectures, to her husband, and canvassed them anew. + +At first he was disposed to regard the whole affair as of small +importance, and she had to insist a little beyond her own convictions +in order to counteract his indifference. + +"Well, I can tell you," she said, "that if you think they were not the +nicest people you ever saw, you're mightily mistaken. They had about +the best manners; and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. I +declare it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods. I +don't know but the mother and the daughters would have let you feel so +a little, if they'd showed out all they thought; but they never did; +and the son--well, I can't express it, Silas! But that young man had +about perfect ways." + +"Seem struck up on Irene?" asked the Colonel. + +"How can I tell? He seemed just about as much struck up on me. Anyway, +he paid me as much attention as he did her. Perhaps it's more the way, +now, to notice the mother than it used to be." + +Lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had asked already, who +the people were. + +Mrs. Lapham repeated their name. Lapham nodded his head. "Do you know +them? What business is he in?" + +"I guess he ain't in anything," said Lapham. + +"They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham impartially. + +"Well, they'd ought to be," returned the Colonel. "Never done anything +else." + +"They didn't seem stuck up," urged his wife. + +"They'd no need to--with you. I could buy him and sell him, twice +over." + +This answer satisfied Mrs. Lapham rather with the fact than with her +husband. "Well, I guess I wouldn't brag, Silas," she said. + +In the winter the ladies of this family, who returned to town very +late, came to call on Mrs. Lapham. They were again very polite. But +the mother let drop, in apology for their calling almost at nightfall, +that the coachman had not known the way exactly. + +"Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill." + +There was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on +comparing notes with her daughter, Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had +been left to rankle in her mind also. + +"They said they had never been in this part of the town before." + +Upon a strict search of her memory, Irene could not report that the +fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, but it was that +which gave it a more penetrating effect. + +"Oh, well, of course," said Lapham, to whom these facts were referred. +"Those sort of people haven't got much business up our way, and they +don't come. It's a fair thing all round. We don't trouble the Hill or +the New Land much." + +"We know where they are," suggested his wife thoughtfully. + +"Yes," assented the Colonel. "I know where they are. I've got a lot +of land over on the Back Bay." + +"You have?" eagerly demanded his wife. + +"Want me to build on it?" he asked in reply, with a quizzical smile. + +"I guess we can get along here for a while." + +This was at night. In the morning Mrs. Lapham said-- + +"I suppose we ought to do the best we can for the children, in every +way." + +"I supposed we always had," replied her husband. + +"Yes, we have, according to our light." + +"Have you got some new light?" + +"I don't know as it's light. But if the girls are going to keep on +living in Boston and marry here, I presume we ought to try to get them +into society, some way; or ought to do something." + +"Well, who's ever done more for their children than we have?" demanded +Lapham, with a pang at the thought that he could possibly have been +out-done. "Don't they have everything they want? Don't they dress just +as you say? Don't you go everywhere with 'em? Is there ever anything +going on that's worth while that they don't see it or hear it? I don't +know what you mean. Why don't you get them into society? There's money +enough!" + +"There's got to be something besides money, I guess," said Mrs. Lapham, +with a hopeless sigh. "I presume we didn't go to work just the right +way about their schooling. We ought to have got them into some school +where they'd have got acquainted with city girls--girls who could help +them along." + +"Nearly everybody at Miss Smillie's was from some where else." + +"Well, it's pretty late to think about that now," grumbled Lapham. + +"And we've always gone our own way, and not looked out for the future. +We ought to have gone out more, and had people come to the house. +Nobody comes." + +"Well, is that my fault? I guess nobody ever makes people welcomer." + +"We ought to have invited company more." + +"Why don't you do it now? If it's for the girls, I don't care if you +have the house full all the while." + +Mrs. Lapham was forced to a confession full of humiliation. "I don't +know who to ask." + +"Well, you can't expect me to tell you." + +"No; we're both country people, and we've kept our country ways, and we +don't, either of us, know what to do. You've had to work so hard, and +your luck was so long coming, and then it came with such a rush, that +we haven't had any chance to learn what to do with it. It's just the +same with Irene's looks; I didn't expect she was ever going to have +any, she WAS such a plain child, and, all at once, she's blazed out +this way. As long as it was Pen that didn't seem to care for society, +I didn't give much mind to it. But I can see it's going to be +different with Irene. I don't believe but what we're in the wrong +neighbourhood." + +"Well," said the Colonel, "there ain't a prettier lot on the Back Bay +than mine. It's on the water side of Beacon, and it's twenty-eight +feet wide and a hundred and fifty deep. Let's build on it." + +Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. "No," she said finally; "we've always +got along well enough here, and I guess we better stay." + +At breakfast she said casually: "Girls, how would you like to have your +father build on the New Land?" + +The girls said they did not know. It was more convenient to the +horse-cars where they were. + +Mrs. Lapham stole a look of relief at her husband, and nothing more was +said of the matter. + +The mother of the family who had called upon Mrs. Lapham brought her +husband's cards, and when Mrs. Lapham returned the visit she was in +some trouble about the proper form of acknowledging the civility. The +Colonel had no card but a business card, which advertised the principal +depot and the several agencies of the mineral paint; and Mrs. Lapham +doubted, till she wished to goodness that she had never seen nor heard +of those people, whether to ignore her husband in the transaction +altogether, or to write his name on her own card. She decided finally +upon this measure, and she had the relief of not finding the family at +home. As far as she could judge, Irene seemed to suffer a little +disappointment from the fact. + +For several months there was no communication between the families. +Then there came to Nankeen Square a lithographed circular from the +people on the Hill, signed in ink by the mother, and affording Mrs. +Lapham an opportunity to subscribe for a charity of undeniable merit +and acceptability. She submitted it to her husband, who promptly drew +a cheque for five hundred dollars. + +She tore it in two. "I will take a cheque for a hundred, Silas," she +said. + +"Why?" he asked, looking up guiltily at her. + +"Because a hundred is enough; and I don't want to show off before them." + +"Oh, I thought may be you did. Well, Pert," he added, having satisfied +human nature by the preliminary thrust, "I guess you're about right. +When do you want I should begin to build on Beacon Street?" He handed +her the new cheque, where she stood over him, and then leaned back in +his chair and looked up at her. + +"I don't want you should begin at all. What do you mean, Silas?" She +rested against the side of his desk. + +"Well, I don't know as I mean anything. But shouldn't you like to +build? Everybody builds, at least once in a lifetime." + +"Where is your lot? They say it's unhealthy, over there." + +Up to a certain point in their prosperity Mrs. Lapham had kept strict +account of all her husband's affairs; but as they expanded, and ceased +to be of the retail nature with which women successfully grapple, the +intimate knowledge of them made her nervous. There was a period in +which she felt that they were being ruined, but the crash had not come; +and, since his great success, she had abandoned herself to a blind +confidence in her husband's judgment, which she had hitherto felt +needed her revision. He came and went, day by day, unquestioned. He +bought and sold and got gain. She knew that he would tell her if ever +things went wrong, and he knew that she would ask him whenever she was +anxious. + +"It ain't unhealthy where I've bought," said Lapham, rather enjoying +her insinuation. "I looked after that when I was trading; and I guess +it's about as healthy on the Back Bay as it is here, anyway. I got +that lot for you, Pert; I thought you'd want to build on the Back Bay +some day." + +"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Lapham, deeply pleased inwardly, but not going to +show it, as she would have said. "I guess you want to build there +yourself." She insensibly got a little nearer to her husband. They +liked to talk to each other in that blunt way; it is the New England +way of expressing perfect confidence and tenderness. + +"Well, I guess I do," said Lapham, not insisting upon the unselfish +view of the matter. "I always did like the water side of Beacon. +There ain't a sightlier place in the world for a house. And some day +there's bound to be a drive-way all along behind them houses, between +them and the water, and then a lot there is going to be worth the gold +that will cover it--COIN. I've had offers for that lot, Pert, twice +over what I give for it. Yes, I have. Don't you want to ride over +there some afternoon with me and see it?" "I'm satisfied where we be, +Si," said Mrs. Lapham, recurring to the parlance of her youth in her +pathos at her husband's kindness. She sighed anxiously, for she felt +the trouble a woman knows in view of any great change. They had often +talked of altering over the house in which they lived, but they had +never come to it; and they had often talked of building, but it had +always been a house in the country that they had thought of. "I wish +you had sold that lot." + +"I hain't," said the colonel briefly. + +"I don't know as I feel much like changing our way of living." + +"Guess we could live there pretty much as we live here. There's all +kinds of people on Beacon Street; you mustn't think they're all +big-bugs. I know one party that lives in a house he built to sell, and +his wife don't keep any girl. You can have just as much style there as +you want, or just as little. I guess we live as well as most of 'em +now, and set as good a table. And if you come to style, I don't know +as anybody has got more of a right to put it on than what we have." + +"Well, I don't want to build on Beacon Street, Si," said Mrs. Lapham +gently. + +"Just as you please, Persis. I ain't in any hurry to leave." + +Mrs. Lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held in her right hand +against the edge of her left. + +The Colonel still sat looking up at her face, and watching the effect +of the poison of ambition which he had artfully instilled into her mind. + +She sighed again--a yielding sigh. "What are you going to do this +afternoon?" + +"I'm going to take a turn on the Brighton road," said the Colonel. + +"I don't believe but what I should like to go along," said his wife. + +"All right. You hain't ever rode behind that mare yet, Pert, and I +want you should see me let her out once. They say the snow's all +packed down already, and the going is A 1." + +At four o'clock in the afternoon, with a cold, red winter sunset before +them, the Colonel and his wife were driving slowly down Beacon Street +in the light, high-seated cutter, where, as he said, they were a pretty +tight fit. He was holding the mare in till the time came to speed her, +and the mare was springily jolting over the snow, looking intelligently +from side to side, and cocking this ear and that, while from her +nostrils, her head tossing easily, she blew quick, irregular whiffs of +steam. + +"Gay, ain't she?" proudly suggested the Colonel. + +"She IS gay," assented his wife. + +They met swiftly dashing sleighs, and let them pass on either hand, +down the beautiful avenue narrowing with an admirably even sky-line in +the perspective. They were not in a hurry. The mare jounced easily +along, and they talked of the different houses on either side of the +way. They had a crude taste in architecture, and they admired the +worst. There were women's faces at many of the handsome windows, and +once in a while a young man on the pavement caught his hat suddenly +from his head, and bowed in response to some salutation from within. + +"I don't think our girls would look very bad behind one of those big +panes," said the Colonel. + +"No," said his wife dreamily. + +"Where's the YOUNG man? Did he come with them?" + +"No; he was to spend the winter with a friend of his that has a ranch +in Texas. I guess he's got to do something." + +"Yes; gentlemaning as a profession has got to play out in a generation +or two." + +Neither of them spoke of the lot, though Lapham knew perfectly well +what his wife had come with him for, and she was aware that he knew it. +The time came when he brought the mare down to a walk, and then slowed +up almost to a stop, while they both turned their heads to the right +and looked at the vacant lot, through which showed the frozen stretch +of the Back Bay, a section of the Long Bridge, and the roofs and +smoke-stacks of Charlestown. + +"Yes, it's sightly," said Mrs. Lapham, lifting her hand from the reins, +on which she had unconsciously laid it. + +Lapham said nothing, but he let the mare out a little. + +The sleighs and cutters were thickening round them. On the Milldam it +became difficult to restrict the mare to the long, slow trot into which +he let her break. The beautiful landscape widened to right and left of +them, with the sunset redder and redder, over the low, irregular hills +before them. They crossed the Milldam into Longwood; and here, from +the crest of the first upland, stretched two endless lines, in which +thousands of cutters went and came. Some of the drivers were already +speeding their horses, and these shot to and fro on inner lines, +between the slowly moving vehicles on either side of the road. Here +and there a burly mounted policeman, bulging over the pommel of his +M'Clellan saddle, jolted by, silently gesturing and directing the +course, and keeping it all under the eye of the law. It was what +Bartley Hubbard called "a carnival of fashion and gaiety on the +Brighton road," in his account of it. But most of the people in those +elegant sleighs and cutters had so little the air of the great world +that one knowing it at all must have wondered where they and their +money came from; and the gaiety of the men, at least, was expressed, +like that of Colonel Lapham, in a grim almost fierce, alertness; the +women wore an air of courageous apprehension. At a certain point the +Colonel said, "I'm going to let her out, Pert," and he lifted and then +dropped the reins lightly on the mare's back. + +She understood the signal, and, as an admirer said, "she laid down to +her work." Nothing in the immutable iron of Lapham's face betrayed his +sense of triumph as the mare left everything behind her on the road. +Mrs. Lapham, if she felt fear, was too busy holding her flying wraps +about her, and shielding her face from the scud of ice flung from the +mare's heels, to betray it; except for the rush of her feet, the mare +was as silent as the people behind her; the muscles of her back and +thighs worked more and more swiftly, like some mechanism responding to +an alien force, and she shot to the end of the course, grazing a +hundred encountered and rival sledges in her passage, but unmolested by +the policemen, who probably saw that the mare and the Colonel knew what +they were about, and, at any rate, were not the sort of men to +interfere with trotting like that. At the end of the heat Lapham drew +her in, and turned off on a side street into Brookline. + +"Tell you what, Pert," he said, as if they had been quietly jogging +along, with time for uninterrupted thought since he last spoke, "I've +about made up my mind to build on that lot." + +"All right, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham; "I suppose you know what you're +about. Don't build on it for me, that's all." + +When she stood in the hall at home, taking off her things, she said to +the girls, who were helping her, "Some day your father will get killed +with that mare." + +"Did he speed her?" asked Penelope, the elder. + +She was named after her grandmother, who had in her turn inherited from +another ancestress the name of the Homeric matron whose peculiar merits +won her a place even among the Puritan Faiths, Hopes, Temperances, and +Prudences. Penelope was the girl whose odd serious face had struck +Bartley Hubbard in the photograph of the family group Lapham showed him +on the day of the interview. Her large eyes, like her hair, were +brown; they had the peculiar look of near-sighted eyes which is called +mooning; her complexion was of a dark pallor. + +Her mother did not reply to a question which might be considered +already answered. "He says he's going to build on that lot of his," +she next remarked, unwinding the long veil which she had tied round her +neck to hold her bonnet on. She put her hat and cloak on the hall +table, to be carried upstairs later, and they all went in to tea: +creamed oysters, birds, hot biscuit, two kinds of cake, and dishes of +stewed and canned fruit and honey. The women dined alone at one, and +the Colonel at the same hour down-town. But he liked a good hot meal +when he got home in the evening. The house flared with gas; and the +Colonel, before he sat down, went about shutting the registers, through +which a welding heat came voluming up from the furnace. + +"I'll be the death of that darkey YET," he said, "if he don't stop +making on such a fire. The only way to get any comfort out of your +furnace is to take care of it yourself." + +"Well," answered his wife from behind the teapot, as he sat down at +table with this threat, "there's nothing to prevent you, Si. And you +can shovel the snow too, if you want to--till you get over to Beacon +Street, anyway." + +"I guess I can keep my own sidewalk on Beacon Street clean, if I take +the notion." + +"I should like to see you at it," retorted his wife. + +"Well, you keep a sharp lookout, and may be you will." + +Their taunts were really expressions of affectionate pride in each +other. They liked to have it, give and take, that way, as they would +have said, right along. + +"A man can be a man on Beacon Street as well as anywhere, I guess." + +"Well, I'll do the wash, as I used to in Lumberville," said Mrs. +Lapham. "I presume you'll let me have set tubs, Si. You know I ain't +so young any more." She passed Irene a cup of Oolong tea,--none of them +had a sufficiently cultivated palate for Sou-chong,--and the girl +handed it to her father. "Papa," she asked, "you don't really mean +that you're going to build over there?" + +"Don't I? You wait and see," said the Colonel, stirring his tea. + +"I don't believe you do," pursued the girl. + +"Is that so? I presume you'd hate to have me. Your mother does." He +said DOOS, of course. + +Penelope took the word. "I go in for it. I don't see any use in not +enjoying money, if you've got it to enjoy. That's what it's for, I +suppose; though you mightn't always think so." She had a slow, quaint +way of talking, that seemed a pleasant personal modification of some +ancestral Yankee drawl, and her voice was low and cozy, and so far from +being nasal that it was a little hoarse. + +"I guess the ayes has it, Pen," said her father. "How would it do to +let Irene and your mother stick in the old place here, and us go into +the new house?" At times the Colonel's grammar failed him. + +The matter dropped, and the Laphams lived on as before, with joking +recurrences to the house on the water side of Beacon. The Colonel +seemed less in earnest than any of them about it; but that was his way, +his girls said; you never could tell when he really meant a thing. + + + +III. + + +TOWARD the end of the winter there came a newspaper, addressed to Miss +Irene Lapham; it proved to be a Texas newspaper, with a complimentary +account of the ranch of the Hon. Loring G. Stanton, which the +representative of the journal had visited. + +"It must be his friend," said Mrs. Lapham, to whom her daughter brought +the paper; "the one he's staying with." + +The girl did not say anything, but she carried the paper to her room, +where she scanned every line of it for another name. She did not find +it, but she cut the notice out and stuck it into the side of her +mirror, where she could read it every morning when she brushed her +hair, and the last thing at night when she looked at herself in the +glass just before turning off the gas. Her sister often read it aloud, +standing behind her and rendering it with elocutionary effects. + +"The first time I ever heard of a love-letter in the form of a puff to +a cattle-ranch. But perhaps that's the style on the Hill." + +Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the arrival of the paper, treating the +fact with an importance that he refused to see in it. + +"How do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I know he did." + +"I don't see why he couldn't write to 'Rene, if he really meant +anything." + +"Well, I guess that wouldn't be their way," said Mrs. Lapham; she did +not at all know what their way would be. + +When the spring opened Colonel Lapham showed that he had been in +earnest about building on the New Land. His idea of a house was a +brown-stone front, four stories high, and a French roof with an +air-chamber above. Inside, there was to be a reception-room on the +street and a dining-room back. The parlours were to be on the second +floor, and finished in black walnut or party-coloured paint. The +chambers were to be on the three floors above, front and rear, with +side-rooms over the front door. Black walnut was to be used everywhere +except in the attic, which was to be painted and grained to look like +black walnut. The whole was to be very high-studded, and there were to +be handsome cornices and elaborate centre-pieces throughout, except, +again, in the attic. + +These ideas he had formed from the inspection of many new buildings +which he had seen going up, and which he had a passion for looking +into. He was confirmed in his ideas by a master builder who had put up +a great many houses on the Back Bay as a speculation, and who told him +that if he wanted to have a house in the style, that was the way to +have it. + +The beginnings of the process by which Lapham escaped from the master +builder and ended in the hands of an architect are so obscure that it +would be almost impossible to trace them. But it all happened, and +Lapham promptly developed his ideas of black walnut finish, high +studding, and cornices. The architect was able to conceal the shudder +which they must have sent through him. He was skilful, as nearly all +architects are, in playing upon that simple instrument Man. He began +to touch Colonel Lapham's stops. + +"Oh, certainly, have the parlours high-studded. But you've seen some of +those pretty old-fashioned country-houses, haven't you, where the +entrance-story is very low-studded?" "Yes," Lapham assented. + +"Well, don't you think something of that kind would have a very nice +effect? Have the entrance-story low-studded, and your parlours on the +next floor as high as you please. Put your little reception-room here +beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a +square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up three sides of +it. I'm sure Mrs. Lapham would find it much pleasanter." The architect +caught toward him a scrap of paper lying on the table at which they +were sitting and sketched his idea. "Then have your dining-room behind +the hall, looking on the water." + +He glanced at Mrs. Lapham, who said, "Of course," and the architect +went on-- + +"That gets you rid of one of those long, straight, ugly +staircases,"--until that moment Lapham had thought a long, straight +staircase the chief ornament of a house,--"and gives you an effect of +amplitude and space." + +"That's so!" said Mrs. Lapham. Her husband merely made a noise in his +throat. + +"Then, were you thinking of having your parlours together, connected by +folding doors?" asked the architect deferentially. + +"Yes, of course," said Lapham. "They're always so, ain't they?" + +"Well, nearly," said the architect. "I was wondering how would it do +to make one large square room at the front, taking the whole breadth of +the house, and, with this hall-space between, have a music-room back +for the young ladies?" + +Lapham looked helplessly at his wife, whose quicker apprehension had +followed the architect's pencil with instant sympathy. "First-rate!" +she cried. + +The Colonel gave way. "I guess that would do. It'll be kind of odd, +won't it?" + +"Well, I don't know," said the architect. "Not so odd, I hope, as the +other thing will be a few years from now." He went on to plan the rest +of the house, and he showed himself such a master in regard to all the +practical details that Mrs. Lapham began to feel a motherly affection +for the young man, and her husband could not deny in his heart that the +fellow seemed to understand his business. He stopped walking about the +room, as he had begun to do when the architect and Mrs. Lapham entered +into the particulars of closets, drainage, kitchen arrangements, and +all that, and came back to the table. "I presume," he said, "you'll +have the drawing-room finished in black walnut?" + +"Well, yes," replied the architect, "if you like. But some less +expensive wood can be made just as effective with paint. Of course you +can paint black walnut too." + +"Paint it?" gasped the Colonel. + +"Yes," said the architect quietly. "White, or a little off white." + +Lapham dropped the plan he had picked up from the table. His wife made +a little move toward him of consolation or support. + +"Of course," resumed the architect, "I know there has been a great +craze for black walnut. But it's an ugly wood; and for a drawing-room +there is really nothing like white paint. We should want to introduce +a little gold here and there. Perhaps we might run a painted frieze +round under the cornice--garlands of roses on a gold ground; it would +tell wonderfully in a white room." + +The Colonel returned less courageously to the charge. "I presume +you'll want Eastlake mantel-shelves and tiles?" He meant this for a +sarcastic thrust at a prevailing foible of the profession. + +"Well, no," gently answered the architect. "I was thinking perhaps a +white marble chimney-piece, treated in the refined Empire style, would +be the thing for that room." + +"White marble!" exclaimed the Colonel. "I thought that had gone out +long ago." + +"Really beautiful things can't go out. They may disappear for a little +while, but they must come back. It's only the ugly things that stay +out after they've had their day." + +Lapham could only venture very modestly, "Hard-wood floors?" + +"In the music-room, of course," consented the architect. + +"And in the drawing-room?" + +"Carpet. Some sort of moquette, I should say. But I should prefer to +consult Mrs. Lapham's taste in that matter." + +"And in the other rooms?" + +"Oh, carpets, of course." + +"And what about the stairs?" + +"Carpet. And I should have the rail and banisters white--banisters +turned or twisted." + +The Colonel said under his breath, "Well, I'm dumned!" but he gave no +utterance to his astonishment in the architect's presence. When he +went at last,--the session did not end till eleven o'clock,--Lapham +said, "Well, Pert, I guess that fellow's fifty years behind, or ten +years ahead. I wonder what the Ongpeer style is?" + +"I don't know. I hated to ask. But he seemed to understand what he +was talking about. I declare, he knows what a woman wants in a house +better than she does herself." + +"And a man's simply nowhere in comparison," said Lapham. But he +respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, and have a reason +ready, as this architect had; and when he recovered from the daze into +which the complete upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left +him, he was in a fit state to swear by the architect. It seemed to him +that he had discovered the fellow (as he always called him) and owned +him now, and the fellow did nothing to disturb this impression. He +entered into that brief but intense intimacy with the Laphams which the +sympathetic architect holds with his clients. He was privy to all +their differences of opinion and all their disputes about the house. +He knew just where to insist upon his own ideas, and where to yield. +He was really building several other houses, but he gave the Laphams +the impression that he was doing none but theirs. + +The work was not begun till the frost was thoroughly out of the ground, +which that year was not before the end of April. Even then it did not +proceed very rapidly. Lapham said they might as well take their time +to it; if they got the walls up and the thing closed in before the snow +flew, they could be working at it all winter. It was found necessary +to dig for the kitchen; at that point the original salt-marsh lay near +the surface, and before they began to put in the piles for the +foundation they had to pump. The neighbourhood smelt like the hold of +a ship after a three years' voyage. People who had cast their fortunes +with the New Land went by professing not to notice it; people who still +"hung on to the Hill" put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and told +each other the old terrible stories of the material used in filling up +the Back Bay. + +Nothing gave Lapham so much satisfaction in the whole construction of +his house as the pile-driving. When this began, early in the summer, he +took Mrs. Lapham every day in his buggy and drove round to look at it; +stopping the mare in front of the lot, and watching the operation with +even keener interest than the little loafing Irish boys who +superintended it in force. It pleased him to hear the portable engine +chuckle out a hundred thin whiffs of steam in carrying the big iron +weight to the top of the framework above the pile, then seem to +hesitate, and cough once or twice in pressing the weight against the +detaching apparatus. There was a moment in which the weight had the +effect of poising before it fell; then it dropped with a mighty whack +on the iron-bound head of the pile, and drove it a foot into the earth. + +"By gracious!" he would say, "there ain't anything like that in THIS +world for BUSINESS, Persis!" + +Mrs. Lapham suffered him to enjoy the sight twenty or thirty times +before she said, "Well, now drive on, Si." + +By the time the foundation was in and the brick walls had begun to go +up, there were so few people left in the neighbourhood that she might +indulge with impunity her husband's passion for having her clamber over +the floor-timbers and the skeleton stair-cases with him. Many of the +householders had boarded up their front doors before the buds had begun +to swell and the assessor to appear in early May; others had followed +soon; and Mrs. Lapham was as safe from remark as if she had been in the +depth of the country. Ordinarily she and her girls left town early in +July, going to one of the hotels at Nantasket, where it was convenient +for the Colonel to get to and from his business by the boat. But this +summer they were all lingering a few weeks later, under the novel +fascination of the new house, as they called it, as if there were no +other in the world. + +Lapham drove there with his wife after he had set Bartley Hubbard down +at the Events office, but on this day something happened that +interfered with the solid pleasure they usually took in going over the +house. As the Colonel turned from casting anchor at the mare's head +with the hitching-weight, after helping his wife to alight, he +encountered a man to whom he could not help speaking, though the man +seemed to share his hesitation if not his reluctance at the necessity. +He was a tallish, thin man, with a dust-coloured face, and a dead, +clerical air, which somehow suggested at once feebleness and tenacity. + +Mrs. Lapham held out her hand to him. + +"Why, Mr. Rogers!" she exclaimed; and then, turning toward her husband, +seemed to refer the two men to each other. They shook hands, but +Lapham did not speak. "I didn't know you were in Boston," pursued Mrs. +Lapham. "Is Mrs. Rogers with you?" + +"No," said Mr. Rogers, with a voice which had the flat, succinct sound +of two pieces of wood clapped together. "Mrs. Rogers is still in +Chicago." + +A little silence followed, and then Mrs Lapham said-- + +"I presume you are quite settled out there." + +"No; we have left Chicago. Mrs. Rogers has merely remained to finish +up a little packing." + +"Oh, indeed! Are you coming back to Boston?" + +"I cannot say as yet. We sometimes think of so doing." + +Lapham turned away and looked up at the building. His wife pulled a +little at her glove, as if embarrassed, or even pained. She tried to +make a diversion. + +"We are building a house," she said, with a meaningless laugh. + +"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Rogers, looking up at it. + +Then no one spoke again, and she said helplessly-- + +"If you come to Boston, I hope I shall see Mrs. Rogers." + +"She will be happy to have you call," said Mr Rogers. + +He touched his hat-brim, and made a bow forward rather than in Mrs. +Lapham's direction. + +She mounted the planking that led into the shelter of the bare brick +walls, and her husband slowly followed. When she turned her face +toward him her cheeks were burning, and tears that looked hot stood in +her eyes. + +"You left it all to me!" she cried. "Why couldn't you speak a word?" + +"I hadn't anything to say to him," replied Lapham sullenly. + +They stood a while, without looking at the work which they had come to +enjoy, and without speaking to each other. + +"I suppose we might as well go on," said Mrs. Lapham at last, as they +returned to the buggy. The Colonel drove recklessly toward the +Milldam. His wife kept her veil down and her face turned from him. +After a time she put her handkerchief up under her veil and wiped her +eyes, and he set his teeth and squared his jaw. + +"I don't see how he always manages to appear just at the moment when he +seems to have gone fairly out of our lives, and blight everything," she +whimpered. + +"I supposed he was dead," said Lapham. + +"Oh, don't SAY such a thing! It sounds as if you wished it." + +"Why do you mind it? What do you let him blight everything for?" + +"I can't help it, and I don't believe I ever shall. I don't know as +his being dead would help it any. I can't ever see him without feeling +just as I did at first." + +"I tell you," said Lapham, "it was a perfectly square thing. And I +wish, once for all, you would quit bothering about it. My conscience +is easy as far as he is concerned, and it always was." + +"And I can't look at him without feeling as if you'd ruined him, Silas." + +"Don't look at him, then," said her husband, with a scowl. "I want you +should recollect in the first place, Persis, that I never wanted a +partner." + +"If he hadn't put his money in when he did, you'd 'a' broken down." + +"Well, he got his money out again, and more, too," said the Colonel, +with a sulky weariness. + +"He didn't want to take it out." + +"I gave him his choice: buy out or go out." + +"You know he couldn't buy out then. It was no choice at all." + +"It was a business chance." + +"No; you had better face the truth, Silas. It was no chance at all. +You crowded him out. A man that had saved you! No, you had got greedy, +Silas. You had made your paint your god, and you couldn't bear to let +anybody else share in its blessings." + +"I tell you he was a drag and a brake on me from the word go. You say +he saved me. Well, if I hadn't got him out he'd 'a' ruined me sooner +or later. So it's an even thing, as far forth as that goes." + +"No, it ain't an even thing, and you know it, Silas. Oh, if I could +only get you once to acknowledge that you did wrong about it, then I +should have some hope. I don't say you meant wrong exactly, but you +took an advantage. Yes, you took an advantage! You had him where he +couldn't help himself, and then you wouldn't show him any mercy." + +"I'm sick of this," said Lapham. "If you'll 'tend to the house, I'll +manage my business without your help." + +"You were very glad of my help once." + +"Well, I'm tired of it now. Don't meddle." + +"I WILL meddle. When I see you hardening yourself in a wrong thing, +it's time for me to meddle, as you call it, and I will. I can't ever +get you to own up the least bit about Rogers, and I feel as if it was +hurting you all the while." + +"What do you want I should own up about a thing for when I don't feel +wrong? I tell you Rogers hain't got anything to complain of, and that's +what I told you from the start. It's a thing that's done every day. I +was loaded up with a partner that didn't know anything, and couldn't do +anything, and I unloaded; that's all." + +"You unloaded just at the time when you knew that your paint was going +to be worth about twice what it ever had been; and you wanted all the +advantage for yourself." + +"I had a right to it. I made the success." + +"Yes, you made it with Rogers's money; and when you'd made it you took +his share of it. I guess you thought of that when you saw him, and +that's why you couldn't look him in the face." + +At these words Lapham lost his temper. + +"I guess you don't want to ride with me any more to-day," he said, +turning the mare abruptly round. + +"I'm as ready to go back as what you are," replied his wife. "And +don't you ask me to go to that house with you any more. You can sell +it, for all me. I sha'n't live in it. There's blood on it." + + + +IV. + + +THE silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain of wrong +and insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without +lesion; and sometimes the strength that knits society together might +appear to the eye of faltering faith the curse of those immediately +bound by it. Two people by no means reckless of each other's rights +and feelings, but even tender of them for the most part, may tear at +each other's heart-strings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity; +though if they were any other two they would not speak or look at each +other again after the outrages they exchange. It is certainly a +curious spectacle, and doubtless it ought to convince an observer of +the divinity of the institution. If the husband and wife are blunt, +outspoken people like the Laphams, they do not weigh their words; if +they are more refined, they weigh them very carefully, and know +accurately just how far they will carry, and in what most sensitive +spot they may be planted with most effect. + +Lapham was proud of his wife, and when he married her it had been a +rise in life for him. For a while he stood in awe of his good fortune, +but this could not last, and he simply remained supremely satisfied +with it. The girl who had taught school with a clear head and a strong +hand was not afraid of work; she encouraged and helped him from the +first, and bore her full share of the common burden. She had health, +and she did not worry his life out with peevish complaints and +vagaries; she had sense and principle, and in their simple lot she did +what was wise and right. Their marriage was hallowed by an early +sorrow: they lost their boy, and it was years before they could look +each other in the face and speak of him. No one gave up more than they +when they gave up each other and Lapham went to the war. When he came +back and began to work, her zeal and courage formed the spring of his +enterprise. In that affair of the partnership she had tried to be his +conscience, but perhaps she would have defended him if he had accused +himself; it was one of those things in this life which seem destined to +await justice, or at least judgment, in the next. As he said, Lapham +had dealt fairly by his partner in money; he had let Rogers take more +money out of the business than he put into it; he had, as he said, +simply forced out of it a timid and inefficient participant in +advantages which he had created. But Lapham had not created them all. +He had been dependent at one time on his partner's capital. It was a +moment of terrible trial. Happy is the man for ever after who can +choose the ideal, the unselfish part in such an exigency! Lapham could +not rise to it. He did what he could maintain to be perfectly fair. +The wrong, if any, seemed to be condoned to him, except when from time +to time his wife brought it up. Then all the question stung and burned +anew, and had to be reasoned out and put away once more. It seemed to +have an inextinguishable vitality. It slept, but it did not die. + +His course did not shake Mrs. Lapham's faith in him. It astonished her +at first, and it always grieved her that he could not see that he was +acting solely in his own interest. But she found excuses for him, +which at times she made reproaches. She vaguely perceived that his +paint was something more than business to him; it was a sentiment, +almost a passion. He could not share its management and its profit +with another without a measure of self-sacrifice far beyond that which +he must make with something less personal to him. It was the poetry of +that nature, otherwise so intensely prosaic; and she understood this, +and for the most part forbore. She knew him good and true and +blameless in all his life, except for this wrong, if it were a wrong; +and it was only when her nerves tingled intolerably with some chance +renewal of the pain she had suffered, that she shared her anguish with +him in true wifely fashion. + +With those two there was never anything like an explicit +reconciliation. They simply ignored a quarrel; and Mrs. Lapham had +only to say a few days after at breakfast, "I guess the girls would +like to go round with you this afternoon, and look at the new house," +in order to make her husband grumble out as he looked down into his +coffee-cup. "I guess we better all go, hadn't we?" + +"Well, I'll see," she said. + +There was not really a great deal to look at when Lapham arrived on the +ground in his four-seated beach-wagon. But the walls were up, and the +studding had already given skeleton shape to the interior. The floors +were roughly boarded over, and the stairways were in place, with +provisional treads rudely laid. They had not begun to lath and plaster +yet, but the clean, fresh smell of the mortar in the walls mingling +with the pungent fragrance of the pine shavings neutralised the +Venetian odour that drew in over the water. It was pleasantly shady +there, though for the matter of that the heat of the morning had all +been washed out of the atmosphere by a tide of east wind setting in at +noon, and the thrilling, delicious cool of a Boston summer afternoon +bathed every nerve. + +The foreman went about with Mrs. Lapham, showing her where the doors +were to be; but Lapham soon tired of this, and having found a pine +stick of perfect grain, he abandoned himself to the pleasure of +whittling it in what was to be the reception-room, where he sat looking +out on the street from what was to be the bay-window. Here he was +presently joined by his girls, who, after locating their own room on +the water side above the music-room, had no more wish to enter into +details than their father. + +"Come and take a seat in the bay-window, ladies," he called out to +them, as they looked in at him through the ribs of the wall. He +jocosely made room for them on the trestle on which he sat. + +They came gingerly and vaguely forward, as young ladies do when they +wish not to seem to be going to do a thing they have made up their +minds to do. When they had taken their places on their trestle, they +could not help laughing with scorn, open and acceptable to their +father; and Irene curled her chin up, in a little way she had, and +said, "How ridiculous!" to her sister. + +"Well, I can tell you what," said the Colonel, in fond enjoyment of +their young ladyishness, "your mother wa'n't ashamed to sit with me on +a trestle when I called her out to look at the first coat of my paint +that I ever tried on a house." + +"Yes; we've heard that story," said Penelope, with easy security of her +father's liking what she said. "We were brought up on that story." + +"Well, it's a good story," said her father. + +At that moment a young man came suddenly in range, who began to look up +at the signs of building as he approached. He dropped his eyes in +coming abreast of the bay-window, where Lapham sat with his girls, and +then his face lightened, and he took off his hat and bowed to Irene. +She rose mechanically from the trestle, and her face lightened too. + +She was a very pretty figure of a girl, after our fashion of girls, +round and slim and flexible, and her face was admirably regular. But +her great beauty--and it was very great--was in her colouring. This +was of an effect for which there is no word but delicious, as we use it +of fruit or flowers. She had red hair, like her father in his earlier +days, and the tints of her cheeks and temples were such as suggested +May-flowers and apple-blossoms and peaches. Instead of the grey that +often dulls this complexion, her eyes were of a blue at once intense +and tender, and they seemed to burn on what they looked at with a soft, +lambent flame. It was well understood by her sister and mother that +her eyes always expressed a great deal more than Irene ever thought or +felt; but this is not saying that she was not a very sensible girl and +very honest. + +The young man faltered perceptibly, and Irene came a little forward, +and then there gushed from them both a smiling exchange of greeting, of +which the sum was that he supposed she was out of town, and that she +had not known that he had got back. A pause ensued, and flushing again +in her uncertainty as to whether she ought or ought not to do it, she +said, "My father, Mr. Corey; and my sister." + +The young man took off his hat again, showing his shapely head, with a +line of wholesome sunburn ceasing where the recently and closely +clipped hair began. He was dressed in a fine summer check, with a blue +white-dotted neckerchief, and he had a white hat, in which he looked +very well when he put it back on his head. His whole dress seemed very +fresh and new, and in fact he had cast aside his Texan habiliments only +the day before. + +"How do you do, sir?" said the Colonel, stepping to the window, and +reaching out of it the hand which the young man advanced to take. +"Won't you come in? We're at home here. House I'm building." + +"Oh, indeed?" returned the young man; and he came promptly up the +steps, and through its ribs into the reception-room. + +"Have a trestle?" asked the Colonel, while the girls exchanged little +shocks of terror and amusement at the eyes. + +"Thank you," said the young man simply, and sat down. + +"Mrs. Lapham is upstairs interviewing the carpenter, but she'll be down +in a minute." + +"I hope she's quite well," said Corey. "I supposed--I was afraid she +might be out of town." + +"Well, we are off to Nantasket next week. The house kept us in town +pretty late." + +"It must be very exciting, building a house," said Corey to the elder +sister. + +"Yes, it is," she assented, loyally refusing in Irene's interest the +opportunity of saying anything more. + +Corey turned to the latter. "I suppose you've all helped to plan it?" + +"Oh no; the architect and mamma did that." + +"But they allowed the rest of us to agree, when we were good," said +Penelope. + +Corey looked at her, and saw that she was shorter than her sister, and +had a dark complexion. + +"It's very exciting," said Irene. + +"Come up," said the Colonel, rising, "and look round if you'd like to." + +"I should like to, very much," said the young man. He helped the young +ladies over crevasses of carpentry and along narrow paths of planking, +on which they had made their way unassisted before. The elder sister +left the younger to profit solely by these offices as much as possible. +She walked between them and her father, who went before, lecturing on +each apartment, and taking the credit of the whole affair more and more +as he talked on. + +"There!" he said, "we're going to throw out a bay-window here, so as +get the water all the way up and down. This is my girls' room," he +added, looking proudly at them both. + +It seemed terribly intimate. Irene blushed deeply and turned her head +away. + +But the young man took it all, apparently, as simply as their father. +"What a lovely lookout!" he said. The Back Bay spread its glassy sheet +before them, empty but for a few small boats and a large schooner, with +her sails close-furled and dripping like snow from her spars, which a +tug was rapidly towing toward Cambridge. The carpentry of that city, +embanked and embowered in foliage, shared the picturesqueness of +Charlestown in the distance. + +"Yes," said Lapham, "I go in for using the best rooms in your house +yourself. If people come to stay with you, they can put up with the +second best. Though we don't intend to have any second best. There +ain't going to be an unpleasant room in the whole house, from top to +bottom." + +"Oh, I wish papa wouldn't brag so!" breathed Irene to her sister, where +they stood, a little apart, looking away together. + +The Colonel went on. "No, sir," he swelled out, "I have gone in for +making a regular job of it. I've got the best architect in Boston, and +I'm building a house to suit myself. And if money can do it, guess I'm +going to be suited." + +"It seems very delightful," said Corey, "and very original." + +"Yes, sir. That fellow hadn't talked five minutes before I saw that he +knew what he was about every time." + +"I wish mamma would come!" breathed Irene again. "I shall certainly go +through the floor if papa says anything more." + +"They are making a great many very pretty houses nowadays," said the +young man. "It's very different from the old-fashioned building." + +"Well," said the Colonel, with a large toleration of tone and a deep +breath that expanded his ample chest, "we spend more on our houses +nowadays. I started out to build a forty-thousand-dollar house. Well, +sir! that fellow has got me in for more than sixty thousand already, +and I doubt if I get out of it much under a hundred. You can't have a +nice house for nothing. It's just like ordering a picture of a +painter. You pay him enough, and he can afford to paint you a +first-class picture; and if you don't, he can't. That's all there is of +it. Why, they tell me that A. T. Stewart gave one of those French +fellows sixty thousand dollars for a little seven-by-nine picture the +other day. Yes, sir, give an architect money enough, and he'll give +you a nice house every time." + +"I've heard that they're sharp at getting money to realise their +ideas," assented the young man, with a laugh. + +"Well, I should say so!" exclaimed the Colonel. "They come to you with +an improvement that you can't resist. It has good looks and +common-sense and everything in its favour, and it's like throwing money +away to refuse. And they always manage to get you when your wife is +around, and then you're helpless." + +The Colonel himself set the example of laughing at this joke, and the +young man joined him less obstreperously. The girls turned, and he +said, "I don't think I ever saw this view to better advantage. It's +surprising how well the Memorial Hall and the Cambridge spires work up, +over there. And the sunsets must be magnificent." + +Lapham did not wait for them to reply. + +"Yes, sir, it's about the sightliest view I know of. I always did like +the water side of Beacon. Long before I owned property here, or ever +expected to, m'wife and I used to ride down this way, and stop the +buggy to get this view over the water. When people talk to me about +the Hill, I can understand 'em. It's snug, and it's old-fashioned, and +it's where they've always lived. But when they talk about Commonwealth +Avenue, I don't know what they mean. It don't hold a candle to the +water side of Beacon. You've got just as much wind over there, and +you've got just as much dust, and all the view you've got is the view +across the street. No, sir! when you come to the Back Bay at all, give +me the water side of Beacon." + +"Oh, I think you're quite right," said the young man. "The view here +is everything." + +Irene looked "I wonder what papa is going to say next!" at her sister, +when their mother's voice was heard overhead, approaching the opening +in the floor where the stairs were to be; and she presently appeared, +with one substantial foot a long way ahead. She was followed by the +carpenter, with his rule sticking out of his overalls pocket, and she +was still talking to him about some measurements they had been taking, +when they reached the bottom, so that Irene had to say, "Mamma, Mr. +Corey," before Mrs. Lapham was aware of him. + +He came forward with as much grace and speed as the uncertain footing +would allow, and Mrs. Lapham gave him a stout squeeze of her +comfortable hand. + +"Why, Mr. Corey! When did you get back?" + +"Yesterday. It hardly seems as if I HAD got back. I didn't expect to +find you in a new house." + +"Well, you are our first caller. I presume you won't expect I should +make excuses for the state you find it in. Has the Colonel been doing +the honours?" + +"Oh yes. And I've seen more of your house than I ever shall again, I +suppose." + +"Well, I hope not," said Lapham. "There'll be several chances to see +us in the old one yet, before we leave." + +He probably thought this a neat, off-hand way of making the invitation, +for he looked at his woman-kind as if he might expect their admiration. + +"Oh yes, indeed!" said his wife. "We shall be very glad to see Mr. +Corey, any time." + +"Thank you; I shall be glad to come." + +He and the Colonel went before, and helped the ladies down the +difficult descent. Irene seemed less sure-footed than the others; she +clung to the young man's hand an imperceptible moment longer than need +be, or else he detained her. He found opportunity of saying, "It's so +pleasant seeing you again," adding, "all of you." + +"Thank you," said the girl. "They must all be glad to have you at home +again." + +Corey laughed. + +"Well, I suppose they would be, if they were at home to have me. But +the fact is, there's nobody in the house but my father and myself, and +I'm only on my way to Bar Harbour." + +"Oh! Are they there?" + +"Yes; it seems to be the only place where my mother can get just the +combination of sea and mountain air that she wants." + +"We go to Nantasket--it's convenient for papa; and I don't believe we +shall go anywhere else this summer, mamma's so taken up with building. +We do nothing but talk house; and Pen says we eat and sleep house. She +says it would be a sort of relief to go and live in tents for a while." + +"She seems to have a good deal of humour," the young man ventured, upon +the slender evidence. + +The others had gone to the back of the house a moment, to look at some +suggested change. Irene and Corey were left standing in the doorway. +A lovely light of happiness played over her face and etherealised its +delicious beauty. She had some ado to keep herself from smiling +outright, and the effort deepened the dimples in her cheeks; she +trembled a little, and the pendants shook in the tips of her pretty +ears. + +The others came back directly, and they all descended the front steps +together. The Colonel was about to renew his invitation, but he caught +his wife's eye, and, without being able to interpret its warning +exactly, was able to arrest himself, and went about gathering up the +hitching-weight, while the young man handed the ladies into the +phaeton. Then he lifted his hat, and the ladies all bowed, and the +Laphams drove off, Irene's blue ribbons fluttering backward from her +hat, as if they were her clinging thoughts. + +"So that's young Corey, is it?" said the Colonel, letting the stately +stepping, tall coupe horse make his way homeward at will with the +beach-wagon. "Well, he ain't a bad-looking fellow, and he's got a good, +fair and square, honest eye. But I don't see how a fellow like that, +that's had every advantage in this world, can hang round home and let +his father support him. Seems to me, if I had his health and his +education, I should want to strike out and do something for myself." + +The girls on the back seat had hold of each other's hands, and they +exchanged electrical pressures at the different points their father +made. + +"I presume," said Mrs. Lapham, "that he was down in Texas looking after +something." + +"He's come back without finding it, I guess." + +"Well, if his father has the money to support him, and don't complain +of the burden, I don't see why WE should." + +"Oh, I know it's none of my business, but I don't like the principle. +I like to see a man ACT like a man. I don't like to see him taken care +of like a young lady. Now, I suppose that fellow belongs to two or +three clubs, and hangs around 'em all day, lookin' out the +window,--I've seen 'em,--instead of tryin' to hunt up something to do +for an honest livin'." + +"If I was a young man," Penelope struck in, "I would belong to twenty +clubs, if I could find them and I would hang around them all, and look +out the window till I dropped." + +"Oh, you would, would you?" demanded her father, delighted with her +defiance, and twisting his fat head around over his shoulder to look at +her. "Well, you wouldn't do it on my money, if you were a son of MINE, +young lady." + +"Oh, you wait and see," retorted the girl. + +This made them all laugh. But the Colonel recurred seriously to the +subject that night, as he was winding up his watch preparatory to +putting it under his pillow. + +"I could make a man of that fellow, if I had him in the business with +me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke up the way I did because I +didn't choose Irene should think I would stand any kind of a loafer +'round--I don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. +And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw what I was +driving at." + +The girl, apparently, was less anxious about her father's ideas and +principles than about the impression which he had made upon the young +man. She had talked it over and over with her sister before they went +to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking at Penelope +brushing out her hair before the glass-- + +"Do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that bragging way?" + +"He'll be right if he does," answered her sister. "It's the way father +always does talk. You never noticed it so much, that's all. And I +guess if he can't make allowance for father's bragging, he'll be a +little too good. I enjoyed hearing the Colonel go on." + +"I know you did," returned Irene in distress. Then she sighed. +"Didn't you think he looked very nice?" + +"Who? The Colonel?" Penelope had caught up the habit of calling her +father so from her mother, and she used his title in all her jocose and +perverse moods. + +"You know very well I don't mean papa," pouted Irene. "Oh! Mr. Corey! +Why didn't you say Mr. Corey if you meant Mr. Corey? If I meant Mr. +Corey, I should say Mr. Corey. It isn't swearing! Corey, Corey, Co----" + +Her sister clapped her hand over her mouth "Will you HUSH, you wretched +thing?" she whimpered. "The whole house can hear you." + +"Oh yes, they can hear me all over the square. Well, I think he looked +well enough for a plain youth, who hadn't taken his hair out of +curl-papers for some time." + +"It WAS clipped pretty close," Irene admitted; and they both laughed at +the drab effect of Mr. Corey's skull, as they remembered it. "Did you +like his nose?" asked Irene timorously. + +"Ah, now you're COMING to something," said Penelope. "I don't know +whether, if I had so much of a nose, I should want it all Roman." + +"I don't see how you can expect to have a nose part one kind and part +another," argued Irene. + +"Oh, I do. Look at mine!" She turned aside her face, so as to get a +three-quarters view of her nose in the glass, and crossing her hands, +with the brush in one of them, before her, regarded it judicially. +"Now, my nose started Grecian, but changed its mind before it got over +the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way." + +"You've got a very pretty nose, Pen," said Irene, joining in the +contemplation of its reflex in the glass. + +"Don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment HIS, Mrs."--she +stopped, and then added deliberately--"C.!" + +Irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now she sprang at her +sister and beat her very softly on the shoulder with the flat of it. +"You mean thing!" she cried, between her shut teeth, blushing hotly. + +"Well, D., then," said Penelope. "You've nothing to say against D.? +Though I think C. is just as nice an initial." + +"Oh!" cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things. + +"I think he has very good eyes," admitted Penelope. + +"Oh, he HAS! And didn't you like the way his sackcoat set? So close to +him, and yet free--kind of peeling away at the lapels?" + +"Yes, I should say he was a young man of great judgment. He knows how +to choose his tailor." + +Irene sat down on the edge of a chair. "It was so nice of you, Pen, to +come in, that way, about clubs." + +"Oh, I didn't mean anything by it except opposition," said Penelope. +"I couldn't have father swelling on so, without saying something." + +"How he did swell!" sighed Irene. "Wasn't it a relief to have mamma +come down, even if she did seem to be all stocking at first?" + +The girls broke into a wild giggle, and hid their faces in each other's +necks. "I thought I SHOULD die," said Irene. + +"'It's just like ordering a painting,'" said Penelope, recalling her +father's talk, with an effect of dreamy absent-mindedness. "'You give +the painter money enough, and he can afford to paint you a first-class +picture. Give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a +first-class house, every time.'" + +"Oh, wasn't it awful!" moaned her sister. "No one would ever have +supposed that he had fought the very idea of an architect for weeks, +before he gave in." + +Penelope went on. "'I always did like the water side of Beacon,--long +before I owned property there. When you come to the Back Bay at all, +give me the water side of Beacon.'" + +"Ow-w-w-w!" shrieked Irene. "DO stop!" + +The door of their mother's chamber opened below, and the voice of the +real Colonel called, "What are you doing up there, girls? Why don't you +go to bed?" + +This extorted nervous shrieks from both of them. The Colonel heard a +sound of scurrying feet, whisking drapery, and slamming doors. Then he +heard one of the doors opened again, and Penelope said, "I was only +repeating something you said when you talked to Mr. Corey." + +"Very well, now," answered the Colonel. "You postpone the rest of it +till to-morrow at breakfast, and see that you're up in time to let ME +hear it." + + + +V. + + +AT the same moment young Corey let himself in at his own door with his +latch-key, and went to the library, where he found his father turning +the last leaves of a story in the Revue des Deux Mondes. He was a +white-moustached old gentleman, who had never been able to abandon his +pince-nez for the superior comfort of spectacles, even in the privacy +of his own library. He knocked the glasses off as his son came in and +looked up at him with lazy fondness, rubbing the two red marks that +they always leave on the side of the nose. + +"Tom," he said, "where did you get such good clothes?" + +"I stopped over a day in New York," replied the son, finding himself a +chair. "I'm glad you like them." + +"Yes, I always do like your clothes, Tom," returned the father +thoughtfully, swinging his glasses, "But I don't see how you can afford +'em, I can't." + +"Well, sir," said the son, who dropped the "sir" into his speech with +his father, now and then, in an old-fashioned way that was rather +charming, "you see, I have an indulgent parent." + +"Smoke?" suggested the father, pushing toward his son a box of +cigarettes, from which he had taken one. + +"No, thank you," said the son. "I've dropped that." + +"Ah, is that so?" The father began to feel about on the table for +matches, in the purblind fashion of elderly men. His son rose, lighted +one, and handed it to him. "Well,--oh, thank you, Tom!--I believe some +statisticians prove that if you will give up smoking you can dress very +well on the money your tobacco costs, even if you haven't got an +indulgent parent. But I'm too old to try. Though, I confess, I should +rather like the clothes. Whom did you find at the club?" + +"There were a lot of fellows there," said young Corey, watching the +accomplished fumigation of his father in an absent way. + +"It's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," observed +his father. "All summer through, in weather that sends the sturdiest +female flying to the sea-shore, you find the clubs filled with young +men, who don't seem to mind the heat in the least." + +"Boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," said the son, +declining to take up the matter in its ironical shape. + +"I dare say it isn't, compared with Texas," returned the father, +smoking tranquilly on. "But I don't suppose you find many of your +friends in town outside of the club." + +"No; you're requested to ring at the rear door, all the way down Beacon +Street and up Commonwealth Avenue. It's rather a blank reception for +the returning prodigal." + +"Ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back out of season. +But I'm glad to have you back, Tom, even as it is, and I hope you're +not going to hurry away. You must give your energies a rest." + +"I'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity," +suggested the son, taking his father's jokes in good part. + +"No, I don't know that I have," admitted the elder. "You've always +shown a fair degree of moderation, after all. What do you think of +taking up next? I mean after you have embraced your mother and sisters +at Mount Desert. Real estate? It seems to me that it is about time for +you to open out as a real-estate broker. Or did you ever think of +matrimony?" + +"Well, not just in that way, sir," said the young man. "I shouldn't +quite like to regard it as a career, you know." + +"No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you know +I've always contended that the affections could be made to combine +pleasure and profit. I wouldn't have a man marry for money,--that +would be rather bad,--but I don't see why, when it comes to falling in +love, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor +one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should say that the +chances of a quiet life with them were rather greater. They've always +had everything, and they wouldn't be so ambitious and uneasy. Don't +you think so?" + +"It would depend," said the son, "upon whether a girl's people had been +rich long enough to have given her position before she married. If +they hadn't, I don't see how she would be any better than a poor girl +in that respect." + +"Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich are on a level with +any of us nowadays. Money buys position at once. I don't say that it +isn't all right. The world generally knows what it's about, and knows +how to drive a bargain. I dare say it makes the new rich pay too much. +But there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. It is the romance, +the poetry of our age. It's the thing that chiefly strikes the +imagination. The Englishmen who come here are more curious about the +great new millionaires than about any one else, and they respect them +more. It's all very well. I don't complain of it." + +"And you would like a rich daughter-in-law, quite regardless, then?" + +"Oh, not quite so bad as that, Tom," said his father. "A little youth, +a little beauty, a little good sense and pretty behaviour--one mustn't +object to those things; and they go just as often with money as without +it. And I suppose I should like her people to be rather grammatical." + +"It seems to me that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "How can you +expect people who have been strictly devoted to business to be +grammatical? Isn't that rather too much?" + +"Perhaps it is. Perhaps you're right. But I understood your mother to +say that those benefactors of hers, whom you met last summer, were very +passably grammatical." + +"The father isn't." + +The elder, who had been smoking with his profile toward his son, now +turned his face full upon him. "I didn't know you had seen him?" + +"I hadn't until to-day," said young Corey, with a little heightening of +his colour. "But I was walking down street this afternoon, and +happened to look round at a new house some one was putting up, and I +saw the whole family in the window. It appears that Mr. Lapham is +building the house." + +The elder Corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into the holder at his +elbow. "I am more and more convinced, the longer I know you, Tom, that +we are descended from Giles Corey. The gift of holding one's tongue +seems to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. I can't say +just how you would behave under peine forte et dure, but under ordinary +pressure you are certainly able to keep your own counsel. Why didn't +you mention this encounter at dinner? You weren't asked to plead to an +accusation of witchcraft." + +"No, not exactly," said the young man. "But I didn't quite see my way +to speaking of it. We had a good many other things before us." + +"Yes, that's true. I suppose you wouldn't have mentioned it now if I +hadn't led up to it, would you?" + +"I don't know, sir. It was rather on my mind to do so. Perhaps it was +I who led up to it." + +His father laughed. "Perhaps you did, Tom; perhaps you did. Your +mother would have known you were leading up to something, but I'll +confess that I didn't. What is it?" + +"Nothing very definite. But do you know that in spite of his syntax I +rather liked him?" + +The father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's full +confidence was offered, Corey was not the man to ask it. "Well?" was +all that he said. + +"I suppose that in a new country one gets to looking at people a little +out of our tradition; and I dare say that if I hadn't passed a winter +in Texas I might have found Colonel Lapham rather too much." + +"You mean that there are worse things in Texas?" + +"Not that exactly. I mean that I saw it wouldn't be quite fair to test +him by our standards." + +"This comes of the error which I have often deprecated," said the elder +Corey. "In fact I am always saying that the Bostonian ought never to +leave Boston. Then he knows--and then only--that there can BE no +standard but ours. But we are constantly going away, and coming back +with our convictions shaken to their foundations. One man goes to +England, and returns with the conception of a grander social life; +another comes home from Germany with the notion of a more searching +intellectual activity; a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdest +ideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the cowboys of +Texas, and tell us to our faces that we ought to try Papa Lapham by a +jury of his peers. It ought to be stopped--it ought, really. The +Bostonian who leaves Boston ought to be condemned to perpetual exile." + +The son suffered the father to reach his climax with smiling patience. +When he asked finally, "What are the characteristics of Papa Lapham +that place him beyond our jurisdiction?" the younger Corey crossed his +long legs, and leaned forward to take one of his knees between his +hands. + +"Well, sir, he bragged, rather." + +"Oh, I don't know that bragging should exempt him from the ordinary +processes. I've heard other people brag in Boston." + +"Ah, not just in that personal way--not about money." + +"No, that was certainly different." + +"I don't mean," said the young fellow, with the scrupulosity which +people could not help observing and liking in him, "that it was more +than an indirect expression of satisfaction in the ability to spend." + +"No. I should be glad to express something of the kind myself, if the +facts would justify me." + +The son smiled tolerantly again. "But if he was enjoying his money in +that way, I didn't see why he shouldn't show his pleasure in it. It +might have been vulgar, but it wasn't sordid. And I don't know that it +was vulgar. Perhaps his successful strokes of business were the +romance of his life----" + +The father interrupted with a laugh. "The girl must be uncommonly +pretty. What did she seem to think of her father's brag?" + +"There were two of them," answered the son evasively. + +"Oh, two! And is the sister pretty too?" + +"Not pretty, but rather interesting. She is like her mother." + +"Then the pretty one isn't the father's pet?" + +"I can't say, sir. I don't believe," added the young fellow, "that I +can make you see Colonel Lapham just as I did. He struck me as very +simple-hearted and rather wholesome. Of course he could be tiresome; +we all can; and I suppose his range of ideas is limited. But he is a +force, and not a bad one. If he hasn't got over being surprised at the +effect of rubbing his lamp." + +"Oh, one could make out a case. I suppose you know what you are about, +Tom. But remember that we are Essex County people, and that in savour +we are just a little beyond the salt of the earth. I will tell you +plainly that I don't like the notion of a man who has rivalled the hues +of nature in her wildest haunts with the tints of his mineral paint; +but I don't say there are not worse men. He isn't to my taste, though +he might be ever so much to my conscience." + +"I suppose," said the son, "that there is nothing really to be ashamed +of in mineral paint. People go into all sorts of things." + +His father took his cigarette from his mouth and once more looked his +son full in the face. "Oh, is THAT it?" + +"It has crossed my mind," admitted the son. "I must do something. +I've wasted time and money enough. I've seen much younger men all +through the West and South-west taking care of themselves. I don't +think I was particularly fit for anything out there, but I am ashamed +to come back and live upon you, sir." + +His father shook his head with an ironical sigh. "Ah, we shall never +have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a +parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It +strikes at the root of the whole feudal system. I really think you owe +me an apology, Tom. I supposed you wished to marry the girl's money, +and here you are, basely seeking to go into business with her father." + +Young Corey laughed again like a son who perceives that his father is a +little antiquated, but keeps a filial faith in his wit. "I don't know +that it's quite so bad as that; but the thing had certainly crossed my +mind. I don't know how it's to be approached, and I don't know that +it's at all possible. But I confess that I 'took to' Colonel Lapham +from the moment I saw him. He looked as if he 'meant business,' and I +mean business too." + +The father smoked thoughtfully. "Of course people do go into all sorts +of things, as you say, and I don't know that one thing is more ignoble +than another, if it's decent and large enough. In my time you would +have gone into the China trade or the India trade--though I didn't; and +a little later cotton would have been your manifest destiny--though it +wasn't mine; but now a man may do almost anything. The real-estate +business is pretty full. Yes, if you have a deep inward vocation for +it, I don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do. I fancy it's easy +enough approaching the matter. We will invite Papa Lapham to dinner, +and talk it over with him." + +"Oh, I don't think that would be exactly the way, sir," said the son, +smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness. + +"No? Why not?" + +"I'm afraid it would be a bad start. I don't think it would strike him +as business-like." + +"I don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not." + +"Ah, we might say that if he were making the advances." + +"Well, perhaps you are right, Tom. What is your idea?" + +"I haven't a very clear one. It seems to me I ought to get some +business friend of ours, whose judgment he would respect, to speak a +good word for me." + +"Give you a character?" + +"Yes. And of course I must go to Colonel Lapham. My notion would be to +inquire pretty thoroughly about him, and then, if I liked the look of +things, to go right down to Republic Street and let him see what he +could do with me, if anything." + +"That sounds tremendously practical to me, Tom, though it may be just +the wrong way. When are you going down to Mount Desert?" + +"To-morrow, I think, sir," said the young man. "I shall turn it over +in my mind while I'm off." + +The father rose, showing something more than his son's height, with a +very slight stoop, which the son's figure had not. "Well," he said, +whimsically, "I admire your spirit, and I don't deny that it is +justified by necessity. It's a consolation to think that while I've +been spending and enjoying, I have been preparing the noblest future +for you--a future of industry and self-reliance. You never could draw, +but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint business shows that you +have inherited something of my feeling for colour." + +The son laughed once more, and waiting till his father was well on his +way upstairs, turned out the gas and then hurried after him and +preceded him into his chamber. He glanced over it to see that +everything was there, to his father's hand. Then he said, "Good night, +sir," and the elder responded, "Good night, my son," and the son went +to his own room. + +Over the mantel in the elder Corey's room hung a portrait which he had +painted of his own father, and now he stood a moment and looked at this +as if struck by something novel in it. The resemblance between his son +and the old India merchant, who had followed the trade from Salem to +Boston when the larger city drew it away from the smaller, must have +been what struck him. Grandfather and grandson had both the Roman nose +which appears to have flourished chiefly at the formative period of the +republic, and which occurs more rarely in the descendants of the +conscript fathers, though it still characterises the profiles of a good +many Boston ladies. Bromfield Corey had not inherited it, and he had +made his straight nose his defence when the old merchant accused him of +a want of energy. He said, "What could a man do whose unnatural father +had left his own nose away from him?" This amused but did not satisfy +the merchant. "You must do something," he said; "and it's for you to +choose. If you don't like the India trade, go into something else. +Or, take up law or medicine. No Corey yet ever proposed to do +nothing." "Ah, then, it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urged +the man who was then young, and who was now old, looking into the +somewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait. He had inherited as +little of the fierceness as of the nose, and there was nothing +predatory in his son either, though the aquiline beak had come down to +him in such force. Bromfield Corey liked his son Tom for the +gentleness which tempered his energy. + +"Well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his father's +portrait. "I will travel." "Travel? How long?" the keen eyes demanded. +"Oh, indefinitely. I won't be hard with you, father." He could see the +eyes soften, and the smile of yielding come over his father's face; the +merchant could not resist a son who was so much like his dead mother. +There was some vague understanding between them that Bromfield Corey +was to come back and go into business after a time, but he never did +so. He travelled about over Europe, and travelled handsomely, +frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself presented at +several courts, at a period when it was a distinction to do so. He had +always sketched, and with his father's leave he fixed himself at Rome, +where he remained studying art and rounding the being inherited from +his Yankee progenitors, till there was very little left of the +ancestral angularities. After ten years he came home and painted that +portrait of his father. It was very good, if a little amateurish, and +he might have made himself a name as a painter of portraits if he had +not had so much money. But he had plenty of money, though by this time +he was married and beginning to have a family. It was absurd for him +to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; +so he did not paint them at all. He continued a dilettante, never +quite abandoning his art, but working at it fitfully, and talking more +about it than working at it. He had his theory of Titian's method; and +now and then a Bostonian insisted upon buying a picture of him. After +a while he hung it more and more inconspicuously, and said +apologetically, "Oh yes! that's one of Bromfield Corey's things. It +has nice qualities, but it's amateurish." + +In process of time the money seemed less abundant. There were +shrinkages of one kind and another, and living had grown much more +expensive and luxurious. For many years he talked about going back to +Rome, but he never went, and his children grew up in the usual way. +Before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day spread at +Harvard, and then he had his son on his hands. The son made various +unsuccessful provisions for himself, and still continued upon his +father's hands, to their common dissatisfaction, though it was chiefly +the younger who repined. He had the Roman nose and the energy without +the opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father said to him, +"You ought not to have that nose, Tom; then you would do very well. +You would go and travel, as I did." + + +LAPHAM and his wife continued talking after he had quelled the +disturbance in his daughters' room overhead; and their talk was not +altogether of the new house. + +"I tell you," he said, "if I had that fellow in the business with me I +would make a man of him." + +"Well, Silas Lapham," returned his wife, "I do believe you've got +mineral paint on the brain. Do you suppose a fellow like young Corey, +brought up the way he's been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot +pole?" + +"Why not?" haughtily asked the Colonel. + +"Well, if you don't know already, there's no use trying to tell you." + + + +VI. + + +THE Coreys had always had a house at Nahant, but after letting it for a +season or two they found they could get on without it, and sold it at +the son's instance, who foresaw that if things went on as they were +going, the family would be straitened to the point of changing their +mode of life altogether. They began to be of the people of whom it was +said that they stayed in town very late; and when the ladies did go +away, it was for a brief summering in this place and that. The father +remained at home altogether; and the son joined them in the intervals +of his enterprises, which occurred only too often. + +At Bar Harbour, where he now went to find them, after his winter in +Texas, he confessed to his mother that there seemed no very good +opening there for him. He might do as well as Loring Stanton, but he +doubted if Stanton was doing very well. Then he mentioned the new +project which he had been thinking over. She did not deny that there +was something in it, but she could not think of any young man who had +gone into such a business as that, and it appeared to her that he might +as well go into a patent medicine or a stove-polish. + +"There was one of his hideous advertisements," she said, "painted on a +reef that we saw as we came down." + +Corey smiled. "Well, I suppose, if it was in a good state of +preservation, that is proof positive of the efficacy of the paint on +the hulls of vessels." + +"It's very distasteful to me, Tom," said his mother; and if there was +something else in her mind, she did not speak more plainly of it than +to add: "It's not only the kind of business, but the kind of people you +would be mixed up with." + +"I thought you didn't find them so very bad," suggested Corey. + +"I hadn't seen them in Nankeen Square then." + +"You can see them on the water side of Beacon Street when you go back." + +Then he told of his encounter with the Lapham family in their new +house. At the end his mother merely said, "It is getting very common +down there," and she did not try to oppose anything further to his +scheme. + +The young man went to see Colonel Lapham shortly after his return to +Boston. He paid his visit at Lapham's office, and if he had studied +simplicity in his summer dress he could not have presented himself in a +figure more to the mind of a practical man. His hands and neck still +kept the brown of the Texan suns and winds, and he looked as +business-like as Lapham himself. + +He spoke up promptly and briskly in the outer office, and caused the +pretty girl to look away from her copying at him. "Is Mr. Lapham in?" +he asked; and after that moment for reflection which an array of +book-keepers so addressed likes to give the inquirer, a head was lifted +from a ledger and nodded toward the inner office. + +Lapham had recognised the voice, and he was standing, in considerable +perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted +glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirt +sleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he +had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his +present address. He looked at the young man's face, as if he expected +him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair he had come upon. + +"Won't you sit down? How are you? You'll excuse me," he added, in brief +allusion to the shirt-sleeves. "I'm about roasted." + +Corey laughed. "I wish you'd let me take off MY coat." + +"Why, TAKE it off!" cried the Colonel, with instant pleasure. There is +something in human nature which causes the man in his shirt-sleeves to +wish all other men to appear in the same deshabille. + +"I will, if you ask me after I've talked with you two minutes," said +the young fellow, companionably pulling up the chair offered him toward +the desk where Lapham had again seated himself. "But perhaps you +haven't got two minutes to give me?" + +"Oh yes, I have," said the Colonel. "I was just going to knock off. I +can give you twenty, and then I shall have fifteen minutes to catch the +boat." + +"All right," said Corey. "I want you to take me into the mineral paint +business." + +The Colonel sat dumb. He twisted his thick neck, and looked round at +the door to see if it was shut. He would not have liked to have any of +those fellows outside hear him, but there is no saying what sum of +money he would not have given if his wife had been there to hear what +Corey had just said. + +"I suppose," continued the young man, "I could have got several people +whose names you know to back my industry and sobriety, and say a word +for my business capacity. But I thought I wouldn't trouble anybody for +certificates till I found whether there was a chance, or the ghost of +one, of your wanting me. So I came straight to you." + +Lapham gathered himself together as well as he could. He had not yet +forgiven Corey for Mrs. Lapham's insinuation that he would feel himself +too good for the mineral paint business; and though he was dispersed by +that astounding shot at first, he was not going to let any one even +hypothetically despise his paint with impunity. "How do you think I am +going to take you on?" They took on hands at the works; and Lapham put +it as if Corey were a hand coming to him for employment. Whether he +satisfied himself by this or not, he reddened a little after he had +said it. + +Corey answered, ignorant of the offence: "I haven't a very clear idea, +I'm afraid; but I've been looking a little into the matter from the +outside." + +"I hope you hain't been paying any attention to that fellow's stuff in +the Events?" Lapham interrupted. Since Bartley's interview had +appeared, Lapham had regarded it with very mixed feelings. At first it +gave him a glow of secret pleasure, blended with doubt as to how his +wife would like the use Bartley had made of her in it. But she had not +seemed to notice it much, and Lapham had experienced the gratitude of +the man who escapes. Then his girls had begun to make fun of it; and +though he did not mind Penelope's jokes much, he did not like to see +that Irene's gentility was wounded. Business friends met him with the +kind of knowing smile about it that implied their sense of the +fraudulent character of its praise--the smile of men who had been there +and who knew how it was themselves. Lapham had his misgivings as to +how his clerks and underlings looked at it; he treated them with +stately severity for a while after it came out, and he ended by feeling +rather sore about it. He took it for granted that everybody had read +it. + +"I don't know what you mean," replied Corey, "I don't see the Events +regularly." + +"Oh, it was nothing. They sent a fellow down here to interview me, and +he got everything about as twisted as he could." + +"I believe they always do," said Corey. "I hadn't seen it. Perhaps it +came out before I got home." + +"Perhaps it did." + +"My notion of making myself useful to you was based on a hint I got +from one of your own circulars." + +Lapham was proud of those circulars; he thought they read very well. +"What was that?" + +"I could put a little capital into the business," said Corey, with the +tentative accent of a man who chances a thing. "I've got a little +money, but I didn't imagine you cared for anything of that kind." + +"No, sir, I don't," returned the Colonel bluntly. "I've had one +partner, and one's enough." + +"Yes," assented the young man, who doubtless had his own ideas as to +eventualities--or perhaps rather had the vague hopes of youth. "I +didn't come to propose a partnership. But I see that you are +introducing your paint into the foreign markets, and there I really +thought I might be of use to you, and to myself too." + +"How?" asked the Colonel scantly. + +"Well, I know two or three languages pretty well. I know French, and I +know German, and I've got a pretty fair sprinkling of Spanish." + +"You mean that you can talk them?" asked the Colonel, with the mingled +awe and slight that such a man feels for such accomplishments. "Yes; +and I can write an intelligible letter in either of them." + +Lapham rubbed his nose. "It's easy enough to get all the letters we +want translated." + +"Well," pursued Corey, not showing his discouragement if he felt any, +"I know the countries where you want to introduce this paint of yours. +I've been there. I've been in Germany and France and I've been in +South America and Mexico; I've been in Italy, of course. I believe I +could go to any of those countries and place it to advantage." + +Lapham had listened with a trace of persuasion in his face, but now he +shook his head. + +"It's placing itself as fast as there's any call for it. It wouldn't +pay us to send anybody out to look after it. Your salary and expenses +would eat up about all we should make on it." + +"Yes," returned the young man intrepidly, "if you had to pay me any +salary and expenses." + +"You don't propose to work for nothing?" + +"I propose to work for a commission." The Colonel was beginning to +shake his head again, but Corey hurried on. "I haven't come to you +without making some inquiries about the paint, and I know how it stands +with those who know best. I believe in it." + +Lapham lifted his head and looked at the young man, deeply moved. + +"It's the best paint in God's universe," he said with the solemnity of +prayer. + +"It's the best in the market," said Corey; and he repeated, "I believe +in it." + +"You believe in it," began the Colonel, and then he stopped. If there +had really been any purchasing power in money, a year's income would +have bought Mrs. Lapham's instant presence. He warmed and softened to +the young man in every way, not only because he must do so to any one +who believed in his paint, but because he had done this innocent person +the wrong of listening to a defamation of his instinct and good sense, +and had been willing to see him suffer for a purely supposititious +offence. + +Corey rose. + +"You mustn't let me outstay my twenty minutes," he said, taking out his +watch. "I don't expect you to give a decided answer on the spot. All +that I ask is that you'll consider my proposition." + +"Don't hurry," said Lapham. "Sit still! I want to tell you about this +paint," he added, in a voice husky with the feeling that his hearer +could not divine. "I want to tell you ALL about it." + +"I could walk with you to the boat," suggested the young man. + +"Never mind the boat! I can take the next one. Look here!" The Colonel +pulled open a drawer, as Corey sat down again, and took out a +photograph of the locality of the mine. "Here's where we get it. This +photograph don't half do the place justice," he said, as if the +imperfect art had slighted the features of a beloved face. "It's one +of the sightliest places in the country, and here's the very spot "--he +covered it with his huge forefinger--"where my father found that paint, +more than forty--years--ago. Yes, sir!" + +He went on, and told the story in unsparing detail, while his chance +for the boat passed unheeded, and the clerks in the outer office hung +up their linen office coats and put on their seersucker or flannel +street coats. The young lady went too, and nobody was left but the +porter, who made from time to time a noisy demonstration of fastening a +distant blind, or putting something in place. At last the Colonel +roused himself from the autobiographical delight of the history of his +paint. "Well, sir, that's the story." + +"It's an interesting story," said Corey, with a long breath, as they +rose together, and Lapham put on his coat. + +"That's what it is," said the Colonel. "Well!" he added, "I don't see +but what we've got to have another talk about this thing. It's a +surprise to me, and I don't see exactly how you're going to make it +pay." + +"I'm willing to take the chances," answered Corey. "As I said, I +believe in it. I should try South America first. I should try Chili." + +"Look here!" said Lapham, with his watch in his hand. "I like to get +things over. We've just got time for the six o'clock boat. Why don't +you come down with me to Nantasket? I can give you a bed as well as +not. And then we can finish up." + +The impatience of youth in Corey responded to the impatience of +temperament in his elder. "Why, I don't see why I shouldn't," he +allowed himself to say. "I confess I should like to have it finished +up myself, if it could be finished up in the right way." + +"Well, we'll see. Dennis!" Lapham called to the remote porter, and the +man came. "Want to send any word home?" he asked Corey. + +"No; my father and I go and come as we like, without keeping account of +each other. If I don't come home, he knows that I'm not there. That's +all." + +"Well, that's convenient. You'll find you can't do that when you're +married. Never mind, Dennis," said the Colonel. + +He had time to buy two newspapers on the wharf before he jumped on +board the steam-boat with Corey. "Just made it," he said; "and that's +what I like to do. I can't stand it to be aboard much more than a +minute before she shoves out." He gave one of the newspapers to Corey +as he spoke, and set him the example of catching up a camp-stool on +their way to that point on the boat which his experience had taught him +was the best. He opened his paper at once and began to run over its +news, while the young man watched the spectacular recession of the +city, and was vaguely conscious of the people about him, and of the gay +life of the water round the boat. The air freshened; the craft thinned +in number; they met larger sail, lagging slowly inward in the afternoon +light; the islands of the bay waxed and waned as the steamer approached +and left them behind. + +"I hate to see them stirring up those Southern fellows again," said the +Colonel, speaking into the paper on his lap. "Seems to me it's time to +let those old issues go." + +"Yes," said the young man. "What are they doing now?" + +"Oh, stirring up the Confederate brigadiers in Congress. I don't like +it. Seems to me, if our party hain't got any other stock-in-trade, we +better shut up shop altogether." Lapham went on, as he scanned his +newspaper, to give his ideas of public questions, in a fragmentary way, +while Corey listened patiently, and waited for him to come back to +business. He folded up his paper at last, and stuffed it into his coat +pocket. "There's one thing I always make it a rule to do," he said, +"and that is to give my mind a complete rest from business while I'm +going down on the boat. I like to get the fresh air all through me, +soul and body. I believe a man can give his mind a rest, just the same +as he can give his legs a rest, or his back. All he's got to do is to +use his will-power. Why, I suppose, if I hadn't adopted some such rule, +with the strain I've had on me for the last ten years, I should 'a' +been a dead man long ago. That's the reason I like a horse. You've +got to give your mind to the horse; you can't help it, unless you want +to break your neck; but a boat's different, and there you got to use +your will-power. You got to take your mind right up and put it where +you want it. I make it a rule to read the paper on the boat----Hold +on!" he interrupted himself to prevent Corey from paying his fare to +the man who had come round for it. "I've got tickets. And when I get +through the paper, I try to get somebody to talk to, or I watch the +people. It's an astonishing thing to me where they all come from. +I've been riding up and down on these boats for six or seven years, and +I don't know but very few of the faces I see on board. Seems to be a +perfectly fresh lot every time. Well, of course! Town's full of +strangers in the summer season, anyway, and folks keep coming down from +the country. They think it's a great thing to get down to the beach, +and they've all heard of the electric light on the water, and they want +to see it. But you take faces now! The astonishing thing to me is not +what a face tells, but what it don't tell. When you think of what a +man is, or a woman is, and what most of 'em have been through before +they get to be thirty, it seems as if their experience would burn right +through. But it don't. I like to watch the couples, and try to make +out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, or better +be. But half the time I can't make any sort of guess. Of course, +where they're young and kittenish, you can tell; but where they're +anyways on, you can't. Heigh?" + +"Yes, I think you're right," said Corey, not perfectly reconciled to +philosophy in the place of business, but accepting it as he must. + +"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't suppose it was meant we should know +what was in each other's minds. It would take a man out of his own +hands. As long as he's in his own hands, there's some hopes of his +doing something with himself; but if a fellow has been found out--even +if he hasn't been found out to be so very bad--it's pretty much all up +with him. No, sir. I don't want to know people through and through." + +The greater part of the crowd on board--and, of course, the boat was +crowded--looked as if they might not only be easily but safely known. +There was little style and no distinction among them; they were people +who were going down to the beach for the fun or the relief of it, and +were able to afford it. In face they were commonplace, with nothing +but the American poetry of vivid purpose to light them up, where they +did not wholly lack fire. But they were nearly all shrewd and +friendly-looking, with an apparent readiness for the humorous intimacy +native to us all. The women were dandified in dress, according to +their means and taste, and the men differed from each other in degrees +of indifference to it. To a straw-hatted population, such as ours is +in summer, no sort of personal dignity is possible. We have not even +the power over observers which comes from the fantasticality of an +Englishman when he discards the conventional dress. In our straw hats +and our serge or flannel sacks we are no more imposing than a crowd of +boys. + +"Some day," said Lapham, rising as the boat drew near the wharf of the +final landing, "there's going to be an awful accident on these boats. +Just look at that jam." + +He meant the people thickly packed on the pier, and under strong +restraint of locks and gates, to prevent them from rushing on board the +boat and possessing her for the return trip before she had landed her +Nantasket passengers. + +"Overload 'em every time," he continued, with a sort of dry, impersonal +concern at the impending calamity, as if it could not possibly include +him. "They take about twice as many as they ought to carry, and about +ten times as many as they could save if anything happened. Yes, sir, +it's bound to come. Hello! There's my girl!" He took out his folded +newspaper and waved it toward a group of phaetons and barouches drawn +up on the pier a little apart from the pack of people, and a lady in +one of them answered with a flourish of her parasol. + +When he had made his way with his guest through the crowd, she began to +speak to her father before she noticed Corey. "Well, Colonel, you've +improved your last chance. We've been coming to every boat since four +o'clock,--or Jerry has,--and I told mother that I would come myself +once, and see if I couldn't fetch you; and if I failed, you could walk +next time. You're getting perfectly spoiled." + +The Colonel enjoyed letting her scold him to the end before he said, +with a twinkle of pride in his guest and satisfaction in her probably +being able to hold her own against any discomfiture, "I've brought Mr. +Corey down for the night with me, and I was showing him things all the +way, and it took time." + +The young fellow was at the side of the open beach-wagon, making a +quick bow, and Penelope Lapham was cozily drawling, "Oh, how do you do, +Mr. Corey?" before the Colonel had finished his explanation. + +"Get right in there, alongside of Miss Lapham, Mr. Corey," he said, +pulling himself up into the place beside the driver. "No, no," he had +added quickly, at some signs of polite protest in the young man, "I +don't give up the best place to anybody. Jerry, suppose you let me +have hold of the leathers a minute." + +This was his way of taking the reins from the driver; and in half the +time he specified, he had skilfully turned the vehicle on the pier, +among the crooked lines and groups of foot-passengers, and was spinning +up the road toward the stretch of verandaed hotels and restaurants in +the sand along the shore. "Pretty gay down here," he said, indicating +all this with a turn of his whip, as he left it behind him. "But I've +got about sick of hotels; and this summer I made up my mind that I'd +take a cottage. Well, Pen, how are the folks?" He looked half-way +round for her answer, and with the eye thus brought to bear upon her he +was able to give her a wink of supreme content. The Colonel, with no +sort of ulterior design, and nothing but his triumph over Mrs. Lapham +definitely in his mind, was feeling, as he would have said, about right. + + +The girl smiled a daughter's amusement at her father's boyishness. "I +don't think there's much change since morning. Did Irene have a +headache when you left?" + +"No," said the Colonel. + +"Well, then, there's that to report." + +"Pshaw!" said the Colonel with vexation in his tone. + +"I'm sorry Miss Irene isn't well," said Corey politely. + +"I think she must have got it from walking too long on the beach. The +air is so cool here that you forget how hot the sun is." + +"Yes, that's true," assented Corey. + +"A good night's rest will make it all right," suggested the Colonel, +without looking round. "But you girls have got to look out." + +"If you're fond of walking," said Corey, "I suppose you find the beach +a temptation." + +"Oh, it isn't so much that," returned the girl. "You keep walking on +and on because it's so smooth and straight before you. We've been here +so often that we know it all by heart--just how it looks at high tide, +and how it looks at low tide, and how it looks after a storm. We're as +well acquainted with the crabs and stranded jelly-fish as we are with +the children digging in the sand and the people sitting under +umbrellas. I think they're always the same, all of them." + +The Colonel left the talk to the young people. When he spoke next it +was to say, "Well, here we are!" and he turned from the highway and +drove up in front of a brown cottage with a vermilion roof, and a group +of geraniums clutching the rock that cropped up in the loop formed by +the road. It was treeless and bare all round, and the ocean, +unnecessarily vast, weltered away a little more than a stone's-cast +from the cottage. A hospitable smell of supper filled the air, and +Mrs. Lapham was on the veranda, with that demand in her eyes for her +belated husband's excuses, which she was obliged to check on her tongue +at sight of Corey. + + + +VII. + + +THE exultant Colonel swung himself lightly down from his seat. "I've +brought Mr. Corey with me," he nonchalantly explained. + +Mrs. Lapham made their guest welcome, and the Colonel showed him to his +room, briefly assuring himself that there was nothing wanting there. +Then he went to wash his own hands, carelessly ignoring the eagerness +with which his wife pursued him to their chamber. + +"What gave Irene a headache?" he asked, making himself a fine lather +for his hairy paws. + +"Never you mind Irene," promptly retorted his wife. "How came he to +come? Did you press him? If you DID, I'll never forgive you, Silas!" + +The Colonel laughed, and his wife shook him by the shoulder to make him +laugh lower. "'Sh!" she whispered. "Do you want him to hear EVERY +thing? DID you urge him?" + +The Colonel laughed the more. He was going to get all the good out of +this. "No, I didn't urge him. Seemed to want to come." + +"I don't believe it. Where did you meet him?" + +"At the office." + +"What office?" + +"Mine." + +"Nonsense! What was he doing there?" + +"Oh, nothing much." + +"What did he come for?" "Come for? Oh! he SAID he wanted to go into the +mineral paint business." + +Mrs. Lapham dropped into a chair, and watched his bulk shaken with +smothered laughter. "Silas Lapham," she gasped, "if you try to get off +any more of those things on me----" + +The Colonel applied himself to the towel. "Had a notion he could work +it in South America. I don't know what he's up to." + +"Never mind!" cried his wife. "I'll get even with you YET." + +"So I told him he had better come down and talk it over," continued the +Colonel, in well-affected simplicity. "I knew he wouldn't touch it +with a ten-foot pole." + +"Go on!" threatened Mrs. Lapham. + +"Right thing to do, wa'n't it?" + +A tap was heard at the door, and Mrs. Lapham answered it. A maid +announced supper. "Very well," she said, "come to tea now. But I'll +make you pay for this, Silas." + +Penelope had gone to her sister's room as soon as she entered the house. + +"Is your head any better, 'Rene?" she asked. + +"Yes, a little," came a voice from the pillows. "But I shall not come +to tea. I don't want anything. If I keep still, I shall be all right +by morning." + +"Well, I'm sorry," said the elder sister. "He's come down with father." + +"He hasn't! Who?" cried Irene, starting up in simultaneous denial and +demand. + +"Oh, well, if you say he hasn't, what's the use of my telling you who?" + +"Oh, how can you treat me so!" moaned the sufferer. "What do you mean, +Pen?" + +"I guess I'd better not tell you," said Penelope, watching her like a +cat playing with a mouse. "If you're not coming to tea, it would just +excite you for nothing." + +The mouse moaned and writhed upon the bed. + +"Oh, I wouldn't treat YOU so!" + +The cat seated herself across the room, and asked quietly-- + + +"Well, what could you do if it WAS Mr. Corey? You couldn't come to tea, +you say. But HE'LL excuse you. I've told him you had a headache. +Why, of course you can't come! It would be too barefaced. But you +needn't be troubled, Irene; I'll do my best to make the time pass +pleasantly for him." Here the cat gave a low titter, and the mouse +girded itself up with a momentary courage and self-respect. + +"I should think you would be ashamed to come here and tease me so." + +"I don't see why you shouldn't believe me," argued Penelope. "Why +shouldn't he come down with father, if father asked him? and he'd be +sure to if he thought of it. I don't see any p'ints about that frog +that's any better than any other frog." + +The sense of her sister's helplessness was too much for the tease; she +broke down in a fit of smothered laughter, which convinced her victim +that it was nothing but an ill-timed joke. + +"Well, Pen, I wouldn't use you so," she whimpered. + +Penelope threw herself on the bed beside her. + +"Oh, poor Irene! He IS here. It's a solemn fact." And she caressed and +soothed her sister, while she choked with laughter. "You must get up +and come out. I don't know what brought him here, but here he is." + +"It's too late now," said Irene desolately. Then she added, with a +wilder despair: "What a fool I was to take that walk!" + +"Well," coaxed her sister, "come out and get some tea. The tea will do +you good." + +"No, no; I can't come. But send me a cup here." + +"Yes, and then perhaps you can see him later in the evening." + +"I shall not see him at all." + +An hour after Penelope came back to her sister's room and found her +before her glass. "You might as well have kept still, and been well by +morning, 'Rene," she said. "As soon as we were done father said, +'Well, Mr. Corey and I have got to talk over a little matter of +business, and we'll excuse you, ladies.' He looked at mother in a way +that I guess was pretty hard to bear. 'Rene, you ought to have heard +the Colonel swelling at supper. It would have made you feel that all +he said the other day was nothing." + +Mrs. Lapham suddenly opened the door. + +"Now, see here, Pen," she said, as she closed it behind her, "I've had +just as much as I can stand from your father, and if you don't tell me +this instant what it all means----" + +She left the consequences to imagination, and Penelope replied with her +mock soberness-- + +"Well, the Colonel does seem to be on his high horse, ma'am. But you +mustn't ask me what his business with Mr. Corey is, for I don't know. +All that I know is that I met them at the landing, and that they +conversed all the way down--on literary topics." + +"Nonsense! What do you think it is?" + +"Well, if you want my candid opinion, I think this talk about business +is nothing but a blind. It seems a pity Irene shouldn't have been up +to receive him," she added. + +Irene cast a mute look of imploring at her mother, who was too much +preoccupied to afford her the protection it asked. + +"Your father said he wanted to go into the business with him." + +Irene's look changed to a stare of astonishment and mystification, but +Penelope preserved her imperturbability. + +"Well, it's a lucrative business, I believe." + +"Well, I don't believe a word of it!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "And so I +told your father." + +"Did it seem to convince him?" inquired Penelope. + +Her mother did not reply. "I know one thing," she said. "He's got to +tell me every word, or there'll be no sleep for him THIS night." + +"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, breaking down in one of her queer laughs, +"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you were right." + +"Go on and dress, Irene," ordered her mother, "and then you and Pen +come out into the parlour. They can have just two hours for business, +and then we must all be there to receive him. You haven't got headache +enough to hurt you." + +"Oh, it's all gone now," said the girl. + +At the end of the limit she had given the Colonel, Mrs. Lapham looked +into the dining-room, which she found blue with his smoke. + +"I think you gentlemen will find the parlour pleasanter now, and we can +give it up to you." + +"Oh no, you needn't," said her husband. "We've got about through." +Corey was already standing, and Lapham rose too. "I guess we can join +the ladies now. We can leave that little point till to-morrow." + +Both of the young ladies were in the parlour when Corey entered with +their father, and both were frankly indifferent to the few books and +the many newspapers scattered about on the table where the large lamp +was placed. But after Corey had greeted Irene he glanced at the novel +under his eye, and said, in the dearth that sometimes befalls people at +such times: "I see you're reading Middlemarch. Do you like George +Eliot?" + +"Who?" asked the girl. + +Penelope interposed. "I don't believe Irene's read it yet. I've just +got it out of the library; I heard so much talk about it. I wish she +would let you find out a little about the people for yourself," she +added. But here her father struck in-- + +"I can't get the time for books. It's as much as I can do to keep up +with the newspapers; and when night comes, I'm tired, and I'd rather go +out to the theatre, or a lecture, if they've got a good stereopticon to +give you views of the places. But I guess we all like a play better +than 'most anything else. I want something that'll make me laugh. I +don't believe in tragedy. I think there's enough of that in real life +without putting it on the stage. Seen 'Joshua Whitcomb'?" + +The whole family joined in the discussion, and it appeared that they +all had their opinions of the plays and actors. Mrs. Lapham brought +the talk back to literature. "I guess Penelope does most of our +reading." + +"Now, mother, you're not going to put it all on me!" said the girl, in +comic protest. + +Her mother laughed, and then added, with a sigh: "I used to like to get +hold of a good book when I was a girl; but we weren't allowed to read +many novels in those days. My mother called them all LIES. And I +guess she wasn't so very far wrong about some of them." + +"They're certainly fictions," said Corey, smiling. + +"Well, we do buy a good many books, first and last," said the Colonel, +who probably had in mind the costly volumes which they presented to one +another on birthdays and holidays. "But I get about all the reading I +want in the newspapers. And when the girls want a novel, I tell 'em to +get it out of the library. That's what the library's for. Phew!" he +panted, blowing away the whole unprofitable subject. "How close you +women-folks like to keep a room! You go down to the sea-side or up to +the mountains for a change of air, and then you cork yourselves into a +room so tight you don't have any air at all. Here! You girls get on +your bonnets, and go and show Mr. Corey the view of the hotels from the +rocks." + +Corey said that he should be delighted. The girls exchanged looks with +each other, and then with their mother. Irene curved her pretty chin +in comment upon her father's incorrigibility, and Penelope made a droll +mouth, but the Colonel remained serenely content with his finesse. "I +got 'em out of the way," he said, as soon as they were gone, and before +his wife had time to fall upon him, "because I've got through my talk +with him, and now I want to talk with YOU. It's just as I said, +Persis; he wants to go into the business with me." + +"It's lucky for you," said his wife, meaning that now he would not be +made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. But she was too intensely +interested to pursue that matter further. "What in the world do you +suppose he means by it?" + +"Well, I should judge by his talk that he had been trying a good many +different things since he left college, and he hain't found just the +thing he likes--or the thing that likes him. It ain't so easy. And +now he's got an idea that he can take hold of the paint and push it in +other countries--push it in Mexico and push it in South America. He's +a splendid Spanish scholar,"--this was Lapham's version of Corey's +modest claim to a smattering of the language,--"and he's been among the +natives enough to know their ways. And he believes in the paint," +added the Colonel. + +"I guess he believes in something else besides the paint," said Mrs. +Lapham. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Well, Silas Lapham, if you can't see NOW that he's after Irene, I +don't know what ever CAN open your eyes. That's all." + +The Colonel pretended to give the idea silent consideration, as if it +had not occurred to him before. "Well, then, all I've got to say is, +that he's going a good way round. I don't say you're wrong, but if +it's Irene, I don't see why he should want to go off to South America +to get her. And that's what he proposes to do. I guess there's some +paint about it too, Persis. He says he believes in it,"--the Colonel +devoutly lowered his voice,--"and he's willing to take the agency on +his own account down there, and run it for a commission on what he can +sell." + +"Of course! He isn't going to take hold of it any way so as to feel +beholden to you. He's got too much pride for that." + +"He ain't going to take hold of it at all, if he don't mean paint in +the first place and Irene afterward. I don't object to him, as I know, +either way, but the two things won't mix; and I don't propose he shall +pull the wool over my eyes--or anybody else. But, as far as heard +from, up to date, he means paint first, last, and all the time. At any +rate, I'm going to take him on that basis. He's got some pretty good +ideas about it, and he's been stirred up by this talk, just now, about +getting our manufactures into the foreign markets. There's an +overstock in everything, and we've got to get rid of it, or we've got +to shut down till the home demand begins again. We've had two or three +such flurries before now, and they didn't amount to much. They say we +can't extend our commerce under the high tariff system we've got now, +because there ain't any sort of reciprocity on our side,--we want to +have the other fellows show all the reciprocity,--and the English have +got the advantage of us every time. I don't know whether it's so or +not; but I don't see why it should apply to my paint. Anyway, he wants +to try it, and I've about made up my mind to let him. Of course I +ain't going to let him take all the risk. I believe in the paint TOO, +and I shall pay his expenses anyway." + +"So you want another partner after all?" Mrs. Lapham could not forbear +saying. + +"Yes, if that's your idea of a partner. It isn't mine," returned her +husband dryly. + +"Well, if you've made up your mind, Si, I suppose you're ready for +advice," said Mrs. Lapham. + +The Colonel enjoyed this. "Yes, I am. What have you got to say +against it?" + +"I don't know as I've got anything. I'm satisfied if you are." + +"Well?" + +"When is he going to start for South America?" + +"I shall take him into the office a while. He'll get off some time in +the winter. But he's got to know the business first." + +"Oh, indeed! Are you going to take him to board in the family?" + +"What are you after, Persis?" + +"Oh, nothing! I presume he will feel free to visit in the family, even +if he don't board with us." + +"I presume he will." + +"And if he don't use his privileges, do you think he'll be a fit person +to manage your paint in South America?" + +The Colonel reddened consciously. "I'm not taking him on that basis." + +"Oh yes, you are! You may pretend you ain't to yourself, but you +mustn't pretend so to me. Because I know you." + +The Colonel laughed. "Pshaw!" he said. + +Mrs. Lapham continued: "I don't see any harm in hoping that he'll take +a fancy to her. But if you really think it won't do to mix the two +things, I advise you not to take Mr. Corey into the business. It will +do all very well if he DOES take a fancy to her; but if he don't, you +know how you'll feel about it. And I know you well enough, Silas, to +know that you can't do him justice if that happens. And I don't think +it's right you should take this step unless you're pretty sure. I can +see that you've set your heart on this thing." + +"I haven't set my heart on it at all," protested Lapham. + +"And if you can't bring it about, you're going to feel unhappy over +it," pursued his wife, regardless of his protest. + +"Oh, very well," he said. "If you know more about what's in my mind +than I do, there's no use arguing, as I can see." + +He got up, to carry off his consciousness, and sauntered out of the +door on to his piazza. He could see the young people down on the +rocks, and his heart swelled in his breast. He had always said that he +did not care what a man's family was, but the presence of young Corey +as an applicant to him for employment, as his guest, as the possible +suitor of his daughter, was one of the sweetest flavours that he had +yet tasted in his success. He knew who the Coreys were very well, and, +in his simple, brutal way, he had long hated their name as a symbol of +splendour which, unless he should live to see at least three +generations of his descendants gilded with mineral paint, he could not +hope to realise in his own. He was acquainted in a business way with +the tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many +things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's +money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could +not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. +Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the +tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything +that was offensively aristocratic. He had bristled up aggressively at +the name when his wife told how she had made the acquaintance of the +fellow's family the summer before, and he had treated the notion of +young Corey's caring for Irene with the contempt which such a +ridiculous superstition deserved. He had made up his mind about young +Corey beforehand; yet when he met him he felt an instant liking for +him, which he frankly acknowledged, and he had begun to assume the +burden of his wife's superstition, of which she seemed now ready to +accuse him of being the inventor. + +Nothing had moved his thick imagination like this day's events since +the girl who taught him spelling and grammar in the school at +Lumberville had said she would have him for her husband. + +The dark figures, stationary on the rocks, began to move, and he could +see that they were coming toward the house. He went indoors, so as not +to appear to have been watching them. + + + +VIII. + + +A WEEK after she had parted with her son at Bar Harbour, Mrs. Corey +suddenly walked in upon her husband in their house in Boston. He was +at breakfast, and he gave her the patronising welcome with which the +husband who has been staying in town all summer receives his wife when +she drops down upon him from the mountains or the sea-side. For a +little moment she feels herself strange in the house, and suffers +herself to be treated like a guest, before envy of his comfort vexes +her back into possession and authority. Mrs. Corey was a lady, and she +did not let her envy take the form of open reproach. + +"Well, Anna, you find me here in the luxury you left me to. How did +you leave the girls?" + +"The girls were well," said Mrs. Corey, looking absently at her +husband's brown velvet coat, in which he was so handsome. No man had +ever grown grey more beautifully. His hair, while not remaining dark +enough to form a theatrical contrast with his moustache, was yet some +shades darker, and, in becoming a little thinner, it had become a +little more gracefully wavy. His skin had the pearly tint which that +of elderly men sometimes assumes, and the lines which time had traced +upon it were too delicate for the name of wrinkles. He had never had +any personal vanity, and there was no consciousness in his good looks +now. + +"I am glad of that. The boy I have with me," he returned; "that is, +when he IS with me." + +"Why, where is he?" demanded the mother. + +"Probably carousing with the boon Lapham somewhere. He left me +yesterday afternoon to go and offer his allegiance to the Mineral Paint +King, and I haven't seen him since." + +"Bromfield!" cried Mrs. Corey. "Why didn't you stop him?" + +"Well, my dear, I'm not sure that it isn't a very good thing." + +"A good thing? It's horrid!" + +"No, I don't think so. It's decent. Tom had found out--without +consulting the landscape, which I believe proclaims it everywhere----" + +"Hideous!" + +"That it's really a good thing; and he thinks that he has some ideas in +regard to its dissemination in the parts beyond seas." + +"Why shouldn't he go into something else?" lamented the mother. + +"I believe he has gone into nearly everything else and come out of it. +So there is a chance of his coming out of this. But as I had nothing +to suggest in place of it, I thought it best not to interfere. In +fact, what good would my telling him that mineral paint was nasty have +done? I dare say YOU told him it was nasty." + +"Yes! I did." + +"And you see with what effect, though he values your opinion three +times as much as he values mine. Perhaps you came up to tell him again +that it was nasty?" + +"I feel very unhappy about it. He is throwing himself away. Yes, I +should like to prevent it if I could!" + +The father shook his head. + +"If Lapham hasn't prevented it, I fancy it's too late. But there may +be some hopes of Lapham. As for Tom's throwing himself away, I don't +know. There's no question but he is one of the best fellows under the +sun. He's tremendously energetic, and he has plenty of the kind of +sense which we call horse; but he isn't brilliant. No, Tom is not +brilliant. I don't think he would get on in a profession, and he's +instinctively kept out of everything of the kind. But he has got to do +something. What shall he do? He says mineral paint, and really I don't +see why he shouldn't. If money is fairly and honestly earned, why +should we pretend to care what it comes out of, when we don't really +care? That superstition is exploded everywhere." + +"Oh, it isn't the paint alone," said Mrs. Corey; and then she +perceptibly arrested herself, and made a diversion in continuing: "I +wish he had married some one." + +"With money?" suggested her husband. "From time to time I have +attempted Tom's corruption from that side, but I suspect Tom has a +conscience against it, and I rather like him for it. I married for +love myself," said Corey, looking across the table at his wife. + +She returned his look tolerantly, though she felt it right to say, +"What nonsense!" + +"Besides," continued her husband, "if you come to money, there is the +paint princess. She will have plenty." + +"Ah, that's the worst of it," sighed the mother. "I suppose I could +get on with the paint----" + +"But not with the princess? I thought you said she was a very pretty, +well-behaved girl?" + +"She is very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there is nothing of +her. She is insipid; she is very insipid." + +"But Tom seemed to like her flavour, such as it was?" + +"How can I tell? We were under a terrible obligation to them, and I +naturally wished him to be polite to them. In fact, I asked him to be +so." + +"And he was too polite." + +"I can't say that he was. But there is no doubt that the child is +extremely pretty." + +"Tom says there are two of them. Perhaps they will neutralise each +other." + +"Yes, there is another daughter," assented Mrs. Corey. "I don't see +how you can joke about such things, Bromfield," she added. + +"Well, I don't either, my dear, to tell you the truth. My hardihood +surprises me. Here is a son of mine whom I see reduced to making his +living by a shrinkage in values. It's very odd," interjected Corey, +"that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never +hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real +estate--all those values shrink abominably. Perhaps it might be argued +that one should put all his values into pictures; I've got a good many +of mine there." + +"Tom needn't earn his living," said Mrs. Corey, refusing her husband's +jest. "There's still enough for all of us." + +"That is what I have sometimes urged upon Tom. I have proved to him +that with economy, and strict attention to business, he need do nothing +as long as he lives. Of course he would be somewhat restricted, and it +would cramp the rest of us; but it is a world of sacrifices and +compromises. He couldn't agree with me, and he was not in the least +moved by the example of persons of quality in Europe, which I alleged +in support of the life of idleness. It appears that he wishes to do +something--to do something for himself. I am afraid that Tom is +selfish." + +Mrs. Corey smiled wanly. Thirty years before, she had married the rich +young painter in Rome, who said so much better things than he +painted--charming things, just the things to please the fancy of a girl +who was disposed to take life a little too seriously and practically. +She saw him in a different light when she got him home to Boston; but +he had kept on saying the charming things, and he had not done much +else. In fact, he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. It was a +good trait in him that he was not actively but only passively +extravagant. He was not adventurous with his money; his tastes were as +simple as an Italian's; he had no expensive habits. In the process of +time he had grown to lead a more and more secluded life. It was hard +to get him out anywhere, even to dinner. His patience with their +narrowing circumstances had a pathos which she felt the more the more +she came into charge of their joint life. At times it seemed too bad +that the children and their education and pleasures should cost so +much. She knew, besides, that if it had not been for them she would +have gone back to Rome with him, and lived princely there for less than +it took to live respectably in Boston. + +"Tom hasn't consulted me," continued his father, "but he has consulted +other people. And he has arrived at the conclusion that mineral paint +is a good thing to go into. He has found out all about it, and about +its founder or inventor. It's quite impressive to hear him talk. And +if he must do something for himself, I don't see why his egotism +shouldn't as well take that form as another. Combined with the paint +princess, it isn't so agreeable; but that's only a remote possibility, +for which your principal ground is your motherly solicitude. But even +if it were probable and imminent, what could you do? The chief +consolation that we American parents have in these matters is that we +can do nothing. If we were Europeans, even English, we should take +some cognisance of our children's love affairs, and in some measure +teach their young affections how to shoot. But it is our custom to +ignore them until they have shot, and then they ignore us. We are +altogether too delicate to arrange the marriages of our children; and +when they have arranged them we don't like to say anything, for fear we +should only make bad worse. The right way is for us to school +ourselves to indifference. That is what the young people have to do +elsewhere, and that is the only logical result of our position here. +It is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we don't interfere +with." + +"Oh, people do interfere with their children's marriages very often," +said Mrs. Corey. + +"Yes, but only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make it disagreeable +for themselves if the marriages go on in spite of them, as they're +pretty apt to do. Now, my idea is that I ought to cut Tom off with a +shilling. That would be very simple, and it would be economical. But +you would never consent, and Tom wouldn't mind it." + +"I think our whole conduct in regard to such things is wrong," said +Mrs. Corey. + +"Oh, very likely. But our whole civilisation is based upon it. And +who is going to make a beginning? To which father in our acquaintance +shall I go and propose an alliance for Tom with his daughter? I should +feel like an ass. And will you go to some mother, and ask her sons in +marriage for our daughters? You would feel like a goose. No; the only +motto for us is, Hands off altogether." + +"I shall certainly speak to Tom when the time comes," said Mrs. Corey. + +"And I shall ask leave to be absent from your discomfiture, my dear," +answered her husband. + +The son returned that afternoon, and confessed his surprise at finding +his mother in Boston. He was so frank that she had not quite the +courage to confess in turn why she had come, but trumped up an excuse. + +"Well, mother," he said promptly, "I have made an engagement with Mr. +Lapham." + +"Have you, Tom?" she asked faintly. + +"Yes. For the present I am going to have charge of his foreign +correspondence, and if I see my way to the advantage I expect to find +in it, I am going out to manage that side of his business in South +America and Mexico. He's behaved very handsomely about it. He says +that if it appears for our common interest, he shall pay me a salary as +well as a commission. I've talked with Uncle Jim, and he thinks it's a +good opening." + +"Your Uncle Jim does?" queried Mrs. Corey in amaze. + +"Yes; I consulted him the whole way through, and I've acted on his +advice." + +This seemed an incomprehensible treachery on her brother's part. + +"Yes; I thought you would like to have me. And besides, I couldn't +possibly have gone to any one so well fitted to advise me." + +His mother said nothing. In fact, the mineral paint business, however +painful its interest, was, for the moment, superseded by a more +poignant anxiety. She began to feel her way cautiously toward this. + +"Have you been talking about your business with Mr. Lapham all night?" + +"Well, pretty much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh. "I went to +see him yesterday afternoon, after I had gone over the whole ground +with Uncle Jim, and Mr. Lapham asked me to go down with him and finish +up." + +"Down?" repeated Mrs. Corey. "Yes, to Nantasket. He has a cottage +down there." + +"At Nantasket?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows a little. "What in the +world can a cottage at Nantasket be like?" + +"Oh, very much like a 'cottage' anywhere. It has the usual allowance +of red roof and veranda. There are the regulation rocks by the sea; +and the big hotels on the beach about a mile off, flaring away with +electric lights and roman-candles at night. We didn't have them at +Nahant." + +"No," said his mother. "Is Mrs. Lapham well? And her daughter?" + +"Yes, I think so," said the young man. "The young ladies walked me +down to the rocks in the usual way after dinner, and then I came back +and talked paint with Mr. Lapham till midnight. We didn't settle +anything till this morning coming up on the boat." + +"What sort of people do they seem to be at home?" + +"What sort? Well, I don't know that I noticed." Mrs. Corey permitted +herself the first part of a sigh of relief; and her son laughed, but +apparently not at her. "They're just reading Middlemarch. They say +there's so much talk about it. Oh, I suppose they're very good people. +They seemed to be on very good terms with each other." + +"I suppose it's the plain sister who's reading Middlemarch." + +"Plain? Is she plain?" asked the young man, as if searching his +consciousness. "Yes, it's the older one who does the reading, +apparently. But I don't believe that even she overdoes it. They like +to talk better. They reminded me of Southern people in that." The +young man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions of the Lapham +family. "The living, as the country people call it, is tremendously +good. The Colonel--he's a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's +coffee, as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, though I +believe it was merely inspired by her. And there was everything in the +house that money could buy. But money has its limitations." + +This was a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realise more and more +unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring her a certain +comfort in its application to the Laphams. "Yes, there is a point +where taste has to begin," she said. + +"They seemed to want to apologise to me for not having more books," +said Corey. "I don't know why they should. The Colonel said they +bought a good many books, first and last; but apparently they don't +take them to the sea-side." + +"I dare say they NEVER buy a NEW book. I've met some of these moneyed +people lately, and they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then +borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper editions." + +"I fancy that's the way with the Lapham family," said the young man, +smilingly. "But they are very good people. The other daughter is +humorous." + +"Humorous?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows in some perplexity. "Do you +mean like Mrs. Sayre?" she asked, naming the lady whose name must come +into every Boston mind when humour is mentioned. + +"Oh no; nothing like that. She never says anything that you can +remember; nothing in flashes or ripples; nothing the least literary. +But it's a sort of droll way of looking at things; or a droll medium +through which things present themselves. I don't know. She tells what +she's seen, and mimics a little." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey coldly. After a moment she asked: "And is Miss +Irene as pretty as ever?" + +"She's a wonderful complexion," said the son unsatisfactorily. "I +shall want to be by when father and Colonel Lapham meet," he added, +with a smile. + +"Ah, yes, your father!" said the mother, in that way in which a wife at +once compassionates and censures her husband to their children. + +"Do you think it's really going to be a trial to him?" asked the young +man quickly. + +"No, no, I can't say it is. But I confess I wish it was some other +business, Tom." + +"Well, mother, I don't see why. The principal thing looked at now is +the amount of money; and while I would rather starve than touch a +dollar that was dirty with any sort of dishonesty----" + +"Of course you would, my son!" interposed his mother proudly. + +"I shouldn't at all mind its having a little mineral paint on it. I'll +use my influence with Colonel Lapham--if I ever have any--to have his +paint scraped off the landscape." + +"I suppose you won't begin till the autumn." + +"Oh yes, I shall," said the son, laughing at his mother's simple +ignorance of business. "I shall begin to-morrow morning." + +"To-morrow morning!" + +"Yes. I've had my desk appointed already, and I shall be down there at +nine in the morning to take possession." + +"Tom," cried his mother, "why do you think Mr. Lapham has taken you +into business so readily? I've always heard that it was so hard for +young men to get in." + +"And do you think I found it easy with him? We had about twelve hours' +solid talk." + +"And you don't suppose it was any sort of--personal consideration?" + +"Why, I don't know exactly what you mean, mother. I suppose he likes +me." + +Mrs. Corey could not say just what she meant. She answered, +ineffectually enough-- + +"Yes. You wouldn't like it to be a favour, would you?" + +"I think he's a man who may be trusted to look after his own interest. +But I don't mind his beginning by liking me. It'll be my own fault if +I don't make myself essential to him." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey. + +"Well," demanded her husband, at their first meeting after her +interview with their son, "what did you say to Tom?" + +"Very little, if anything. I found him with his mind made up, and it +would only have distressed him if I had tried to change it." + +"That is precisely what I said, my dear." + +"Besides, he had talked the matter over fully with James, and seems to +have been advised by him. I can't understand James." + +"Oh! it's in regard to the paint, and not the princess, that he's made +up his mind. Well, I think you were wise to let him alone, Anna. We +represent a faded tradition. We don't really care what business a man +is in, so it is large enough, and he doesn't advertise offensively; but +we think it fine to affect reluctance." + +"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" asked his wife seriously. + +"Certainly I do. There was a long time in my misguided youth when I +supposed myself some sort of porcelain; but it's a relief to be of the +common clay, after all, and to know it. If I get broken, I can be +easily replaced." + +"If Tom must go into such a business," said Mrs. Corey, "I'm glad James +approves of it." + +"I'm afraid it wouldn't matter to Tom if he didn't; and I don't know +that I should care," said Corey, betraying the fact that he had perhaps +had a good deal of his brother-in-law's judgment in the course of his +life. "You had better consult him in regard to Tom's marrying the +princess." + +"There is no necessity at present for that," said Mrs. Corey, with +dignity. After a moment, she asked, "Should you feel quite so easy if +it were a question of that, Bromfield?" + +"It would be a little more personal." + +"You feel about it as I do. Of course, we have both lived too long, +and seen too much of the world, to suppose we can control such things. +The child is good, I haven't the least doubt, and all those things can +be managed so that they wouldn't disgrace us. But she has had a +certain sort of bringing up. I should prefer Tom to marry a girl with +another sort, and this business venture of his increases the chances +that he won't. That's all." + +"''Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'twill +serve.'" + +"I shouldn't like it." + +"Well, it hasn't happened yet." + +"Ah, you never can realise anything beforehand." + +"Perhaps that has saved me some suffering. But you have at least the +consolation of two anxieties at once. I always find that a great +advantage. You can play one off against the other." + +Mrs. Corey drew a long breath as if she did not experience the +suggested consolation; and she arranged to quit, the following +afternoon, the scene of her defeat, which she had not had the courage +to make a battlefield. Her son went down to see her off on the boat, +after spending his first day at his desk in Lapham's office. He was in +a gay humour, and she departed in a reflected gleam of his good +spirits. He told her all about it, as he sat talking with her at the +stern of the boat, lingering till the last moment, and then stepping +ashore, with as little waste of time as Lapham himself, on the +gang-plank which the deck-hands had laid hold of. He touched his hat +to her from the wharf to reassure her of his escape from being carried +away with her, and the next moment his smiling face hid itself in the +crowd. + +He walked on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with trucks and +hacks and piles of freight, and, taking his way through the deserted +business streets beyond this bustle, made a point of passing the door +of Lapham's warehouse, on the jambs of which his name and paint were +lettered in black on a square ground of white. The door was still +open, and Corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to go upstairs and +fetch away some foreign letters which he had left on his desk, and +which he thought he might finish up at home. He was in love with his +work, and he felt the enthusiasm for it which nothing but the work we +can do well inspires in us. He believed that he had found his place in +the world, after a good deal of looking, and he had the relief, the +repose, of fitting into it. Every little incident of the momentous, +uneventful day was a pleasure in his mind, from his sitting down at his +desk, to which Lapham's boy brought him the foreign letters, till his +rising from it an hour ago. Lapham had been in view within his own +office, but he had given Corey no formal reception, and had, in fact, +not spoken to him till toward the end of the forenoon, when he suddenly +came out of his den with some more letters in his hand, and after a +brief "How d'ye do?" had spoken a few words about them, and left them +with him. He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person +seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. He did not go out +to lunch, but had it brought to him in his office, where Corey saw him +eating it before he left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging +seat before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. He observed +that all the others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to anticipate +his usual hour. When he returned, the pretty girl who had been +clicking away at a type-writer all the morning was neatly putting out +of sight the evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood, +and was preparing to go on with her copying. In his office Lapham lay +asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over his face. + +Now, while Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway, these two +came down the stairs together, and he heard Lapham saying, "Well, then, +you better get a divorce." + +He looked red and excited, and the girl's face, which she veiled at +sight of Corey, showed traces of tears. She slipped round him into the +street. + +But Lapham stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling but surprise: +"Hello, Corey! Did you want to go up?" + +"Yes; there were some letters I hadn't quite got through with." + +"You'll find Dennis up there. But I guess you better let them go till +to-morrow. I always make it a rule to stop work when I'm done." + +"Perhaps you're right," said Corey, yielding. + +"Come along down as far as the boat with me. There's a little matter I +want to talk over with you." + +It was a business matter, and related to Corey's proposed connection +with the house. + +The next day the head book-keeper, who lunched at the long counter of +the same restaurant with Corey, began to talk with him about Lapham. +Walker had not apparently got his place by seniority; though with his +forehead, bald far up toward the crown, and his round smooth face, one +might have taken him for a plump elder, if he had not looked equally +like a robust infant. The thick drabbish yellow moustache was what +arrested decision in either direction, and the prompt vigour of all his +movements was that of a young man of thirty, which was really Walker's +age. He knew, of course, who Corey was, and he had waited for a man +who might look down on him socially to make the overtures toward +something more than business acquaintance; but, these made, he was +readily responsive, and drew freely on his philosophy of Lapham and his +affairs. + +"I think about the only difference between people in this world is that +some know what they want, and some don't. Well, now," said Walker, +beating the bottom of his salt-box to make the salt come out, "the old +man knows what he wants every time. And generally he gets it. Yes, +sir, he generally gets it. He knows what he's about, but I'll be +blessed if the rest of us do half the time. Anyway, we don't till he's +ready to let us. You take my position in most business houses. It's +confidential. The head book-keeper knows right along pretty much +everything the house has got in hand. I'll give you my word I don't. +He may open up to you a little more in your department, but, as far as +the rest of us go, he don't open up any more than an oyster on a hot +brick. They say he had a partner once; I guess he's dead. I wouldn't +like to be the old man's partner. Well, you see, this paint of his is +like his heart's blood. Better not try to joke him about it. I've +seen people come in occasionally and try it. They didn't get much fun +out of it." + +While he talked, Walker was plucking up morsels from his plate, tearing +off pieces of French bread from the long loaf, and feeding them into +his mouth in an impersonal way, as if he were firing up an engine. + +"I suppose he thinks," suggested Corey, "that if he doesn't tell, +nobody else will." + +Walker took a draught of beer from his glass, and wiped the foam from +his moustache. + +"Oh, but he carries it too far! It's a weakness with him. He's just so +about everything. Look at the way he keeps it up about that +type-writer girl of his. You'd think she was some princess travelling +incognito. There isn't one of us knows who she is, or where she came +from, or who she belongs to. He brought her and her machine into the +office one morning, and set 'em down at a table, and that's all there +is about it, as far as we're concerned. It's pretty hard on the girl, +for I guess she'd like to talk; and to any one that didn't know the old +man----" Walker broke off and drained his glass of what was left in it. + +Corey thought of the words he had overheard from Lapham to the girl. +But he said, "She seems to be kept pretty busy." + +"Oh yes," said Walker; "there ain't much loafing round the place, in +any of the departments, from the old man's down. That's just what I +say. He's got to work just twice as hard, if he wants to keep +everything in his own mind. But he ain't afraid of work. That's one +good thing about him. And Miss Dewey has to keep step with the rest of +us. But she don't look like one that would take to it naturally. Such +a pretty girl as that generally thinks she does enough when she looks +her prettiest." + +"She's a pretty girl," said Corey, non-committally. "But I suppose a +great many pretty girls have to earn their living." + +"Don't any of 'em like to do it," returned the book-keeper. "They +think it's a hardship, and I don't blame 'em. They have got a right to +get married, and they ought to have the chance. And Miss Dewey's +smart, too. She's as bright as a biscuit. I guess she's had trouble. +I shouldn't be much more than half surprised if Miss Dewey wasn't Miss +Dewey, or hadn't always been. Yes, sir," continued the book-keeper, +who prolonged the talk as they walked back to Lapham's warehouse +together, "I don't know exactly what it is,--it isn't any one thing in +particular,--but I should say that girl had been married. I wouldn't +speak so freely to any of the rest, Mr. Corey,--I want you to +understand that,--and it isn't any of my business, anyway; but that's +my opinion." + +Corey made no reply, as he walked beside the book-keeper, who +continued-- + +"It's curious what a difference marriage makes in people. Now, I know +that I don't look any more like a bachelor of my age than I do like the +man in the moon, and yet I couldn't say where the difference came in, +to save me. And it's just so with a woman. The minute you catch sight +of her face, there's something in it that tells you whether she's +married or not. What do you suppose it is?" + +"I'm sure I don't know," said Corey, willing to laugh away the topic. +"And from what I read occasionally of some people who go about +repeating their happiness, I shouldn't say that the intangible +evidences were always unmistakable." + +"Oh, of course," admitted Walker, easily surrendering his position. +"All signs fail in dry weather. Hello! What's that?" He caught Corey +by the arm, and they both stopped. + +At a corner, half a block ahead of them, the summer noon solitude of +the place was broken by a bit of drama. A man and woman issued from +the intersecting street, and at the moment of coming into sight the +man, who looked like a sailor, caught the woman by the arm, as if to +detain her. A brief struggle ensued, the woman trying to free herself, +and the man half coaxing, half scolding. The spectators could now see +that he was drunk; but before they could decide whether it was a case +for their interference or not, the woman suddenly set both hands +against the man's breast and gave him a quick push. He lost his +footing and tumbled into a heap in the gutter. The woman faltered an +instant, as if to see whether he was seriously hurt, and then turned +and ran. + +When Corey and the book-keeper re-entered the office, Miss Dewey had +finished her lunch, and was putting a sheet of paper into her +type-writer. She looked up at them with her eyes of turquoise blue, +under her low white forehead, with the hair neatly rippled over it, and +then began to beat the keys of her machine. + + + +IX. + + +LAPHAM had the pride which comes of self-making, and he would not +openly lower his crest to the young fellow he had taken into his +business. He was going to be obviously master in his own place to +every one; and during the hours of business he did nothing to +distinguish Corey from the half-dozen other clerks and book-keepers in +the outer office, but he was not silent about the fact that Bromfield +Corey's son had taken a fancy to come to him. "Did you notice that +fellow at the desk facing my type-writer girl? Well, sir, that's the +son of Bromfield Corey--old Phillips Corey's grandson. And I'll say +this for him, that there isn't a man in the office that looks after his +work better. There isn't anything he's too good for. He's right here +at nine every morning, before the clock gets in the word. I guess it's +his grandfather coming out in him. He's got charge of the foreign +correspondence. We're pushing the paint everywhere." He flattered +himself that he did not lug the matter in. He had been warned against +that by his wife, but he had the right to do Corey justice, and his +brag took the form of illustration. "Talk about training for +business--I tell you it's all in the man himself! I used to believe in +what old Horace Greeley said about college graduates being the poorest +kind of horned cattle; but I've changed my mind a little. You take +that fellow Corey. He's been through Harvard, and he's had about every +advantage that a fellow could have. Been everywhere, and talks half a +dozen languages like English. I suppose he's got money enough to live +without lifting a hand, any more than his father does; son of Bromfield +Corey, you know. But the thing was in him. He's a natural-born +business man; and I've had many a fellow with me that had come up out +of the street, and worked hard all his life, without ever losing his +original opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it. I believe the +fellow would like to stick at that desk of his night and day. I don't +know where he got it. I guess it must be his grandfather, old Phillips +Corey; it often skips a generation, you know. But what I say is, a +thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain't born in him, all the +privations in the world won't put it there, and if it is, all the +college training won't take it out." + +Sometimes Lapham advanced these ideas at his own table, to a guest whom +he had brought to Nantasket for the night. Then he suffered exposure +and ridicule at the hands of his wife, when opportunity offered. She +would not let him bring Corey down to Nantasket at all. + +"No, indeed!" she said. "I am not going to have them think we're +running after him. If he wants to see Irene, he can find out ways of +doing it for himself." + +"Who wants him to see Irene?" retorted the Colonel angrily. + +"I do," said Mrs. Lapham. "And I want him to see her without any of +your connivance, Silas. I'm not going to have it said that I put my +girls at anybody. Why don't you invite some of your other clerks?" + +"He ain't just like the other clerks. He's going to take charge of a +part of the business. It's quite another thing." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Lapham vexatiously. "Then you ARE going to +take a partner." + +"I shall ask him down if I choose!" returned the Colonel, disdaining +her insinuation. + +His wife laughed with the fearlessness of a woman who knows her husband. + +"But you won't choose when you've thought it over, Si." Then she +applied an emollient to his chafed surface. "Don't you suppose I feel +as you do about it? I know just how proud you are, and I'm not going to +have you do anything that will make you feel meeching afterward. You +just let things take their course. If he wants Irene, he's going to +find out some way of seeing her; and if he don't, all the plotting and +planning in the world isn't going to make him." + +"Who's plotting?" again retorted the Colonel, shuddering at the +utterance of hopes and ambitions which a man hides with shame, but a +woman talks over as freely and coolly as if they were items of a +milliner's bill. + +"Oh, not you!" exulted his wife. "I understand what you want. You +want to get this fellow, who is neither partner nor clerk, down here to +talk business with him. Well, now, you just talk business with him at +the office." + +The only social attention which Lapham succeeded in offering Corey was +to take him in his buggy, now and then, for a spin out over the +Mill-dam. He kept the mare in town, and on a pleasant afternoon he +liked to knock off early, as he phrased it, and let the mare out a +little. Corey understood something about horses, though in a +passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk business when +obliged to talk horse. But he deferred to his business superior with +the sense of discipline which is innate in the apparently insubordinate +American nature. If Corey could hardly have helped feeling the social +difference between Lapham and himself, in his presence he silenced his +traditions, and showed him all the respect that he could have exacted +from any of his clerks. He talked horse with him, and when the Colonel +wished he talked house. Besides himself and his paint Lapham had not +many other topics; and if he had a choice between the mare and the +edifice on the water side of Beacon Street, it was just now the latter. +Sometimes, in driving in or out, he stopped at the house, and made +Corey his guest there, if he might not at Nantasket; and one day it +happened that the young man met Irene there again. She had come up +with her mother alone, and they were in the house, interviewing the +carpenter as before, when the Colonel jumped out of his buggy and cast +anchor at the pavement. More exactly, Mrs. Lapham was interviewing the +carpenter, and Irene was sitting in the bow-window on a trestle, and +looking out at the driving. She saw him come up with her father, and +bowed and blushed. Her father went on up-stairs to find her mother, +and Corey pulled up another trestle which he found in the back part of +the room. The first floorings had been laid throughout the house, and +the partitions had been lathed so that one could realise the shape of +the interior. + +"I suppose you will sit at this window a good deal," said the young man. + +"Yes, I think it will be very nice. There's so much more going on than +there is in the Square." + +"It must be very interesting to you to see the house grow." + +"It is. Only it doesn't seem to grow so fast as I expected." + +"Why, I'm amazed at the progress your carpenter has made every time I +come." + +The girl looked down, and then lifting her eyes she said, with a sort +of timorous appeal-- + +"I've been reading that book since you were down at Nantasket." + +"Book?" repeated Corey, while she reddened with disappointment. "Oh +yes. Middlemarch. Did you like it?" + +"I haven't got through with it yet. Pen has finished it." + +"What does she think of it?" + +"Oh, I think she likes it very well. I haven't heard her talk about it +much. Do you like it?" + +"Yes; I liked it immensely. But it's several years since I read it." + +"I didn't know it was so old. It's just got into the Seaside Library," +she urged, with a little sense of injury in her tone. + +"Oh, it hasn't been out such a very great while," said Corey politely. +"It came a little before DANIEL DERONDA." + +The girl was again silent. She followed the curl of a shaving on the +floor with the point of her parasol. + +"Do you like that Rosamond Vincy?" she asked, without looking up. + +Corey smiled in his kind way. + +"I didn't suppose she was expected to have any friends. I can't say I +liked her. But I don't think I disliked her so much as the author +does. She's pretty hard on her good-looking"--he was going to say +girls, but as if that might have been rather personal, he +said--"people." + +"Yes, that's what Pen says. She says she doesn't give her any chance +to be good. She says she should have been just as bad as Rosamond if +she had been in her place." + +The young man laughed. "Your sister is very satirical, isn't she?" + +"I don't know," said Irene, still intent upon the convolutions of the +shaving. "She keeps us laughing. Papa thinks there's nobody that can +talk like her." She gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took +the parasol up across her lap. The unworldliness of the Lapham girls +did not extend to their dress; Irene's costume was very stylish, and +she governed her head and shoulders stylishly. "We are going to have +the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," she said abruptly. + +"Yes?" returned Corey. "I should think that would be charming." + +"We expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants to build the +shelves in." + +The fact seemed to be referred to Corey for his comment. + +"It seems to me that would be the best way. They'll look like part of +the room then. You can make them low, and hang your pictures above +them." + +"Yes, that's what he said." The girl looked out of the window in +adding, "I presume with nice bindings it will look very well." + +"Oh, nothing furnishes a room like books." + +"No. There will have to be a good many of them." + +"That depends upon the size of your room and the number of your +shelves." + +"Oh, of course! I presume," said Irene, thoughtfully, "we shall have to +have Gibbon." + +"If you want to read him," said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an +imaginable joke. + +"We had a great deal about him at school. I believe we had one of his +books. Mine's lost, but Pen will remember." + +The young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, "You'll want +Greene, of course, and Motley, and Parkman." + +"Yes. What kind of writers are they?" + +"They're historians too." + +"Oh yes; I remember now. That's what Gibbon was. Is it Gibbon or +Gibbons?" + +The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy. +"Gibbon, I think." + +"There used to be so many of them," said Irene gaily. "I used to get +them mixed up with each other, and I couldn't tell them from the poets. +Should you want to have poetry?" + +"Yes; I suppose some edition of the English poets." + +"We don't any of us like poetry. Do you like it?" + +"I'm afraid I don't very much," Corey owned. "But, of course, there +was a time when Tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now." + +"We had something about him at school too. I think I remember the +name. I think we ought to have ALL the American poets." + +"Well, not all. Five or six of the best: you want Longfellow and +Bryant and Whittier and Holmes and Emerson and Lowell." + +The girl listened attentively, as if making mental note of the names. + +"And Shakespeare," she added. "Don't you like Shakespeare's plays?" + +"Oh yes, very much." + +"I used to be perfectly crazy about his plays. Don't you think +'Hamlet' is splendid? We had ever so much about Shakespeare. Weren't +you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays of his +there were? I always thought there was nothing but 'Hamlet' and 'Romeo +and Juliet' and 'Macbeth' and 'Richard III.' and 'King Lear,' and that +one that Robeson and Crane have--oh yes! 'Comedy of Errors.'" + +"Those are the ones they usually play," said Corey. + +"I presume we shall have to have Scott's works," said Irene, returning +to the question of books. + +"Oh yes." + +"One of the girls used to think he was GREAT. She was always talking +about Scott." Irene made a pretty little amiably contemptuous mouth. +"He isn't American, though?" she suggested. + +"No," said Corey; "he's Scotch, I believe." + +Irene passed her glove over her forehead. "I always get him mixed up +with Cooper. Well, papa has got to get them. If we have a library, we +have got to have books in it. Pen says it's perfectly ridiculous +having one. But papa thinks whatever the architect says is right. He +fought him hard enough at first. I don't see how any one can keep the +poets and the historians and novelists separate in their mind. Of +course papa will buy them if we say so. But I don't see how I'm ever +going to tell him which ones." The joyous light faded out of her face +and left it pensive. + +"Why, if you like," said the young man, taking out his pencil, "I'll +put down the names we've been talking about." + +He clapped himself on his breast pockets to detect some lurking scrap +of paper. + +"Will you?" she cried delightedly. "Here! take one of my cards," and +she pulled out her card-case. "The carpenter writes on a three-cornered +block and puts it into his pocket, and it's so uncomfortable he can't +help remembering it. Pen says she's going to adopt the +three-cornered-block plan with papa." + +"Thank you," said Corey. "I believe I'll use your card." He crossed +over to her, and after a moment sat down on the trestle beside her. +She looked over the card as he wrote. "Those are the ones we +mentioned, but perhaps I'd better add a few others." + +"Oh, thank you," she said, when he had written the card full on both +sides. "He has got to get them in the nicest binding, too. I shall +tell him about their helping to furnish the room, and then he can't +object." She remained with the card, looking at it rather wistfully. + +Perhaps Corey divined her trouble of mind. "If he will take that to +any bookseller, and tell him what bindings he wants, he will fill the +order for him." + +"Oh, thank you very much," she said, and put the card back into her +card-case with great apparent relief. Then she turned her lovely face +toward the young man, beaming with the triumph a woman feels in any bit +of successful manoeuvring, and began to talk with recovered gaiety of +other things, as if, having got rid of a matter annoying out of all +proportion to its importance, she was now going to indemnify herself. + +Corey did not return to his own trestle. She found another shaving +within reach of her parasol, and began poking that with it, and trying +to follow it through its folds. Corey watched her a while. + +"You seem to have a great passion for playing with shavings," he said. +"Is it a new one?" + +"New what?" + +"Passion." + +"I don't know," she said, dropping her eyelids, and keeping on with her +effort. She looked shyly aslant at him. "Perhaps you don't approve of +playing with shavings?" + +"Oh yes, I do. I admire it very much. But it seems rather difficult. +I've a great ambition to put my foot on the shaving's tail and hold it +for you." + +"Well," said the girl. + +"Thank you," said the young man. He did so, and now she ran her +parasol point easily through it. They looked at each other and +laughed. "That was wonderful. Would you like to try another?" he +asked. + +"No, I thank you," she replied. "I think one will do." + +They both laughed again, for whatever reason or no reason, and then the +young girl became sober. To a girl everything a young man does is of +significance; and if he holds a shaving down with his foot while she +pokes through it with her parasol, she must ask herself what he means +by it. + +"They seem to be having rather a long interview with the carpenter +to-day," said Irene, looking vaguely toward the ceiling. She turned +with polite ceremony to Corey. "I'm afraid you're letting them keep +you. You mustn't." + +"Oh no. You're letting me stay," he returned. + +She bridled and bit her lip for pleasure. "I presume they will be down +before a great while. Don't you like the smell of the wood and the +mortar? It's so fresh." + +"Yes, it's delicious." He bent forward and picked up from the floor the +shaving with which they had been playing, and put it to his nose. +"It's like a flower. May I offer it to you?" he asked, as if it had +been one. + +"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She took it from him and put it into her +belt, and then they both laughed once more. + +Steps were heard descending. When the elder people reached the floor +where they were sitting, Corey rose and presently took his leave. + +"What makes you so solemn, 'Rene?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"Solemn?" echoed the girl. "I'm not a BIT solemn. What CAN you mean?" + +Corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking across the +table at his father, he said, "I wonder what the average literature of +non-cultivated people is." + +"Ah," said the elder, "I suspect the average is pretty low even with +cultivated people. You don't read a great many books yourself, Tom." + +"No, I don't," the young man confessed. "I read more books when I was +with Stanton, last winter, than I had since I was a boy. But I read +them because I must--there was nothing else to do. It wasn't because I +was fond of reading. Still I think I read with some sense of +literature and the difference between authors. I don't suppose that +people generally do that; I have met people who had read books without +troubling themselves to find out even the author's name, much less +trying to decide upon his quality. I suppose that's the way the vast +majority of people read." + +"Yes. If authors were not almost necessarily recluses, and ignorant of +the ignorance about them, I don't see how they could endure it. Of +course they are fated to be overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor +fellows; but to see it weltering all round them while they are in the +very act of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. I +don't suppose that we who have the habit of reading, and at least a +nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness +of the great mass of people--even people whose houses are rich and +whose linen is purple and fine. But occasionally we get glimpses of +it. I suppose you found the latest publications lying all about in +Lapham cottage when you were down there?" + +Young Corey laughed. "It wasn't exactly cumbered with them." + +"No?" + +"To tell the truth, I don't suppose they ever buy books. The young +ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating +library." + +"Had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?" + +"Yes, in certain ways--to a certain degree." + +"It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation," said the elder +musingly. "We think it is an affair of epochs and of nations. It's +really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilised and the +other a barbarian. I've occasionally met young girls who were so +brutally, insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make +civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the skins of wild +beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs over their shoulders. Yet +they were of polite origin, and their parents were at least respectful +of the things that these young animals despised." + +"I don't think that is exactly the case with the Lapham family," said +the son, smiling. "The father and mother rather apologised about not +getting time to read, and the young ladies by no means scorned it." + +"They are quite advanced!" + +"They are going to have a library in their Beacon Street house." + +"Oh, poor things! How are they ever going to get the books together?" + +"Well, sir," said the son, colouring a little, "I have been indirectly +applied to for help." + +"You, Tom!" His father dropped back in his chair and laughed. + +"I recommended the standard authors," said the son. + +"Oh, I never supposed your PRUDENCE would be at fault, Tom!" + +"But seriously," said the young man, generously smiling in sympathy +with his father's enjoyment, "they're not unintelligent people. They +are very quick, and they are shrewd and sensible." + +"I have no doubt that some of the Sioux are so. But that is not saying +that they are civilised. All civilisation comes through literature +now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilisation by +talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. +But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we +must barbarise. Once we were softened, if not polished, by religion; +but I suspect that the pulpit counts for much less now in civilising." + +"They're enormous devourers of newspapers, and theatre-goers; and they +go a great deal to lectures. The Colonel prefers them with the +stereopticon." + +"They might get a something in that way," said the elder thoughtfully. +"Yes, I suppose one must take those things into account--especially the +newspapers and the lectures. I doubt if the theatre is a factor in +civilisation among us. I dare say it doesn't deprave a great deal, but +from what I've seen of it I should say that it was intellectually +degrading. Perhaps they might get some sort of lift from it; I don't +know. Tom!" he added, after a moment's reflection. "I really think I +ought to see this patron of yours. Don't you think it would be rather +decent in me to make his acquaintance?" + +"Well, if you have the fancy, sir," said the young man. "But there's +no sort of obligation. Colonel Lapham would be the last man in the +world to want to give our relation any sort of social character. The +meeting will come about in the natural course of things." + +"Ah, I didn't intend to propose anything immediate," said the father. +"One can't do anything in the summer, and I should prefer your mother's +superintendence. Still, I can't rid myself of the idea of a dinner. +It appears to me that there ought to be a dinner." + +"Oh, pray don't feel that there's any necessity." + +"Well," said the elder, with easy resignation, "there's at least no +hurry." + + +"There is one thing I don't like," said Lapham, in the course of one of +those talks which came up between his wife and himself concerning +Corey, "or at least I don't understand it; and that's the way his +father behaves. I don't want to force myself on any man; but it seems +to me pretty queer the way he holds off. I should think he would take +enough interest in his son to want to know something about his +business. What is he afraid of?" demanded Lapham angrily. "Does he +think I'm going to jump at a chance to get in with him, if he gives me +one? He's mightily mistaken if he does. I don't want to know him." + +"Silas," said his wife, making a wife's free version of her husband's +words, and replying to their spirit rather than their letter, "I hope +you never said a word to Mr. Corey to let him know the way you feel." + +"I never mentioned his father to him!" roared the Colonel. "That's the +way I feel about it!" + +"Because it would spoil everything. I wouldn't have them think we +cared the least thing in the world for their acquaintance. We +shouldn't be a bit better off. We don't know the same people they do, +and we don't care for the same kind of things." + +Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication. +"Don't I tell you," he gasped, "that I don't want to know them? Who +began it? They're friends of yours if they're anybody's." + +"They're distant acquaintances of mine," returned Mrs. Lapham quietly; +"and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I want we should hold +ourselves so that when they get ready to make the advances we can meet +them half-way or not, just as we choose." + +"That's what grinds me," cried her husband. "Why should we wait for +them to make the advances? Why shouldn't we make 'em? Are they any +better than we are? My note of hand would be worth ten times what +Bromfield Corey's is on the street to-day. And I made MY money. I +haven't loafed my life away." + +"Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've done exactly. +It's what you are." + +"Well, then, what's the difference?" + +"None that really amounts to anything, or that need give you any +trouble, if you don't think of it. But he's been all his life in +society, and he knows just what to say and what to do, and he can talk +about the things that society people like to talk about, and +you--can't." + +Lapham gave a furious snort. "And does that make him any better?" + +"No. But it puts him where he can make the advances without demeaning +himself, and it puts you where you can't. Now, look here, Silas Lapham! +You understand this thing as well as I do. You know that I appreciate +you, and that I'd sooner die than have you humble yourself to a living +soul. But I'm not going to have you coming to me, and pretending that +you can meet Bromfield Corey as an equal on his own ground. You can't. +He's got a better education than you, and if he hasn't got more brains +than you, he's got different. And he and his wife, and their fathers +and grandfathers before 'em, have always had a high position, and you +can't help it. If you want to know them, you've got to let them make +the advances. If you don't, all well and good." + +"I guess," said the chafed and vanquished Colonel, after a moment for +swallowing the pill, "that they'd have been in a pretty fix if you'd +waited to let them make the advances last summer." + +"That was a different thing altogether. I didn't know who they were, +or may be I should have waited. But all I say now is that if you've +got young Corey into business with you, in hopes of our getting into +society with his father, you better ship him at once. For I ain't +going to have it on that basis." + +"Who wants to have it on that basis?" retorted her husband. + +"Nobody, if you don't," said Mrs. Lapham tranquilly. + +Irene had come home with the shaving in her belt, unnoticed by her +father, and unquestioned by her mother. But her sister saw it at once, +and asked her what she was doing with it. + +"Oh, nothing," said Irene, with a joyful smile of self-betrayal, taking +the shaving carefully out, and laying it among the laces and ribbons in +her drawer. + +"Hadn't you better put it in water, 'Rene? It'll be all wilted by +morning," said Pen. + +"You mean thing!" cried the happy girl. "It isn't a flower!" + +"Oh, I thought it was a whole bouquet. Who gave it to you?" + +"I shan't tell you," said Irene saucily. + +"Oh, well, never mind. Did you know Mr. Corey had been down here this +afternoon, walking on the beach with me?" + +"He wasn't--he wasn't at all! He was at the house with ME. There! I've +caught you fairly." + +"Is that so?" drawled Penelope. "Then I never could guess who gave you +that precious shaving." + +"No, you couldn't!" said Irene, flushing beautifully. "And you may +guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!" With her lovely eyes she +coaxed her sister to keep on teasing her, and Penelope continued the +comedy with the patience that women have for such things. + +"Well, I'm not going to try, if it's no use. But I didn't know it had +got to be the fashion to give shavings instead of flowers. But there's +some sense in it. They can be used for kindlings when they get old, +and you can't do anything with old flowers. Perhaps he'll get to +sending 'em by the barrel." + +Irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. "O Pen, I want to tell +you how it all happened." + +"Oh, he DID give it to you, then? Well, I guess I don't care to hear." + +"You shall, and you've got to!" Irene ran and caught her sister, who +feigned to be going out of the room, and pushed her into a chair. +"There, now!" She pulled up another chair, and hemmed her in with it. +"He came over, and sat down on the trestle alongside of me----" + +"What? As close as you are to me now?" + +"You wretch! I will GIVE it to you! No, at a proper distance. And here +was this shaving on the floor, that I'd been poking with my parasol----" + +"To hide your embarrassment." + +"Pshaw! I wasn't a bit embarrassed. I was just as much at my ease! And +then he asked me to let him hold the shaving down with his foot, while +I went on with my poking. And I said yes he might----" + +"What a bold girl! You said he might hold a shaving down for you?" + +"And then--and then----" continued Irene, lifting her eyes absently, +and losing herself in the beatific recollection, "and then----Oh yes! +Then I asked him if he didn't like the smell of pine shavings. And +then he picked it up, and said it smelt like a flower. And then he +asked if he might offer it to me--just for a joke, you know. And I +took it, and stuck it in my belt. And we had such a laugh! We got into +a regular gale. And O Pen, what do you suppose he meant by it?" She +suddenly caught herself to her sister's breast, and hid her burning +face on her shoulder. + +"Well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. But I +never knew much about the language of shavings, and I can't say +exactly----" + +"Oh, don't--DON'T, Pen!" and here Irene gave over laughing, and began +to sob in her sister's arms. + +"Why, 'Rene!" cried the elder girl. + +"You KNOW he didn't mean anything. He doesn't care a bit about me. He +hates me! He despises me! Oh, what shall I do?" + +A trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently comforted +the child in her arms; then the drolling light came back into her eyes. +"Well, 'Rene, YOU haven't got to do ANYthing. That's one advantage +girls have got--if it IS an advantage. I'm not always sure." + +Irene's tears turned to laughing again. When she lifted her head it +was to look into the mirror confronting them, where her beauty showed +all the more brilliant for the shower that had passed over it. She +seemed to gather courage from the sight. + +"It must be awful to have to DO," she said, smiling into her own face. +"I don't see how they ever can." + +"Some of 'em can't--especially when there's such a tearing beauty +around." + +"Oh, pshaw, Pen! you know that isn't so. You've got a real pretty +mouth, Pen," she added thoughtfully, surveying the feature in the +glass, and then pouting her own lips for the sake of that effect on +them. + +"It's a useful mouth," Penelope admitted; "I don't believe I could get +along without it now, I've had it so long." + +"It's got such a funny expression--just the mate of the look in your +eyes; as if you were just going to say something ridiculous. He said, +the very first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous." + +"Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. Why didn't +you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a +common person?" + +Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in +that way rather than another. + +"I've got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth," she said, drawing it down, +and then looking anxiously at it. + +"I hope you didn't put on that expression when he offered you the +shaving. If you did, I don't believe he'll ever give you another +splinter." + +The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in +a kiss against Penelope's cheek. + +"There! Be done, you silly thing! I'm not going to have you accepting +ME before I've offered myself, ANYWAY." She freed herself from her +sister's embrace, and ran from her round the room. + +Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder +again. "O Pen! O Pen!" she cried. + + +The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her +eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing that Penelope must +have already made it subject of inquiry: "What was Irene doing with +that shaving in her belt yesterday?" + +"Oh, just some nonsense of hers with Mr. Corey. He gave it to her at +the new house." Penelope did not choose to look up and meet her +mother's grave glance. + +"What do you think he meant by it?" + +Penelope repeated Irene's account of the affair, and her mother +listened without seeming to derive much encouragement from it. + +"He doesn't seem like one to flirt with her," she said at last. Then, +after a thoughtful pause: "Irene is as good a girl as ever breathed, +and she's a perfect beauty. But I should hate the day when a daughter +of mine was married for her beauty." + +"You're safe as far as I'm concerned, mother." + +Mrs. Lapham smiled ruefully. "She isn't really equal to him, Pen. I +misdoubted that from the first, and it's been borne in upon me more and +more ever since. She hasn't mind enough." "I didn't know that a man +fell in love with a girl's intellect," said Penelope quietly. + +"Oh no. He hasn't fallen in love with Irene at all. If he had, it +wouldn't matter about the intellect." + +Penelope let the self-contradiction pass. + +"Perhaps he has, after all." + +"No," said Mrs. Lapham. "She pleases him when he sees her. But he +doesn't try to see her." + +"He has no chance. You won't let father bring him here." + +"He would find excuses to come without being brought, if he wished to +come," said the mother. "But she isn't in his mind enough to make him. +He goes away and doesn't think anything more about her. She's a child. +She's a good child, and I shall always say it; but she's nothing but a +child. No, she's got to forget him." + +"Perhaps that won't be so easy." + +"No, I presume not. And now your father has got the notion in his +head, and he will move heaven and earth to bring it to pass. I can see +that he's always thinking about it." + +"The Colonel has a will of his own," observed the girl, rocking to and +fro where she sat looking at her mother. + +"I wish we had never met them!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "I wish we had +never thought of building! I wish he had kept away from your father's +business!" + +"Well, it's too late now, mother," said the girl. "Perhaps it isn't so +bad as you think." + +"Well, we must stand it, anyway," said Mrs. Lapham, with the grim +antique Yankee submission. + +"Oh yes, we've got to stand it," said Penelope, with the quaint modern +American fatalism. + + + +X. + + +IT was late June, almost July, when Corey took up his life in Boston +again, where the summer slips away so easily. If you go out of town +early, it seems a very long summer when you come back in October; but +if you stay, it passes swiftly, and, seen foreshortened in its flight, +seems scarcely a month's length. It has its days of heat, when it is +very hot, but for the most part it is cool, with baths of the east wind +that seem to saturate the soul with delicious freshness. Then there +are stretches of grey westerly weather, when the air is full of the +sentiment of early autumn, and the frying, of the grasshopper in the +blossomed weed of the vacant lots on the Back Bay is intershot with the +carol of crickets; and the yellowing leaf on the long slope of Mt. +Vernon Street smites the sauntering observer with tender melancholy. +The caterpillar, gorged with the spoil of the lindens on Chestnut, and +weaving his own shroud about him in his lodgment on the brick-work, +records the passing of summer by mid-July; and if after that comes +August, its breath is thick and short, and September is upon the +sojourner before he has fairly had time to philosophise the character +of the town out of season. + +But it must have appeared that its most characteristic feature was the +absence of everybody he knew. This was one of the things that +commended Boston to Bromfield Corey during the summer; and if his son +had any qualms about the life he had entered upon with such vigour, it +must have been a relief to him that there was scarcely a soul left to +wonder or pity. By the time people got back to town the fact of his +connection with the mineral paint man would be an old story, heard afar +off with different degrees of surprise, and considered with different +degrees of indifference. A man has not reached the age of twenty-six +in any community where he was born and reared without having had his +capacity pretty well ascertained; and in Boston the analysis is +conducted with an unsparing thoroughness which may fitly impress the +un-Bostonian mind, darkened by the popular superstition that the +Bostonians blindly admire one another. A man's qualities are sifted as +closely in Boston as they doubtless were in Florence or Athens; and, if +final mercy was shown in those cities because a man was, with all his +limitations, an Athenian or Florentine, some abatement might as justly +be made in Boston for like reason. Corey's powers had been gauged in +college, and he had not given his world reason to think very +differently of him since he came out of college. He was rated as an +energetic fellow, a little indefinite in aim, with the smallest amount +of inspiration that can save a man from being commonplace. If he was +not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which +was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of +qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him +sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable +excellences. Some of the more nervous and excitable said that Tom +Corey was as sweet as he could live; but this perhaps meant no more +than the word alone. No man ever had a son less like him than +Bromfield Corey. If Tom Corey had ever said a witty thing, no one +could remember it; and yet the father had never said a witty thing to a +more sympathetic listener than his own son. The clear mind which +produced nothing but practical results reflected everything with +charming lucidity; and it must have been this which endeared Tom Corey +to every one who spoke ten words with him. In a city where people have +good reason for liking to shine, a man who did not care to shine must +be little short of universally acceptable without any other effort for +popularity; and those who admired and enjoyed Bromfield Corey loved his +son. Yet, when it came to accounting for Tom Corey, as it often did in +a community where every one's generation is known to the remotest +degrees of cousinship, they could not trace his sweetness to his +mother, for neither Anna Bellingham nor any of her family, though they +were so many blocks of Wenham ice for purity and rectangularity, had +ever had any such savour; and, in fact, it was to his father, whose +habit of talk wronged it in himself, that they had to turn for this +quality of the son's. They traced to the mother the traits of +practicality and common-sense in which he bordered upon the +commonplace, and which, when they had dwelt upon them, made him seem +hardly worth the close inquiry they had given him. + +While the summer wore away he came and went methodically about his +business, as if it had been the business of his life, sharing his +father's bachelor liberty and solitude, and expecting with equal +patience the return of his mother and sisters in the autumn. Once or +twice he found time to run down to Mt. Desert and see them; and then +he heard how the Philadelphia and New York people were getting in +everywhere, and was given reason to regret the house at Nahant which he +had urged to be sold. He came back and applied himself to his desk +with a devotion that was exemplary rather than necessary; for Lapham +made no difficulty about the brief absences which he asked, and set no +term to the apprenticeship that Corey was serving in the office before +setting off upon that mission to South America in the early winter, for +which no date had yet been fixed. + +The summer was a dull season for the paint as well as for everything +else. Till things should brisk up, as Lapham said, in the fall, he was +letting the new house take a great deal of his time. AEsthetic ideas +had never been intelligibly presented to him before, and he found a +delight in apprehending them that was very grateful to his imaginative +architect. At the beginning, the architect had foreboded a series of +mortifying defeats and disastrous victories in his encounters with his +client; but he had never had a client who could be more reasonably led +on from one outlay to another. It appeared that Lapham required but to +understand or feel the beautiful effect intended, and he was ready to +pay for it. His bull-headed pride was concerned in a thing which the +architect made him see, and then he believed that he had seen it +himself, perhaps conceived it. In some measure the architect seemed to +share his delusion, and freely said that Lapham was very suggestive. +Together they blocked out windows here, and bricked them up there; they +changed doors and passages; pulled down cornices and replaced them with +others of different design; experimented with costly devices of +decoration, and went to extravagant lengths in novelties of finish. +Mrs. Lapham, beginning with a woman's adventurousness in the unknown +region, took fright at the reckless outlay at last, and refused to let +her husband pass a certain limit. He tried to make her believe that a +far-seeing economy dictated the expense; and that if he put the money +into the house, he could get it out any time by selling it. She would +not be persuaded. + +"I don't want you should sell it. And you've put more money into it +now than you'll ever get out again, unless you can find as big a goose +to buy it, and that isn't likely. No, sir! You just stop at a hundred +thousand, and don't you let him get you a cent beyond. Why, you're +perfectly bewitched with that fellow! You've lost your head, Silas +Lapham, and if you don't look out you'll lose your money too." + +The Colonel laughed; he liked her to talk that way, and promised he +would hold up a while. + +"But there's no call to feel anxious, Pert. It's only a question what +to do with the money. I can reinvest it; but I never had so much of it +to spend before." + +"Spend it, then," said his wife; "don't throw it away! And how came +you to have so much more money than you know what to do with, Silas +Lapham?" she added. + +"Oh, I've made a very good thing in stocks lately." + +"In stocks? When did you take up gambling for a living?" + +"Gambling? Stuff! What gambling? Who said it was gambling?" + +"You have; many a time." + +"Oh yes, buying and selling on a margin. But this was a bona fide +transaction. I bought at forty-three for an investment, and I sold at +a hundred and seven; and the money passed both times." + +"Well, you better let stocks alone," said his wife, with the +conservatism of her sex. "Next time you'll buy at a hundred and seven +and sell at forty three. Then where'll you be?" + +"Left," admitted the Colonel. + +"You better stick to paint a while yet." The Colonel enjoyed this too, +and laughed again with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. A +few days after that he came down to Nantasket with the radiant air +which he wore when he had done a good thing in business and wanted his +wife's sympathy. He did not say anything of what had happened till he +was alone with her in their own room; but he was very gay the whole +evening, and made several jokes which Penelope said nothing but very +great prosperity could excuse: they all understood these moods of his. + +"Well, what is it, Silas?" asked his wife when the time came. "Any +more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint business with you?" + +"Something better than that." + +"I could think of a good many better things," said his wife, with a +sigh of latent bitterness. "What's this one?" + +"I've had a visitor." + +"Who?" + +"Can't you guess?" + +"I don't want to try. Who was it?" + +"Rogers." + +Mrs. Lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared at the smile +on her husband's face, where he sat facing her. + +"I guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, Si," she said, a +little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin about it unless you had some +good news. I don't know what the miracle is, but if you could tell +quick----" + +She stopped like one who can say no more. + +"I will, Persis," said her husband, and with that awed tone in which he +rarely spoke of anything but the virtues of his paint. "He came to +borrow money of me, and I lent him it. That's the short of it. The +long----" + +"Go on," said his wife, with gentle patience. + +"Well, Pert, I was never so much astonished in my life as I was to see +that man come into my office. You might have knocked me down with--I +don't know what." + +"I don't wonder. Go on!" + +"And he was as much embarrassed as I was. There we stood, gaping at +each other, and I hadn't hardly sense enough to ask him to take a +chair. I don't know just how we got at it. And I don't remember just +how it was that he said he came to come to me. But he had got hold of +a patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, and there he +was wanting me to supply him the funds." + +"Go on!" said Mrs. Lapham, with her voice further in her throat. + +"I never felt the way you did about Rogers, but I know how you always +did feel, and I guess I surprised him with my answer. He had brought +along a lot of stock as security----" + +"You didn't take it, Silas!" his wife flashed out. + +"Yes, I did, though," said Lapham. "You wait. We settled our +business, and then we went into the old thing, from the very start. +And we talked it all over. And when we got through we shook hands. +Well, I don't know when it's done me so much good to shake hands with +anybody." + +"And you told him--you owned up to him that you were in the wrong, +Silas?" + +"No, I didn't," returned the Colonel promptly; "for I wasn't. And +before we got through, I guess he saw it the same as I did." + +"Oh, no matter! so you had the chance to show how you felt." + +"But I never felt that way," persisted the Colonel. "I've lent him the +money, and I've kept his stocks. And he got what he wanted out of me." + +"Give him back his stocks!" + +"No, I shan't. Rogers came to borrow. He didn't come to beg. You +needn't be troubled about his stocks. They're going to come up in +time; but just now they're so low down that no bank would take them as +security, and I've got to hold them till they do rise. I hope you're +satisfied now, Persis," said her husband; and he looked at her with the +willingness to receive the reward of a good action which we all feel +when we have performed one. "I lent him the money you kept me from +spending on the house." + +"Truly, Si? Well, I'm satisfied," said Mrs. Lapham, with a deep +tremulous breath. "The Lord has been good to you, Silas," she +continued solemnly. "You may laugh if you choose, and I don't know as +I believe in his interfering a great deal; but I believe he's +interfered this time; and I tell you, Silas, it ain't always he gives +people a chance to make it up to others in this life. I've been afraid +you'd die, Silas, before you got the chance; but he's let you live to +make it up to Rogers." + +"I'm glad to be let live," said Lapham stubbornly, "but I hadn't +anything to make up to Milton K. Rogers. And if God has let me live +for that----" + +"Oh, say what you please, Si! Say what you please, now you've done it! +I shan't stop you. You've taken the one spot--the one SPECK--off you +that was ever there, and I'm satisfied." + +"There wa'n't ever any speck there," Lapham held out, lapsing more and +more into his vernacular; "and what I done I done for you, Persis." + +"And I thank you for your own soul's sake, Silas." + +"I guess my soul's all right," said Lapham. + +"And I want you should promise me one thing more." + +"Thought you said you were satisfied?" + +"I am. But I want you should promise me this: that you won't let +anything tempt you--anything!--to ever trouble Rogers for that money +you lent him. No matter what happens--no matter if you lose it all. +Do you promise?" + +"Why, I don't ever EXPECT to press him for it. That's what I said to +myself when I lent it. And of course I'm glad to have that old trouble +healed up. I don't THINK I ever did Rogers any wrong, and I never did +think so; but if I DID do it--IF I did--I'm willing to call it square, +if I never see a cent of my money back again." + +"Well, that's all," said his wife. + +They did not celebrate his reconciliation with his old enemy--for such +they had always felt him to be since he ceased to be an ally--by any +show of joy or affection. It was not in their tradition, as stoical +for the woman as for the man, that they should kiss or embrace each +other at such a moment. She was content to have told him that he had +done his duty, and he was content with her saying that. But before she +slept she found words to add that she always feared the selfish part he +had acted toward Rogers had weakened him, and left him less able to +overcome any temptation that might beset him; and that was one reason +why she could never be easy about it. Now she should never fear for +him again. + +This time he did not explicitly deny her forgiving impeachment. "Well, +it's all past and gone now, anyway; and I don't want you should think +anything more about it." + +He was man enough to take advantage of the high favour in which he +stood when he went up to town, and to abuse it by bringing Corey down +to supper. His wife could not help condoning the sin of disobedience +in him at such a time. Penelope said that between the admiration she +felt for the Colonel's boldness and her mother's forbearance, she was +hardly in a state to entertain company that evening; but she did what +she could. + +Irene liked being talked to better than talking, and when her sister +was by she was always, tacitly or explicitly, referring to her for +confirmation of what she said. She was content to sit and look pretty +as she looked at the young man and listened to her sister's drolling. +She laughed and kept glancing at Corey to make sure that he was +understanding her. When they went out on the veranda to see the moon +on the water, Penelope led the way and Irene followed. + +They did not look at the moonlight long. The young man perched on the +rail of the veranda, and Irene took one of the red-painted +rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her +sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase +is. That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed +now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little, +had a fascination which kept his eye. Her talk was very unliterary, +and its effect seemed hardly conscious. She was far from epigram in +her funning. She told of this trifle and that; she sketched the +characters and looks of people who had interested her, and nothing +seemed to have escaped her notice; she mimicked a little, but not much; +she suggested, and then the affair represented itself as if without her +agency. She did not laugh; when Corey stopped she made a soft cluck in +her throat, as if she liked his being amused, and went on again. + +The Colonel, left alone with his wife for the first time since he had +come from town, made haste to take the word. "Well, Pert, I've +arranged the whole thing with Rogers, and I hope you'll be satisfied to +know that he owes me twenty thousand dollars, and that I've got +security from him to the amount of a fourth of that, if I was to force +his stocks to a sale." + +"How came he to come down with you?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"Who? Rogers?" + +"Mr. Corey." + +"Corey? Oh!" said Lapham, affecting not to have thought she could mean +Corey. "He proposed it." + +"Likely!" jeered his wife, but with perfect amiability. + +"It's so," protested the Colonel. "We got talking about a matter just +before I left, and he walked down to the boat with me; and then he said +if I didn't mind he guessed he'd come along down and go back on the +return boat. Of course I couldn't let him do that." + +"It's well for you you couldn't." + +"And I couldn't do less than bring him here to tea." + +"Oh, certainly not." + +"But he ain't going to stay the night--unless," faltered Lapham, "you +want him to." + +"Oh, of course, I want him to! I guess he'll stay, probably." + +"Well, you know how crowded that last boat always is, and he can't get +any other now." + +Mrs. Lapham laughed at the simple wile. "I hope you'll be just as well +satisfied, Si, if it turns out he doesn't want Irene after all." + +"Pshaw, Persis! What are you always bringing that up for?" pleaded the +Colonel. Then he fell silent, and presently his rude, strong face was +clouded with an unconscious frown. + +"There!" cried his wife, startling him from his abstraction. "I see +how you'd feel; and I hope that you'll remember who you've got to +blame." + +"I'll risk it," said Lapham, with the confidence of a man used to +success. + +From the veranda the sound of Penelope's lazy tone came through the +closed windows, with joyous laughter from Irene and peals from Corey. + +"Listen to that!" said her father within, swelling up with +inexpressible satisfaction. "That girl can talk for twenty, right +straight along. She's better than a circus any day. I wonder what +she's up to now." + +"Oh, she's probably getting off some of those yarns of hers, or telling +about some people. She can't step out of the house without coming back +with more things to talk about than most folks would bring back from +Japan. There ain't a ridiculous person she's ever seen but what she's +got something from them to make you laugh at; and I don't believe we've +ever had anybody in the house since the girl could talk that she hain't +got some saying from, or some trick that'll paint 'em out so't you can +see 'em and hear 'em. Sometimes I want to stop her; but when she gets +into one of her gales there ain't any standing up against her. I guess +it's lucky for Irene that she's got Pen there to help entertain her +company. I can't ever feel down where Pen is." + +"That's so," said the Colonel. "And I guess she's got about as much +culture as any of them. Don't you?" + +"She reads a great deal," admitted her mother. "She seems to be at it +the whole while. I don't want she should injure her health, and +sometimes I feel like snatchin' the books away from her. I don't know +as it's good for a girl to read so much, anyway, especially novels. I +don't want she should get notions." + +"Oh, I guess Pen'll know how to take care of herself," said Lapham. + +"She's got sense enough. But she ain't so practical as Irene. She's +more up in the clouds--more of what you may call a dreamer. Irene's +wide-awake every minute; and I declare, any one to see these two +together when there's anything to be done, or any lead to be taken, +would say Irene was the oldest, nine times out of ten. It's only when +they get to talking that you can see Pen's got twice as much brains." + +"Well," said Lapham, tacitly granting this point, and leaning back in +his chair in supreme content. "Did you ever see much nicer girls +anywhere?" + +His wife laughed at his pride. "I presume they're as much swans as +anybody's geese." + +"No; but honestly, now!" + +"Oh, they'll do; but don't you be silly, if you can help it, Si." + +The young people came in, and Corey said it was time for his boat. +Mrs. Lapham pressed him to stay, but he persisted, and he would not let +the Colonel send him to the boat; he said he would rather walk. +Outside, he pushed along toward the boat, which presently he could see +lying at her landing in the bay, across the sandy tract to the left of +the hotels. From time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk, as +a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then he went forward +at a swifter pace. "She's charming!" he said, and he thought he had +spoken aloud. He found himself floundering about in the deep sand, +wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat just before +she started. The clerk came to take his fare, and Corey looked +radiantly up at him in his lantern-light, with a smile that he must +have been wearing a long time; his cheek was stiff with it. Once some +people who stood near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then +he suspected himself of having laughed outright. + + + +XI. + + +COREY put off his set smile with the help of a frown, of which he first +became aware after reaching home, when his father asked-- + +"Anything gone wrong with your department of the fine arts to-day, Tom?" + +"Oh no--no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving his brows from the +strain upon them, and beaming again. "But I was thinking whether you +were not perhaps right in your impression that it might be well for you +to make Colonel Lapham's acquaintance before a great while." + +"Has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked Bromfield Corey, laying +aside his book and taking his lean knee between his clasped hands. + +"Oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to reply. "I was merely +thinking whether it might not begin to seem intentional, your not doing +it." + +"Well, Tom, you know I have been leaving it altogether to you----" + +"Oh, I understand, of course, and I didn't mean to urge anything of the +kind----" + +"You are so very much more of a Bostonian than I am, you know, that +I've been waiting your motion in entire confidence that you would know +just what to do, and when to do it. If I had been left quite to my own +lawless impulses, I think I should have called upon your padrone at +once. It seems to me that my father would have found some way of +showing that he expected as much as that from people placed in the +relation to him that we hold to Colonel Lapham." + +"Do you think so?" asked the young man. + +"Yes. But you know I don't pretend to be an authority in such matters. +As far as they go, I am always in the hands of your mother and you +children." + +"I'm very sorry, sir. I had no idea I was over-ruling your judgment. +I only wanted to spare you a formality that didn't seem quite a +necessity yet. I'm very sorry," he said again, and this time with more +comprehensive regret. "I shouldn't like to have seemed remiss with a +man who has been so considerate of me. They are all very good-natured." + +"I dare say," said Bromfield Corey, with the satisfaction which no +elder can help feeling in disabling the judgment of a younger man, +"that it won't be too late if I go down to your office with you +to-morrow." + +"No, no. I didn't imagine your doing it at once, sir." + +"Ah, but nothing can prevent me from doing a thing when once I take the +bit in my teeth," said the father, with the pleasure which men of weak +will sometimes take in recognising their weakness. "How does their new +house get on?" + +"I believe they expect to be in it before New Year." + +"Will they be a great addition to society?" asked Bromfield Corey, with +unimpeachable seriousness. + +"I don't quite know what you mean," returned the son, a little uneasily. + +"Ah, I see that you do, Tom." + +"No one can help feeling that they are all people of good sense +and--right ideas." + +"Oh, that won't do. If society took in all the people of right ideas +and good sense, it would expand beyond the calling capacity of its most +active members. Even your mother's social conscientiousness could not +compass it. Society is a very different sort of thing from good sense +and right ideas. It is based upon them, of course, but the airy, +graceful, winning superstructure which we all know demands different +qualities. Have your friends got these qualities,--which may be felt, +but not defined?" + +The son laughed. "To tell you the truth, sir, I don't think they have +the most elemental ideas of society, as we understand it. I don't +believe Mrs. Lapham ever gave a dinner." + +"And with all that money!" sighed the father. + +"I don't believe they have the habit of wine at table. I suspect that +when they don't drink tea and coffee with their dinner, they drink +ice-water." + +"Horrible!" said Bromfield Corey. + +"It appears to me that this defines them." + +"Oh yes. There are people who give dinners, and who are not +cognoscible. But people who have never yet given a dinner, how is +society to assimilate them?" + +"It digests a great many people," suggested the young man. + +"Yes; but they have always brought some sort of sauce piquante with +them. Now, as I understand you, these friends of yours have no such +sauce." + +"Oh, I don't know about that!" cried the son. + +"Oh, rude, native flavours, I dare say. But that isn't what I mean. +Well, then, they must spend. There is no other way for them to win +their way to general regard. We must have the Colonel elected to the +Ten O'clock Club, and he must put himself down in the list of those +willing to entertain. Any one can manage a large supper. Yes, I see a +gleam of hope for him in that direction." + +In the morning Bromfield Corey asked his son whether he should find +Lapham at his place as early as eleven. + +"I think you might find him even earlier. I've never been there before +him. I doubt if the porter is there much sooner." + +"Well, suppose I go with you, then?" + +"Why, if you like, sir," said the son, with some deprecation. + +"Oh, the question is, will HE like?" + +"I think he will, sir;" and the father could see that his son was very +much pleased. + +Lapham was rending an impatient course through the morning's news when +they appeared at the door of his inner room. He looked up from the +newspaper spread on the desk before him, and then he stood up, making +an indifferent feint of not knowing that he knew Bromfield Corey by +sight. + +"Good morning, Colonel Lapham," said the son, and Lapham waited for him +to say further, "I wish to introduce my father." Then he answered, +"Good morning," and added rather sternly for the elder Corey, "How do +you do, sir? Will you take a chair?" and he pushed him one. + +They shook hands and sat down, and Lapham said to his subordinate, +"Have a seat;" but young Corey remained standing, watching them in +their observance of each other with an amusement which was a little +uneasy. Lapham made his visitor speak first by waiting for him to do +so. + +"I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Colonel Lapham, and I ought to +have come sooner to do so. My father in your place would have expected +it of a man in my place at once, I believe. But I can't feel myself +altogether a stranger as it is. I hope Mrs. Lapham is well? And your +daughter?" + +"Thank you," said Lapham, "they're quite well." + +"They were very kind to my wife----" + +"Oh, that was nothing!" cried Lapham. "There's nothing Mrs. Lapham +likes better than a chance of that sort. Mrs. Corey and the young +ladies well?" + +"Very well, when I heard from them. They're out of town." + +"Yes, so I understood," said Lapham, with a nod toward the son. "I +believe Mr. Corey, here, told Mrs. Lapham." He leaned back in his +chair, stiffly resolute to show that he was not incommoded by the +exchange of these civilities. + +"Yes," said Bromfield Corey. "Tom has had the pleasure which I hope +for of seeing you all. I hope you're able to make him useful to you +here?" Corey looked round Lapham's room vaguely, and then out at the +clerks in their railed enclosure, where his eye finally rested on an +extremely pretty girl, who was operating a type-writer. + +"Well, sir," replied Lapham, softening for the first time with this +approach to business, "I guess it will be our own fault if we don't. By +the way, Corey," he added, to the younger man, as he gathered up some +letters from his desk, "here's something in your line. Spanish or +French, I guess." + +"I'll run them over," said Corey, taking them to his desk. + +His father made an offer to rise. + +"Don't go," said Lapham, gesturing him down again. "I just wanted to +get him away a minute. I don't care to say it to his face,--I don't +like the principle,--but since you ask me about it, I'd just as lief +say that I've never had any young man take hold here equal to your son. +I don't know as you care." + +"You make me very happy," said Bromfield Corey. "Very happy indeed. +I've always had the idea that there was something in my son, if he +could only find the way to work it out. And he seems to have gone into +your business for the love of it." + +"He went to work in the right way, sir! He told me about it. He looked +into it. And that paint is a thing that will bear looking into." + +"Oh yes. You might think he had invented it, if you heard him +celebrating it." + +"Is that so?" demanded Lapham, pleased through and through. "Well, +there ain't any other way. You've got to believe in a thing before you +can put any heart in it. Why, I had a partner in this thing once, +along back just after the war, and he used to be always wanting to +tinker with something else. 'Why,' says I, 'you've got the best thing +in God's universe now. Why ain't you satisfied?' I had to get rid of +him at last. I stuck to my paint, and that fellow's drifted round +pretty much all over the whole country, whittling his capital down all +the while, till here the other day I had to lend him some money to +start him new. No, sir, you've got to believe in a thing. And I +believe in your son. And I don't mind telling you that, so far as he's +gone, he's a success." + +"That's very kind of you." + +"No kindness about it. As I was saying the other day to a friend of +mine, I've had many a fellow right out of the street that had to work +hard all his life, and didn't begin to take hold like this son of +yours." + +Lapham expanded with profound self-satisfaction. As he probably +conceived it, he had succeeded in praising, in a perfectly casual way, +the supreme excellence of his paint, and his own sagacity and +benevolence; and here he was sitting face to face with Bromfield Corey, +praising his son to him, and receiving his grateful acknowledgments as +if he were the father of some office-boy whom Lapham had given a place +half but of charity. + +"Yes, sir, when your son proposed to take hold here, I didn't have much +faith in his ideas, that's the truth. But I had faith in him, and I +saw that he meant business from the start. I could see it was born in +him. Any one could." + +"I'm afraid he didn't inherit it directly from me," said Bromfield +Corey; "but it's in the blood, on both sides." "Well, sir, we can't +help those things," said Lapham compassionately. "Some of us have got +it, and some of us haven't. The idea is to make the most of what we +HAVE got." + +"Oh yes; that is the idea. By all means." + +"And you can't ever tell what's in you till you try. Why, when I +started this thing, I didn't more than half understand my own strength. +I wouldn't have said, looking back, that I could have stood the wear +and tear of what I've been through. But I developed as I went along. +It's just like exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. You can lift +twice or three times as much after you've been in training a month as +you could before. And I can see that it's going to be just so with +your son. His going through college won't hurt him,--he'll soon slough +all that off,--and his bringing up won't; don't be anxious about it. I +noticed in the army that some of the fellows that had the most go-ahead +were fellows that hadn't ever had much more to do than girls before the +war broke out. Your son will get along." + +"Thank you," said Bromfield Corey, and smiled--whether because his +spirit was safe in the humility he sometimes boasted, or because it was +triply armed in pride against anything the Colonel's kindness could do. + +"He'll get along. He's a good business man, and he's a fine fellow. +MUST you go?" asked Lapham, as Bromfield Corey now rose more +resolutely. "Well, glad to see you. It was natural you should want to +come and see what he was about, and I'm glad you did. I should have +felt just so about it. Here is some of our stuff," he said, pointing +out the various packages in his office, including the Persis Brand. + +"Ah, that's very nice, very nice indeed," said his visitor. "That +colour through the jar--very rich--delicious. Is Persis Brand a name?" + +Lapham blushed. + +"Well, Persis is. I don't know as you saw an interview that fellow +published in the Events a while back?" + +"What is the Events?" + +"Well, it's that new paper Witherby's started." + +"No," said Bromfield Corey, "I haven't seen it. I read The Daily," he +explained; by which he meant The Daily Advertiser, the only daily there +is in the old-fashioned Bostonian sense. + +"He put a lot of stuff in my mouth that I never said," resumed Lapham; +"but that's neither here nor there, so long as you haven't seen it. +Here's the department your son's in," and he showed him the foreign +labels. Then he took him out into the warehouse to see the large +packages. At the head of the stairs, where his guest stopped to nod to +his son and say "Good-bye, Tom," Lapham insisted upon going down to the +lower door with him "Well, call again," he said in hospitable +dismissal. "I shall always be glad to see you. There ain't a great +deal doing at this season." Bromfield Corey thanked him, and let his +hand remain perforce in Lapham's lingering grasp. "If you ever like to +ride after a good horse----" the Colonel began. + +"Oh, no, no, no; thank you! The better the horse, the more I should be +scared. Tom has told me of your driving!" + +"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Colonel. "Well! every one to his taste. +Well, good morning, sir!" and he suffered him to go. + +"Who is the old man blowing to this morning?" asked Walker, the +book-keeper, making an errand to Corey's desk. + +"My father." + +"Oh! That your father? I thought he must be one of your Italian +correspondents that you'd been showing round, or Spanish." + +In fact, as Bromfield Corey found his way at his leisurely pace up +through the streets on which the prosperity of his native city was +founded, hardly any figure could have looked more alien to its life. +He glanced up and down the facades and through the crooked vistas like +a stranger, and the swarthy fruiterer of whom he bought an apple, +apparently for the pleasure of holding it in his hand, was not +surprised that the purchase should be transacted in his own tongue. + +Lapham walked back through the outer office to his own room without +looking at Corey, and during the day he spoke to him only of business +matters. That must have been his way of letting Corey see that he was +not overcome by the honour of his father's visit. But he presented +himself at Nantasket with the event so perceptibly on his mind that his +wife asked: "Well, Silas, has Rogers been borrowing any more money of +you? I don't want you should let that thing go too far. You've done +enough." + +"You needn't be afraid. I've seen the last of Rogers for one while." +He hesitated, to give the fact an effect of no importance. "Corey's +father called this morning." + +"Did he?" said Mrs. Lapham, willing to humour his feint of +indifference. "Did HE want to borrow some money too?" "Not as I +understood." Lapham was smoking at great ease, and his wife had some +crocheting on the other side of the lamp from him. + +The girls were on the piazza looking at the moon on the water again. +"There's no man in it to-night," Penelope said, and Irene laughed +forlornly. + +"What DID he want, then?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"Oh, I don't know. Seemed to be just a friendly call. Said he ought +to have come before." + +Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. Then she said: "Well, I hope you're +satisfied now." + +Lapham rejected the sympathy too openly offered. "I don't know about +being satisfied. I wa'n't in any hurry to see him." + +His wife permitted him this pretence also. "What sort of a person is +he, anyway?" + +"Well, not much like his son. There's no sort of business about him. +I don't know just how you'd describe him. He's tall; and he's got +white hair and a moustache; and his fingers are very long and limber. +I couldn't help noticing them as he sat there with his hands on the top +of his cane. Didn't seem to be dressed very much, and acted just like +anybody. Didn't talk much. Guess I did most of the talking. Said he +was glad I seemed to be getting along so well with his son. He asked +after you and Irene; and he said he couldn't feel just like a stranger. +Said you had been very kind to his wife. Of course I turned it off. +Yes," said Lapham thoughtfully, with his hands resting on his knees, +and his cigar between the fingers of his left hand, "I guess he meant +to do the right thing, every way. Don't know as I ever saw a much +pleasanter man. Dunno but what he's about the pleasantest man I ever +did see." He was not letting his wife see in his averted face the +struggle that revealed itself there--the struggle of stalwart +achievement not to feel flattered at the notice of sterile elegance, +not to be sneakingly glad of its amiability, but to stand up and look +at it with eyes on the same level. God, who made us so much like +himself, but out of the dust, alone knows when that struggle will end. +The time had been when Lapham could not have imagined any worldly +splendour which his dollars could not buy if he chose to spend them for +it; but his wife's half discoveries, taking form again in his ignorance +of the world, filled him with helpless misgiving. A cloudy vision of +something unpurchasable, where he had supposed there was nothing, had +cowed him in spite of the burly resistance of his pride. + +"I don't see why he shouldn't be pleasant," said Mrs. Lapham. "He's +never done anything else." + +Lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy laugh. "Pshaw, Persis! +you never forget anything?" + +"Oh, I've got more than that to remember. I suppose you asked him to +ride after the mare?" + +"Well," said Lapham, reddening guiltily, "he said he was afraid of a +good horse." + +"Then, of course, you hadn't asked him." Mrs. Lapham crocheted in +silence, and her husband leaned back in his chair and smoked. + +At last he said, "I'm going to push that house forward. They're +loafing on it. There's no reason why we shouldn't be in it by +Thanksgiving. I don't believe in moving in the dead of winter." + +"We can wait till spring. We're very comfortable in the old place," +answered his wife. Then she broke out on him: "What are you in such a +hurry to get into that house for? Do you want to invite the Coreys to a +house-warming?" + +Lapham looked at her without speaking. + +"Don't you suppose I can see through you I declare, Silas Lapham, if I +didn't know different, I should say you were about the biggest fool! +Don't you know ANYthing? Don't you know that it wouldn't do to ask +those people to our house before they've asked us to theirs? They'd +laugh in our faces!" + +"I don't believe they'd laugh in our faces. What's the difference +between our asking them and their asking us?" demanded the Colonel +sulkily. + +"Oh, well! If you don t see!" + +"Well, I DON'T see. But I don't want to ask them to the house. I +suppose, if I want to, I can invite him down to a fish dinner at +Taft's." + +Mrs. Lapham fell back in her chair, and let her work drop in her lap +with that "Tckk!" in which her sex knows how to express utter contempt +and despair. + +"What's the matter?" + +"Well, if you DO such a thing, Silas, I'll never speak to you again! +It's no USE! It's NO use! I did think, after you'd behaved so well +about Rogers, I might trust you a little. But I see I can't. I presume +as long as you live you'll have to be nosed about like a perfect--I +don't know what!" + +"What are you making such a fuss about?" demanded Lapham, terribly +crestfallen, but trying to pluck up a spirit. "I haven't done anything +yet. I can't ask your advice about anything any more without having +you fly out. Confound it! I shall do as I please after this." + +But as if he could not endure that contemptuous atmosphere, he got up, +and his wife heard him in the dining-room pouring himself out a glass +of ice-water, and then heard him mount the stairs to their room, and +slam its door after him. + +"Do you know what your father's wanting to do now?" Mrs. Lapham asked +her eldest daughter, who lounged into the parlour a moment with her +wrap stringing from her arm, while the younger went straight to bed. +"He wants to invite Mr. Corey's father to a fish dinner at Taft's!" + +Penelope was yawning with her hand on her mouth; she stopped, and, with +a laugh of amused expectance, sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged +forward. + +"Why! what in the world has put the Colonel up to that?" + +"Put him up to it! There's that fellow, who ought have come to see him +long ago, drops into his office this morning, and talks five minutes +with him, and your father is flattered out of his five senses. He's +crazy to get in with those people, and I shall have a perfect battle to +keep him within bounds." + +"Well, Persis, ma'am, you can't say but what you began it," said +Penelope. + +"Oh yes, I began it," confessed Mrs. Lapham. "Pen," she broke out, +"what do you suppose he means by it?" + +"Who? Mr. Corey's father? What does the Colonel think?" + +"Oh, the Colonel!" cried Mrs. Lapham. She added tremulously: "Perhaps +he IS right. He DID seem to take a fancy to her last summer, and now +if he's called in that way . . ." She left her daughter to distribute +the pronouns aright, and resumed: "Of course, I should have said once +that there wasn't any question about it. I should have said so last +year; and I don't know what it is keeps me from saying so now. I +suppose I know a little more about things than I did; and your father's +being so bent on it sets me all in a twitter. He thinks his money can +do everything. Well, I don't say but what it can, a good many. And +'Rene is as good a child as ever there was; and I don't see but what +she's pretty-appearing enough to suit any one. She's pretty-behaved, +too; and she IS the most capable girl. I presume young men don't care +very much for such things nowadays; but there ain't a great many girls +can go right into the kitchen, and make such a custard as she did +yesterday. And look at the way she does, through the whole house! She +can't seem to go into a room without the things fly right into their +places. And if she had to do it to-morrow, she could make all her own +dresses a great deal better than them we pay to do it. I don't say but +what he's about as nice a fellow as ever stepped. But there! I'm +ashamed of going on so." + +"Well, mother," said the girl after a pause, in which she looked as if +a little weary of the subject, "why do you worry about it? If it's to +be it'll be, and if it isn't----" + +"Yes, that's what I tell your father. But when it comes to myself, I +see how hard it is for him to rest quiet. I'm afraid we shall all do +something we'll repent of afterwards." + +"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, "I don't intend to do anything wrong; but +if I do, I promise not to be sorry for it. I'll go that far. And I +think I wouldn't be sorry for it beforehand, if I were in your place, +mother. Let the Colonel go on! He likes to manoeuvre, and he isn't +going to hurt any one. The Corey family can take care of themselves, I +guess." + +She laughed in her throat, drawing down the corners of her mouth, and +enjoying the resolution with which her mother tried to fling off the +burden of her anxieties. "Pen! I believe you're right. You always do +see things in such a light! There! I don't care if he brings him down +every day." + +"Well, ma'am," said Pen, "I don't believe 'Rene would, either. She's +just so indifferent!" + +The Colonel slept badly that night, and in the morning Mrs. Lapham came +to breakfast without him. + +"Your father ain't well," she reported. "He's had one of his turns." + +"I should have thought he had two or three of them," said Penelope, "by +the stamping round I heard. Isn't he coming to breakfast?" + +"Not just yet," said her mother. "He's asleep, and he'll be all right +if he gets his nap out. I don't want you girls should make any great +noise." "Oh, we'll be quiet enough," returned Penelope. "Well, I'm +glad the Colonel isn't sojering. At first I thought he might be +sojering." She broke into a laugh, and, struggling indolently with it, +looked at her sister. "You don't think it'll be necessary for anybody +to come down from the office and take orders from him while he's laid +up, do you, mother?" she inquired. + +"Pen!" cried Irene. + +"He'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock boat," said the +mother sharply. + +"I think papa works too hard all through the summer. Why don't you +make him take a rest, mamma?" asked Irene. + +"Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every year. It used to be so +that he'd take a little time off now and then; but I declare, he hardly +ever seems to breathe now away from his office. And this year he says +he doesn't intend to go down to Lapham, except to see after the works +for a few days. I don't know what to do with the man any more! Seems +as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. It scares me +to think what would happen to him if he lost it. I know one thing," +concluded Mrs. Lapham. "He shall not go back to the office to-day." + +"Then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat," Pen reminded her. + +"No, he won't. You can just drive over to the hotel as soon as you're +through, girls, and telegraph that he's not well, and won't be at the +office till to-morrow. I'm not going to have them send anybody down +here to bother him." + +"That's a blow," said Pen. "I didn't know but they might send----" she +looked demurely at her sister--"Dennis!" + +"Mamma!" cried Irene. + +"Well, I declare, there's no living with this family any more," said +Penelope. + +"There, Pen, be done!" commanded her mother. But perhaps she did not +intend to forbid her teasing. It gave a pleasant sort of reality to +the affair that was in her mind, and made what she wished appear not +only possible but probable. + +Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling as each boat +departed without him, through the day; before night he became very +cross, in spite of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and +grumbled that he had been kept from going up to town. "I might as well +have gone as not," he repeated, till his wife lost her patience. + +"Well, you shall go to-morrow, Silas, if you have to be carried to the +boat." + +"I declare," said Penelope, "the Colonel don't pet worth a cent." + +The six o'clock boat brought Corey. The girls were sitting on the +piazza, and Irene saw him first. + +"O Pen!" she whispered, with her heart in her face; and Penelope had no +time for mockery before he was at the steps. + +"I hope Colonel Lapham isn't ill," he said, and they could hear their +mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors. + +"Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It don't matter HOW he sees +you at the office, shirt-sleeves or not. You're in a gentleman's house +now--or you ought to be--and you shan't see company in your +dressing-gown." + +Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother's anger. + +"Oh, he's very much better, thank you!" said Irene, speaking up loudly +to drown the noise of the controversy. + +"I'm glad of that," said Corey, and when she led him indoors the +vanquished Colonel met his visitor in a double-breasted frock-coat, +which he was still buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at once +that Corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, and when he +was clear that he had come out of civility, surprise mingled with his +gratification that he should be the object of solicitude to the young +man. In Lapham's circle of acquaintance they complained when they were +sick, but they made no womanish inquiries after one another's health, +and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters were serious. He +would have enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he had +been allowed to do so; and after tea, which Corey took with them, he +would have remained to entertain him if his wife had not sent him to +bed. She followed him to see that he took some medicine she had +prescribed for him, but she went first to Penelope's room, where she +found the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading. + +"You better go down," said the mother. "I've got to go to your father, +and Irene is all alone with Mr. Corey; and I know she'll be on pins and +needles without you're there to help make it go off." + +"She'd better try to get along without me, mother," said Penelope +soberly. "I can't always be with them." + +"Well," replied Mrs. Lapham, "then I must. There'll be a perfect +Quaker meeting down there." + +"Oh, I guess 'Rene will find something to say if you leave her to +herself. Or if she don't, HE must. It'll be all right for you to go +down when you get ready; but I shan't go till toward the last. If he's +coming here to see Irene--and I don't believe he's come on father's +account--he wants to see her and not me. If she can't interest him +alone, perhaps he'd as well find it out now as any time. At any rate, +I guess you'd better make the experiment. You'll know whether it's a +success if he comes again." + +"Well," said the mother, "may be you're right. I'll go down directly. +It does seem as if he did mean something, after all." + +Mrs. Lapham did not hasten to return to her guest. In her own girlhood +it was supposed that if a young man seemed to be coming to see a girl, +it was only common-sense to suppose that he wished to see her alone; +and her life in town had left Mrs. Lapham's simple traditions in this +respect unchanged. She did with her daughter as her mother would have +done with her. + +Where Penelope sat with her book, she heard the continuous murmur of +voices below, and after a long interval she heard her mother descend. +She did not read the open book that lay in her lap, though she kept her +eyes fast on the print. Once she rose and almost shut the door, so +that she could scarcely hear; then she opened it wide again with a +self-disdainful air, and resolutely went back to her book, which again +she did not read. But she remained in her room till it was nearly time +for Corey to return to his boat. + +When they were alone again, Irene made a feint of scolding her for +leaving her to entertain Mr. Corey. + +"Why! didn't you have a pleasant call?" asked Penelope. + +Irene threw her arms round her. "Oh, it was a SPLENDID call! I didn't +suppose I could make it go off so well. We talked nearly the whole +time about you!" + +"I don't think THAT was a very interesting subject." + +"He kept asking about you. He asked everything. You don't know how +much he thinks of you, Pen. O Pen! what do you think made him come? +Do you think he really did come to see how papa was?" Irene buried her +face in her sister's neck. + +Penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting. "Well," she +said, "I don't think he did, altogether." + +Irene, all glowing, released her. "Don't you--don't you REALLY? O Pen! +don't you think he IS nice? Don't you think he's handsome? Don't you +think I behaved horridly when we first met him this evening, not +thanking him for coming? I know he thinks I've no manners. But it +seemed as if it would be thanking him for coming to see me. Ought I to +have asked him to come again, when he said good-night? I didn't; I +couldn't. Do you believe he'll think I don't want him to? You don't +believe he would keep coming if he didn't--want to----" + +"He hasn't kept coming a great deal, yet," suggested Penelope. + +"No; I know he hasn't. But if he--if he should?" + +"Then I should think he wanted to." + +"Oh, would you--WOULD you? Oh, how good you always are, Pen! And you +always say what you think. I wish there was some one coming to see you +too. That's all that I don't like about it. Perhaps----He was telling +about his friend there in Texas----" + +"Well," said Penelope, "his friend couldn't call often from Texas. You +needn't ask Mr. Corey to trouble about me, 'Rene. I think I can manage +to worry along, if you're satisfied." + +"Oh, I AM, Pen. When do you suppose he'll come again?" Irene pushed +some of Penelope's things aside on the dressing-case, to rest her elbow +and talk at ease. Penelope came up and put them back. + +"Well, not to-night," she said; "and if that's what you're sitting up +for----" + +Irene caught her round the neck again, and ran out of the room. + +The Colonel was packed off on the eight o'clock boat the next morning; +but his recovery did not prevent Corey from repeating his visit in a +week. This time Irene came radiantly up to Penelope's room, where she +had again withdrawn herself. "You must come down, Pen," she said. +"He's asked if you're not well, and mamma says you've got to come." + +After that Penelope helped Irene through with her calls, and talked +them over with her far into the night after Corey was gone. But when +the impatient curiosity of her mother pressed her for some opinion of +the affair, she said, "You know as much as I do, mother." + +"Don't he ever say anything to you about her--praise her up, any?" + +"He's never mentioned Irene to me." + +"He hasn't to me, either," said Mrs. Lapham, with a sigh of trouble. +"Then what makes him keep coming?" + +"I can't tell you. One thing, he says there isn't a house open in +Boston where he's acquainted. Wait till some of his friends get back, +and then if he keeps coming, it'll be time to inquire." + +"Well!" said the mother; but as the weeks passed she was less and less +able to attribute Corey's visits to his loneliness in town, and turned +to her husband for comfort. + +"Silas, I don't know as we ought to let young Corey keep coming so. I +don't quite like it, with all his family away." + +"He's of age," said the Colonel. "He can go where he pleases. It +don't matter whether his family's here or not." + +"Yes, but if they don't want he should come? Should you feel just right +about letting him?" + +"How're you going to stop him? I swear, Persis, I don't know what's got +over you! What is it? You didn't use to be so. But to hear you talk, +you'd think those Coreys were too good for this world, and we wa'n't +fit for 'em to walk on." + +"I'm not going to have 'em say we took an advantage of their being away +and tolled him on." + +"I should like to HEAR 'em say it!" cried Lapham. "Or anybody!" + +"Well," said his wife, relinquishing this point of anxiety, "I can't +make out whether he cares anything for her or not. And Pen can't tell +either; or else she won't." + +"Oh, I guess he cares for her, fast enough," said the Colonel. + +"I can't make out that he's said or done the first thing to show it." + +"Well, I was better than a year getting my courage up." + +"Oh, that was different," said Mrs. Lapham, in contemptuous dismissal +of the comparison, and yet with a certain fondness. "I guess, if he +cared for her, a fellow in his position wouldn't be long getting up his +courage to speak to Irene." + +Lapham brought his fist down on the table between them. + +"Look here, Persis! Once for all, now, don't you ever let me hear you +say anything like that again! I'm worth nigh on to a million, and I've +made it every cent myself; and my girls are the equals of anybody, I +don't care who it is. He ain't the fellow to take on any airs; but if +he ever tries it with me, I'll send him to the right about mighty +quick. I'll have a talk with him, if----" + +"No, no; don't do that!" implored his wife. "I didn't mean anything. +I don't know as I meant ANYthing. He's just as unassuming as he can +be, and I think Irene's a match for anybody. You just let things go +on. It'll be all right. You never can tell how it is with young +people. Perhaps SHE'S offish. Now you ain't--you ain't going to say +anything?" + +Lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the more easily, no doubt, +because after his explosion he must have perceived that his pride +itself stood in the way of what his pride had threatened. He contented +himself with his wife's promise that she would never again present that +offensive view of the case, and she did not remain without a certain +support in his sturdy self-assertion. + + + +XII. + + +MRS. COREY returned with her daughters in the early days of October, +having passed three or four weeks at Intervale after leaving Bar +Harbour. They were somewhat browner than they were when they left town +in June, but they were not otherwise changed. Lily, the elder of the +girls, had brought back a number of studies of kelp and toadstools, +with accessory rocks and rotten logs, which she would never finish up +and never show any one, knowing the slightness of their merit. Nanny, +the younger, had read a great many novels with a keen sense of their +inaccuracy as representations of life, and had seen a great deal of +life with a sad regret for its difference from fiction. They were both +nice girls, accomplished, well-dressed of course, and well enough +looking; but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains whom +their taste would allow to influence their fate, and they had come home +to the occupations they had left, with no hopes and no fears to +distract them. + +In the absence of these they were fitted to take the more vivid +interest in their brother's affairs, which they could see weighed upon +their mother's mind after the first hours of greeting. + +"Oh, it seems to have been going on, and your father has never written +a word about it," she said, shaking her head. + +"What good would it have done?" asked Nanny, who was little and fair, +with rings of light hair that filled a bonnet-front very prettily; she +looked best in a bonnet. "It would only have worried you. He could +not have stopped Tom; you couldn't, when you came home to do it." + +"I dare say papa didn't know much about it," suggested Lily. She was a +tall, lean, dark girl, who looked as if she were not quite warm enough, +and whom you always associated with wraps of different aesthetic effect +after you had once seen her. + +It is a serious matter always to the women of his family when a young +man gives them cause to suspect that he is interested in some other +woman. A son-in-law or brother-in-law does not enter the family; he +need not be caressed or made anything of; but the son's or brother's +wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they cannot deny. +Some convention of their sex obliges them to show her affection, to +like or to seem to like her, to take her to their intimacy, however +odious she may be to them. With the Coreys it was something more than +an affair of sentiment. They were by no means poor, and they were not +dependent money-wise upon Tom Corey; but the mother had come, without +knowing it, to rely upon his sense, his advice in everything, and the +sisters, seeing him hitherto so indifferent to girls, had insensibly +grown to regard him as altogether their own till he should be released, +not by his marriage, but by theirs, an event which had not approached +with the lapse of time. Some kinds of girls--they believed that they +could readily have chosen a kind--might have taken him without taking +him from them; but this generosity could not be hoped for in such a +girl as Miss Lapham. + +"Perhaps," urged their mother, "it would not be so bad. She seemed an +affectionate little thing with her mother, without a great deal of +character though she was so capable about some things." + +"Oh, she'll be an affectionate little thing with Tom too, you may be +sure," said Nanny. "And that characterless capability becomes the most +in tense narrow-mindedness. She'll think we were against her from the +beginning." + +"She has no cause for that," Lily interposed, "and we shall not give +her any." + +"Yes, we shall," retorted Nanny. "We can't help it; and if we can't, +her own ignorance would be cause enough." + +"I can't feel that she's altogether ignorant," said Mrs. Corey justly. + +"Of course she can read and write," admitted Nanny. + +"I can't imagine what he finds to talk about with her," said Lily. + +"Oh, THAT'S very simple," returned her sister. + +"They talk about themselves, with occasional references to each other. +I have heard people 'going on' on the hotel piazzas. She's +embroidering, or knitting, or tatting, or something of that kind; and +he says she seems quite devoted to needlework, and she says, yes, she +has a perfect passion for it, and everybody laughs at her for it; but +she can't help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she +always shall be,--with remote and minute particulars. And she ends by +saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or +embroider, or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make +her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather +better, or if you're in the woods camping. Then she lets him take up +one corner of her work, and perhaps touch her fingers; and that +encourages him to say that he supposes nothing could induce her to drop +her work long enough to go down on the rocks, or out among the +huckleberry bushes; and she puts her head on one side, and says she +doesn't know really. And then they go, and he lies at her feet on the +rocks, or picks huckleberries and drops them in her lap, and they go on +talking about themselves, and comparing notes to see how they differ +from each other. And----" + +"That will do, Nanny," said her mother. + +Lily smiled autumnally. "Oh, disgusting!" + +"Disgusting? Not at all!" protested her sister. "It's very amusing +when you see it, and when you do it----" + +"It's always a mystery what people see in each other," observed Mrs. +Corey severely. + +"Yes," Nanny admitted, "but I don't know that there is much comfort for +us in the application." "No, there isn't," said her mother. + +"The most that we can do is to hope for the best till we know the +worst. Of course we shall make the best of the worst when it comes." + +"Yes, and perhaps it would not be so very bad. I was saying to your +father when I was here in July that those things can always be managed. +You must face them as if they were nothing out of the way, and try not +to give any cause for bitterness among ourselves." + +"That's true. But I don't believe in too much resignation beforehand. +It amounts to concession," said Nanny. + +"Of course we should oppose it in all proper ways," returned her mother. + +Lily had ceased to discuss the matter. In virtue of her artistic +temperament, she was expected not to be very practical. It was her +mother and her sister who managed, submitting to the advice and consent +of Corey what they intended to do. + +"Your father wrote me that he had called on Colonel Lapham at his place +of business," said Mrs. Corey, seizing her first chance of approaching +the subject with her son. + +"Yes," said Corey. "A dinner was father's idea, but he came down to a +call, at my suggestion." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey, in a tone of relief, as if the statement threw a +new light on the fact that Corey had suggested the visit. "He said so +little about it in his letter that I didn't know just how it came +about." + +"I thought it was right they should meet," explained the son, "and so +did father. I was glad that I suggested it, afterward; it was +extremely gratifying to Colonel Lapham." + +"Oh, it was quite right in every way. I suppose you have seen +something of the family during the summer." + +"Yes, a good deal. I've been down at Nantasket rather often." + +Mrs. Corey let her eyes droop. Then she asked: "Are they well?" + +"Yes, except Lapham himself, now and then. I went down once or twice +to see him. He hasn't given himself any vacation this summer; he has +such a passion for his business that I fancy he finds it hard being +away from it at any time, and he's made his new house an excuse for +staying." + +"Oh yes, his house! Is it to be something fine?" + +"Yes; it's a beautiful house. Seymour is doing it." + +"Then, of course, it will be very handsome. I suppose the young ladies +are very much taken up with it; and Mrs. Lapham." + +"Mrs. Lapham, yes. I don't think the young ladies care so much about +it." + +"It must be for them. Aren't they ambitious?" asked Mrs. Corey, +delicately feeling her way. + +Her son thought a while. Then he answered with a smile-- + +"No, I don't really think they are. They are unambitious, I should +say." Mrs. Corey permitted herself a long breath. But her son added, +"It's the parents who are ambitious for them," and her respiration +became shorter again. + +"Yes," she said. + +"They're very simple, nice girls," pursued Corey. "I think you'll like +the elder, when you come to know her." + +When you come to know her. The words implied an expectation that the +two families were to be better acquainted. + +"Then she is more intellectual than her sister?" Mrs. Corey ventured. + +"Intellectual?" repeated her son. "No; that isn't the word, quite. +Though she certainly has more mind." + +"The younger seemed very sensible." + +"Oh, sensible, yes. And as practical as she's pretty. She can do all +sorts of things, and likes to be doing them. Don't you think she's an +extraordinary beauty?" + +"Yes--yes, she is," said Mrs. Corey, at some cost. + +"She's good, too," said Corey, "and perfectly innocent and transparent. +I think you will like her the better the more you know her." + +"I thought her very nice from the beginning," said the mother +heroically; and then nature asserted itself in her. "But I should be +afraid that she might perhaps be a little bit tiresome at last; her +range of ideas seemed so extremely limited." + +"Yes, that's what I was afraid of. But, as a matter of fact, she +isn't. She interests you by her very limitations. You can see the +working of her mind, like that of a child. She isn't at all conscious +even of her beauty." + +"I don't believe young men can tell whether girls are conscious or +not," said Mrs. Corey. "But I am not saying the Miss Laphams are +not----" Her son sat musing, with an inattentive smile on his face. +"What is it?" + +"Oh! nothing. I was thinking of Miss Lapham and something she was +saying. She's very droll, you know." + +"The elder sister? Yes, you told me that. Can you see the workings of +her mind too?" + +"No; she's everything that's unexpected." Corey fell into another +reverie, and smiled again; but he did not offer to explain what amused +him, and his mother would not ask. + +"I don't know what to make of his admiring the girl so frankly," she +said afterward to her husband. "That couldn't come naturally till +after he had spoken to her, and I feel sure that he hasn't yet." + +"You women haven't risen yet--it's an evidence of the backwardness of +your sex--to a conception of the Bismarck idea in diplomacy. If a man +praises one woman, you still think he's in love with another. Do you +mean that because Tom didn't praise the elder sister so much, he HAS +spoken to HER?" + +Mrs. Corey refused the consequence, saying that it did not follow. +"Besides, he did praise her." + +"You ought to be glad that matters are in such good shape, then. At +any rate, you can do absolutely nothing." + +"Oh! I know it," sighed Mrs. Corey. "I wish Tom would be a little +opener with me." + +"He's as open as it's in the nature of an American-born son to be with +his parents. I dare say if you'd asked him plumply what he meant in +regard to the young lady, he would have told you--if he knew." + +"Why, don't you think he does know, Bromfield?" + +"I'm not at all sure he does. You women think that because a young man +dangles after a girl, or girls, he's attached to them. It doesn't at +all follow. He dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to do +with his time, and because they seem to like it. I dare say that Tom +has dangled a good deal in this instance because there was nobody else +in town." + +"Do you really think so?" + +"I throw out the suggestion. And it strikes me that a young lady +couldn't do better than stay in or near Boston during the summer. Most +of the young men are here, kept by business through the week, with +evenings available only on the spot, or a few miles off. What was the +proportion of the sexes at the seashore and the mountains?" + +"Oh, twenty girls at least for even an excuse of a man. It's shameful." + +"You see, I am right in one part of my theory. Why shouldn't I be +right in the rest?" + +"I wish you were. And yet I can't say that I do. Those things are +very serious with girls. I shouldn't like Tom to have been going to +see those people if he meant nothing by it." + +"And you wouldn't like it if he did. You are difficult, my dear." Her +husband pulled an open newspaper toward him from the table. + +"I feel that it wouldn't be at all like him to do so," said Mrs. Corey, +going on to entangle herself in her words, as women often do when their +ideas are perfectly clear. "Don't go to reading, please, Bromfield! I +am really worried about this matter I must know how much it means. I +can't let it go on so. I don't see how you can rest easy without +knowing." + +"I don't in the least know what's going to become of me when I die; and +yet I sleep well," replied Bromfield Corey, putting his newspaper aside. + +"Ah! but this is a very different thing." + +"So much more serious? Well, what can you do? We had this out when you +were here in the summer, and you agreed with me then that we could do +nothing. The situation hasn't changed at all." + +"Yes, it has; it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, again +expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "I think I must ask +Tom outright." + +"You know you can't do that, my dear." + +"Then why doesn't he tell us?" + +"Ah, that's what HE can't do, if he's making love to Miss Irene--that's +her name, I believe--on the American plan. He will tell us after he +has told HER. That was the way I did. Don't ignore our own youth, +Anna. It was a long while ago, I'll admit." + +"It was very different," said Mrs. Corey, a little shaken. + +"I don't see how. I dare say Mamma Lapham knows whether Tom is in love +with her daughter or not; and no doubt Papa Lapham knows it at second +hand. But we shall not know it until the girl herself does. Depend +upon that. Your mother knew, and she told your father; but my poor +father knew nothing about it till we were engaged; and I had been +hanging about--dangling, as you call it----" + +"No, no; YOU called it that." + +"Was it I?--for a year or more." + +The wife could not refuse to be a little consoled by the image of her +young love which the words conjured up, however little she liked its +relation to her son's interest in Irene Lapham. She smiled pensively. +"Then you think it hasn't come to an understanding with them yet?" + +"An understanding? Oh, probably." + +"An explanation, then?" + +"The only logical inference from what we've been saying is that it +hasn't. But I don't ask you to accept it on that account. May I read +now, my dear?" + +"Yes, you may read now," said Mrs. Corey, with one of those sighs which +perhaps express a feminine sense of the unsatisfactoriness of husbands +in general, rather than a personal discontent with her own. + +"Thank you, my dear; then I think I'll smoke too," said Bromfield +Corey, lighting a cigar. + +She left him in peace, and she made no further attempt upon her son's +confidence. But she was not inactive for that reason. She did not, of +course, admit to herself, and far less to others, the motive with which +she went to pay an early visit to the Laphams, who had now come up from +Nantasket to Nankeen Square. She said to her daughters that she had +always been a little ashamed of using her acquaintance with them to get +money for her charity, and then seeming to drop it. Besides, it seemed +to her that she ought somehow to recognise the business relation that +Tom had formed with the father; they must not think that his family +disapproved of what he had done. "Yes, business is business," said +Nanny, with a laugh. "Do you wish us to go with you again?" + +"No; I will go alone this time," replied the mother with dignity. + +Her coupe now found its way to Nankeen Square without difficulty, and +she sent up a card, which Mrs. Lapham received in the presence of her +daughter Penelope. + +"I presume I've got to see her," she gasped. + +"Well, don't look so guilty, mother," joked the girl; "you haven't been +doing anything so VERY wrong." + +"It seems as if I HAD. I don't know what's come over me. I wasn't +afraid of the woman before, but now I don't seem to feel as if I could +look her in the face. He's been coming here of his own accord, and I +fought against his coming long enough, goodness knows. I didn't want +him to come. And as far forth as that goes, we're as respectable as +they are; and your father's got twice their money, any day. We've no +need to go begging for their favour. I guess they were glad enough to +get him in with your father." + +"Yes, those are all good points, mother," said the girl; "and if you +keep saying them over, and count a hundred every time before you speak, +I guess you'll worry through." + +Mrs. Lapham had been fussing distractedly with her hair and ribbons, in +preparation for her encounter with Mrs. Corey. She now drew in a long +quivering breath, stared at her daughter without seeing her, and +hurried downstairs. It was true that when she met Mrs. Corey before +she had not been awed by her; but since then she had learned at least +her own ignorance of the world, and she had talked over the things she +had misconceived and the things she had shrewdly guessed so much that +she could not meet her on the former footing of equality. In spite of +as brave a spirit and as good a conscience as woman need have, Mrs. +Lapham cringed inwardly, and tremulously wondered what her visitor had +come for. She turned from pale to red, and was hardly coherent in her +greetings; she did not know how they got to where Mrs. Corey was saying +exactly the right things about her son's interest and satisfaction in +his new business, and keeping her eyes fixed on Mrs. Lapham's, reading +her uneasiness there, and making her feel, in spite of her indignant +innocence, that she had taken a base advantage of her in her absence to +get her son away from her and marry him to Irene. Then, presently, +while this was painfully revolving itself in Mrs. Lapham's mind, she +was aware of Mrs. Corey's asking if she was not to have the pleasure of +seeing Miss Irene. + +"No; she's out, just now," said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't know just when +she'll be in. She went to get a book." And here she turned red again, +knowing that Irene had gone to get the book because it was one that +Corey had spoken of. + +"Oh! I'm sorry," said Mrs. Corey. "I had hoped to see her. And your +other daughter, whom I never met?" + +"Penelope?" asked Mrs. Lapham, eased a little. "She is at home. I +will go and call her." The Laphams had not yet thought of spending +their superfluity on servants who could be rung for; they kept two +girls and a man to look after the furnace, as they had for the last ten +years. If Mrs. Lapham had rung in the parlour, her second girl would +have gone to the street door to see who was there. She went upstairs +for Penelope herself, and the girl, after some rebellious derision, +returned with her. + +Mrs. Corey took account of her, as Penelope withdrew to the other side +of the room after their introduction, and sat down, indolently +submissive on the surface to the tests to be applied, and following +Mrs. Corey's lead of the conversation in her odd drawl. + +"You young ladies will be glad to be getting into your new house," she +said politely. + +"I don't know," said Penelope. "We're so used to this one." + +Mrs. Corey looked a little baffled, but she said sympathetically, "Of +course, you will be sorry to leave your old home." + +Mrs. Lapham could not help putting in on behalf of her daughters: "I +guess if it was left to the girls to say, we shouldn't leave it at all." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey; "are they so much attached? But I can +quite understand it. My children would be heart-broken too if we were +to leave the old place." She turned to Penelope. "But you must think +of the lovely new house, and the beautiful position." + +"Yes, I suppose we shall get used to them too," said Penelope, in +response to this didactic consolation. + +"Oh, I could even imagine your getting very fond of them," pursued Mrs. +Corey patronisingly. "My son has told me of the lovely outlook you're +to have over the water. He thinks you have such a beautiful house. I +believe he had the pleasure of meeting you all there when he first came +home." + +"Yes, I think he was our first visitor." + +"He is a great admirer of your house," said Mrs. Corey, keeping her +eyes very sharply, however politely, on Penelope's face, as if to +surprise there the secret of any other great admiration of her son's +that might helplessly show itself. + +"Yes," said the girl, "he's been there several times with father; and +he wouldn't be allowed to overlook any of its good points." + +Her mother took a little more courage from her daughter's tranquillity. + +"The girls make such fun of their father's excitement about his +building, and the way he talks it into everybody." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey, with civil misunderstanding and inquiry. + +Penelope flushed, and her mother went on: "I tell him he's more of a +child about it than any of them." + +"Young people are very philosophical nowadays," remarked Mrs. Corey. + +"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Lapham. "I tell them they've always had +everything, so that nothing's a surprise to them. It was different +with us in our young days." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, without assenting. + +"I mean the Colonel and myself," explained Mrs. Lapham. + +"Oh yes--yes!" said Mrs. Corey. + +"I'm sure," the former went on, rather helplessly, "we had to work hard +enough for everything we got. And so we appreciated it." + +"So many things were not done for young people then," said Mrs. Corey, +not recognising the early-hardships standpoint of Mrs. Lapham. "But I +don't know that they are always the better for it now," she added +vaguely, but with the satisfaction we all feel in uttering a just +commonplace. + +"It's rather hard living up to blessings that you've always had," said +Penelope. + +"Yes," replied Mrs. Corey distractedly, and coming back to her slowly +from the virtuous distance to which she had absented herself. She +looked at the girl searchingly again, as if to determine whether this +were a touch of the drolling her son had spoken of. But she only +added: "You will enjoy the sunsets on the Back Bay so much." "Well, not +unless they're new ones," said Penelope. "I don't believe I could +promise to enjoy any sunsets that I was used to, a great deal." + +Mrs. Corey looked at her with misgiving, hardening into dislike. "No," +she breathed vaguely. "My son spoke of the fine effect of the lights +about the hotel from your cottage at Nantasket," she said to Mrs. +Lapham. + +"Yes, they're splendid!" exclaimed that lady. "I guess the girls went +down every night with him to see them from the rocks." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, a little dryly; and she permitted herself to +add: "He spoke of those rocks. I suppose both you young ladies spend a +great deal of your time on them when you're there. At Nahant my +children were constantly on them." + +"Irene likes the rocks," said Penelope. "I don't care much about +them,--especially at night." + +"Oh, indeed! I suppose you find it quite as well looking at the lights +comfortably from the veranda." + +"No; you can't see them from the house." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey. After a perceptible pause, she turned to Mrs. +Lapham. "I don't know what my son would have done for a breath of sea +air this summer, if you had not allowed him to come to Nantasket. He +wasn't willing to leave his business long enough to go anywhere else." + +"Yes, he's a born business man," responded Mrs. Lapham +enthusiastically. "If it's born in you, it's bound to come out. +That's what the Colonel is always saying about Mr. Corey. He says it's +born in him to be a business man, and he can't help it." She recurred +to Corey gladly because she felt that she had not said enough of him +when his mother first spoke of his connection with the business. "I +don't believe," she went on excitedly, "that Colonel Lapham has ever +had anybody with him that he thought more of." + +"You have all been very kind to my son," said Mrs. Corey in +acknowledgment, and stiffly bowing a little, "and we feel greatly +indebted to you. Very much so." At these grateful expressions Mrs. +Lapham reddened once more, and murmured that it had been very pleasant +to them, she was sure. She glanced at her daughter for support, but +Penelope was looking at Mrs. Corey, who doubtless saw her from the +corner of her eyes, though she went on speaking to her mother. + +"I was sorry to hear from him that Mr.--Colonel?--Lapham had not been +quite well this summer. I hope he's better now?" + +"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Lapham; "he's all right now. He's +hardly ever been sick, and he don't know how to take care of himself. +That's all. We don't any of us; we're all so well." + +"Health is a great blessing," sighed Mrs. Corey. + +"Yes, so it is. How is your oldest daughter?" inquired Mrs. Lapham. +"Is she as delicate as ever?" + +"She seems to be rather better since we returned." And now Mrs. Corey, +as if forced to the point, said bunglingly that the young ladies had +wished to come with her, but had been detained. She based her +statement upon Nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple +a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. "But we shall +hope for some--some other occasion," she said vaguely, and she put on a +parting smile, and shook hands with Mrs. Lapham and Penelope, and then, +after some lingering commonplaces, got herself out of the house. + +Penelope and her mother were still looking at each other, and trying to +grapple with the effect or purport of the visit, when Irene burst in +upon them from the outside. + +"O mamma! wasn't that Mrs. Corey's carriage just drove away?" + +Penelope answered with her laugh. "Yes! You've just missed the most +delightful call, 'Rene. So easy and pleasant every way. Not a bit +stiff! Mrs. Corey was so friendly! She didn't make one feel at all as +if she'd bought me, and thought she'd given too much; and mother held +up her head as if she were all wool and a yard wide, and she would just +like to have anybody deny it." + +In a few touches of mimicry she dashed off a sketch of the scene: her +mother's trepidation, and Mrs. Corey's well-bred repose and polite +scrutiny of them both. She ended by showing how she herself had sat +huddled up in a dark corner, mute with fear. + +"If she came to make us say and do the wrong thing, she must have gone +away happy; and it's a pity you weren't here to help, Irene. I don't +know that I aimed to make a bad impression, but I guess I +succeeded--even beyond my deserts." She laughed; then suddenly she +flashed out in fierce earnest. "If I missed doing anything that could +make me as hateful to her as she made herself to me----" She checked +herself, and began to laugh. Her laugh broke, and the tears started +into her eyes; she ran out of the room, and up the stairs. + +"What--what does it mean?" asked Irene in a daze. + +Mrs. Lapham was still in the chilly torpor to which Mrs. Corey's call +had reduced her. Penelope's vehemence did not rouse her. She only +shook her head absently, and said, "I don't know." + +"Why should Pen care what impression she made? I didn't suppose it +would make any difference to her whether Mrs. Corey liked her or not." + +"I didn't, either. But I could see that she was just as nervous as she +could be, every minute of the time. I guess she didn't like Mrs. Corey +any too well from the start, and she couldn't seem to act like herself." + +"Tell me about it, mamma," said Irene, dropping into a chair. + + +Mrs. Corey described the interview to her husband on her return home. +"Well, and what are your inferences?" he asked. + +"They were extremely embarrassed and excited--that is, the mother. I +don't wish to do her injustice, but she certainly behaved consciously." + +"You made her feel so, I dare say, Anna. I can imagine how terrible +you must have been in the character of an accusing spirit, too +lady-like to say anything. What did you hint?" + +"I hinted nothing," said Mrs. Corey, descending to the weakness of +defending herself. "But I saw quite enough to convince me that the +girl is in love with Tom, and the mother knows it." + +"That was very unsatisfactory. I supposed you went to find out whether +Tom was in love with the girl. Was she as pretty as ever?" + +"I didn't see her; she was not at home; I saw her sister." + +"I don't know that I follow you quite, Anna. But no matter. What was +the sister like?" + +"A thoroughly disagreeable young woman." + +"What did she do?" + +"Nothing. She's far too sly for that. But that was the impression." + +"Then you didn't find her so amusing as Tom does?" + +"I found her pert. There's no other word for it. She says things to +puzzle you and put you out." + +"Ah, that was worse than pert, Anna; that was criminal. Well, let us +thank heaven the younger one is so pretty." + +Mrs. Corey did not reply directly. "Bromfield," she said, after a +moment of troubled silence, "I have been thinking over your plan, and I +don't see why it isn't the right thing." + +"What is my plan?" inquired Bromfield Corey. + +"A dinner." + +Her husband began to laugh. "Ah, you overdid the accusing-spirit +business, and this is reparation." But Mrs. Corey hurried on, with +combined dignity and anxiety-- + +"We can't ignore Tom's intimacy with them--it amounts to that; it will +probably continue even if it's merely a fancy, and we must seem to know +it; whatever comes of it, we can't disown it. They are very simple, +unfashionable people, and unworldly; but I can't say that they are +offensive, unless--unless," she added, in propitiation of her husband's +smile, "unless the father--how did you find the father?" she implored. + +"He will be very entertaining," said Corey, "if you start him on his +paint. What was the disagreeable daughter like? Shall you have her?" + +"She's little and dark. We must have them all," Mrs. Corey sighed. +"Then you don't think a dinner would do?" + +"Oh yes, I do. As you say, we can't disown Tom's relation to them, +whatever it is. We had much better recognise it, and make the best of +the inevitable. I think a Lapham dinner would be delightful." He +looked at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, and she +fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he laughed outright. +"Perhaps," he suggested, "it would be the best way of curing Tom of his +fancy, if he has one. He has been seeing her with the dangerous +advantages which a mother knows how to give her daughter in the family +circle, and with no means of comparing her with other girls. You must +invite several other very pretty girls." + +"Do you really think so, Bromfield?" asked Mrs. Corey, taking courage a +little. "That might do," But her spirits visibly sank again. "I don't +know any other girl half so pretty." + +"Well, then, better bred." + +"She is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing." + +"Well, more cultivated." + +"Tom doesn't get on with such people." + +"Oh, you wish him to marry her, I see." + +"No, no." + +"Then you'd better give the dinner to bring them together, to promote +the affair." + +"You know I don't want to do that, Bromfield. But I feel that we must +do something. If we don't, it has a clandestine appearance. It isn't +just to them. A dinner won't leave us in any worse position, and may +leave us in a better. Yes," said Mrs. Corey, after another thoughtful +interval, "we must have them--have them all. It could be very simple." + +"Ah, you can't give a dinner under a bushel, if I take your meaning, my +dear. If we do this at all, we mustn't do it as if we were ashamed of +it. We must ask people to meet them." + +"Yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "There are not many people in town yet," she +added, with relief that caused her husband another smile. "There +really seems a sort of fatality about it," she concluded religiously. + +"Then you had better not struggle against it. Go and reconcile Lily +and Nanny to it as soon as possible." + +Mrs. Corey blanched a little. "But don't you think it will be the best +thing, Bromfield?" + +"I do indeed, my dear. The only thing that shakes my faith in the +scheme is the fact that I first suggested it. But if you have adopted +it, it must be all right, Anna. I can't say that I expected it." + +"No," said his wife, "it wouldn't do." + + + +XIII. + + +HAVING distinctly given up the project of asking the Laphams to dinner, +Mrs. Corey was able to carry it out with the courage of sinners who +have sacrificed to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to +their intended transgression. She did not question but the Laphams +would come; and she only doubted as to the people whom she should +invite to meet them. She opened the matter with some trepidation to +her daughters, but neither of them opposed her; they rather looked at +the scheme from her own point of view, and agreed with her that nothing +had really yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams +helplessly contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that +ill-advised application to Mrs. Lapham for charity. Not only the +principal of their debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing +interest. They said, What harm could giving the dinner possibly do +them? They might ask any or all of their acquaintance without +disadvantage to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give the +dinner just the character they chose, and still flatter the ignorance +of the Laphams. The trouble would be with Tom, if he were really +interested in the girl; but he could not say anything if they made it a +family dinner; he could not feel anything. They had each turned in her +own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most +comprehensive of those cousinships which form the admiration and terror +of the adventurer in Boston society. He finds himself hemmed in and +left out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all hope of +safe personality in his comments on people; he is never less secure +than when he hears some given Bostonian denouncing or ridiculing +another. If he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring +in these criticisms, however just they appear, for the probability is +that their object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the +censor. When the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling one +another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, by the familiar +abbreviations of their Christian names, he must feel keenly the exile +to which he was born; but he is then, at least, in comparatively little +danger; while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls at every +step around him, in a society where Middlesexes have married Essexes +and produced Suffolks for two hundred and fifty years. + +These conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, are a source +of strength and security to those native to them. An uncertain +acquaintance may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such a +cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it and tremendous +stories are told of people who have spent a whole winter in Boston, in +a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of the Suffolks, +discover upon reflection that they have met no one but Essexes and +Middlesexes. + +Mrs. Corey's brother James came first into her mind, and she thought +with uncommon toleration of the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of +his wife. James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout, +and might be said to have actively promoted his connection with Lapham. +She thought next of the widow of her cousin, Henry Bellingham, who had +let her daughter marry that Western steamboat man, and was fond of her +son-in-law; she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king and +his family. The daughters insisted so strongly upon Mrs. Bellingham's +son Charles, that Mrs. Corey put him down--if he were in town; he might +be in Central America; he got on with all sorts of people. It seemed +to her that she might stop at this: four Laphams, five Coreys, and four +Bellinghams were enough. + +"That makes thirteen," said Nanny. "You can have Mr. and Mrs. Sewell." + +"Yes, that is a good idea," assented Mrs. Corey. "He is our minister, +and it is very proper." + +"I don't see why you don't have Robert Chase. It is a pity he +shouldn't see her--for the colour." + +"I don't quite like the idea of that," said Mrs. Corey; "but we can +have him too, if it won't make too many." The painter had married into +a poorer branch of the Coreys, and his wife was dead. "Is there any +one else?" + +"There is Miss Kingsbury." + +"We have had her so much. She will begin to think we are using her." + +"She won't mind; she's so good-natured." + +"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four Laphams, five +Coreys, four Bellinghams, one Chase, and one Kingsbury--fifteen. Oh! +and two Sewells. Seventeen. Ten ladies and seven gentlemen. It +doesn't balance very well, and it's too large." + +"Perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested Lily. + +"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny. + +Their mother reflected. "Well, I will ask them. The ladies will +refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more +artists. Why! we must have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he's a +bachelor, and he's building their house, Tom says." + +Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, and she told +him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident +misgiving. + +"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his +honest eyes. + +She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I won't do it at all, my +dear," she said, "if you don't approve. But I thought--You know we +have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at +Baie St. Paul. Then in the winter, I'm ashamed to say, I got money +from her for a charity I was interested in; and I hate the idea of +merely USING people in that way. And now your having been at their +house this summer--we can't seem to disapprove of that; and your +business relations to him----" + +"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it amounts to a dinner?" + +"Why, I don't know," returned his mother. "We shall have hardly any +one out of our family connection." + +"Well," Corey assented, "it might do. I suppose what you wish is to +give them a pleasure." + +"Why, certainly. Don't you think they'd like to come?" + +"Oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure after they +were here is another thing. I should have said that if you wanted to +have them, they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet our own +immediate family." + +"That's what I thought of in the first place, but your father seemed to +think it implied a social distrust of them; and we couldn't afford to +have that appearance, even to ourselves." + +"Perhaps he was right." + +"And besides, it might seem a little significant." + +Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "Whom did you think of +asking?" His mother repeated the names. "Yes, that would do," he said, +with a vague dissatisfaction. + +"I won't have it at all, if you don't wish, Tom." + +"Oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. Yes, I dare say it's right. What +did you mean by a family dinner seeming significant?" + +His mother hesitated. When it came to that, she did not like to +recognise in his presence the anxieties that had troubled her. But "I +don't know," she said, since she must. "I shouldn't want to give that +young girl, or her mother, the idea that we wished to make more of the +acquaintance than--than you did, Tom." + +He looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did not take her meaning. +But he said, "Oh yes, of course," and Mrs. Corey, in the uncertainty in +which she seemed destined to remain concerning this affair, went off +and wrote her invitation to Mrs. Lapham. Later in the evening, when +they again found themselves alone, her son said, "I don't think I +understood you, mother, in regard to the Laphams. I think I do now. I +certainly don't wish you to make more of the acquaintance than I have +done. It wouldn't be right; it might be very unfortunate. Don't give +the dinner!" + +"It's too late now, my son," said Mrs. Corey. "I sent my note to Mrs. +Lapham an hour ago." Her courage rose at the trouble which showed in +Corey's face. "But don't be annoyed by it, Tom. It isn't a family +dinner, you know, and everything can be managed without embarrassment. +If we take up the affair at this point, you will seem to have been +merely acting for us; and they can't possibly understand anything more." + +"Well, well! Let it go! I dare say it's all right. At any rate, it can't +be helped now." + +"I don't wish to help it, Tom," said Mrs. Corey, with a cheerfullness +which the thought of the Laphams had never brought her before. "I am +sure it is quite fit and proper, and we can make them have a very +pleasant time. They are good, inoffensive people, and we owe it to +ourselves not to be afraid to show that we have felt their kindness to +us, and his appreciation of you." + +"Well," consented Corey. The trouble that his mother had suddenly cast +off was in his tone; but she was not sorry. It was quite time that he +should think seriously of his attitude toward these people if he had +not thought of it before, but, according to his father's theory, had +been merely dangling. + +It was a view of her son's character that could hardly have pleased her +in different circumstances, yet it was now unquestionably a consolation +if not wholly a pleasure. If she considered the Laphams at all, it was +with the resignation which we feel at the evils of others, even when +they have not brought them on themselves. + +Mrs. Lapham, for her part, had spent the hours between Mrs. Corey's +visit and her husband's coming home from business in reaching the same +conclusion with regard to Corey; and her spirits were at the lowest +when they sat down to supper. Irene was downcast with her; Penelope +was purposely gay; and the Colonel was beginning, after his first plate +of the boiled ham,--which, bristling with cloves, rounded its bulk on a +wide platter before him,--to take note of the surrounding mood, when +the door-bell jingled peremptorily, and the girl left waiting on the +table to go and answer it. She returned at once with a note for Mrs. +Lapham, which she read, and then, after a helpless survey of her +family, read again. + +"Why, what IS it, mamma?" asked Irene, while the Colonel, who had taken +up his carving-knife for another attack on the ham, held it drawn half +across it. + +"Why, I don't know what it does mean," answered Mrs. Lapham +tremulously, and she let the girl take the note from her. + +Irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at the end with a joyful +cry and a flush that burned to the top of her forehead. Then she began +to read it once more. + +The Colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently, and Mrs. Lapham +said, "You read it out loud, if you know what to make of it, Irene." +But Irene, with a nervous scream of protest, handed it to her father, +who performed the office. + +"DEAR MRS. LAPHAM: + +"Will you and General Lapham----" + +"I didn't know I was a general," grumbled Lapham. "I guess I shall +have to be looking up my back pay. Who is it writes this, anyway?" he +asked, turning the letter over for the signature. + +"Oh, never mind. Read it through!" cried his wife, with a kindling +glance of triumph at Penelope, and he resumed-- + +"--and your daughters give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on +Thursday, the 28th, at half-past six. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"ANNA B. COREY." + +The brief invitation had been spread over two pages, and the Colonel +had difficulties with the signature which he did not instantly +surmount. When he had made out the name and pronounced it, he looked +across at his wife for an explanation. + +"I don't know what it all means," she said, shaking her head and +speaking with a pleased flutter. "She was here this afternoon, and I +should have said she had come to see how bad she could make us feel. I +declare I never felt so put down in my life by anybody." + +"Why, what did she do? What did she say?" Lapham was ready, in his +dense pride, to resent any affront to his blood, but doubtful, with the +evidence of this invitation to the contrary, if any affront had been +offered. Mrs. Lapham tried to tell him, but there was really nothing +tangible; and when she came to put it into words, she could not make +out a case. Her husband listened to her excited attempt, and then he +said, with judicial superiority, "I guess nobody's been trying to make +you feel bad, Persis. What would she go right home and invite you to +dinner for, if she'd acted the way you say?" + +In this view it did seem improbable, and Mrs. Lapham was shaken. She +could only say, "Penelope felt just the way I did about it." + +Lapham looked at the girl, who said, "Oh, I can't prove it! I begin to +think it never happened. I guess it didn't." + +"Humph!" said her father, and he sat frowning thoughtfully a +while--ignoring her mocking irony, or choosing to take her seriously. +"You can't really put your finger on anything," he said to his wife, +"and it ain't likely there is anything. Anyway, she's done the proper +thing by you now." + +Mrs. Lapham faltered between her lingering resentment and the appeals +of her flattered vanity. She looked from Penelope's impassive face to +the eager eyes of Irene. "Well--just as you say, Silas. I don't know +as she WAS so very bad. I guess may be she was embarrassed some----" + +"That's what I told you, mamma, from the start," interrupted Irene. +"Didn't I tell you she didn't mean anything by it? It's just the way +she acted at Baie St. Paul, when she got well enough to realise what +you'd done for her!" + +Penelope broke into a laugh. "Is that her way of showing her +gratitude? I'm sorry I didn't understand that before." + +Irene made no effort to reply. She merely looked from her mother to +her father with a grieved face for their protection, and Lapham said, +"When we've done supper, you answer her, Persis. Say we'll come." + +"With one exception," said Penelope. + +"What do you mean?" demanded her father, with a mouth full of ham. +"Oh, nothing of importance. Merely that I'm not going." + +Lapham gave himself time to swallow his morsel, and his rising wrath +went down with it. "I guess you'll change your mind when the time +comes," he said. "Anyway, Persis, you say we'll all come, and then, if +Penelope don't want to go, you can excuse her after we get there. +That's the best way." + +None of them, apparently, saw any reason why the affair should not be +left in this way, or had a sense of the awful and binding nature of a +dinner engagement. If she believed that Penelope would not finally +change her mind and go, no doubt Mrs. Lapham thought that Mrs. Corey +would easily excuse her absence. She did not find it so simple a +matter to accept the invitation. Mrs. Corey had said "Dear Mrs. +Lapham," but Mrs. Lapham had her doubts whether it would not be a +servile imitation to say "Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was +tormented as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise +temperature which she should impart to her politeness. She wrote an +unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, the same in which she used to +set the children's copies at school, and she subscribed herself, after +some hesitation between her husband's given name and her own, "Yours +truly, Mrs. S. Lapham." + +Penelope had gone to her room, without waiting to be asked to advise or +criticise; but Irene had decided upon the paper, and on the whole, Mrs. +Lapham's note made a very decent appearance on the page. + +When the furnace-man came, the Colonel sent him out to post it in the +box at the corner of the square. He had determined not to say anything +more about the matter before the girls, not choosing to let them see +that he was elated; he tried to give the effect of its being an +everyday sort of thing, abruptly closing the discussion with his order +to Mrs. Lapham to accept; but he had remained swelling behind his +newspaper during her prolonged struggle with her note, and he could no +longer hide his elation when Irene followed her sister upstairs. + +"Well, Pers," he demanded, "what do you say now?" + +Mrs. Lapham had been sobered into something of her former misgiving by +her difficulties with her note. "Well, I don't know what TO say. I +declare, I'm all mixed up about it, and I don't know as we've begun as +we can carry out in promising to go. I presume," she sighed, "that we +can all send some excuse at the last moment, if we don't want to go." + +"I guess we can carry out, and I guess we shan't want to send any +excuse," bragged the Colonel. "If we're ever going to be anybody at +all, we've got to go and see how it's done. I presume we've got to +give some sort of party when we get into the new house, and this gives +the chance to ask 'em back again. You can't complain now but what +they've made the advances, Persis?" + +"No," said Mrs. Lapham lifelessly; "I wonder why they wanted to do it. +Oh, I suppose it's all right," she added in deprecation of the anger +with her humility which she saw rising in her husband's face; "but if +it's all going to be as much trouble as that letter, I'd rather be +whipped. I don't know what I'm going to wear; or the girls either. I +do wonder--I've heard that people go to dinner in low-necks. Do you +suppose it's the custom?" + +"How should I know?" demanded the Colonel. "I guess you've got clothes +enough. Any rate, you needn't fret about it. You just go round to +White's or Jordan & Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress. I guess +that'll settle it; they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I +see 'em in the window every time I pass; lots of 'em." + +"Oh, it ain't the dress!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't suppose but what +we could get along with that; and I want to do the best we can for the +children; but I don't know what we're going to talk about to those +people when we get there. We haven't got anything in common with them. +Oh, I don't say they're any better," she again made haste to say in +arrest of her husband's resentment. "I don't believe they are; and I +don't see why they should be. And there ain't anybody has got a better +right to hold up their head than you have, Silas. You've got plenty of +money, and you've made every cent of it." + +"I guess I shouldn't amounted to much without you, Persis," interposed +Lapham, moved to this justice by her praise. + +"Oh, don't talk about ME!" protested the wife. "Now that you've made +it all right about Rogers, there ain't a thing in this world against +you. But still, for all that, I can see--and I can feel it when I +can't see it--that we're different from those people. They're +well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it, I presume, but we're too old +to learn to be like them." + +"The children ain't," said Lapham shrewdly. + +"No, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and that's the only thing +that reconciles me to it." + +"You see how pleased Irene looked when I read it?" + +"Yes, she was pleased." + +"And I guess Penelope'll think better of it before the time comes." + +"Oh yes, we do it for them. But whether we're doing the best thing for +'em, goodness knows. I'm not saying anything against HIM. Irene'll be +a lucky girl to get him, if she wants him. But there! I'd ten times +rather she was going to marry such a fellow as you were, Si, that had +to make every inch of his own way, and she had to help him. It's in +her!" + +Lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's fondness; but neither +of them wished that he should respond directly to it. "I guess, if it +wa'n't for me, he wouldn't have a much easier time. But don't you +fret! It's all coming out right. That dinner ain't a thing for you to +be uneasy about. It'll pass off perfectly easy and natural." + +Lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite to the end of the week +that followed. It was his theory not to let Corey see that he was set +up about the invitation, and when the young man said politely that his +mother was glad they were able to come, Lapham was very short with him. +He said yes, he believed that Mrs. Lapham and the girls were going. +Afterward he was afraid Corey might not understand that he was coming +too; but he did not know how to approach the subject again, and Corey +did not, so he let it pass. It worried him to see all the preparation +that his wife and Irene were making, and he tried to laugh at them for +it; and it worried him to find that Penelope was making no preparation +at all for herself, but only helping the others. He asked her what +should she do if she changed her mind at the last moment and concluded +to go, and she said she guessed she should not change her mind, but if +she did, she would go to White's with him and get him to choose her an +imported dress, he seemed to like them so much. He was too proud to +mention the subject again to her. + +Finally, all that dress-making in the house began to scare him with +vague apprehensions in regard to his own dress. As soon as he had +determined to go, an ideal of the figure in which he should go +presented itself to his mind. He should not wear any dress-coat, +because, for one thing, he considered that a man looked like a fool in +a dress-coat, and, for another thing, he had none--had none on +principle. He would go in a frock-coat and black pantaloons, and +perhaps a white waistcoat, but a black cravat anyway. But as soon as +he developed this ideal to his family, which he did in pompous disdain +of their anxieties about their own dress, they said he should not go +so. Irene reminded him that he was the only person without a +dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner which he had taken her to some +years before, and she remembered feeling awfully about it at the time. +Mrs. Lapham, who would perhaps have agreed of herself, shook her head +with misgiving. "I don't see but what you'll have to get you one, Si," +she said. "I don't believe they ever go without 'em to a private +house." + +He held out openly, but on his way home the next day, in a sudden +panic, he cast anchor before his tailor's door and got measured for a +dress-coat. After that he began to be afflicted about his waist-coat, +concerning which he had hitherto been airily indifferent. He tried to +get opinion out of his family, but they were not so clear about it as +they were about the frock. It ended in their buying a book of +etiquette, which settled the question adversely to a white waistcoat. +The author, however, after being very explicit in telling them not to +eat with their knives, and above all not to pick their teeth with their +forks,--a thing which he said no lady or gentleman ever did,--was still +far from decided as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought to wear: +shaken on other points, Lapham had begun to waver also concerning the +black cravat. As to the question of gloves for the Colonel, which +suddenly flashed upon him one evening, it appeared never to have +entered the thoughts of the etiquette man, as Lapham called him. Other +authors on the same subject were equally silent, and Irene could only +remember having heard, in some vague sort of way, that gentlemen did +not wear gloves so much any more. + +Drops of perspiration gathered on Lapham's forehead in the anxiety of +the debate; he groaned, and he swore a little in the compromise +profanity which he used. + +"I declare," said Penelope, where she sat purblindly sewing on a bit of +dress for Irene, "the Colonel's clothes are as much trouble as +anybody's. Why don't you go to Jordan & Marsh's and order one of the +imported dresses for yourself, father?" That gave them all the relief +of a laugh over it, the Colonel joining in piteously. + +He had an awful longing to find out from Corey how he ought to go. He +formulated and repeated over to himself an apparently careless +question, such as, "Oh, by the way, Corey, where do you get your +gloves?" This would naturally lead to some talk on the subject, which +would, if properly managed, clear up the whole trouble. But Lapham +found that he would rather die than ask this question, or any question +that would bring up the dinner again. Corey did not recur to it, and +Lapham avoided the matter with positive fierceness. He shunned talking +with Corey at all, and suffered in grim silence. + +One night, before they fell asleep, his wife said to him, "I was +reading in one of those books to-day, and I don't believe but what +we've made a mistake if Pen holds out that she won't go." + +"Why?" demanded Lapham, in the dismay which beset him at every fresh +recurrence to the subject. + +"The book says that it's very impolite not to answer a dinner +invitation promptly. Well, we've done that all right,--at first I +didn't know but what we had been a little too quick, may be,--but then +it says if you're not going, that it's the height of rudeness not to +let them know at once, so that they can fill your place at the table." + +The Colonel was silent for a while. "Well, I'm dumned," he said +finally, "if there seems to be any end to this thing. If it was to do +over again, I'd say no for all of us." + +"I've wished a hundred times they hadn't asked us; but it's too late to +think about that now. The question is, what are we going to do about +Penelope?" + +"Oh, I guess she'll go, at the last moment." + +"She says she won't. She took a prejudice against Mrs. Corey that day, +and she can't seem to get over it." + +"Well, then, hadn't you better write in the morning, as soon as you're +up, that she ain't coming?" + +Mrs. Lapham sighed helplessly. "I shouldn't know how to get it in. +It's so late now; I don't see how I could have the face." + +"Well, then, she's got to go, that's all." + +"She's set she won't." + +"And I'm set she shall," said Lapham with the loud obstinacy of a man +whose women always have their way. + +Mrs. Lapham was not supported by the sturdiness of his proclamation. + +But she did not know how to do what she knew she ought to do about +Penelope, and she let matters drift. After all, the child had a right +to stay at home if she did not wish to go. That was what Mrs. Lapham +felt, and what she said to her husband next morning, bidding him let +Penelope alone, unless she chose herself to go. She said it was too +late now to do anything, and she must make the best excuse she could +when she saw Mrs. Corey. She began to wish that Irene and her father +would go and excuse her too. She could not help saying this, and then +she and Lapham had some unpleasant words. + +"Look here!" he cried. "Who wanted to go in for these people in the +first place? Didn't you come home full of 'em last year, and want me to +sell out here and move somewheres else because it didn't seem to suit +'em? And now you want to put it all on me! I ain't going to stand it." + +"Hush!" said his wife. "Do you want to raise the house? I didn't put +it on you, as you say. You took it on yourself. Ever since that +fellow happened to come into the new house that day, you've been +perfectly crazy to get in with them. And now you're so afraid you +shall do something wrong before 'em, you don't hardly dare to say your +life's your own. I declare, if you pester me any more about those +gloves, Silas Lapham, I won't go." + +"Do you suppose I want to go on my own account?" he demanded furiously. + +"No," she admitted. "Of course I don't. I know very well that you're +doing it for Irene; but, for goodness gracious' sake, don't worry our +lives out, and make yourself a perfect laughing-stock before the +children." + +With this modified concession from her, the quarrel closed in sullen +silence on Lapham's part. The night before the dinner came, and the +question of his gloves was still unsettled, and in a fair way to remain +so. He had bought a pair, so as to be on the safe side, perspiring in +company with the young lady who sold them, and who helped him try them +on at the shop; his nails were still full of the powder which she had +plentifully peppered into them in order to overcome the resistance of +his blunt fingers. But he was uncertain whether he should wear them. +They had found a book at last that said the ladies removed their gloves +on sitting down at table, but it said nothing about gentlemen's gloves. +He left his wife where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass in her +new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he +shut his door he caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before +the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her +knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she +made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; +Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham +sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for the trouble they +were taking. But another glance gave him a sight of the young girl's +face in the mirror, beautiful and radiant with happiness, and his heart +melted again with paternal tenderness and pride. It was going to be a +great pleasure to Irene, and Lapham felt that she was bound to cut out +anything there. He was vexed with Penelope that she was not going too; +he would have liked to have those people hear her talk. He held his +door a little open, and listened to the things she was "getting off" +there to Irene. He showed that he felt really hurt and disappointed +about Penelope, and the girl's mother made her console him the next +evening before they all drove away without her. "You try to look on +the bright side of it, father. I guess you'll see that it's best I +didn't go when you get there. Irene needn't open her lips, and they +can all see how pretty she is; but they wouldn't know how smart I was +unless I talked, and maybe then they wouldn't." + +This thrust at her father's simple vanity in her made him laugh; and +then they drove away, and Penelope shut the door, and went upstairs +with her lips firmly shutting in a sob. + + + +XIV. + + +THE Coreys were one of the few old families who lingered in Bellingham +Place, the handsome, quiet old street which the sympathetic observer +must grieve to see abandoned to boarding-houses. The dwellings are +stately and tall, and the whole place wears an air of aristocratic +seclusion, which Mrs. Corey's father might well have thought assured +when he left her his house there at his death. It is one of two +evidently designed by the same architect who built some houses in a +characteristic taste on Beacon Street opposite the Common. It has a +wooden portico, with slender fluted columns, which have always been +painted white, and which, with the delicate mouldings of the cornice, +form the sole and sufficient decoration of the street front; nothing +could be simpler, and nothing could be better. Within, the architect +has again indulged his preference for the classic; the roof of the +vestibule, wide and low, rests on marble columns, slim and fluted like +the wooden columns without, and an ample staircase climbs in a +graceful, easy curve from the tesselated pavement. Some carved +Venetian scrigni stretched along the wall; a rug lay at the foot of the +stairs; but otherwise the simple adequacy of the architectural +intention had been respected, and the place looked bare to the eyes of +the Laphams when they entered. The Coreys had once kept a man, but +when young Corey began his retrenchments the man had yielded to the +neat maid who showed the Colonel into the reception-room and asked the +ladies to walk up two flights. + +He had his charges from Irene not to enter the drawing-room without her +mother, and he spent five minutes in getting on his gloves, for he had +desperately resolved to wear them at last. When he had them on, and +let his large fists hang down on either side, they looked, in the +saffron tint which the shop-girl said his gloves should be of, like +canvased hams. He perspired with doubt as he climbed the stairs, and +while he waited on the landing for Mrs. Lapham and Irene to come down +from above before going into the drawing-room, he stood staring at his +hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard. He heard quiet +talking beyond the portiere within, and presently Tom Corey came out. + +"Ah, Colonel Lapham! Very glad to see you." + +Lapham shook hands with him and gasped, "Waiting for Mis' Lapham," to +account for his presence. He had not been able to button his right +glove, and he now began, with as much indifference as he could assume, +to pull them both off, for he saw that Corey wore none. By the time he +had stuffed them into the pocket of his coat-skirt his wife and +daughter descended. + +Corey welcomed them very cordially too, but looked a little mystified. +Mrs. Lapham knew that he was silently inquiring for Penelope, and she +did not know whether she ought to excuse her to him first or not. She +said nothing, and after a glance toward the regions where Penelope +might conjecturably be lingering, he held aside the portiere for the +Laphams to pass, and entered the room with them. + +Mrs. Lapham had decided against low-necks on her own responsibility, +and had entrenched herself in the safety of a black silk, in which she +looked very handsome. Irene wore a dress of one of those shades which +only a woman or an artist can decide to be green or blue, and which to +other eyes looks both or neither, according to their degrees of +ignorance. If it was more like a ball dress than a dinner dress, that +might be excused to the exquisite effect. She trailed, a delicate +splendour, across the carpet in her mother's sombre wake, and the +consciousness of success brought a vivid smile to her face. Lapham, +pallid with anxiety lest he should somehow disgrace himself, giving +thanks to God that he should have been spared the shame of wearing +gloves where no one else did, but at the same time despairing that +Corey should have seen him in them, had an unwonted aspect of almost +pathetic refinement. + +Mrs. Corey exchanged a quick glance of surprise and relief with her +husband as she started across the room to meet her guests, and in her +gratitude to them for being so irreproachable, she threw into her +manner a warmth that people did not always find there. "General +Lapham?" she said, shaking hands in quick succession with Mrs. Lapham +and Irene, and now addressing herself to him. + +"No, ma'am, only Colonel," said the honest man, but the lady did not +hear him. She was introducing her husband to Lapham's wife and +daughter, and Bromfield Corey was already shaking his hand and saying +he was very glad to see him again, while he kept his artistic eye on +Irene, and apparently could not take it off. Lily Corey gave the +Lapham ladies a greeting which was physically rather than socially +cold, and Nanny stood holding Irene's hand in both of hers a moment, +and taking in her beauty and her style with a generous admiration which +she could afford, for she was herself faultlessly dressed in the quiet +taste of her city, and looking very pretty. The interval was long +enough to let every man present confide his sense of Irene's beauty to +every other; and then, as the party was small, Mrs. Corey made +everybody acquainted. When Lapham had not quite understood, he held +the person's hand, and, leaning urbanely forward, inquired, "What +name?" He did that because a great man to whom he had been presented on +the platform at a public meeting had done so to him, and he knew it +must be right. + +A little lull ensued upon the introductions, and Mrs. Corey said +quietly to Mrs. Lapham, "Can I send any one to be of use to Miss +Lapham?" as if Penelope must be in the dressing-room. + +Mrs. Lapham turned fire-red, and the graceful forms in which she had +been intending to excuse her daughter's absence went out of her head. +"She isn't upstairs," she said, at her bluntest, as country people are +when embarrassed. "She didn't feel just like coming to-night. I don't +know as she's feeling very well." + +Mrs. Corey emitted a very small "O!"--very small, very cold,--which +began to grow larger and hotter and to burn into Mrs. Lapham's soul +before Mrs. Corey could add, "I'm very sorry. It's nothing serious, I +hope?" + +Robert Chase, the painter, had not come, and Mrs. James Bellingham was +not there, so that the table really balanced better without Penelope; +but Mrs. Lapham could not know this, and did not deserve to know it. +Mrs. Corey glanced round the room, as if to take account of her guests, +and said to her husband, "I think we are all here, then," and he came +forward and gave his arm to Mrs. Lapham. She perceived then that in +their determination not to be the first to come they had been the last, +and must have kept the others waiting for them. + +Lapham had never seen people go down to dinner arm-in-arm before, but +he knew that his wife was distinguished in being taken out by the host, +and he waited in jealous impatience to see if Tom Corey would offer his +arm to Irene. He gave it to that big girl they called Miss Kingsbury, +and the handsome old fellow whom Mrs. Corey had introduced as her +cousin took Irene out. Lapham was startled from the misgiving in which +this left him by Mrs. Corey's passing her hand through his arm, and he +made a sudden movement forward, but felt himself gently restrained. +They went out the last of all; he did not know why, but he submitted, +and when they sat down he saw that Irene, although she had come in with +that Mr. Bellingham, was seated beside young Corey, after all. + +He fetched a long sigh of relief when he sank into his chair and felt +himself safe from error if he kept a sharp lookout and did only what +the others did. Bellingham had certain habits which he permitted +himself, and one of these was tucking the corner of his napkin into his +collar; he confessed himself an uncertain shot with a spoon, and +defended his practice on the ground of neatness and common-sense. +Lapham put his napkin into his collar too, and then, seeing that no one +but Bellingham did it, became alarmed and took it out again slyly. He +never had wine on his table at home, and on principle he was a +prohibitionist; but now he did not know just what to do about the +glasses at the right of his plate. He had a notion to turn them all +down, as he had read of a well-known politician's doing at a public +dinner, to show that he did not take wine; but, after twiddling with +one of them a moment, he let them be, for it seemed to him that would +be a little too conspicuous, and he felt that every one was looking. +He let the servant fill them all, and he drank out of each, not to +appear odd. Later, he observed that the young ladies were not taking +wine, and he was glad to see that Irene had refused it, and that Mrs. +Lapham was letting it stand untasted. He did not know but he ought to +decline some of the dishes, or at least leave most of some on his +plate, but he was not able to decide; he took everything and ate +everything. + +He noticed that Mrs. Corey seemed to take no more trouble about the +dinner than anybody, and Mr. Corey rather less; he was talking busily +to Mrs. Lapham, and Lapham caught a word here and there that convinced +him she was holding her own. He was getting on famously himself with +Mrs. Corey, who had begun with him about his new house; he was telling +her all about it, and giving her his ideas. Their conversation +naturally included his architect across the table; Lapham had been +delighted and secretly surprised to find the fellow there; and at +something Seymour said the talk spread suddenly, and the pretty house +he was building for Colonel Lapham became the general theme. Young +Corey testified to its loveliness, and the architect said laughingly +that if he had been able to make a nice thing of it, he owed it to the +practical sympathy of his client. + +"Practical sympathy is good," said Bromfield Corey; and, slanting his +head confidentially to Mrs. Lapham, he added, "Does he bleed your +husband, Mrs. Lapham? He's a terrible fellow for appropriations!" + +Mrs. Lapham laughed, reddening consciously, and said she guessed the +Colonel knew how to take care of himself. This struck Lapham, then +draining his glass of sauterne, as wonderfully discreet in his wife. +Bromfield Corey leaned back in his chair a moment. "Well, after all, +you can't say, with all your modern fuss about it, that you do much +better now than the old fellows who built such houses as this." + +"Ah," said the architect, "nobody can do better than well. Your house +is in perfect taste; you know I've always admired it; and I don't think +it's at all the worse for being old-fashioned. What we've done is +largely to go back of the hideous style that raged after they forgot +how to make this sort of house. But I think we may claim a better +feeling for structure. We use better material, and more wisely; and by +and by we shall work out something more characteristic and original." + +"With your chocolates and olives, and your clutter of bric-a-brac?" + +"All that's bad, of course, but I don't mean that. I don't wish to +make you envious of Colonel Lapham, and modesty prevents my saying, +that his house is prettier,--though I may have my convictions,--but +it's better built. All the new houses are better built. Now, your +house----" + +"Mrs. Corey's house," interrupted the host, with a burlesque haste in +disclaiming responsibility for it that made them all laugh. "My +ancestral halls are in Salem, and I'm told you couldn't drive a nail +into their timbers; in fact, I don't know that you would want to do it." + +"I should consider it a species of sacrilege," answered Seymour, "and I +shall be far from pressing the point I was going to make against a +house of Mrs. Corey's." + +This won Seymour the easy laugh, and Lapham silently wondered that the +fellow never got off any of those things to him. + +"Well," said Corey, "you architects and the musicians are the true and +only artistic creators. All the rest of us, sculptors, painters, +novelists, and tailors, deal with forms that we have before us; we try +to imitate, we try to represent. But you two sorts of artists create +form. If you represent, you fail. Somehow or other you do evolve the +camel out of your inner consciousness." + +"I will not deny the soft impeachment," said the architect, with a +modest air. + +"I dare say. And you'll own that it's very handsome of me to say this, +after your unjustifiable attack on Mrs. Corey's property." + +Bromfield Corey addressed himself again to Mrs. Lapham, and the talk +subdivided itself as before. It lapsed so entirely away from the +subject just in hand, that Lapham was left with rather a good idea, as +he thought it, to perish in his mind, for want of a chance to express +it. The only thing like a recurrence to what they had been saying was +Bromfield Corey's warning Mrs. Lapham, in some connection that Lapham +lost, against Miss Kingsbury. "She's worse," he was saying, "when it +comes to appropriations than Seymour himself. Depend upon it, Mrs. +Lapham, she will give you no peace of your mind, now she's met you, +from this out. Her tender mercies are cruel; and I leave you to supply +the content from your own scriptural knowledge. Beware of her, and all +her works. She calls them works of charity; but heaven knows whether +they are. It don't stand to reason that she gives the poor ALL the +money she gets out of people. I have my own belief"--he gave it in a +whisper for the whole table to hear--"that she spends it for champagne +and cigars." + +Lapham did not know about that kind of talking; but Miss Kingsbury +seemed to enjoy the fun as much as anybody, and he laughed with the +rest. + +"You shall be asked to the very next debauch of the committee, Mr. +Corey; then you won't dare expose us," said Miss Kingsbury. + +"I wonder you haven't been down upon Corey to go to the Chardon Street +home and talk with your indigent Italians in their native tongue," said +Charles Bellingham. "I saw in the Transcript the other night that you +wanted some one for the work." + +"We did think of Mr. Corey," replied Miss Kingsbury; "but we reflected +that he probably wouldn't talk with them at all; he would make them +keep still to be sketched, and forget all about their wants." + +Upon the theory that this was a fair return for Corey's pleasantry, the +others laughed again. + +"There is one charity," said Corey, pretending superiority to Miss +Kingsbury's point, "that is so difficult, I wonder it hasn't occurred +to a lady of your courageous invention." + +"Yes?" said Miss Kingsbury. "What is that?" + +"The occupation, by deserving poor of neat habits, of all the +beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand empty the whole summer +long, while their owners are away in their lowly cots beside the sea." + +"Yes, that is terrible," replied Miss Kingsbury, with quick +earnestness, while her eyes grew moist. "I have often thought of our +great, cool houses standing useless here, and the thousands of poor +creatures stifling in their holes and dens, and the little children +dying for wholesome shelter. How cruelly selfish we are!" + +"That is a very comfortable sentiment, Miss Kingsbury," said Corey, +"and must make you feel almost as if you had thrown open No. 31 to the +whole North End. But I am serious about this matter. I spend my +summers in town, and I occupy my own house, so that I can speak +impartially and intelligently; and I tell you that in some of my walks +on the Hill and down on the Back Bay, nothing but the surveillance of +the local policeman prevents my offering personal violence to those +long rows of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensible houses. If +I were a poor man, with a sick child pining in some garret or cellar at +the North End, I should break into one of them, and camp out on the +grand piano." + +"Surely, Bromfield," said his wife, "you don't consider what havoc such +people would make with the furniture of a nice house!" + +"That is true," answered Corey, with meek conviction. "I never thought +of that." + +"And if you were a poor man with a sick child, I doubt if you'd have so +much heart for burglary as you have now," said James Bellingham. + +"It's wonderful how patient they are," said the minister. "The +spectacle of the hopeless comfort the hard-working poor man sees must +be hard to bear." + +Lapham wanted to speak up and say that he had been there himself, and +knew how such a man felt. He wanted to tell them that generally a poor +man was satisfied if he could make both ends meet; that he didn't envy +any one his good luck, if he had earned it, so long as he wasn't +running under himself. But before he could get the courage to address +the whole table, Sewell added, "I suppose he don't always think of it." + +"But some day he WILL think about it," said Corey. "In fact, we rather +invite him to think about it, in this country." + +"My brother-in-law," said Charles Bellingham, with the pride a man +feels in a mentionably remarkable brother-in-law, "has no end of +fellows at work under him out there at Omaha, and he says it's the +fellows from countries where they've been kept from thinking about it +that are discontented. The Americans never make any trouble. They +seem to understand that so long as we give unlimited opportunity, +nobody has a right to complain." + +"What do you hear from Leslie?" asked Mrs. Corey, turning from these +profitless abstractions to Mrs. Bellingham. + +"You know," said that lady in a lower tone, "that there is another +baby?" + +"No! I hadn't heard of it!" + +"Yes; a boy. They have named him after his uncle." + +"Yes," said Charles Bellingham, joining in. "He is said to be a noble +boy, and to resemble me." + +"All boys of that tender age are noble," said Corey, "and look like +anybody you wish them to resemble. Is Leslie still home-sick for the +bean-pots of her native Boston?" + +"She is getting over it, I fancy," replied Mrs. Bellingham. "She's +very much taken up with Mr. Blake's enterprises, and leads a very +exciting life. She says she's like people who have been home from +Europe three years; she's past the most poignant stage of regret, and +hasn't reached the second, when they feel that they must go again." + +Lapham leaned a little toward Mrs. Corey, and said of a picture which +he saw on the wall opposite, "Picture of your daughter, I presume?" + +"No; my daughter's grandmother. It's a Stewart Newton; he painted a +great many Salem beauties. She was a Miss Polly Burroughs. My +daughter IS like her, don't you think?" They both looked at Nanny Corey +and then at the portrait. "Those pretty old-fashioned dresses are +coming in again. I'm not surprised you took it for her. The +others"--she referred to the other portraits more or less darkling on +the walls--"are my people; mostly Copleys." + +These names, unknown to Lapham, went to his head like the wine he was +drinking; they seemed to carry light for the moment, but a film of +deeper darkness followed. He heard Charles Bellingham telling funny +stories to Irene and trying to amuse the girl; she was laughing, and +seemed very happy. From time to time Bellingham took part in the +general talk between the host and James Bellingham and Miss Kingsbury +and that minister, Mr. Sewell. They talked of people mostly; it +astonished Lapham to hear with what freedom they talked. They +discussed these persons unsparingly; James Bellingham spoke of a man +known to Lapham for his business success and great wealth as not a +gentleman; his cousin Charles said he was surprised that the fellow had +kept from being governor so long. + +When the latter turned from Irene to make one of these excursions into +the general talk, young Corey talked to her; and Lapham caught some +words from which it seemed that they were speaking of Penelope. It +vexed him to think she had not come; she could have talked as well as +any of them; she was just as bright; and Lapham was aware that Irene +was not as bright, though when he looked at her face, triumphant in its +young beauty and fondness, he said to himself that it did not make any +difference. He felt that he was not holding up his end of the line, +however. When some one spoke to him he could only summon a few words +of reply, that seemed to lead to nothing; things often came into his +mind appropriate to what they were saying, but before he could get them +out they were off on something else; they jumped about so, he could not +keep up; but he felt, all the same, that he was not doing himself +justice. + +At one time the talk ran off upon a subject that Lapham had never heard +talked of before; but again he was vexed that Penelope was not there, +to have her say; he believed that her say would have been worth hearing. + +Miss Kingsbury leaned forward and asked Charles Bellingham if he had +read Tears, Idle Tears, the novel that was making such a sensation; and +when he said no, she said she wondered at him. "It's perfectly +heart-breaking, as you'll imagine from the name; but there's such a +dear old-fashioned hero and heroine in it, who keep dying for each +other all the way through, and making the most wildly satisfactory and +unnecessary sacrifices for each other. You feel as if you'd done them +yourself." + +"Ah, that's the secret of its success," said Bromfield Corey. "It +flatters the reader by painting the characters colossal, but with his +limp and stoop, so that he feels himself of their supernatural +proportions. You've read it, Nanny?" + +"Yes," said his daughter. "It ought to have been called Slop, Silly +Slop." + +"Oh, not quite SLOP, Nanny," pleaded Miss Kingsbury. + +"It's astonishing," said Charles Bellingham, "how we do like the books +that go for our heart-strings. And I really suppose that you can't put +a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel. We do like to +see people suffering sublimely." + +"There was talk some years ago," said James Bellingham, "about novels +going out." "They're just coming in!" cried Miss Kingsbury. + +"Yes," said Mr. Sewell, the minister. "And I don't think there ever +was a time when they formed the whole intellectual experience of more +people. They do greater mischief than ever." + +"Don't be envious, parson," said the host. + +"No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. But those +novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them--excuse me, Miss +Kingsbury--are ruinous!" + +"Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss Kingsbury?" asked the host. + +But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest possible help +to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true +proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are +altogether noxious." + +This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: "But what if +life as it is isn't amusing? Aren't we to be amused?" + +"Not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. "And the +self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----" + +"Slop, Silly Slop?" suggested the proud father of the inventor of the +phrase. + +"Yes--is nothing but psychical suicide, and is as wholly immoral as the +spectacle of a man falling upon his sword." + +"Well, I don't know but you're right, parson," said the host; and the +minister, who had apparently got upon a battle-horse of his, careered +onward in spite of some tacit attempts of his wife to seize the bridle. + +"Right? To be sure I am right. The whole business of love, and +love-making and marrying, is painted by the novelists in a monstrous +disproportion to the other relations of life. Love is very sweet, very +pretty----" + +"Oh, THANK you, Mr. Sewell," said Nanny Corey, in a way that set them +all laughing. + +"But it's the affair, commonly, of very young people, who have not yet +character and experience enough to make them interesting. In novels +it's treated, not only as if it were the chief interest of life, but +the sole interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons; and it +is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow of a true passion lasts +for ever; and that it is sacrilege to think or act otherwise." "Well, +but isn't that true, Mr. Sewell?" pleaded Miss Kingsbury. + +"I have known some most estimable people who had married a second +time," said the minister, and then he had the applause with him. +Lapham wanted to make some open recognition of his good sense, but +could not. + +"I suppose the passion itself has been a good deal changed," said +Bromfield Corey, "since the poets began to idealise it in the days of +chivalry." + +"Yes; and it ought to be changed again," said Mr. Sewell. + +"What! Back?" + +"I don't say that. But it ought to be recognised as something natural +and mortal, and divine honours, which belong to righteousness alone, +ought not to be paid it." + +"Oh, you ask too much, parson," laughed his host, and the talk wandered +away to something else. + +It was not an elaborate dinner; but Lapham was used to having +everything on the table at once, and this succession of dishes +bewildered him; he was afraid perhaps he was eating too much. He now +no longer made any pretence of not drinking his wine, for he was +thirsty, and there was no more water, and he hated to ask for any. The +ice-cream came, and then the fruit. Suddenly Mrs. Corey rose, and said +across the table to her husband, "I suppose you will want your coffee +here." And he replied, "Yes; we'll join you at tea." + +The ladies all rose, and the gentlemen got up with them. Lapham +started to follow Mrs. Corey, but the other men merely stood in their +places, except young Corey, who ran and opened the door for his mother. +Lapham thought with shame that it was he who ought to have done that; +but no one seemed to notice, and he sat down again gladly, after +kicking out one of his legs which had gone to sleep. + +They brought in cigars with coffee, and Bromfield Corey advised Lapham +to take one that he chose for him. Lapham confessed that he liked a +good cigar about as well as anybody, and Corey said: "These are new. I +had an Englishman here the other day who was smoking old cigars in the +superstition that tobacco improved with age, like wine." + +"Ah," said Lapham, "anybody who had ever lived off a tobacco country +could tell him better than that." With the fuming cigar between his +lips he felt more at home than he had before. He turned sidewise in +his chair and, resting one arm on the back, intertwined the fingers of +both hands, and smoked at large ease. James Bellingham came and sat +down by him. "Colonel Lapham, weren't you with the 96th Vermont when +they charged across the river in front of Pickensburg, and the rebel +battery opened fire on them in the water?" + +Lapham slowly shut his eyes and slowly dropped his head for assent, +letting out a white volume of smoke from the corner of his mouth. + +"I thought so," said Bellingham. "I was with the 85th Massachusetts, +and I sha'n't forget that slaughter. We were all new to it still. +Perhaps that's why it made such an impression." + +"I don't know," suggested Charles Bellingham. "Was there anything much +more impressive afterward? I read of it out in Missouri, where I was +stationed at the time, and I recollect the talk of some old army men +about it. They said that death-rate couldn't be beaten. I don't know +that it ever was." + +"About one in five of us got out safe," said Lapham, breaking his +cigar-ash off on the edge of a plate. James Bellingham reached him a +bottle of Apollinaris. He drank a glass, and then went on smoking. + +They all waited, as if expecting him to speak, and then Corey said: +"How incredible those things seem already! You gentlemen KNOW that +they happened; but are you still able to believe it?" + +"Ah, nobody FEELS that anything happened," said Charles Bellingham. +"The past of one's experience doesn't differ a great deal from the past +of one's knowledge. It isn't much more probable; it's really a great +deal less vivid than some scenes in a novel that one read when a boy." + +"I'm not sure of that," said James Bellingham. + +"Well, James, neither am I," consented his cousin, helping himself from +Lapham's Apollinaris bottle. "There would be very little talking at +dinner if one only said the things that one was sure of." + +The others laughed, and Bromfield Corey remarked thoughtfully, "What +astonishes the craven civilian in all these things is the +abundance--the superabundance--of heroism. The cowards were the +exception; the men that were ready to die, the rule." + +"The woods were full of them," said Lapham, without taking his cigar +from his mouth. + +"That's a nice little touch in School," interposed Charles Bellingham, +"where the girl says to the fellow who was at Inkerman, 'I should think +you would be so proud of it,' and he reflects a while, and says, 'Well, +the fact is, you know, there were so many of us.'" + +"Yes, I remember that," said James Bellingham, smiling for pleasure in +it. "But I don't see why you claim the credit of being a craven +civilian, Bromfield," he added, with a friendly glance at his +brother-in-law, and with the willingness Boston men often show to turn +one another's good points to the light in company; bred so intimately +together at school and college and in society, they all know these +points. "A man who was out with Garibaldi in '48," continued James +Bellingham. + +"Oh, a little amateur red-shirting," Corey interrupted in deprecation. +"But even if you choose to dispute my claim, what has become of all the +heroism? Tom, how many club men do you know who would think it sweet +and fitting to die for their country?" + +"I can't think of a great many at the moment, sir," replied the son, +with the modesty of his generation. + +"And I couldn't in '61," said his uncle. "Nevertheless they were +there." + +"Then your theory is that it's the occasion that is wanting," said +Bromfield Corey. "But why shouldn't civil service reform, and the +resumption of specie payment, and a tariff for revenue only, inspire +heroes? They are all good causes." + +"It's the occasion that's wanting," said James Bellingham, ignoring the +persiflage. "And I'm very glad of it." + +"So am I," said Lapham, with a depth of feeling that expressed itself +in spite of the haze in which his brain seemed to float. There was a +great deal of the talk that he could not follow; it was too quick for +him; but here was something he was clear of. "I don't want to see any +more men killed in my time." Something serious, something sombre must +lurk behind these words, and they waited for Lapham to say more; but +the haze closed round him again, and he remained silent, drinking +Apollinaris. + +"We non-combatants were notoriously reluctant to give up fighting," +said Mr. Sewell, the minister; "but I incline to think Colonel Lapham +and Mr. Bellingham may be right. I dare say we shall have the heroism +again if we have the occasion. Till it comes, we must content +ourselves with the every-day generosities and sacrifices. They make up +in quantity what they lack in quality, perhaps." "They're not so +picturesque," said Bromfield Corey. "You can paint a man dying for his +country, but you can't express on canvas a man fulfilling the duties of +a good citizen." + +"Perhaps the novelists will get at him by and by," suggested Charles +Bellingham. "If I were one of these fellows, I shouldn't propose to +myself anything short of that." + +"What? the commonplace?" asked his cousin. + +"Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light, impalpable, aerial +essence which they've never got into their confounded books yet. The +novelist who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people +would have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth' on his +tongue." + +"Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," said the host; and Lapham looked from +one to the other, trying to make out what they were at. He had never +been so up a tree before. + +"I suppose it isn't well for us to see human nature at white heat +habitually," continued Bromfield Corey, after a while. "It would make +us vain of our species. Many a poor fellow in that war and in many +another has gone into battle simply and purely for his country's sake, +not knowing whether, if he laid down his life, he should ever find it +again, or whether, if he took it up hereafter, he should take it up in +heaven or hell. Come, parson!" he said, turning to the minister, "what +has ever been conceived of omnipotence, of omniscience, so sublime, so +divine as that?" + +"Nothing," answered the minister quietly. "God has never been imagined +at all. But if you suppose such a man as that was Authorised, I think +it will help you to imagine what God must be." + +"There's sense in that," said Lapham. He took his cigar out of his +mouth, and pulled his chair a little toward the table, on which he +placed his ponderous fore-arms. "I want to tell you about a fellow I +had in my own company when we first went out. We were all privates to +begin with; after a while they elected me captain--I'd had the tavern +stand, and most of 'em knew me. But Jim Millon never got to be +anything more than corporal; corporal when he was killed." The others +arrested themselves in various attitudes of attention, and remained +listening to Lapham with an interest that profoundly flattered him. +Now, at last, he felt that he was holding up his end of the rope. "I +can't say he went into the thing from the highest motives, altogether; +our motives are always pretty badly mixed, and when there's such a +hurrah-boys as there was then, you can't tell which is which. I +suppose Jim Millon's wife was enough to account for his going, herself. +She was a pretty bad assortment," said Lapham, lowering his voice and +glancing round at the door to make sure that it was shut, "and she used +to lead Jim ONE kind of life. Well, sir," continued Lapham, +synthetising his auditors in that form of address, "that fellow used to +save every cent of his pay and send it to that woman. Used to get me +to do it for him. I tried to stop him. 'Why, Jim,' said I, 'you know +what she'll do with it.' 'That's so, Cap,' says he, 'but I don't know +what she'll do without it.' And it did keep her straight--straight as a +string--as long as Jim lasted. Seemed as if there was something +mysterious about it. They had a little girl,--about as old as my +oldest girl,--and Jim used to talk to me about her. Guess he done it +as much for her as for the mother; and he said to me before the last +action we went into, 'I should like to turn tail and run, Cap. I ain't +comin' out o' this one. But I don't suppose it would do.' 'Well, not +for you, Jim,' said I. 'I want to live,' he says; and he bust out +crying right there in my tent. 'I want to live for poor Molly and +Zerrilla'--that's what they called the little one; I dunno where they +got the name. 'I ain't ever had half a chance; and now she's doing +better, and I believe we should get along after this.' He set there +cryin' like a baby. But he wa'n't no baby when he went into action. I +hated to look at him after it was over, not so much because he'd got a +ball that was meant for me by a sharpshooter--he saw the devil takin' +aim, and he jumped to warn me--as because he didn't look like Jim; he +looked like--fun; all desperate and savage. I guess he died hard." + +The story made its impression, and Lapham saw it. "Now I say," he +resumed, as if he felt that he was going to do himself justice, and say +something to heighten the effect his story had produced. At the same +time he was aware of a certain want of clearness. He had the idea, but +it floated vague, elusive, in his brain. He looked about as if for +something to precipitate it in tangible shape. + +"Apollinaris?" asked Charles Bellingham, handing the bottle from the +other side. He had drawn his chair closer than the rest to Lapham's, +and was listening with great interest. When Mrs. Corey asked him to +meet Lapham, he accepted gladly. "You know I go in for that sort of +thing, Anna. Since Leslie's affair we're rather bound to do it. And I +think we meet these practical fellows too little. There's always +something original about them." He might naturally have believed that +the reward of his faith was coming. + +"Thanks, I will take some of this wine," said Lapham, pouring himself a +glass of Madeira from a black and dusty bottle caressed by a label +bearing the date of the vintage. He tossed off the wine, unconscious +of its preciousness, and waited for the result. That cloudiness in his +brain disappeared before it, but a mere blank remained. He not only +could not remember what he was going to say, but he could not recall +what they had been talking about. They waited, looking at him, and he +stared at them in return. After a while he heard the host saying, +"Shall we join the ladies?" + +Lapham went, trying to think what had happened. It seemed to him a +long time since he had drunk that wine. + +Miss Corey gave him a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from his wife, +who was talking with Miss Kingsbury and Mrs. Sewell; Irene was with +Miss Nanny Corey. He could not hear what they were talking about; but +if Penelope had come, he knew that she would have done them all credit. +He meant to let her know how he felt about her behaviour when he got +home. It was a shame for her to miss such a chance. Irene was looking +beautiful, as pretty as all the rest of them put together, but she was +not talking, and Lapham perceived that at a dinner-party you ought to +talk. He was himself conscious of having, talked very well. He now +wore an air of great dignity, and, in conversing with the other +gentlemen, he used a grave and weighty deliberation. Some of them +wanted him to go into the library. There he gave his ideas of books. +He said he had not much time for anything but the papers; but he was +going to have a complete library in his new place. He made an +elaborate acknowledgment to Bromfield Corey of his son's kindness in +suggesting books for his library; he said that he had ordered them all, +and that he meant to have pictures. He asked Mr. Corey who was about +the best American painter going now. "I don't set up to be a judge of +pictures, but I know what I like," he said. He lost the reserve which +he had maintained earlier, and began to boast. He himself introduced +the subject of his paint, in a natural transition from pictures; he +said Mr. Corey must take a run up to Lapham with him some day, and see +the Works; they would interest him, and he would drive him round the +country; he kept most of his horses up there, and he could show Mr. +Corey some of the finest Jersey grades in the country. He told about +his brother William, the judge at Dubuque; and a farm he had out there +that paid for itself every year in wheat. As he cast off all fear, his +voice rose, and he hammered his arm-chair with the thick of his hand +for emphasis. Mr. Corey seemed impressed; he sat perfectly quiet, +listening, and Lapham saw the other gentlemen stop in their talk every +now and then to listen. After this proof of his ability to interest +them, he would have liked to have Mrs. Lapham suggest again that he was +unequal to their society, or to the society of anybody else. He +surprised himself by his ease among men whose names had hitherto +overawed him. He got to calling Bromfield Corey by his surname alone. +He did not understand why young Corey seemed so preoccupied, and he +took occasion to tell the company how he had said to his wife the first +time he saw that fellow that he could make a man of him if he had him +in the business; and he guessed he was not mistaken. He began to tell +stories of the different young men he had had in his employ. At last +he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, and he +talked unceasingly. It was a great time; it was a triumph. + +He was in this successful mood when word came to him that Mrs. Lapham +was going; Tom Corey seemed to have brought it, but he was not sure. +Anyway, he was not going to hurry. He made cordial invitations to each +of the gentlemen to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be +satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each. He told Charles +Bellingham that he liked him, and assured James Bellingham that it had +always been his ambition to know him, and that if any one had said when +he first came to Boston that in less than ten years he should be +hobnobbing with Jim Bellingham, he should have told that person he +lied. He would have told anybody he lied that had told him ten years +ago that a son of Bromfield Corey would have come and asked him to take +him into the business. Ten years ago he, Silas Lapham, had come to +Boston a little worse off than nothing at all, for he was in debt for +half the money that he had bought out his partner with, and here he was +now worth a million, and meeting you gentlemen like one of you. And +every cent of that was honest money,--no speculation,--every copper of +it for value received. And here, only the other day, his old partner, +who had been going to the dogs ever since he went out of the business, +came and borrowed twenty thousand dollars of him! Lapham lent it +because his wife wanted him to: she had always felt bad about the +fellow's having to go out of the business. + +He took leave of Mr. Sewell with patronising affection, and bade him +come to him if he ever got into a tight place with his parish work; he +would let him have all the money he wanted; he had more money than he +knew what to do with. "Why, when your wife sent to mine last fall," he +said, turning to Mr. Corey, "I drew my cheque for five hundred dollars, +but my wife wouldn't take more than one hundred; said she wasn't going +to show off before Mrs. Corey. I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs. +Corey. I must tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of a cool four +hundred dollars." + +He started toward the door of the drawing-room to take leave of the +ladies; but Tom Corey was at his elbow, saying, "I think Mrs. Lapham is +waiting for you below, sir," and in obeying the direction Corey gave +him toward another door he forgot all about his purpose, and came away +without saying good-night to his hostess. + +Mrs. Lapham had not known how soon she ought to go, and had no idea +that in her quality of chief guest she was keeping the others. She +stayed till eleven o'clock, and was a little frightened when she found +what time it was; but Mrs. Corey, without pressing her to stay longer, +had said it was not at all late. She and Irene had had a perfect time. +Everybody had been very polite, on the way home they celebrated the +amiability of both the Miss Coreys and of Miss Kingsbury. Mrs. Lapham +thought that Mrs. Bellingham was about the pleasantest person she ever +saw; she had told her all about her married daughter who had married an +inventor and gone to live in Omaha--a Mrs. Blake. + +"If it's that car-wheel Blake," said Lapham proudly, "I know all about +him. I've sold him tons of the paint." + +"Pooh, papa! How you do smell of smoking!" cried Irene. + +"Pretty strong, eh?" laughed Lapham, letting down a window of the +carriage. His heart was throbbing wildly in the close air, and he was +glad of the rush of cold that came in, though it stopped his tongue, +and he listened more and more drowsily to the rejoicings that his wife +and daughter exchanged. He meant to have them wake Penelope up and +tell her what she had lost; but when he reached home he was too sleepy +to suggest it. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, +full of supreme triumph. + +But in the morning his skull was sore with the unconscious, night-long +ache; and he rose cross and taciturn. They had a silent breakfast. In +the cold grey light of the morning the glories of the night before +showed poorer. Here and there a painful doubt obtruded itself and +marred them with its awkward shadow. Penelope sent down word that she +was not well, and was not coming to breakfast, and Lapham was glad to +go to his office without seeing her. + +He was severe and silent all day with his clerks, and peremptory with +customers. Of Corey he was slyly observant, and as the day wore away +he grew more restively conscious. He sent out word by his office-boy +that he would like to see Mr. Corey for a few minutes after closing. +The type-writer girl had lingered too, as if she wished to speak with +him, and Corey stood in abeyance as she went toward Lapham's door. + +"Can't see you to-night, Zerrilla," he said bluffly, but not unkindly. +"Perhaps I'll call at the house, if it's important." + +"It is," said the girl, with a spoiled air of insistence. + +"Well," said Lapham, and, nodding to Corey to enter, he closed the door +upon her. Then he turned to the young, man and demanded: "Was I drunk +last night?" + + + +XV. + + +LAPHAM'S strenuous face was broken up with the emotions that had forced +him to this question: shame, fear of the things that must have been +thought of him, mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, +which died out at the shocked and pitying look in Corey's eyes. + +"Was I drunk?" he repeated. "I ask you, because I was never touched by +drink in my life before, and I don't know." He stood with his huge +hands trembling on the back of his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he +stared at Corey. + +"That is what every one understood, Colonel Lapham," said the young +man. "Every one saw how it was. Don't----" + +"Did they talk it over after I left?" asked Lapham vulgarly. + +"Excuse me," said Corey, blushing, "my father doesn't talk his guests +over with one another." He added, with youthful superfluity, "You were +among gentlemen." + +"I was the only one that wasn't a gentleman there!" lamented Lapham. +"I disgraced you! I disgraced my family! I mortified your father before +his friends!" His head dropped. "I showed that I wasn't fit to go with +you. I'm not fit for any decent place. What did I say? What did I +do?" he asked, suddenly lifting his head and confronting Corey. "Out +with it! If you could bear to see it and hear it, I had ought to bear +to know it!" + +"There was nothing--really nothing," said Corey. "Beyond the fact that +you were not quite yourself, there was nothing whatever. My father DID +speak of it to me," he confessed, "when we were alone. He said that he +was afraid we had not been thoughtful of you, if you were in the habit +of taking only water; I told him I had not seen wine at your table. +The others said nothing about you." + +"Ah, but what did they think?" + +"Probably what we did: that it was purely a misfortune--an accident." + +"I wasn't fit to be there," persisted Lapham. "Do you want to leave?" +he asked, with savage abruptness. + +"Leave?" faltered the young man. + +"Yes; quit the business? Cut the whole connection?" + +"I haven't the remotest idea of it!" cried Corey in amazement. "Why in +the world should I?" "Because you're a gentleman, and I'm not, and it +ain't right I should be over you. If you want to go, I know some +parties that would be glad to get you. I will give you up if you want +to go before anything worse happens, and I shan't blame you. I can +help you to something better than I can offer you here, and I will." + +"There's no question of my going, unless you wish it," said Corey. "If +you do----" + +"Will you tell your father," interrupted Lapham, "that I had a notion +all the time that I was acting the drunken blackguard, and that I've +suffered for it all day? Will you tell him I don't want him to notice +me if we ever meet, and that I know I'm not fit to associate with +gentlemen in anything but a business way, if I am that?" + +"Certainly I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Corey. "I can't +listen to you any longer. What you say is shocking to me--shocking in +a way you can't think." + +"Why, man!" exclaimed Lapham, with astonishment; "if I can stand it, +YOU can!" + +"No," said Corey, with a sick look, "that doesn't follow. You may +denounce yourself, if you will; but I have my reasons for refusing to +hear you--my reasons why I CAN'T hear you. If you say another word I +must go away." + +"I don't understand you," faltered Lapham, in bewilderment, which +absorbed even his shame. + +"You exaggerate the effect of what has happened," said the young man. +"It's enough, more than enough, for you to have mentioned the matter to +me, and I think it's unbecoming in me to hear you." + +He made a movement toward the door, but Lapham stopped him with the +tragic humility of his appeal. "Don't go yet! I can't let you. I've +disgusted you,--I see that; but I didn't mean to. I--I take it back." + +"Oh, there's nothing to take back," said Corey, with a repressed +shudder for the abasement which he had seen. "But let us say no more +about it--think no more. There wasn't one of the gentlemen present +last night who didn't understand the matter precisely as my father and +I did, and that fact must end it between us two." + +He went out into the larger office beyond, leaving Lapham helpless to +prevent his going. It had become a vital necessity with him to think +the best of Lapham, but his mind was in a whirl of whatever thoughts +were most injurious. He thought of him the night before in the company +of those ladies and gentlemen, and he quivered in resentment of his +vulgar, braggart, uncouth nature. He recognised his own allegiance to +the exclusiveness to which he was born and bred, as a man perceives his +duty to his country when her rights are invaded. His eye fell on the +porter going about in his shirt-sleeves to make the place fast for the +night, and he said to himself that Dennis was not more plebeian than +his master; that the gross appetites, the blunt sense, the purblind +ambition, the stupid arrogance were the same in both, and the +difference was in a brute will that probably left the porter the +gentler man of the two. The very innocence of Lapham's life in the +direction in which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's +mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience. Amidst the +stings and flashes of his wounded pride, all the social traditions, all +the habits of feeling, which he had silenced more and more by force of +will during the past months, asserted their natural sway, and he rioted +in his contempt of the offensive boor, who was even more offensive in +his shame than in his trespass. He said to himself that he was a +Corey, as if that were somewhat; yet he knew that at the bottom of his +heart all the time was that which must control him at last, and which +seemed sweetly to be suffering his rebellion, secure of his submission +in the end. It was almost with the girl's voice that it seemed to +plead with him, to undo in him, effect by effect, the work of his +indignant resentment, to set all things in another and fairer light, to +give him hopes, to suggest palliations, to protest against injustices. +It WAS in Lapham's favour that he was so guiltless in the past, and now +Corey asked himself if it were the first time he could have wished a +guest at his father's table to have taken less wine; whether Lapham was +not rather to be honoured for not knowing how to contain his folly +where a veteran transgressor might have held his tongue. He asked +himself, with a thrill of sudden remorse, whether, when Lapham humbled +himself in the dust so shockingly, he had shown him the sympathy to +which such ABANDON had the right; and he had to own that he had met him +on the gentlemanly ground, sparing himself and asserting the +superiority of his sort, and not recognising that Lapham's humiliation +came from the sense of wrong, which he had helped to accumulate upon +him by superfinely standing aloof and refusing to touch him. + +He shut his desk and hurried out into the early night, not to go +anywhere, but to walk up and down, to try to find his way out of the +chaos, which now seemed ruin, and now the materials out of which fine +actions and a happy life might be shaped. Three hours later he stood +at Lapham's door. + +At times what he now wished to do had seemed for ever impossible, and +again it had seemed as if he could not wait a moment longer. He had +not been careless, but very mindful of what he knew must be the +feelings of his own family in regard to the Laphams, and he had not +concealed from himself that his family had great reason and justice on +their side in not wishing him to alienate himself from their common +life and associations. The most that he could urge to himself was that +they had not all the reason and justice; but he had hesitated and +delayed because they had so much. Often he could not make it appear +right that he should merely please himself in what chiefly concerned +himself. He perceived how far apart in all their experiences and +ideals the Lapham girls and his sisters were; how different Mrs. Lapham +was from his mother; how grotesquely unlike were his father and Lapham; +and the disparity had not always amused him. + +He had often taken it very seriously, and sometimes he said that he +must forego the hope on which his heart was set. There had been many +times in the past months when he had said that he must go no further, +and as often as he had taken this stand he had yielded it, upon this or +that excuse, which he was aware of trumping up. It was part of the +complication that he should be unconscious of the injury he might be +doing to some one besides his family and himself; this was the defect +of his diffidence; and it had come to him in a pang for the first time +when his mother said that she would not have the Laphams think she +wished to make more of the acquaintance than he did; and then it had +come too late. Since that he had suffered quite as much from the fear +that it might not be as that it might be so; and now, in the mood, +romantic and exalted, in which he found himself concerning Lapham, he +was as far as might be from vain confidence. He ended the question in +his own mind by affirming to himself that he was there, first of all, +to see Lapham and give him an ultimate proof of his own perfect faith +and unabated respect, and to offer him what reparation this involved +for that want of sympathy--of humanity--which he had shown. + + + +XVI. + + +THE Nova Scotia second-girl who answered Corey's ring said that Lapham +had not come home yet. + +"Oh," said the young man, hesitating on the outer step. + +"I guess you better come in," said the girl, "I'll go and see when +they're expecting him." + +Corey was in the mood to be swayed by any chance. He obeyed the +suggestion of the second-girl's patronising friendliness, and let her +shut him into the drawing-room, while she went upstairs to announce him +to Penelope. "Did you tell him father wasn't at home?" + +"Yes. He seemed so kind of disappointed, I told him to come in, and I'd +see when he WOULD be in," said the girl, with the human interest which +sometimes replaces in the American domestic the servile deference of +other countries. + +A gleam of amusement passed over Penelope's face, as she glanced at +herself in the glass. "Well," she cried finally, dropping from her +shoulders the light shawl in which she had been huddled over a book +when Corey rang, "I will go down." + +"All right," said the girl, and Penelope began hastily to amend the +disarray of her hair, which she tumbled into a mass on the top of her +little head, setting off the pale dark of her complexion with a flash +of crimson ribbon at her throat. She moved across the carpet once or +twice with the quaint grace that belonged to her small figure, made a +dissatisfied grimace at it in the glass, caught a handkerchief out of a +drawer and slid it into her pocket, and then descended to Corey. + +The Lapham drawing-room in Nankeen Square was in the parti-coloured +paint which the Colonel had hoped to repeat in his new house: the trim +of the doors and windows was in light green and the panels in salmon; +the walls were a plain tint of French grey paper, divided by gilt +mouldings into broad panels with a wide stripe of red velvet paper +running up the corners; the chandelier was of massive imitation bronze; +the mirror over the mantel rested on a fringed mantel-cover of green +reps, and heavy curtains of that stuff hung from gilt lambrequin frames +at the window; the carpet was of a small pattern in crude green, which, +at the time Mrs. Lapham bought it, covered half the new floors in +Boston. In the panelled spaces on the walls were some stone-coloured +landscapes, representing the mountains and canyons of the West, which +the Colonel and his wife had visited on one of the early official +railroad excursions. In front of the long windows looking into the +Square were statues, kneeling figures which turned their backs upon the +company within-doors, and represented allegories of Faith and Prayer to +people without. A white marble group of several figures, expressing an +Italian conception of Lincoln Freeing the Slaves,--a Latin negro and +his wife,--with our Eagle flapping his wings in approval, at Lincoln's +feet, occupied one corner, and balanced the what-not of an earlier +period in another. These phantasms added their chill to that imparted +by the tone of the walls, the landscapes, and the carpets, and +contributed to the violence of the contrast when the chandelier was +lighted up full glare, and the heat of the whole furnace welled up from +the registers into the quivering atmosphere on one of the rare +occasions when the Laphams invited company. + +Corey had not been in this room before; the family had always received +him in what they called the sitting-room. Penelope looked into this +first, and then she looked into the parlour, with a smile that broke +into a laugh as she discovered him standing under the single burner +which the second-girl had lighted for him in the chandelier. + +"I don't understand how you came to be put in there," she said, as she +led the way to the cozier place, "unless it was because Alice thought +you were only here on probation, anyway. Father hasn't got home yet, +but I'm expecting him every moment; I don't know what's keeping him. +Did the girl tell you that mother and Irene were out?" + +"No, she didn't say. It's very good of you to see me." She had not +seen the exaltation which he had been feeling, he perceived with half a +sigh; it must all be upon this lower level; perhaps it was best so. +"There was something I wished to say to your father----I hope," he +broke off, "you're better to-night." + +"Oh yes, thank you," said Penelope, remembering that she had not been +well enough to go to dinner the night before. + +"We all missed you very much." + +"Oh, thank you! I'm afraid you wouldn't have missed me if I had been +there." + +"Oh yes, we should," said Corey, "I assure you." + +They looked at each other. + +"I really think I believed I was saying something," said the girl. + +"And so did I," replied the young man. They laughed rather wildly, and +then they both became rather grave. + +He took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, where she sat +on the other side of the hearth, in a chair lower than his, with her +hands dropped in her lap, and the back of her head on her shoulders as +she looked up at him. The soft-coal fire in the grate purred and +flickered; the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face. She let +her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant glance at the +clock on the mantel. + +"Mother and Irene have gone to the Spanish Students' concert." + +"Oh, have they?" asked Corey; and he put his hat, which he had been +holding in his hand, on the floor beside his chair. + +She looked down at it for no reason, and then looked up at his face for +no other, and turned a little red. Corey turned a little red himself. +She who had always been so easy with him now became a little +constrained. + +"Do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?" he asked. + +"No, is it warm? I haven't been out all day." + +"It's like a summer night." + +She turned her face towards the fire, and then started abruptly. +"Perhaps it's too warm for you here?" + +"Oh no, it's very comfortable." + +"I suppose it's the cold of the last few days that's still in the +house. I was reading with a shawl on when you came." + +"I interrupted you." + +"Oh no. I had finished the book. I was just looking over it again." + +"Do you like to read books over?" + +"Yes; books that I like at all." + +"That was it?" asked Corey. + +The girl hesitated. "It has rather a sentimental name. Did you ever +read it?--Tears, Idle Tears." + +"Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous book with +ladies. They break their hearts over it. Did it make you cry?" + +"Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said Penelope, laughing; +"and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. Then +the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I +guess it's rather forced." + +"Her giving him up to the other one?" + +"Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared +for him first. Why should she have done it? What right had she?" + +"I don't know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice----" + +"But it WASN'T self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone. She was +sacrificing him too; and for some one who couldn't appreciate him half +as much as she could. I'm provoked with myself when I think how I +cried over that book--for I did cry. It's silly--it's wicked for any +one to do what that girl did. Why can't they let people have a chance +to behave reasonably in stories?" + +"Perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," suggested Corey, with a +smile. + +"It would be novel, at any rate," said the girl. "But so it would in +real life, I suppose," she added. + +"I don't know. Why shouldn't people in love behave sensibly?" + +"That's a very serious question," said Penelope gravely. "I couldn't +answer it," and she left him the embarrassment of supporting an inquiry +which she had certainly instigated herself. She seemed to have finally +recovered her own ease in doing this. "Do you admire our autumnal +display, Mr. Corey?" + +"Your display?" + +"The trees in the Square. WE think it's quite equal to an opening at +Jordan & Marsh's." + +"Ah, I'm afraid you wouldn't let me be serious even about your maples." + +"Oh yes, I should--if you like to be serious." + +"Don't you?" + +"Well not about serious matters. That's the reason that book made me +cry." + +"You make fun of everything. Miss Irene was telling me last night +about you." + +"Then it's no use for me to deny it so soon. I must give Irene a +talking to." + +"I hope you won't forbid her to talk about you!" + +She had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, now between her +face and the fire, and now between her face and him. Her little +visage, with that arch, lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky +hair, and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, had a +Japanese effect in the subdued light, and it had the charm which comes +to any woman with happiness. It would be hard to say how much of this +she perceived that he felt. They talked about other things a while, +and then she came back to what he had said. She glanced at him +obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it. "Does Irene talk about +me?" she asked. "I think so--yes. Perhaps it's only I who talk about +you. You must blame me if it's wrong," he returned. + +"Oh, I didn't say it was wrong," she replied. "But I hope if you said +anything very bad of me you'll let me know what it was, so that I can +reform----" + +"No, don't change, please!" cried the young man. + +Penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely,--"or rebuke you +for speaking evil of dignities." She looked down at the fan, now flat +in her lap, and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she +remained looking down. Again they let the talk stray, and then it was +he who brought it back to themselves, as if it had not left them. + +"I have to talk OF you," said Corey, "because I get to talk TO you so +seldom." + +"You mean that I do all the talking when we're--together?" She glanced +sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking the last word. + +"We're so seldom together," he pursued. + +"I don't know what you mean----" + +"Sometimes I've thought--I've been afraid that you avoided me." + +"Avoided you?" + +"Yes! Tried not to be alone with me." + +She might have told him that there was no reason why she should be +alone with him, and that it was very strange he should make this +complaint of her. But she did not. She kept looking down at the fan, +and then she lifted her burning face and looked at the clock again. +"Mother and Irene will be sorry to miss you," she gasped. + +He instantly rose and came towards her. She rose too, and mechanically +put out her hand. He took it as if to say good-night. "I didn't mean +to send you away," she besought him. + +"Oh, I'm not going," he answered simply. "I wanted to say--to say that +it's I who make her talk about you. To say I----There is something I +want to say to you; I've said it so often to myself that I feel as if +you must know it." She stood quite still, letting him keep her hand, +and questioning his face with a bewildered gaze. "You MUST know--she +must have told you--she must have guessed----" Penelope turned white, +but outwardly quelled the panic that sent the blood to her heart. +"I--I didn't expect--I hoped to have seen your father--but I must speak +now, whatever----I love you!" + +She freed her hand from both of those he had closed upon it, and went +back from him across the room with a sinuous spring. "ME!" Whatever +potential complicity had lurked in her heart, his words brought her +only immeasurable dismay. + +He came towards her again. "Yes, you. Who else?" + +She fended him off with an imploring gesture. "I thought--I--it +was----" + +She shut her lips tight, and stood looking at him where he remained in +silent amaze. Then her words came again, shudderingly. "Oh, what have +you done?" + +"Upon my soul," he said, with a vague smile, "I don't know. I hope no +harm?" + +"Oh, don't laugh!" she cried, laughing hysterically herself. "Unless +you want me to think you the greatest wretch in the world!" + +"I?" he responded. "For heaven's sake tell me what you mean!" + +"You know I can't tell you. Can you say--can you put your hand on your +heart and say that--you--say you never meant--that you meant me--all +along?" + +"Yes!--yes! Who else? I came here to see your father, and to tell him +that I wished to tell you this--to ask him----But what does it matter? +You must have known it--you must have seen--and it's for you to answer +me. I've been abrupt, I know, and I've startled you; but if you love +me, you can forgive that to my loving you so long before I spoke." + +She gazed at him with parted lips. + +"Oh, mercy! What shall I do? If it's true--what you say--you must go!" +she said. "And you must never come any more. Do you promise that?" + +"Certainly not," said the young man. "Why should I promise such a +thing--so abominably wrong? I could obey if you didn't love me----" + +"Oh, I don't! Indeed I don't! Now will you obey." + +"No. I don't believe you." "Oh!" + +He possessed himself of her hand again. + +"My love--my dearest! What is this trouble, that you can't tell it? It +can't be anything about yourself. If it is anything about any one +else, it wouldn't make the least difference in the world, no matter +what it was. I would be only too glad to show by any act or deed I +could that nothing could change me towards you." + +"Oh, you don't understand!" + +"No, I don't. You must tell me." + +"I will never do that." + +"Then I will stay here till your mother comes, and ask her what it is." + +"Ask HER?" + +"Yes! Do you think I will give you up till I know why I must?" + +"You force me to it! Will you go if I tell you, and never let any human +creature know what you have said to me?" + +"Not unless you give me leave." + +"That will be never. Well, then----" She stopped, and made two or +three ineffectual efforts to begin again. "No, no! I can't. You must +go!" + +"I will not go!" + +"You said you--loved me. If you do, you will go." + +He dropped the hands he had stretched towards her, and she hid her face +in her own. + +"There!" she said, turning it suddenly upon him. "Sit down there. And +will you promise me--on your honour--not to speak--not to try to +persuade me--not to--touch me? You won't touch me?" + +"I will obey you, Penelope." + +"As if you were never to see me again? As if I were dying?" + +"I will do what you say. But I shall see you again; and don't talk of +dying. This is the beginning of life----" + +"No. It's the end," said the girl, resuming at last something of the +hoarse drawl which the tumult of her feeling had broken into those +half-articulate appeals. She sat down too, and lifted her face towards +him. "It's the end of life for me, because I know now that I must have +been playing false from the beginning. You don't know what I mean, and +I can never tell you. It isn't my secret--it's some one else's. +You--you must never come here again. I can't tell you why, and you +must never try to know. Do you promise?" + +"You can forbid me. I must do what you say." + +"I do forbid you, then. And you shall not think I am cruel----" + +"How could I think that?" + +"Oh, how hard you make it!" + +Corey laughed for very despair. "Can I make it easier by disobeying +you?" + +"I know I am talking crazily. But I'm not crazy." + +"No, no," he said, with some wild notion of comforting her; "but try to +tell me this trouble! There is nothing under heaven--no calamity, no +sorrow--that I wouldn't gladly share with you, or take all upon myself +if I could!" + +"I know! But this you can't. Oh, my----" + +"Dearest! Wait! Think! Let me ask your mother--your father----" + +She gave a cry. + +"No! If you do that, you will make me hate you! Will you----" + +The rattling of a latch-key was heard in the outer door. + +"Promise!" cried Penelope. + +"Oh, I promise!" + +"Good-bye!" She suddenly flung her arms round his neck, and, pressing +her cheek tight against his, flashed out of the room by one door as her +father entered it by another. + +Corey turned to him in a daze. "I--I called to speak with you--about a +matter----But it's so late now. I'll--I'll see you to-morrow." + +"No time like the present," said Lapham, with a fierceness that did not +seem referable to Corey. He had his hat still on, and he glared at the +young man out of his blue eyes with a fire that something else must +have kindled there. + +"I really can't now," said Corey weakly. "It will do quite as well +to-morrow. Good night, sir." + +"Good night," answered Lapham abruptly, following him to the door, and +shutting it after him. "I think the devil must have got into pretty +much everybody to-night," he muttered, coming back to the room, where +he put down his hat. Then he went to the kitchen-stairs and called +down, "Hello, Alice! I want something to eat!" + + + +XVII. + + +"WHAT's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast any more?" +asked Lapham, when he met his wife at the table in the morning. He had +been up an hour and a half, and he spoke with the severity of a hungry +man. "It seems to me they don't amount to ANYthing. Here I am, at my +time of life, up the first one in the house. I ring the bell for the +cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the +table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but I never see +anybody but you till I go to the office." + +"Oh yes, you do, Si," said his wife soothingly. "The girls are nearly +always down. But they're young, and it tires them more than it does us +to get up early." + +"They can rest afterwards. They don't do anything after they ARE up," +grumbled Lapham. + +"Well, that's your fault, ain't it? You oughtn't to have made so much +money, and then they'd have had to work." She laughed at Lapham's +Spartan mood, and went on to excuse the young people. "Irene's been up +two nights hand running, and Penelope says she ain't well. What makes +you so cross about the girls? Been doing something you're ashamed of?" + +"I'll tell you when I've been doing anything to be ashamed of," growled +Lapham. + +"Oh no, you won't!" said his wife jollily. "You'll only be hard on the +rest of us. Come now, Si; what is it?" + +Lapham frowned into his coffee with sulky dignity, and said, without +looking up, "I wonder what that fellow wanted here last night?" "What +fellow?" + +"Corey. I found him here when I came home, and he said he wanted to see +me; but he wouldn't stop." + +"Where was he?" + +"In the sitting-room." + +"Was Pen there?" + +"I didn't see her." + +Mrs. Lapham paused, with her hand on the cream-jug. "Why, what in the +land did he want? Did he say he wanted you?" + +"That's what he said." + +"And then he wouldn't stay?" + +"Well, then, I'll tell you just what it is, Silas Lapham. He came +here"--she looked about the room and lowered her voice--"to see you +about Irene, and then he hadn't the courage." + +"I guess he's got courage enough to do pretty much what he wants to," +said Lapham glumly. "All I know is, he was here. You better ask Pen +about it, if she ever gets down." + +"I guess I shan't wait for her," said Mrs. Lapham; and, as her husband +closed the front door after him, she opened that of her daughter's room +and entered abruptly. + +The girl sat at the window, fully dressed, and as if she had been +sitting there a long time. Without rising, she turned her face towards +her mother. It merely showed black against the light, and revealed +nothing till her mother came close to her with successive questions. +"Why, how long have you been up, Pen? Why don't you come to your +breakfast? Did you see Mr. Corey when he called last night? Why, what's +the matter with you? What have you been crying about?" + +"Have I been crying?" + +"Yes! Your cheeks are all wet!" + +"I thought they were on fire. Well, I'll tell you what's happened." +She rose, and then fell back in her chair. "Lock the door!" she +ordered, and her mother mechanically obeyed. "I don't want Irene in +here. There's nothing the matter. Only, Mr. Corey offered himself to +me last night." + +Her mother remained looking at her, helpless, not so much with amaze, +perhaps, as dismay. "Oh, I'm not a ghost! I wish I was! You had better +sit down, mother. You have got to know all about it." + +Mrs. Lapham dropped nervelessly into the chair at the other window, and +while the girl went slowly but briefly on, touching only the vital +points of the story, and breaking at times into a bitter drollery, she +sat as if without the power to speak or stir. + +"Well, that's all, mother. I should say I had dreamt, it, if I had +slept any last night; but I guess it really happened." + +The mother glanced round at the bed, and said, glad to occupy herself +delayingly with the minor care: "Why, you have been sitting up all +night! You will kill yourself." + +"I don't know about killing myself, but I've been sitting up all +night," answered the girl. Then, seeing that her mother remained +blankly silent again, she demanded, "Why don't you blame me, mother? +Why don't you say that I led him on, and tried to get him away from +her? Don't you believe I did?" + +Her mother made her no answer, as if these ravings of self-accusal +needed none. "Do you think," she asked simply, "that he got the idea +you cared for him?" + +"He knew it! How could I keep it from him? I said I didn't--at first!" + +"It was no use," sighed the mother. "You might as well said you did. +It couldn't help Irene any, if you didn't." + +"I always tried to help her with him, even when I----" + +"Yes, I know. But she never was equal to him. I saw that from the +start; but I tried to blind myself to it. And when he kept coming----" + +"You never thought of me!" cried the girl, with a bitterness that +reached her mother's heart. "I was nobody! I couldn't feel! No one +could care for me!" The turmoil of despair, of triumph, of remorse and +resentment, which filled her soul, tried to express itself in the words. + +"No," said the mother humbly. "I didn't think of you. Or I didn't +think of you enough. It did come across me sometimes that may +be----But it didn't seem as if----And your going on so for Irene----" + +"You let me go on. You made me always go and talk with him for her, +and you didn't think I would talk to him for myself. Well, I didn't!" + +"I'm punished for it. When did you--begin to care for him!" + +"How do I know? What difference does it make? It's all over now, no +matter when it began. He won't come here any more, unless I let him." +She could not help betraying her pride in this authority of hers, but +she went on anxiously enough, "What will you say to Irene? She's safe +as far as I'm concerned; but if he don't care for her, what will you +do?" + +"I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Lapham. She sat in an apathy from +which she apparently could not rouse herself. "I don't see as anything +can be done." + +Penelope laughed in a pitying derision. + +"Well, let things go on then. But they won't go on." + +"No, they won't go on," echoed her mother. "She's pretty enough, and +she's capable; and your father's got the money--I don't know what I'm +saying! She ain't equal to him, and she never was. I kept feeling it +all the time, and yet I kept blinding myself." + +"If he had ever cared for her," said Penelope, "it wouldn't have +mattered whether she was equal to him or not. I'M not equal to him +either." + +Her mother went on: "I might have thought it was you; but I had got +set----Well! I can see it all clear enough, now it's too late. I don't +know what to do." + +"And what do you expect me to do?" demanded the girl. "Do you want ME +to go to Irene and tell her that I've got him away from her?" + +"O good Lord!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "What shall I do? What do you want I +should do, Pen?" + +"Nothing for me," said Penelope. "I've had it out with myself. Now do +the best you can for Irene." + +"I couldn't say you had done wrong, if you was to marry him to-day." + +"Mother!" + +"No, I couldn't. I couldn't say but what you had been good and +faithfull all through, and you had a perfect right to do it. There +ain't any one to blame. He's behaved like a gentleman, and I can see +now that he never thought of her, and that it was you all the while. +Well, marry him, then! He's got the right, and so have you." + +"What about Irene? I don't want you to talk about me. I can take care +of myself." + +"She's nothing but a child. It's only a fancy with her. She'll get +over it. She hain't really got her heart set on him." + +"She's got her heart set on him, mother. She's got her whole life set +on him. You know that." + +"Yes, that's so," said the mother, as promptly as if she had been +arguing to that rather than the contrary effect. + +"If I could give him to her, I would. But he isn't mine to give." She +added in a burst of despair, "He isn't mine to keep!" + +"Well," said Mrs. Lapham, "she has got to bear it. I don't know what's +to come of it all. But she's got to bear her share of it." She rose +and went toward the door. + +Penelope ran after her in a sort of terror. "You're not going to tell +Irene?" she gasped, seizing her mother by either shoulder. + +"Yes, I am," said Mrs. Lapham. "If she's a woman grown, she can bear a +woman's burden." + +"I can't let you tell Irene," said the girl, letting fall her face on +her mother's neck. "Not Irene," she moaned. "I'm afraid to let you. +How can I ever look at her again?" + +"Why, you haven't done anything, Pen," said her mother soothingly. + +"I wanted to! Yes, I must have done something. How could I help it? I +did care for him from the first, and I must have tried to make him like +me. Do you think I did? No, no! You mustn't tell Irene! Not-- +not--yet! Mother! Yes! I did try to get him from her!" she cried, +lifting her head, and suddenly looking her mother in the face with +those large dim eyes of hers. "What do you think? Even last night! It +was the first time I ever had him all to myself, for myself, and I know +now that I tried to make him think that I was pretty and--funny. And I +didn't try to make him think of her. I knew that I pleased him, and I +tried to please him more. Perhaps I could have kept him from saying +that he cared for me; but when I saw he did--I must have seen it--I +couldn't. I had never had him to myself, and for myself before. I +needn't have seen him at all, but I wanted to see him; and when I was +sitting there alone with him, how do I know what I did to let him feel +that I cared for him? Now, will you tell Irene? I never thought he did +care for me, and never expected him to. But I liked him. Yes--I did +like him! Tell her that! Or else I will." + +"If it was to tell her he was dead," began Mrs. Lapham absently. + +"How easy it would be!" cried the girl in self-mockery. "But he's +worse than dead to her; and so am I. I've turned it over a million +ways, mother; I've looked at it in every light you can put it in, and I +can't make anything but misery out of it. You can see the misery at +the first glance, and you can't see more or less if you spend your life +looking at it." She laughed again, as if the hopelessness of the thing +amused her. Then she flew to the extreme of self-assertion. "Well, I +HAVE a right to him, and he has a right to me. If he's never done +anything to make her think he cared for her,--and I know he hasn't; +it's all been our doing, then he's free and I'm free. We can't make +her happy whatever we do; and why shouldn't I----No, that won't do! I +reached that point before!" She broke again into her desperate laugh. +"You may try now, mother!" + +"I'd best speak to your father first----" + +Penelope smiled a little more forlornly than she had laughed. + +"Well, yes; the Colonel will have to know. It isn't a trouble that I +can keep to myself exactly. It seems to belong to too many other +people." + +Her mother took a crazy encouragement from her return to her old way of +saying things. "Perhaps he can think of something." + +"Oh, I don't doubt but the Colonel will know just what to do!" + +"You mustn't be too down-hearted about it. It--it'll all come +right----" + +"You tell Irene that, mother." + +Mrs. Lapham had put her hand on the door-key; she dropped it, and +looked at the girl with a sort of beseeching appeal for the comfort she +could not imagine herself. "Don't look at me, mother," said Penelope, +shaking her head. "You know that if Irene were to die without knowing +it, it wouldn't come right for me." + +"Pen!" + +"I've read of cases where a girl gives up the man that loves her so as +to make some other girl happy that the man doesn't love. That might be +done." + +"Your father would think you were a fool," said Mrs. Lapham, finding a +sort of refuge in her strong disgust for the pseudo heroism. "No! If +there's to be any giving up, let it be by the one that shan't make +anybody but herself suffer. There's trouble and sorrow enough in the +world, without MAKING it on purpose!" + +She unlocked the door, but Penelope slipped round and set herself +against it. "Irene shall not give up!" + +"I will see your father about it," said the mother. "Let me out +now----" + +"Don't let Irene come here!" + +"No. I will tell her that you haven't slept. Go to bed now, and try to +get some rest. She isn't up herself yet. You must have some +breakfast." + +"No; let me sleep if I can. I can get something when I wake up. I'll +come down if I can't sleep. Life has got to go on. It does when +there's a death in the house, and this is only a little worse." + +"Don't you talk nonsense!" cried Mrs. Lapham, with angry authority. + +"Well, a little better, then," said Penelope, with meek concession. + +Mrs. Lapham attempted to say something, and could not. She went out +and opened Irene's door. The girl lifted her head drowsily from her +pillow "Don't disturb your sister when you get up, Irene. She hasn't +slept well----" + +"PLEASE don't talk! I'm almost DEAD with sleep!" returned Irene. "Do +go, mamma! I shan't disturb her." She turned her face down in the +pillow, and pulled the covering up over her ears. + +The mother slowly closed the door and went downstairs, feeling +bewildered and baffled almost beyond the power to move. The time had +been when she would have tried to find out why this judgment had been +sent upon her. But now she could not feel that the innocent suffering +of others was inflicted for her fault; she shrank instinctively from +that cruel and egotistic misinterpretation of the mystery of pain and +loss. She saw her two children, equally if differently dear to her, +destined to trouble that nothing could avert, and she could not blame +either of them; she could not blame the means of this misery to them; +he was as innocent as they, and though her heart was sore against him +in this first moment, she could still be just to him in it. She was a +woman who had been used to seek the light by striving; she had hitherto +literally worked to it. But it is the curse of prosperity that it +takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of +spirit. In this house, where everything had come to be done for her, +she had no tasks to interpose between her and her despair. She sat +down in her own room and let her hands fall in her lap,--the hands that +had once been so helpful and busy,--and tried to think it all out. She +had never heard of the fate that was once supposed to appoint the +sorrows of men irrespective of their blamelessness or blame, before the +time when it came to be believed that sorrows were penalties; but in +her simple way she recognised something like that mythic power when she +rose from her struggle with the problem, and said aloud to herself, +"Well, the witch is in it." Turn which way she would, she saw no escape +from the misery to come--the misery which had come already to Penelope +and herself, and that must come to Irene and her father. She started +when she definitely thought of her husband, and thought with what +violence it would work in every fibre of his rude strength. She feared +that, and she feared something worse--the effect which his pride and +ambition might seek to give it; and it was with terror of this, as well +as the natural trust with which a woman must turn to her husband in any +anxiety at last, that she felt she could not wait for evening to take +counsel with him. When she considered how wrongly he might take it +all, it seemed as if it were already known to him, and she was +impatient to prevent his error. + +She sent out for a messenger, whom she despatched with a note to his +place of business: "Silas, I should like to ride with you this +afternoon. Can't you come home early? Persis." And she was at dinner +with Irene, evading her questions about Penelope, when answer came that +he would be at the house with the buggy at half-past two. It is easy +to put off a girl who has but one thing in her head; but though Mrs. +Lapham could escape without telling anything of Penelope, she could not +escape seeing how wholly Irene was engrossed with hopes now turned so +vain and impossible. She was still talking of that dinner, of nothing +but that dinner, and begging for flattery of herself and praise of him, +which her mother had till now been so ready to give. + +"Seems to me you don't take very much interest, mamma!" she said, +laughing and blushing at one point. + +"Yes,--yes, I do," protested Mrs. Lapham, and then the girl prattled on. + +"I guess I shall get one of those pins that Nanny Corey had in her +hair. I think it would become me, don't you?" "Yes; but Irene--I don't +like to have you go on so, till--unless he's said something to +show--You oughtn't to give yourself up to thinking----" But at this the +girl turned so white, and looked such reproach at her, that she added +frantically: "Yes, get the pin. It is just the thing for you! But +don't disturb Penelope. Let her alone till I get back. I'm going out +to ride with your father. He'll be here in half an hour. Are you +through? Ring, then. Get yourself that fan you saw the other day. +Your father won't say anything; he likes to have you look well. I +could see his eyes on you half the time the other night." + +"I should have liked to have Pen go with me," said Irene, restored to +her normal state of innocent selfishness by these flatteries. "Don't +you suppose she'll be up in time? What's the matter with her that she +didn't sleep?" + +"I don't know. Better let her alone." + +"Well," submitted Irene. + + + +XVIII. + + +MRS. LAPHAM went away to put on her bonnet and cloak, and she was +waiting at the window when her husband drove up. She opened the door +and ran down the steps. "Don't get out; I can help myself in," and she +clambered to his side, while he kept the fidgeting mare still with +voice and touch. + +"Where do you want I should go?" he asked, turning the buggy. + +"Oh, I don't care. Out Brookline way, I guess. I wish you hadn't +brought this fool of a horse," she gave way petulantly. "I wanted to +have a talk." + +"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll sell out altogether," +said Lapham. "She'll be quiet enough when she's had her spin." + +"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the +city to the Milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some +points in the new house. + +"I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she +answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his +horse's head westward when they struck Beacon Street. + +He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he left the +Brighton road and struck off under the low boughs that met above one of +the quiet streets of Brookline, where the stone cottages, with here and +there a patch of determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they +could to look English amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. The +smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered with flakes +of the red and yellow gold that made the air luminous around them, and +the perspective was gay with innumerable tints and tones. + +"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sigh, letting the reins lie +loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole +charge of the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis. +He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he +pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I +ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in +Rogers. And I told him so last night." + +"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife broke in. "There's +something a good deal more important than Rogers in the world, and more +important than your business. It seems as if you couldn't think of +anything else--that and the new house. Did you suppose I wanted to +ride so as to talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to the +necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay for her suffering, +even if he has not inflicted it. "I declare----" + +"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham. "What DO you want to talk about? +I'm listening." + +His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas Lapham!" and then she broke +off to say, "Well, you may wait, now--starting me wrong, when it's hard +enough anyway." + +Lapham silently turned his whip over and over in his hand and waited. + +"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young Corey had been +coming to see Irene?" + +"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham sullenly. "You always +said so." He looked sharply at her under his lowering brows. + +"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she replied to the frown that +blackened on her husband's face. "And I can tell you what, if you take +it in that way I shan't speak another word." + +"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham savagely. "What are you +drivin' at?" + +"I want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly." + +"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. I haven't said a word +yet." + +"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, and looking +like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start. I've had to bear it, +and you've got to bear it too." + +"Well, let me have a chance at it, then." + +"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can see, and the only +question is, what's the best thing to do about it. There's only one +thing we can do; for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to +make him. If he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's +all there is to it." + +"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham. + +"There!" protested his wife. + +"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what HAS he been coming for?" + +"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife. "NOW are you +satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but +at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect +comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her +broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. "O +Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid it'll kill Irene." + +Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right hand with the +fingers of his left, in which the reins lay. He passed it over his +forehead, and then flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there. +He caught his breath once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle +with superior force and then remains passive in its grasp. + +His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt the need of +afflicting him. "I don't say but what it can be made to come out all +right in the end. All I say is, I don't see my way clear yet." + +"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked quietly. + +"He told her so last night, and she told me this morning. Was he at +the office to-day?" + +"Yes, he was there. I haven't been there much myself. He didn't say +anything to me. Does Irene know?" + +"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping. She wants to get a +pin like the one Nanny Corey had on." "O my Lord!" groaned Lapham. + +"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost from the start. I +don't say but what he was attracted some by Irene at the very first; +but I guess it's been Pen ever since he saw her; and we've taken up +with a notion, and blinded ourselves with it. Time and again I've had +my doubts whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare to goodness, +when he kept coming, I never hardly thought of Pen, and I couldn't help +believing at last he DID care for Irene. Did it ever strike you he +might be after Pen?" + +"No. I took what you said. I supposed you knew." + +"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly. + +"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want anything but +the children's good. What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that? +That's what we've both slaved for all our lives." + +"Yes, I know. Plenty of people LOSE their children," she suggested. + +"Yes, but that don't comfort me any. I never was one to feel good +because another man felt bad. How would you have liked it if some one +had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? No, I can't do +it. And this is worse than death, someways. That comes and it goes; +but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay. +The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody. Suppose we +don't want Pen to have him; will that help Irene any, if he don't want +her? Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help +either!" + +"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our say was going to settle +it. Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a +fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was +in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him? Don't you +believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the +breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease +Irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing +that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!" + +Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument. His huge head hung +forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the +mare took her own way. At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy +jaws. + +"Well?" quavered his wife. + +"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, I don't see +what that's got to do with it." He looked straight forward, and not at +his wife. + +She laid her hands on the reins. "Now, you stop right here, Silas +Lapham! If I thought that--if I really believed you could be willing to +break that poor child's heart, and let Pen disgrace herself by marrying +a man that had as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted +Bromfield Corey's son for a son-in-law----" + +Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look. "You had better NOT +believe that, Persis! Get up!" he called to the mare, without glancing +at her, and she sprang forward. "I see you've got past being any use +to yourself on this subject." + +"Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him. "Where the devil you goin' +to?" + +"Do you want to KILL somebody!" shrieked his wife. + +There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, and +separated their wheels from those of the open buggy in front which +Lapham had driven into. He made his excuses to the occupant; and the +accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and left them far from +the point of mutual injury which they had reached in their common +trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good. + +It was Lapham who resumed the talk. "I'm afraid we can't either of us +see this thing in the right light. We're too near to it. I wish to +the Lord there was somebody to talk to about it." + +"Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody." + +"Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a moment; "why not talk to the +minister of your church? May be he could see some way out of it." + +Mrs. Lapham shook her head hopelessly. "It wouldn't do. I've never +taken up my connection with the church, and I don't feel as if I'd got +any claim on him." + +"If he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, you HAVE got a +claim on him," urged Lapham; and he spoiled his argument by adding, +"I've contributed enough MONEY to his church." + +"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs. Lapham. "I ain't well enough +acquainted with Dr. Langworthy, or else I'm TOO well. No; if I was to +ask any one, I should want to ask a total stranger. But what's the +use, Si? Nobody could make us see it any different from what it is, and +I don't know as I should want they should." + +It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed down their +hearts ever more heavily within them. They ceased to talk of it a +hundred times, and still came back to it. They drove on and on. It +began to be late. "I guess we better go back, Si," said his wife; and +as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil down and began to +cry softly behind it, with low little broken sobs. + +Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward. At last his +wife stopped crying and began trying to find her pocket. "Here, take +mine, Persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief, and she +took it and dried her eyes with it. "There was one of those fellows +there the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned back +against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that I liked the looks of +about as well as any man I ever saw. I guess he was a pretty good man. +It was that Mr. Sewell." + +He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything. "Persis," he +resumed, "I can't bear to go back with nothing settled in our minds. I +can't bear to let you." + +"We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude. Lapham +groaned. "Where does he live?" she asked. + +"On Bolingbroke Street. He gave me his number." + +"Well, it wouldn't do any good. What could he say to us?" + +"Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said Lapham hopelessly; +and neither of them said anything more till they crossed the Milldam +and found themselves between the rows of city houses. + +"Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his wife. "I couldn't +bear to see it. Drive--drive up Bolingbroke Street. We might as well +see where he DOES live." + +"Well," said Lapham. He drove along slowly. "That's the place," he +said finally, stopping the mare and pointing with his whip. + +"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood +as well as he understood her words. He turned the mare up to the +curbstone. + +"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing them to his wife. + +He got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened; then he +came back and lifted his wife out. "He's in," he said. + +He got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat and made it fast +to the mare's bit. + +"Do you think she'll stand with that?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"I guess so. If she don't, no matter." + +"Ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted, trying to make +delay. + +"Let her!" said Lapham. He took his wife's trembling hand under his +arm, and drew her to the door. + +"He'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her broken pride. + +"Well, we ARE," said Lapham. "Tell him we'd like to see him alone a +while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and +she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant +confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they +did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery +like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to +himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of +wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the +foundation of the world. + +They were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister came in as +if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did so at last, and, with a +simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic +approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's +compassionate and reverent eye. He spared Corey's name, but he did not +pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their daughters who +were concerned. + +"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble you with this thing," he +said, in the moment while Sewell sat pondering the case, "and I don't +know as I've got any warrant for doing it. But, as I told my wife +here, there was something about you--I don't know whether it was +anything you SAID exactly--that made me feel as if you could help us. +I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; but that's the way I felt. +And here we are. And if it ain't all right." + +"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right. I thank you for coming--for +trusting your trouble to me. A time comes to every one of us when we +can't help ourselves, and then we must get others to help us. If +people turn to me at such a time, I feel sure that I was put into the +world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, my sympathy." + +The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome in them that +these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt. + +"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe the tears again +under her veil. + +Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak. "We can +be of use to one another here, because we can always be wiser for some +one else than we can for ourselves. We can see another's sins and +errors in a more merciful light--and that is always a fairer +light--than we can our own; and we can look more sanely at others' +afflictions." He had addressed these words to Lapham; now he turned to +his wife. "If some one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this +perplexity, what would you have thought?" + +"I don't know as I understand you," faltered Mrs. Lapham. + +Sewell repeated his words, and added, "I mean, what do you think some +one else ought to do in your place?" + +"Was there ever any poor creatures in such a strait before?" she asked, +with pathetic incredulity. + +"There's no new trouble under the sun," said the minister. + +"Oh, if it was any one else, I should say--I should say--Why, of +course! I should say that their duty was to let----" She paused. + +"One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" suggested Sewell. +"That's sense, and that's justice. It's the economy of pain which +naturally suggests itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we +were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the +shallowest sentimentality. Tell me, Mrs. Lapham, didn't this come into +your mind when you first learned how matters stood?" + +"Why, yes, it flashed across me. But I didn't think it could be right." + +"And how was it with you, Mr. Lapham?" + +"Why, that's what I thought, of course. But I didn't see my way----" + +"No," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we are all weakened by a +false ideal of self-sacrifice. It wraps us round with its meshes, and +we can't fight our way out of it. Mrs. Lapham, what made you feel that +it might be better for three to suffer than one?" + +"Why, she did herself. I know she would die sooner than take him away +from her." + +"I supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly. "And yet she is a +sensible girl, your daughter?" + +"She has more common-sense----" + +"Of course! But in such a case we somehow think it must be wrong to use +our common-sense. I don't know where this false ideal comes from, +unless it comes from the novels that befool and debauch almost every +intelligence in some degree. It certainly doesn't come from +Christianity, which instantly repudiates it when confronted with it. +Your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense, that she ought to +make herself and the man who loves her unhappy, in order to assure the +life-long wretchedness of her sister, whom he doesn't love, simply +because her sister saw him and fancied him first! And I'm sorry to say +that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred--oh, nine hundred and +ninety-nine out of a thousand!--would consider that noble and beautiful +and heroic; whereas you know at the bottom of your hearts that it would +be foolish and cruel and revolting. You know what marriage is! And +what it must be without love on both sides." + +The minister had grown quite heated and red in the face. + +"I lose all patience!" he went on vehemently. "This poor child of +yours has somehow been brought to believe that it will kill her sister +if her sister does not have what does not belong to her, and what it is +not in the power of all the world, or any soul in the world, to give +her. Her sister will suffer--yes, keenly!--in heart and in pride; but +she will not die. You will suffer too, in your tenderness for her; but +you must do your duty. You must help her to give up. You would be +guilty if you did less. Keep clearly in mind that you are doing right, +and the only possible good. And God be with you!" + + + +XIX. + + +"HE talked sense, Persis," said Lapham gently, as he mounted to his +wife's side in the buggy and drove slowly homeward through the dusk. + +"Yes, he talked sense," she admitted. But she added bitterly, "I +guess, if he had it to DO! Oh, he's right, and it's got to be done. +There ain't any other way for it. It's sense; and, yes, it's justice." +They walked to their door after they left the horse at the livery +stable around the corner, where Lapham kept it. "I want you should +send Irene up to our room as soon as we get in, Silas." + +"Why, ain't you going to have any supper first?" faltered Lapham with +his latch-key in the lock. + +"No. I can't lose a minute. If I do, I shan't do it at all." + +"Look here, Persis," said her husband tenderly, "let me do this thing." + +"Oh, YOU!" said his wife, with a woman's compassionate scorn for a +man's helplessness in such a case. "Send her right up. And I shall +feel----" She stopped to spare him. + +Then she opened the door, and ran up to her room without waiting to +speak to Irene, who had come into the hall at the sound of her father's +key in the door. + +"I guess your mother wants to see you upstairs," said Lapham, looking +away. + +Her mother turned round and faced the girl's wondering look as Irene +entered the chamber, so close upon her that she had not yet had time to +lay off her bonnet; she stood with her wraps still on her arm. + +"Irene!" she said harshly, "there is something you have got to bear. +It's a mistake we've all made. He don't care anything for you. He +never did. He told Pen so last night. He cares for her." + +The sentences had fallen like blows. But the girl had taken them +without flinching. She stood up immovable, but the delicate rose-light +of her complexion went out and left her colourless. She did not offer +to speak. + +"Why don't you say something?" cried her mother. "Do you want to kill +me, Irene?" + +"Why should I want to hurt you, mamma?" the girl replied steadily, but +in an alien voice. "There's nothing to say. I want to see Pen a +minute." + +She turned and left the room. As she mounted the stairs that led to +her own and her sister's rooms on the floor above, her mother +helplessly followed. Irene went first to her own room at the front of +the house, and then came out leaving the door open and the gas flaring +behind her. The mother could see that she had tumbled many things out +of the drawers of her bureau upon the marble top. + +She passed her mother, where she stood in the entry. "You can come +too, if you want to, mamma," she said. + +She opened Penelope's door without knocking, and went in. Penelope sat +at the window, as in the morning. Irene did not go to her; but she +went and laid a gold hair-pin on her bureau, and said, without looking +at her, "There's a pin that I got to-day, because it was like his +sister's. It won't become a dark person so well, but you can have it." + +She stuck a scrap of paper in the side of Penelope's mirror. "There's +that account of Mr. Stanton's ranch. You'll want to read it, I +presume." + +She laid a withered boutonniere on the bureau beside the pin. "There's +his button-hole bouquet. He left it by his plate, and I stole it." + +She had a pine-shaving fantastically tied up with a knot of ribbon, in +her hand. She held it a moment; then, looking deliberately at +Penelope, she went up to her, and dropped it in her lap without a word. +She turned, and, advancing a few steps, tottered and seemed about to +fall. + +Her mother sprang forward with an imploring cry, "O 'Rene, 'Rene, +'Rene!" + +Irene recovered herself before her mother could reach her. "Don't +touch me," she said icily. "Mamma, I'm going to put on my things. I +want papa to walk with me. I'm choking here." + +"I--I can't let you go out, Irene, child," began her mother. + +"You've got to," replied the girl. "Tell papa ta hurry his supper." + +"O poor soul! He doesn't want any supper. HE knows it too." + +"I don't want to talk about that. Tell him to get ready." + +She left them once more. + +Mrs. Lapham turned a hapless glance upon Penelope. + +"Go and tell him, mother," said the girl. "I would, if I could. If +she can walk, let her. It's the only thing for her." She sat still; +she did not even brush to the floor the fantastic thing that lay in her +lap, and that sent up faintly the odour of the sachet powder with which +Irene liked to perfume her boxes. + +Lapham went out with the unhappy child, and began to talk with her, +crazily, incoherently, enough. + +She mercifully stopped him. "Don't talk, papa. I don't want any one +should talk with me." + +He obeyed, and they walked silently on and on. In their aimless course +they reached the new house on the water side of Beacon, and she made +him stop, and stood looking up at it. The scaffolding which had so +long defaced the front was gone, and in the light of the gas-lamp +before it all the architectural beauty of the facade was suggested, and +much of the finely felt detail was revealed. Seymour had pretty nearly +satisfied himself in that rich facade; certainly Lapham had not stinted +him of the means. + +"Well," said the girl, "I shall never live in it," and she began to +walk on. + +Lapham's sore heart went down, as he lumbered heavily after her. "Oh +yes, you will, Irene. You'll have lots of good times there yet." + +"No," she answered, and said nothing more about it. They had not +talked of their trouble at all, and they did not speak of it now. +Lapham understood that she was trying to walk herself weary, and he was +glad to hold his peace and let her have her way. She halted him once +more before the red and yellow lights of an apothecary's window. + +"Isn't there something they give you to make you sleep?" she asked +vaguely. "I've got to sleep to-night!" + +Lapham trembled. "I guess you don't want anything, Irene." + +"Yes, I do! Get me something!" she retorted wilfully. "If you don't, I +shall die. I MUST sleep." + +They went in, and Lapham asked for something to make a nervous person +sleep. Irene stood poring over the show-case full of brushes and +trinkets, while the apothecary put up the bromide, which he guessed +would be about the best thing. She did not show any emotion; her face +was like a stone, while her father's expressed the anguish of his +sympathy. He looked as if he had not slept for a week; his fat eyelids +drooped over his glassy eyes, and his cheeks and throat hung flaccid. +He started as the apothecary's cat stole smoothly up and rubbed itself +against his leg; and it was to him that the man said, "You want to take +a table-spoonful of that, as long as you're awake. I guess it won't +take a great many to fetch you." "All right," said Lapham, and paid and +went out. "I don't know but I SHALL want some of it," he said, with a +joyless laugh. + +Irene came closer up to him and took his arm. He laid his heavy paw on +her gloved fingers. After a while she said, "I want you should let me +go up to Lapham to-morrow." + +"To Lapham? Why, to-morrow's Sunday, Irene! You can't go to-morrow." + +"Well, Monday, then. I can live through one day here." + +"Well," said the father passively. He made no pretence of asking her +why she wished to go, nor any attempt to dissuade her. + +"Give me that bottle," she said, when he opened the door at home for +her, and she ran up to her own room. + +The next morning Irene came to breakfast with her mother; the Colonel +and Penelope did not appear, and Mrs. Lapham looked sleep-broken and +careworn. + +The girl glanced at her. "Don't you fret about me, mamma," she said. +"I shall get along." She seemed herself as steady and strong as rock. + +"I don't like to see you keeping up so, Irene," replied her mother. +"It'll be all the worse for you when you do break. Better give way a +little at the start." + +"I shan't break, and I've given way all I'm going to. I'm going to +Lapham to-morrow,--I want you should go with me, mamma,--and I guess I +can keep up one day here. All about it is, I don't want you should say +anything, or LOOK anything. And, whatever I do, I don't want you +should try to stop me. And, the first thing, I'm going to take her +breakfast up to her. Don't!" she cried, intercepting the protest on +her mother's lips. "I shall not let it hurt Pen, if I can help it. +She's never done a thing nor thought a thing to wrong me. I had to fly +out at her last night; but that's all over now, and I know just what +I've got to bear." + +She had her way unmolested. She carried Penelope's breakfast to her, +and omitted no care or attention that could make the sacrifice +complete, with an heroic pretence that she was performing no unusual +service. They did not speak, beyond her saying, in a clear dry note, +"Here's your breakfast, Pen," and her sister's answering, hoarsely and +tremulously, "Oh, thank you, Irene." And, though two or three times +they turned their faces toward each other while Irene remained in the +room, mechanically putting its confusion to rights, their eyes did not +meet. Then Irene descended upon the other rooms, which she set in +order, and some of which she fiercely swept and dusted. She made the +beds; and she sent the two servants away to church as soon as they had +eaten their breakfast, telling them that she would wash their dishes. +Throughout the morning her father and mother heard her about the work +of getting dinner, with certain silences which represented the moments +when she stopped and stood stock-still, and then, readjusting her +burden, forced herself forward under it again. + +They sat alone in the family room, out of which their two girls seemed +to have died. Lapham could not read his Sunday papers, and she had no +heart to go to church, as she would have done earlier in life when in +trouble. Just then she was obscurely feeling that the church was +somehow to blame for that counsel of Mr. Sewell's on which they had +acted. + +"I should like to know," she said, having brought the matter up, +"whether he would have thought it was such a light matter if it had +been his own children. Do you suppose he'd have been so ready to act +on his own advice if it HAD been?" + +"He told us the right thing to do, Persis,--the only thing. We +couldn't let it go on," urged her husband gently. + +"Well, it makes me despise Pen! Irene's showing twice the character +that she is, this very minute." + +The mother said this so that the father might defend her daughter to +her. He did not fail. "Irene's got the easiest part, the way I look +at it. And you'll see that Pen'll know how to behave when the time +comes." + +"What do you want she should do?" + +"I haven't got so far as that yet. What are we going to do about +Irene?" + +"What do you want Pen should do," repeated Mrs. Lapham, "when it comes +to it?" + +"Well, I don't want she should take him, for ONE thing," said Lapham. + +This seemed to satisfy Mrs. Lapham as to her husband, and she said in +defence of Corey, "Why, I don't see what HE'S done. It's all been our +doing." + +"Never mind that now. What about Irene?" + +"She says she's going to Lapham to-morrow. She feels that she's got to +get away somewhere. It's natural she should." + +"Yes, and I presume it will be about the best thing FOR her. Shall you +go with her?" + +"Yes." + +"Well." He comfortlessly took up a newspaper again, and she rose with a +sigh, and went to her room to pack some things for the morrow's journey. + +After dinner, when Irene had cleared away the last trace of it in +kitchen and dining-room with unsparing punctilio, she came downstairs, +dressed to go out, and bade her father come to walk with her again. It +was a repetition of the aimlessness of the last night's wanderings. +They came back, and she got tea for them, and after that they heard her +stirring about in her own room, as if she were busy about many things; +but they did not dare to look in upon her, even after all the noises +had ceased, and they knew she had gone to bed. + +"Yes; it's a thing she's got to fight out by herself," said Mrs Lapham. + +"I guess she'll get along," said Lapham. "But I don't want you should +misjudge Pen either. She's all right too. She ain't to blame." + +"Yes, I know. But I can't work round to it all at once. I shan't +misjudge her, but you can't expect me to get over it right away." + +"Mamma," said Irene, when she was hurrying their departure the next +morning, "what did she tell him when he asked her?" + +"Tell him?" echoed the mother; and after a while she added, "She didn't +tell him anything." + +"Did she say anything, about me?" + +"She said he mustn't come here any more." + +Irene turned and went into her sister's room. "Good-bye, Pen," she +said, kissing her with an effect of not seeing or touching her. "I +want you should tell him all about it. If he's half a man, he won't +give up till he knows why you won't have him; and he has a right to +know." + +"It wouldn't make any difference. I couldn't have him after----" + +"That's for you to say. But if you don't tell him about me, I will." + +"'Rene!" "Yes! You needn't say I cared for him. But you can say that +you all thought he--cared for--me." + +"O Irene----" + +"Don't!" Irene escaped from the arms that tried to cast themselves +about her. "You are all right, Pen. You haven't done anything. +You've helped me all you could. But I can't--yet." + +She went out of the room and summoned Mrs. Lapham with a sharp "Now, +mamma!" and went on putting the last things into her trunks. + +The Colonel went to the station with them, and put them on the train. +He got them a little compartment to themselves in the Pullman car; and +as he stood leaning with his lifted hands against the sides of the +doorway, he tried to say something consoling and hopeful: "I guess +you'll have an easy ride, Irene. I don't believe it'll be dusty, any, +after the rain last night." + +"Don't you stay till the train starts, papa," returned the girl, in +rigid rejection of his futilities. "Get off, now." + +"Well, if you want I should," he said, glad to be able to please her in +anything. He remained on the platform till the cars started. He saw +Irene bustling about in the compartment, making her mother comfortable +for the journey; but Mrs. Lapham did not lift her head. The train +moved off, and he went heavily back to his business. + +From time to time during the day, when he caught a glimpse of him, +Corey tried to make out from his face whether he knew what had taken +place between him and Penelope. When Rogers came in about time of +closing, and shut himself up with Lapham in his room, the young man +remained till the two came out together and parted in their +salutationless fashion. + +Lapham showed no surprise at seeing Corey still there, and merely +answered, "Well!" when the young man said that he wished to speak with +him, and led the way back to his room. + +Corey shut the door behind them. "I only wish to speak to you in case +you know of the matter already; for otherwise I'm bound by a promise." + +"I guess I know what you mean. It's about Penelope." + +"Yes, it's about Miss Lapham. I am greatly attached to her--you'll +excuse my saying it; I couldn't excuse myself if I were not." + +"Perfectly excusable," said Lapham. "It's all right." + +"Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that!" cried the young fellow joyfully. +"I want you to believe that this isn't a new thing or an unconsidered +thing with me--though it seemed so unexpected to her." + +Lapham fetched a deep sigh. "It's all right as far as I'm +concerned--or her mother. We've both liked you first-rate." + +"Yes?" + +"But there seems to be something in Penelope's mind--I don't know--" +The Colonel consciously dropped his eyes. + +"She referred to something--I couldn't make out what--but I hoped--I +hoped--that with your leave I might overcome it--the barrier--whatever +it was. Miss Lapham--Penelope--gave me the hope--that I +was--wasn't--indifferent to her----" + +"Yes, I guess that's so," said Lapham. He suddenly lifted his head, +and confronted the young fellow's honest face with his own face, so +different in its honesty. "Sure you never made up to any one else at +the same time?" + +"NEVER! Who could imagine such a thing? If that's all, I can easily." + +"I don't say that's all, nor that that's it. I don't want you should +go upon that idea. I just thought, may be--you hadn't thought of it." + +"No, I certainly hadn't thought of it! Such a thing would have been so +impossible to me that I couldn't have thought of it; and it's so +shocking to me now that I don't know what to say to it." + +"Well, don't take it too much to heart," said Lapham, alarmed at the +feeling he had excited; "I don't say she thought so. I was trying to +guess--trying to----" + +"If there is anything I can say or do to convince you----" + +"Oh, it ain't necessary to say anything. I'm all right." + +"But Miss Lapham! I may see her again? I may try to convince her +that----" + +He stopped in distress, and Lapham afterwards told his wife that he +kept seeing the face of Irene as it looked when he parted with her in +the car; and whenever he was going to say yes, he could not open his +lips. At the same time he could not help feeling that Penelope had a +right to what was her own, and Sewell's words came back to him. +Besides, they had already put Irene to the worst suffering. Lapham +compromised, as he imagined. "You can come round to-night and see ME, +if you want to," he said; and he bore grimly the gratitude that the +young man poured out upon him. + +Penelope came down to supper and took her mother's place at the head of +the table. + +Lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could bear it. Then he +asked, "How do you feel to-night, Pen?" + +"Oh, like a thief," said the girl. "A thief that hasn't been arrested +yet." + +Lapham waited a while before he said, "Well, now, your mother and I +want you should hold up on that a while." + +"It isn't for you to say. It's something I can't hold up on." + +"Yes, I guess you can. If I know what's happened, then what's happened +is a thing that nobody is to blame for. And we want you should make +the best of it and not the worst. Heigh? It ain't going to help Irene +any for you to hurt yourself--or anybody else; and I don't want you +should take up with any such crazy notion. As far as heard from, you +haven't stolen anything, and whatever you've got belongs to you." + +"Has he been speaking to you, father?" + +"Your mother's been speaking to me." + +"Has HE been speaking to you?" + +"That's neither here nor there." + +"Then he's broken his word, and I will never speak to him again!" + +"If he was any such fool as to promise that he wouldn't talk to me on a +subject"--Lapham drew a deep breath, and then made the plunge--"that I +brought up----" + +"Did you bring it up?" + +"The same as brought up--the quicker he broke his word the better; and +I want you should act upon that idea. Recollect that it's my business, +and your mother's business, as well as yours, and we're going to have +our say. He hain't done anything wrong, Pen, nor anything that he's +going to be punished for. Understand that. He's got to have a reason, +if you're not going to have him. I don't say you've got to have him; I +want you should feel perfectly free about that; but I DO say you've got +to give him a reason." + +"Is he coming here?" + +"I don't know as you'd call it COMING----" + +"Yes, you do, father!" said the girl, in forlorn amusement at his +shuffling. + +"He's coming here to see ME----" + +"When's he coming?" + +"I don't know but he's coming to-night." + +"And you want I should see him?" + +"I don't know but you'd better." + +"All right. I'll see him." + +Lapham drew a long deep breath of suspicion inspired by this +acquiescence. "What you going to do?" he asked presently. + +"I don't know yet," answered the girl sadly. "It depends a good deal +upon what he does." + +"Well," said Lapham, with the hungriness of unsatisfied anxiety in his +tone. When Corey's card was brought into the family-room where he and +Penelope were sitting, he went into the parlour to find him. "I guess +Penelope wants to see you," he said; and, indicating the family-room, +he added, "She's in there," and did not go back himself. + +Corey made his way to the girl's presence with open trepidation, which +was not allayed by her silence and languor. She sat in the chair where +she had sat the other night, but she was not playing with a fan now. + +He came toward her, and then stood faltering. A faint smile quivered +over her face at the spectacle of his subjection. "Sit down, Mr. +Corey," she said. "There's no reason why we shouldn't talk it over +quietly; for I know you will think I'm right." + +"I'm sure of that," he answered hopefully. "When I saw that your +father knew of it to-day, I asked him to let me see you again. I'm +afraid that I broke my promise to you--technically----" + +"It had to be broken." He took more courage at her words. "But I've +only come to do whatever you say, and not to be an--annoyance to +you----" + +"Yes, you have to know; but I couldn't tell you before. Now they all +think I should." + +A tremor of anxiety passed over the young man's face, on which she kept +her eyes steadily fixed. + +"We supposed it--it was--Irene----" + +He remained blank a moment, and then he said with a smile of relief, of +deprecation, of protest, of amazement, of compassion-- + +"OH! Never! Never for an instant! How could you think such a thing? It +was impossible! I never thought of her. But I see--I see! I can +explain--no, there's nothing to explain! I have never knowingly done or +said a thing from first to last to make you think that. I see how +terrible it is!" he said; but he still smiled, as if he could not take +it seriously. "I admired her beauty--who could help doing that?--and I +thought her very good and sensible. Why, last winter in Texas, I told +Stanton about our meeting in Canada, and we agreed--I only tell you to +show you how far I always was from what you thought--that he must come +North and try to see her, and--and--of course, it all sounds very +silly!--and he sent her a newspaper with an account of his ranch in +it----" + +"She thought it came from you." + +"Oh, good heavens! He didn't tell me till after he'd done it. But he +did it for a part of our foolish joke. And when I met your sister +again, I only admired her as before. I can see, now, how I must have +seemed to be seeking her out; but it was to talk of you with her--I +never talked of anything else if I could help it, except when I changed +the subject because I was ashamed to be always talking of you. I see +how distressing it is for all of you. But tell me that you believe me!" + +"Yes, I must. It's all been our mistake----" + +"It has indeed! But there's no mistake about my loving you, Penelope," +he said; and the old-fashioned name, at which she had often mocked, was +sweet to her from his lips. + +"That only makes it worse!" she answered. + +"Oh no!" he gently protested. "It makes it better. It makes it right. +How is it worse? How is it wrong?" + +"Can't you see? You must understand all now! Don't you see that if she +believed so too, and if she----" She could not go on. + +"Did she--did your sister--think that too?" gasped Corey. + +"She used to talk with me about you; and when you say you care for me +now, it makes me feel like the vilest hypocrite in the world. That day +you gave her the list of books, and she came down to Nantasket, and +went on about you, I helped her to flatter herself--oh! I don't see how +she can forgive me. But she knows I can never forgive myself! That's +the reason she can do it. I can see now," she went on, "how I must +have been trying to get you from her. I can't endure it! The only way +is for me never to see you or speak to you again!" She laughed +forlornly. "That would be pretty hard on you, if you cared." + +"I do care--all the world!" + +"Well, then, it would if you were going to keep on caring. You won't +long, if you stop coming now." + +"Is this all, then? Is it the end?" + +"It's--whatever it is. I can't get over the thought of her. Once I +thought I could, but now I see that I can't. It seems to grow worse. +Sometimes I feel as if it would drive me crazy." + +He sat looking at her with lacklustre eyes. The light suddenly came +back into them. "Do you think I could love you if you had been false +to her? I know you have been true to her, and truer still to yourself. +I never tried to see her, except with the hope of seeing you too. I +supposed she must know that I was in love with you. From the first +time I saw you there that afternoon, you filled my fancy. Do you think +I was flirting with the child, or--no, you don't think that! We have +not done wrong. We have not harmed any one knowingly. We have a right +to each other----" + +"No! no! you must never speak to me of this again. If you do, I shall +know that you despise me." + +"But how will that help her? I don't love HER." + +"Don't say that to me! I have said that to myself too much." + +"If you forbid me to love you, it won't make me love her," he persisted. + +She was about to speak, but she caught her breath without doing so, and +merely stared at him. "I must do what you say," he continued. "But +what good will it do her? You can't make her happy by making yourself +unhappy." + +"Do you ask me to profit by a wrong?" + +"Not for the world. But there is no wrong!" + +"There is something--I don't know what. There's a wall between us. I +shall dash myself against it as long as I live; but that won't break +it." + +"Oh!" he groaned. "We have done no wrong. Why should we suffer from +another's mistake as if it were our sin?" + +"I don't know. But we must suffer." + +"Well, then, I WILL not, for my part, and I will not let you. If you +care for me----" + +"You had no right to know it." + +"You make it my privilege to keep you from doing wrong for the right's +sake. I'm sorry, with all my heart and soul, for this error; but I +can't blame myself, and I won't deny myself the happiness I haven't +done anything to forfeit. I will never give you up. I will wait as +long as you please for the time when you shall feel free from this +mistake; but you shall be mine at last. Remember that. I might go +away for months--a year, even; but that seems a cowardly and guilty +thing, and I'm not afraid, and I'm not guilty, and I'm going to stay +here and try to see you." + +She shook her head. "It won't change anything? Don't you see that +there's no hope for us?" + +"When is she coming back?" he asked. + +"I don't know. Mother wants father to come and take her out West for a +while." + +"She's up there in the country with your mother yet?" + +"Yes." + +He was silent; then he said desperately-- + +"Penelope, she is very young; and perhaps--perhaps she might meet----" + +"It would make no difference. It wouldn't change it for me." + +"You are cruel--cruel to yourself, if you love me, and cruel to me. +Don't you remember that night--before I spoke--you were talking of that +book; and you said it was foolish and wicked to do as that girl did. +Why is it different with you, except that you give me nothing, and can +never give me anything when you take yourself away? If it were anybody +else, I am sure you would say----" + +"But it isn't anybody else, and that makes it impossible. Sometimes I +think it might be if I would only say so to myself, and then all that I +said to her about you comes up----" + +"I will wait. It can't always come up. I won't urge you any longer +now. But you will see it differently--more clearly. Good-bye--no! +Good night! I shall come again to-morrow. It will surely come right, +and, whatever happens, you have done no wrong. Try to keep that in +mind. I am so happy, in spite of all!" + +He tried to take her hand, but she put it behind her. "No, no! I can't +let you--yet!" + + + +XX. + + +AFTER a week Mrs. Lapham returned, leaving Irene alone at the old +homestead in Vermont. "She's comfortable there--as comfortable as she +can be anywheres, I guess," she said to her husband as they drove +together from the station, where he had met her in obedience to her +telegraphic summons. "She keeps herself busy helping about the house; +and she goes round amongst the hands in their houses. There's +sickness, and you know how helpful she is where there's sickness. She +don't complain any. I don't know as I've heard a word out of her mouth +since we left home; but I'm afraid it'll wear on her, Silas." + +"You don't look over and above well yourself, Persis," said her husband +kindly. + +"Oh, don't talk about me. What I want to know is whether you can't get +the time to run off with her somewhere. I wrote to you about Dubuque. +She'll work herself down, I'm afraid; and THEN I don't know as she'll +be over it. But if she could go off, and be amused--see new people----" + +"I could MAKE the time," said Lapham, "if I had to. But, as it +happens, I've got to go out West on business,--I'll tell you about +it,--and I'll take Irene along." + +"Good!" said his wife. "That's about the best thing I've heard yet. +Where you going?" + +"Out Dubuque way." + +"Anything the matter with Bill's folks?" + +"No. It's business." + +"How's Pen?" + +"I guess she ain't much better than Irene." + +"He been about any?" + +"Yes. But I can't see as it helps matters much." + +"Tchk!" Mrs. Lapham fell back against the carriage cushions. "I +declare, to see her willing to take the man that we all thought wanted +her sister! I can't make it seem right." + +"It's right," said Lapham stoutly; "but I guess she ain't willing; I +wish she was. But there don't seem to be any way out of the thing, +anywhere. It's a perfect snarl. But I don't want you should be +anyways ha'sh with Pen." + +Mrs. Lapham answered nothing; but when she met Penelope she gave the +girl's wan face a sharp look, and began to whimper on her neck. + +Penelope's tears were all spent. "Well, mother," she said, "you come +back almost as cheerful as you went away. I needn't ask if 'Rene's in +good spirits. We all seem to be overflowing with them. I suppose this +is one way of congratulating me. Mrs. Corey hasn't been round to do it +yet." + +"Are you--are you engaged to him, Pen?" gasped her mother. + +"Judging by my feelings, I should say not. I feel as if it was a last +will and testament. But you'd better ask him when he comes." + +"I can't bear to look at him." + +"I guess he's used to that. He don't seem to expect to be looked at. +Well! we're all just where we started. I wonder how long it will keep +up." + +Mrs. Lapham reported to her husband when he came home at night--he had +left his business to go and meet her, and then, after a desolate dinner +at the house, had returned to the office again--that Penelope was fully +as bad as Irene. "And she don't know how to work it off. Irene keeps +doing; but Pen just sits in her room and mopes. She don't even read. +I went up this afternoon to scold her about the state the house was +in--you can see that Irene's away by the perfect mess; but when I saw +her through the crack of the door I hadn't the heart. She sat there +with her hands in her lap, just staring. And, my goodness! she JUMPED +so when she saw me; and then she fell back, and began to laugh, and +said she, 'I thought it was my ghost, mother!' I felt as if I should +give way." + +Lapham listened jadedly, and answered far from the point. "I guess +I've got to start out there pretty soon, Persis." + +"How soon?" + +"Well, to-morrow morning." + +Mrs. Lapham sat silent. Then, "All right," she said. "I'll get you +ready." + +"I shall run up to Lapham for Irene, and then I'll push on through +Canada. I can get there about as quick." + +"Is it anything you can tell me about, Silas?" + +"Yes," said Lapham. "But it's a long story, and I guess you've got +your hands pretty full as it is. I've been throwing good money after +bad,--the usual way,--and now I've got to see if I can save the +pieces." + +After a moment Mrs. Lapham asked, "Is it--Rogers?" + +"It's Rogers." + +"I didn't want you should get in any deeper with him." + +"No. You didn't want I should press him either; and I had to do one or +the other. And so I got in deeper." + +"Silas," said his wife, "I'm afraid I made you!" + +"It's all right, Persis, as far forth as that goes. I was glad to make +it up with him--I jumped at the chance. I guess Rogers saw that he had +a soft thing in me, and he's worked it for all it was worth. But it'll +all come out right in the end." + +Lapham said this as if he did not care to talk any more about it. He +added casually, "Pretty near everybody but the fellows that owe ME seem +to expect me to do a cash business, all of a sudden." + +"Do you mean that you've got payments to make, and that people are not +paying YOU?" + +Lapham winced a little. "Something like that," he said, and he lighted +a cigar. "But when I tell you it's all right, I mean it, Persis. I +ain't going to let the grass grow under my feet, though,--especially +while Rogers digs the ground away from the roots." + +"What are you going to do?" + +"If it has to come to that, I'm going to squeeze him." Lapham's +countenance lighted up with greater joy than had yet visited it since +the day they had driven out to Brookline. "Milton K. Rogers is a +rascal, if you want to know; or else all the signs fail. But I guess +he'll find he's got his come-uppance." Lapham shut his lips so that the +short, reddish-grey beard stuck straight out on them. + +"What's he done?" + +"What's he done? Well, now, I'll tell you what he's done, Persis, since +you think Rogers is such a saint, and that I used him so badly in +getting him out of the business. He's been dabbling in every sort of +fool thing you can lay your tongue to,--wild-cat stocks, patent-rights, +land speculations, oil claims,--till he's run through about everything. +But he did have a big milling property out on the line of the P. Y. & +X.,--saw-mills and grist-mills and lands,--and for the last eight years +he's been doing a land-office business with 'em--business that would +have made anybody else rich. But you can't make Milton K. Rogers rich, +any more than you can fat a hide-bound colt. It ain't in him. He'd +run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott rolled into one in +less than six months, give him a chance, and come out and want to +borrow money of you. Well, he won't borrow any more money of ME; and +if he thinks I don't know as much about that milling property as he +does he's mistaken. I've taken his mills, but I guess I've got the +inside track; Bill's kept me posted; and now I'm going out there to see +how I can unload; and I shan't mind a great deal if Rogers is under the +load when it's off once." + +"I don't understand you, Silas." + +"Why, it's just this. The Great Lacustrine & Polar Railroad has leased +the P. Y. & X. for ninety-nine years,--bought it, practically,--and +it's going to build car-works right by those mills, and it may want +them. And Milton K. Rogers knew it when he turned 'em in on me." + +"Well, if the road wants them, don't that make the mills valuable? You +can get what you ask for them!" + +"Can I? The P. Y. & X. is the only road that runs within fifty miles of +the mills, and you can't get a foot of lumber nor a pound of flour to +market any other way. As long as he had a little local road like the +P. Y. & X. to deal with, Rogers could manage; but when it come to a big +through line like the G. L. & P., he couldn't stand any chance at all. +If such a road as that took a fancy to his mills, do you think it would +pay what he asked? No, sir! He would take what the road offered, or +else the road would tell him to carry his flour and lumber to market +himself." + +"And do you suppose he knew the G. L. & P. wanted the mills when he +turned them in on you?" asked Mrs. Lapham aghast, and falling +helplessly into his alphabetical parlance. + +The Colonel laughed scoffingly. "Well, when Milton K. Rogers don't +know which side his bread's buttered on! I don't understand," he added +thoughtfully, "how he's always letting it fall on the buttered side. +But such a man as that is sure to have a screw loose in him somewhere." +Mrs. Lapham sat discomfited. All that she could say was, "Well, I want +you should ask yourself whether Rogers would ever have gone wrong, or +got into these ways of his, if it hadn't been for your forcing him out +of the business when you did. I want you should think whether you're +not responsible for everything he's done since." + +"You go and get that bag of mine ready," said Lapham sullenly. "I +guess I can take care of myself. And Milton K. Rogers too," he added. + + +That evening Corey spent the time after dinner in his own room, with +restless excursions to the library, where his mother sat with his +father and sisters, and showed no signs of leaving them. At last, in +coming down, he encountered her on the stairs, going up. They both +stopped consciously. + +"I would like to speak with you, mother. I have been waiting to see +you alone." + +"Come to my room," she said. + +"I have a feeling that you know what I want to say," he began there. + +She looked up at him where he stood by the chimney-piece, and tried to +put a cheerful note into her questioning "Yes?" + +"Yes; and I have a feeling that you won't like it--that you won't +approve of it. I wish you did--I wish you could!" + +"I'm used to liking and approving everything you do, Tom. If I don't +like this at once, I shall try to like it--you know that--for your +sake, whatever it is." + +"I'd better be short," he said, with a quick sigh. "It's about Miss +Lapham." He hastened to add, "I hope it isn't surprising to you. I'd +have told you before, if I could." + +"No, it isn't surprising. I was afraid--I suspected something of the +kind." + +They were both silent in a painful silence. + +"Well, mother?" he asked at last. + +"If it's something you've quite made up mind to----" + +"It is!" + +"And if you've already spoken to her----" + +"I had to do that first, of course." + +"There would be no use of my saying anything, even if I disliked it." + +"You do dislike it!" + +"No--no! I can't say that. Of course I should have preferred it if you +had chosen some nice girl among those that you had been brought up +with--some friend or associate of your sisters, whose people we had +known----" + +"Yes, I understand that, and I can assure you that I haven't been +indifferent to your feelings. I have tried to consider them from the +first, and it kept me hesitating in a way that I'm ashamed to think of; +for it wasn't quite right towards--others. But your feelings and my +sisters' have been in my mind, and if I couldn't yield to what I +supposed they must be, entirely----" + +Even so good a son and brother as this, when it came to his love +affair, appeared to think that he had yielded much in considering the +feelings of his family at all. + +His mother hastened to comfort him. "I know--I know. I've seen for +some time that this might happen, Tom, and I have prepared myself for +it. I have talked it over with your father, and we both agreed from +the beginning that you were not to be hampered by our feeling. +Still--it is a surprise. It must be." + +"I know it. I can understand your feeling. But I'm sure that it's one +that will last only while you don't know her well." + +"Oh, I'm sure of that, Tom. I'm sure that we shall all be fond of +her,--for your sake at first, even--and I hope she'll like us." + +"I am quite certain of that," said Corey, with that confidence which +experience does not always confirm in such cases. "And your taking it +as you do lifts a tremendous load off me." + +But he sighed so heavily, and looked so troubled, that his mother said, +"Well, now, you mustn't think of that any more. We wish what is for +your happiness, my son, and we will gladly reconcile ourselves to +anything that might have been disagreeable. I suppose we needn't speak +of the family. We must both think alike about them. They have +their--drawbacks, but they are thoroughly good people, and I satisfied +myself the other night that they were not to be dreaded." She rose, and +put her arm round his neck. "And I wish you joy, Tom! If she's half as +good as you are, you will both be very happy." She was going to kiss +him, but something in his looks stopped her--an absence, a trouble, +which broke out in his words. + +"I must tell you, mother! There's been a complication--a +mistake--that's a blight on me yet, and that it sometimes seems as if +we couldn't escape from. I wonder if you can help us! They all thought +I meant--the other sister." + +"O Tom! But how COULD they?" + +"I don't know. It seemed so glaringly plain--I was ashamed of making +it so outright from the beginning. But they did. Even she did, +herself!" + +"But where could they have thought your eyes were--your taste? It +wouldn't be surprising if any one were taken with that wonderful +beauty; and I'm sure she's good too. But I'm astonished at them! To +think you could prefer that little, black, odd creature, with her +joking and----" + +"MOTHER!" cried the young man, turning a ghastly face of warning upon +her. + +"What do you mean, Tom?" + +"Did you--did--did you think so too--that it was IRENE I meant?" + +"Why, of course!" + +He stared at her hopelessly. + +"O my son!" she said, for all comment on the situation. + +"Don't reproach me, mother! I couldn't stand it." + +"No. I didn't mean to do that. But how--HOW could it happen?" + +"I don't know. When she first told me that they had understood it so, +I laughed--almost--it was so far from me. But now when you seem to +have had the same idea--Did you all think so?" + +"Yes." + +They remained looking at each other. Then Mrs. Corey began: "It did +pass through my mind once--that day I went to call upon them--that it +might not be as we thought; but I knew so little of--of----" + +"Penelope," Corey mechanically supplied. + +"Is that her name?--I forgot--that I only thought of you in relation to +her long enough to reject the idea; and it was natural after our seeing +something of the other one last year, that I might suppose you had +formed some--attachment----" + +"Yes; that's what they thought too. But I never thought of her as +anything but a pretty child. I was civil to her because you wished it; +and when I met her here again, I only tried to see her so that I could +talk with her about her sister." + +"You needn't defend yourself to ME, Tom," said his mother, proud to say +it to him in his trouble. "It's a terrible business for them, poor +things," she added. "I don't know how they could get over it. But, of +course, sensible people must see----" + +"They haven't got over it. At least she hasn't. Since it's happened, +there's been nothing that hasn't made me prouder and fonder of her! At +first I WAS charmed with her--my fancy was taken; she delighted me--I +don't know how; but she was simply the most fascinating person I ever +saw. Now I never think of that. I only think how good she is--how +patient she is with me, and how unsparing she is of herself. If she +were concerned alone--if I were not concerned too--it would soon end. +She's never had a thought for anything but her sister's feeling and +mine from the beginning. I go there,--I know that I oughtn't, but I +can't help it,--and she suffers it, and tries not to let me see that +she is suffering it. There never was any one like her--so brave, so +true, so noble. I won't give her up--I can't. But it breaks my heart +when she accuses herself of what was all MY doing. We spend our time +trying to reason out of it, but we always come back to it at last, and +I have to hear her morbidly blaming herself. Oh!" + +Doubtless Mrs. Corey imagined some reliefs to this suffering, some +qualifications of this sublimity in a girl she had disliked so +distinctly; but she saw none in her son's behaviour, and she gave him +her further sympathy. She tried to praise Penelope, and said that it +was not to be expected that she could reconcile herself at once to +everything. "I shouldn't have liked it in her if she had. But time +will bring it all right. And if she really cares for you----" + +"I extorted that from her." + +"Well, then, you must look at it in the best light you can. There is +no blame anywhere, and the mortification and pain is something that +must be lived down. That's all. And don't let what I said grieve you, +Tom. You know I scarcely knew her, and I--I shall be sure to like any +one you like, after all." + +"Yes, I know," said the young man drearily. "Will you tell father?" + +"If you wish." + +"He must know. And I couldn't stand any more of this, just yet--any +more mistake." + +"I will tell him," said Mrs. Corey; and it was naturally the next thing +for a woman who dwelt so much on decencies to propose: "We must go to +call on her--your sisters and I. They have never seen her even; and +she mustn't be allowed to think we're indifferent to her, especially +under the circumstances." + +"Oh no! Don't go--not yet," cried Corey, with an instinctive perception +that nothing could be worse for him. "We must wait--we must be +patient. I'm afraid it would be painful to her now." + +He turned away without speaking further; and his mother's eyes followed +him wistfully to the door. There were some questions that she would +have liked to ask him; but she had to content herself with trying to +answer them when her husband put them to her. + +There was this comfort for her always in Bromfield Corey, that he never +was much surprised at anything, however shocking or painful. His +standpoint in regard to most matters was that of the sympathetic +humorist who would be glad to have the victim of circumstance laugh +with him, but was not too much vexed when the victim could not. He +laughed now when his wife, with careful preparation, got the facts of +his son's predicament fully under his eye. + +"Really, Bromfield," she said, "I don't see how you can laugh. Do you +see any way out of it?" + +"It seems to me that the way has been found already. Tom has told his +love to the right one, and the wrong one knows it. Time will do the +rest." + +"If I had so low an opinion of them all as that, it would make me very +unhappy. It's shocking to think of it." + +"It is upon the theory of ladies and all young people," said her +husband, with a shrug, feeling his way to the matches on the mantel, +and then dropping them with a sign, as if recollecting that he must not +smoke there. "I've no doubt Tom feels himself an awful sinner. But +apparently he's resigned to his sin; he isn't going to give her up." + +"I'm glad to say, for the sake of human nature, that SHE isn't +resigned--little as I like her," cried Mrs. Corey. + +Her husband shrugged again. "Oh, there mustn't be any indecent haste. +She will instinctively observe the proprieties. But come, now, Anna! +you mustn't pretend to me here, in the sanctuary of home, that +practically the human affections don't reconcile themselves to any +situation that the human sentiments condemn. Suppose the wrong sister +had died: would the right one have had any scruple in marrying Tom, +after they had both 'waited a proper time,' as the phrase is?" + +"Bromfield, you're shocking!" + +"Not more shocking than reality. You may regard this as a second +marriage." He looked at her with twinkling eyes, full of the triumph +the spectator of his species feels in signal exhibitions of human +nature. "Depend upon it, the right sister will be reconciled; the +wrong one will be consoled; and all will go merry as a marriage bell--a +second marriage bell. Why, it's quite like a romance!" Here he laughed +outright again. + +"Well," sighed the wife, "I could almost wish the right one, as you +call her, would reject Tom, I dislike her so much." + +"Ah, now you're talking business, Anna," said her husband, with his +hands spread behind the back he turned comfortably to the fire. "The +whole Lapham tribe is distasteful to me. As I don't happen to have +seen our daughter-in-law elect, I have still the hope--which you're +disposed to forbid me--that she may not be quite so unacceptable as the +others." + +"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" anxiously inquired his wife. + +"Yes--I think I do;" and he sat down, and stretched out his long legs +toward the fire. + +"But it's very inconsistent of you to oppose the matter now, when +you've shown so much indifference up to this time. You've told me, all +along, that it was of no use to oppose it." + +"So I have. I was convinced of that at the beginning, or my reason +was. You know very well that I am equal to any trial, any sacrifice, +day after to-morrow; but when it comes to-day it's another thing. As +long as this crisis decently kept its distance, I could look at it with +an impartial eye; but now that it seems at hand, I find that, while my +reason is still acquiescent, my nerves are disposed to--excuse the +phrase--kick. I ask myself, what have I done nothing for, all my life, +and lived as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, in +the possession of every polite taste and feeling that adorns leisure, +if I'm to come to this at last? And I find no satisfactory answer. I +say to myself that I might as well have yielded to the pressure all +round me, and gone to work, as Tom has." + +Mrs. Corey looked at him forlornly, divining the core of real +repugnance that existed in his self-satire. + +"I assure you, my dear," he continued, "that the recollection of what I +suffered from the Laphams at that dinner of yours is an anguish still. +It wasn't their behaviour,--they behaved well enough--or ill enough; +but their conversation was terrible. Mrs. Lapham's range was strictly +domestic; and when the Colonel got me in the library, he poured mineral +paint all over me, till I could have been safely warranted not to crack +or scale in any climate. I suppose we shall have to see a good deal of +them. They will probably come here every Sunday night to tea. It's a +perspective without a vanishing-point." + +"It may not be so bad, after all," said his wife; and she suggested for +his consolation that he knew very little about the Laphams yet. + +He assented to the fact. "I know very little about them, and about my +other fellow-beings. I dare say that I should like the Laphams better +if I knew them better. But in any case, I resign myself. And we must +keep in view the fact that this is mainly Tom's affair, and if his +affections have regulated it to his satisfaction, we must be content." + +"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "And perhaps it won't turn out so badly. +It's a great comfort to know that you feel just as I do about it." + +"I do," said her husband, "and more too." + +It was she and her daughters who would be chiefly annoyed by the Lapham +connection; she knew that. But she had to begin to bear the burden by +helping her husband to bear his light share of it. To see him so +depressed dismayed her, and she might well have reproached him more +sharply than she did for showing so much indifference, when she was so +anxious, at first. But that would not have served any good end now. +She even answered him patiently when he asked her, "What did you say to +Tom when he told you it was the other one?" + +"What could I say? I could do nothing, but try to take back what I had +said against her." + +"Yes, you had quite enough to do, I suppose. It's an awkward business. +If it had been the pretty one, her beauty would have been our excuse. +But the plain one--what do you suppose attracted him in her?" + +Mrs. Corey sighed at the futility of the question. "Perhaps I did her +injustice. I only saw her a few moments. Perhaps I got a false +impression. I don't think she's lacking in sense, and that's a great +thing. She'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness, and +can't, by anything we say or do, when she's Tom's wife." She pronounced +the distasteful word with courage, and went on: "The pretty one might +not have been able to see that. She might have got it into her head +that we were looking down on her; and those insipid people are terribly +stubborn. We can come to some understanding with this one; I'm sure of +that." She ended by declaring that it was now their duty to help Tom +out of his terrible predicament. + +"Oh, even the Lapham cloud has a silver lining," said Corey. "In fact, +it seems really to have all turned out for the best, Anna; though it's +rather curious to find you the champion of the Lapham side, at last. +Confess, now, that the right girl has secretly been your choice all +along, and that while you sympathise with the wrong one, you rejoice in +the tenacity with which the right one is clinging to her own!" He added +with final seriousness, "It's just that she should, and, so far as I +understand the case, I respect her for it." + +"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "It's natural, and it's right." But she +added, "I suppose they're glad of him on any terms." + +"That is what I have been taught to believe," said her husband. "When +shall we see our daughter-in-law elect? I find myself rather impatient +to have that part of it over." + +Mrs. Corey hesitated. "Tom thinks we had better not call, just yet." + +"She has told him of your terrible behaviour when you called before?" + +"No, Bromfield! She couldn't be so vulgar as that?" + +"But anything short of it?" + + + +XXI. + + +LAPHAM was gone a fortnight. He was in a sullen humour when he came +back, and kept himself shut close within his own den at the office the +first day. He entered it in the morning without a word to his clerks +as he passed through the outer room, and he made no sign throughout the +forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell from time to time, +and send out to Walker for some book of accounts or a letter-file. His +boy confidentially reported to Walker that the old man seemed to have +got a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper said to Corey, +at the little table which they had taken in a corner together, in +default of seats at the counter, "Well, sir, I guess there's a cold +wave coming." + +Corey looked up innocently, and said, "I haven't read the weather +report." + +"Yes, sir," Walker continued, "it's coming. Areas of rain along the +whole coast, and increased pressure in the region of the private +office. Storm-signals up at the old man's door now." + +Corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, and that his +meteorology was entirely personal to Lapham. "What do you mean?" he +asked, without vivid interest in the allegory, his mind being full of +his own tragi-comedy. + +"Why, just this: I guess the old man's takin' in sail. And I guess +he's got to. As I told you the first time we talked about him, there +don't any one know one-quarter as much about the old man's business as +the old man does himself; and I ain't betraying any confidence when I +say that I guess that old partner of his has got pretty deep into his +books. I guess he's over head and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone +in after him, and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck. There +seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, I call it--in the +paint market just now; and then again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man +don't build a hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain, +unless there's a regular boom. And just now there ain't any boom at +all. Oh, I don't say but what the old man's got anchors to windward; +guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN' to leave me his money, I wish he'd left +it six weeks ago. Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but +you can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, where the old +man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess." Walker began to feed in his +breaded chop with the same nervous excitement with which he abandoned +himself to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks. Corey had +listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain +moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him. It came from +Lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had +hitherto seemed so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster +would befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the +unselfishness of his constancy. He thought of the sum of money that +was his own, and that he might offer to lend, or practically give, if +the time came; and with his crude hopes and purposes formlessly +exulting in his heart, he kept on listening with an unchanged +countenance. + +Walker could not rest till he had developed the whole situation, so far +as he knew it. "Look at the stock we've got on hand. There's going to +be an awful shrinkage on that, now! And when everybody is shutting +down, or running half-time, the works up at Lapham are going full chip, +just the same as ever. Well, it's his pride. I don't say but what +it's a good sort of pride, but he likes to make his brags that the +fire's never been out in the works since they started, and that no +man's work or wages has ever been cut down yet at Lapham, it don't +matter WHAT the times are. Of course," explained Walker, "I shouldn't +talk so to everybody; don't know as I should talk so to anybody but +you, Mr. Corey." + +"Of course," assented Corey. + +"Little off your feed to-day," said Walker, glancing at Corey's plate. + +"I got up with a headache." + +"Well, sir, if you're like me you'll carry it round all day, then. I +don't know a much meaner thing than a headache--unless it's earache, or +toothache, or some other kind of ache I'm pretty hard to suit, when it +comes to diseases. Notice how yellow the old man looked when he came +in this morning? I don't like to see a man of his build look +yellow--much." About the middle of the afternoon the dust-coloured face +of Rogers, now familiar to Lapham's clerks, showed itself among them. +"Has Colonel Lapham returned yet?" he asked, in his dry, wooden tones, +of Lapham's boy. + +"Yes, he's in his office," said the boy; and as Rogers advanced, he +rose and added, "I don't know as you can see him to-day. His orders are +not to let anybody in." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Rogers; "I think he will see ME!" and he pressed +forward. + +"Well, I'll have to ask," returned the boy; and hastily preceding +Rogers, he put his head in at Lapham's door, and then withdrew it. +"Please to sit down," he said; "he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with +an air of some surprise, Rogers obeyed. His sere, dull-brown whiskers +and the moustache closing over both lips were incongruously and +illogically clerical in effect, and the effect was heightened for no +reason by the parchment texture of his skin; the baldness extending to +the crown of his head was like a baldness made up for the stage. What +his face expressed chiefly was a bland and beneficent caution. Here, +you must have said to yourself, is a man of just, sober, and prudent +views, fixed purposes, and the good citizenship that avoids debt and +hazard of every kind. + +"What do you want?" asked Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair as +Rogers entered his room, and pushing the door shut with his foot, +without rising. + +Rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat with his +hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed towards Lapham. "I want +to know what you are going to do," he answered with sufficient +self-possession. + +"I'll tell you, first, what I've done," said Lapham. "I've been to +Dubuque, and I've found out all about that milling property you turned +in on me. Did you know that the G. L. & P. had leased the P. Y. & X.?" + +"I some suspected that it might." + +"Did you know it when you turned the property in on me? Did you know +that the G. L. & P. wanted to buy the mills?" + +"I presumed the road would give a fair price for them," said Rogers, +winking his eyes in outward expression of inwardly blinking the point. + +"You lie," said Lapham, as quietly as if correcting him in a slight +error; and Rogers took the word with equal sang froid. "You knew the +road wouldn't give a fair price for the mills. You knew it would give +what it chose, and that I couldn't help myself, when you let me take +them. You're a thief, Milton K. Rogers, and you stole money I lent +you." Rogers sat listening, as if respectfully considering the +statements. "You knew how I felt about that old matter--or my wife +did; and that I wanted to make it up to you, if you felt anyway badly +used. And you took advantage of it. You've got money out of me, in +the first place, on securities that wa'n't worth thirty-five cents on +the dollar, and you've let me in for this thing, and that thing, and +you've bled me every time. And all I've got to show for it is a +milling property on a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it +wants to, as dry as it pleases. And you want to know what I'm going to +do? I'm going to squeeze YOU. I'm going to sell these collaterals of +yours,"--he touched a bundle of papers among others that littered his +desk,--"and I'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch. I +ain't going to fight the G. L. & P." + +Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his +visitor, who sat wholly unmoved. + +"There are some parties," he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring +Lapham's words, as if they had been an outburst against some third +person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little +interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his +condemnation,--"there are some English parties who have been making +inquiries in regard to those mills." + +"I guess you're lying, Rogers," said Lapham, without looking round. + +"Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not act hastily." + +"I see you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, facing fiercely +about. "You think I'm fooling, do you?" He struck his bell, and +"William," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting +while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the +bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to Gallop & +Paddock's, in State Street, right away. Now go!" he said to Rogers, +when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to +his desk. + +Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand. He was +not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was +impartial. He wore the air of a man who was ready to return to +business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted. +"Then I understand," he said, "that you will take no action in regard +to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of." + +Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of +Rogers in silence. "I wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "I +should like to know." But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his +curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham's as of the +irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party +that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll +talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll +give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again." + +Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking +thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly +withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour. + +Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, during the +afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the +sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed +swearing, penetrated to the outer office. Somewhat earlier than the +usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat on and his +overcoat buttoned about him. He said briefly to his boy, "William, I +shan't be back again this afternoon," and then went to Miss Dewey and +left a number of letters on her table to be copied, and went out. +Nothing had been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself +through those who saw him go out. + +That evening as he sat down with his wife alone at tea, he asked, +"Ain't Pen coming to supper?" + +"No, she ain't," said his wife. "I don't know as I like the way she's +going on, any too well. I'm afraid, if she keeps on, she'll be down +sick. She's got deeper feelings than Irene." + +Lapham said nothing, but having helped himself to the abundance of his +table in his usual fashion, he sat and looked at his plate with an +indifference that did not escape the notice of his wife. "What's the +matter with YOU?" she asked. + +"Nothing. I haven't got any appetite." + +"What's the matter?" she persisted. + +"Trouble's the matter; bad luck and lots of it's the matter," said +Lapham. "I haven't ever hid anything from you, Persis, well you asked +me, and it's too late to begin now. I'm in a fix. I'll tell you what +kind of a fix, if you think it'll do you any good; but I guess you'll +be satisfied to know that it's a fix." + +"How much of a one?" she asked with a look of grave, steady courage in +her eyes. + +"Well, I don't know as I can tell, just yet," said Lapham, avoiding +this look. "Things have been dull all the fall, but I thought they'd +brisk up come winter. They haven't. There have been a lot of +failures, and some of 'em owed me, and some of 'em had me on their +paper; and----" Lapham stopped. + +"And what?" prompted his wife. + +He hesitated before he added, "And then--Rogers." + +"I'm to blame for that," said Mrs. Lapham. "I forced you to it." + +"No; I was as willing to go into it as what you were," answered Lapham. +"I don't want to blame anybody." + +Mrs. Lapham had a woman's passion for fixing responsibility; she could +not help saying, as soon as acquitted, "I warned you against him, +Silas. I told you not to let him get in any deeper with you." + +"Oh yes. I had to help him to try to get my money back. I might as +well poured water into a sieve. And now--" Lapham stopped. + +"Don't be afraid to speak out to me, Silas Lapham. If it comes to the +worst, I want to know it--I've got to know it. What did I ever care +for the money? I've had a happy home with you ever since we were +married, and I guess I shall have as long as you live, whether we go on +to the Back Bay, or go back to the old house at Lapham. I know who's +to blame, and I blame myself. It was my forcing Rogers on to you." She +came back to this with her helpless longing, inbred in all Puritan +souls, to have some one specifically suffer for the evil in the world, +even if it must be herself. + +"It hasn't come to the worst yet, Persis," said her husband. "But I +shall have to hold up on the new house a little while, till I can see +where I am." + +"I shouldn't care if we had to sell it," cried his wife, in passionate +self-condemnation. "I should be GLAD if we had to, as far as I'm +concerned." + +"I shouldn't," said Lapham. + +"I know!" said his wife; and she remembered ruefully how his heart was +set on it. + +He sat musing. "Well, I guess it's going to come out all right in the +end. Or, if it ain't," he sighed, "we can't help it. May be Pen +needn't worry so much about Corey, after all," he continued, with a +bitter irony new to him. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. +And there's a chance," he ended, with a still bitterer laugh, "that +Rogers will come to time, after all." + +"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, with a gleam of hope in +her eyes. "What chance?" + +"One in ten million," said Lapham; and her face fell again. "He says +there are some English parties after him to buy these mills." + +"Well?" + +"Well, I gave him twenty-four hours to prove himself a liar." + +"You don't believe there are any such parties?" + +"Not in THIS world." + +"But if there were?" + +"Well, if there were, Persis----But pshaw!" + +"No, no!" she pleaded eagerly. "It don't seem as if he COULD be such a +villain. What would be the use of his pretending? If he brought the +parties to you." + +"Well," said Lapham scornfully, "I'd let them have the mills at the +price Rogers turned 'em in on me at. I don't want to make anything on +'em. But guess I shall hear from the G. L. & P. first. And when they +make their offer, I guess I'll have to accept it, whatever it is. I +don't think they'll have a great many competitors." + +Mrs. Lapham could not give up her hope. "If you could get your price +from those English parties before they knew that the G. L. & P. wanted +to buy the mills, would it let you out with Rogers?" + +"Just about," said Lapham. + +"Then I know he'll move heaven and earth to bring it about. I KNOW you +won't be allowed to suffer for doing him a kindness, Silas. He CAN'T +be so ungrateful! Why, why SHOULD he pretend to have any such parties +in view when he hasn't? Don't you be down-hearted, Si. You'll see that +he'll be round with them to-morrow." + +Lapham laughed, but she urged so many reasons for her belief in Rogers +that Lapham began to rekindle his own faith a little. He ended by +asking for a hot cup of tea; and Mrs. Lapham sent the pot out and had a +fresh one steeped for him. After that he made a hearty supper in the +revulsion from his entire despair; and they fell asleep that night +talking hopefully of his affairs, which he laid before her fully, as he +used to do when he first started in business. That brought the old +times back, and he said: "If this had happened then, I shouldn't have +cared much. I was young then, and I wasn't afraid of anything. But I +noticed that after I passed fifty I began to get scared easier. I +don't believe I could pick up, now, from a regular knock-down." + +"Pshaw! YOU scared, Silas Lapham?" cried his wife proudly. "I should +like to see the thing that ever scared you; or the knockdown that YOU +couldn't pick up from!" + +"Is that so, Persis?" he asked, with the joy her courage gave him. + +In the middle of the night she called to him, in a voice which the +darkness rendered still more deeply troubled: "Are you awake, Silas?" + +"Yes; I'm awake." + +"I've been thinking about those English parties, Si----" + +"So've I." + +"And I can't make it out but what you'd be just as bad as Rogers, every +bit and grain, if you were to let them have the mills----" + +"And not tell 'em what the chances were with the G. L. & P.? I thought +of that, and you needn't be afraid." + +She began to bewail herself, and to sob convulsively: "O Silas! O +Silas!" Heaven knows in what measure the passion of her soul was mired +with pride in her husband's honesty, relief from an apprehended +struggle, and pity for him. + +"Hush, hush, Persis!" he besought her. "You'll wake Pen if you keep on +that way. Don't cry any more! You mustn't." + +"Oh, let me cry, Silas! It'll help me. I shall be all right in a +minute. Don't you mind." She sobbed herself quiet. "It does seem too +hard," she said, when she could speak again, "that you have to give up +this chance when Providence had fairly raised it up for you." + +"I guess it wa'n't Providence raised it up," said Lapham. "Any rate, +it's got to go. Most likely Rogers was lyin', and there ain't any such +parties; but if there were, they couldn't have the mills from me +without the whole story. Don't you be troubled, Persis. I'm going to +pull through all right." "Oh, I ain't afraid. I don't suppose but what +there's plenty would help you, if they knew you needed it, Si." + +"They would if they knew I DIDN'T need it," said Lapham sardonically. + +"Did you tell Bill how you stood?" + +"No, I couldn't bear to. I've been the rich one so long, that I +couldn't bring myself to own up that I was in danger." + +"Yes." + +"Besides, it didn't look so ugly till to-day. But I guess we shan't let +ugly looks scare us." + +"No." + + + +XXII. + + +THE morning postman brought Mrs. Lapham a letter from Irene, which was +chiefly significant because it made no reference whatever to the writer +or her state of mind. It gave the news of her uncle's family; it told +of their kindness to her; her cousin Will was going to take her and his +sisters ice-boating on the river, when it froze. + +By the time this letter came, Lapham had gone to his business, and the +mother carried it to Penelope to talk over. "What do you make out of +it?" she asked; and without waiting to be answered she said, "I don't +know as I believe in cousins marrying, a great deal; but if Irene and +Will were to fix it up between 'em----" She looked vaguely at Penelope. + +"It wouldn't make any difference as far as I was concerned," replied +the girl listlessly. + +Mrs. Lapham lost her patience. + +"Well, then, I'll tell you what, Penelope!" she exclaimed. "Perhaps +it'll make a difference to you if you know that your father's in REAL +trouble. He's harassed to death, and he was awake half the night, +talking about it. That abominable Rogers has got a lot of money away +from him; and he's lost by others that he's helped,"--Mrs. Lapham put +it in this way because she had no time to be explicit,--"and I want you +should come out of your room now, and try to be of some help and +comfort to him when he comes home to-night. I guess Irene wouldn't +mope round much, if she was here," she could not help adding. + +The girl lifted herself on her elbow. "What's that you say about +father?" she demanded eagerly. "Is he in trouble? Is he going to lose +his money? Shall we have to stay in this house?" + +"We may be very GLAD to stay in this house," said Mrs. Lapham, half +angry with herself for having given cause for the girl's conjectures, +and half with the habit of prosperity in her child, which could +conceive no better of what adversity was. "And I want you should get +up and show that you've got some feeling for somebody in the world +besides yourself." + +"Oh, I'll get UP!" said the girl promptly, almost cheerfully. + +"I don't say it's as bad now as it looked a little while ago," said her +mother, conscientiously hedging a little from the statement which she +had based rather upon her feelings than her facts. "Your father thinks +he'll pull through all right, and I don't know but what he will. But I +want you should see if you can't do something to cheer him up and keep +him from getting so perfectly down-hearted as he seems to get, under +the load he's got to carry. And stop thinking about yourself a while, +and behave yourself like a sensible girl." + +"Yes, yes," said the girl; "I will. You needn't be troubled about me +any more." + +Before she left her room she wrote a note, and when she came down she +was dressed to go out-of-doors and post it herself. The note was to +Corey:-- + +"Do not come to see me any more till you hear from me. I have a reason +which I cannot give you now; and you must not ask what it is." + +All day she went about in a buoyant desperation, and she came down to +meet her father at supper. + +"Well, Persis," he said scornfully, as he sat down, "we might as well +saved our good resolutions till they were wanted. I guess those +English parties have gone back on Rogers." + +"Do you mean he didn't come?" + +"He hadn't come up to half-past five," said Lapham. + +"Tchk!" uttered his wife. "But I guess I shall pull through without +Mr. Rogers," continued Lapham. "A firm that I didn't think COULD +weather it is still afloat, and so far forth as the danger goes of +being dragged under with it, I'm all right." Penelope came in. "Hello, +Pen!" cried her father. "It ain't often I meet YOU nowadays." He put +up his hand as she passed his chair, and pulled her down and kissed her. + +"No," she said; "but I thought I'd come down to-night and cheer you up +a little. I shall not talk; the sight of me will be enough." + +Her father laughed out. "Mother been telling you? Well, I WAS pretty +blue last night; but I guess I was more scared than hurt. How'd you +like to go to the theatre to-night? Sellers at the Park. Heigh?" + +"Well, I don't know. Don't you think they could get along without me +there?" + +"No; couldn't work it at all," cried the Colonel. "Let's all go. +Unless," he added inquiringly, "there's somebody coming here?" + +"There's nobody coming," said Penelope. + +"Good! Then we'll go. Mother, don't you be late now." + +"Oh, I shan't keep you waiting," said Mrs. Lapham. She had thought of +telling what a cheerful letter she had got from Irene; but upon the +whole it seemed better not to speak of Irene at all just then. After +they returned from the theatre, where the Colonel roared through the +comedy, with continual reference of his pleasure to Penelope, to make +sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the whole +affair had been for the girl's distraction rather than his, "I don't +believe but what it's going to come out all right about the children;" +and then she told him of the letter, and the hopes she had founded upon +it. + +"Well, perhaps you're right, Persis," he consented. + +"I haven't seen Pen so much like herself since it happened. I declare, +when I see the way she came out to-night, just to please you, I don't +know as I want you should get over all your troubles right away." + +"I guess there'll be enough to keep Pen going for a while yet," said +the Colonel, winding up his watch. + +But for a time there was a relief, which Walker noted, in the +atmosphere at the office, and then came another cold wave, slighter +than the first, but distinctly felt there, and succeeded by another +relief. It was like the winter which was wearing on to the end of the +year, with alternations of freezing weather, and mild days stretching +to weeks, in which the snow and ice wholly disappeared. It was none +the less winter, and none the less harassing for these fluctuations, +and Lapham showed in his face and temper the effect of like +fluctuations in his affairs. He grew thin and old, and both at home +and at his office he was irascible to the point of offence. In these +days Penelope shared with her mother the burden of their troubled home, +and united with her in supporting the silence or the petulance of the +gloomy, secret man who replaced the presence of jolly prosperity there. +Lapham had now ceased to talk of his troubles, and savagely resented +his wife's interference. "You mind your own business, Persis," he said +one day, "if you've got any;" and after that she left him mainly to +Penelope, who did not think of asking him questions. + +"It's pretty hard on you, Pen," she said. + +"That makes it easier for me," returned the girl, who did not otherwise +refer to her own trouble. + +In her heart she had wondered a little at the absolute obedience of +Corey, who had made no sign since receiving her note. She would have +liked to ask her father if Corey was sick; she would have liked him to +ask her why Corey did not come any more. Her mother went on-- + +"I don't believe your father knows WHERE he stands. He works away at +those papers he brings home here at night, as if he didn't half know +what he was about. He always did have that close streak in him, and I +don't suppose but what he's been going into things he don't want +anybody else to know about, and he's kept these accounts of his own." + +Sometimes he gave Penelope figures to work at, which he would not +submit to his wife's nimbler arithmetic. Then she went to bed and left +them sitting up till midnight, struggling with problems in which they +were both weak. But she could see that the girl was a comfort to her +father, and that his troubles were a defence and shelter to her. Some +nights she could hear them going out together, and then she lay awake +for their return from their long walk. When the hour or day of respite +came again, the home felt it first. Lapham wanted to know what the +news from Irene was; he joined his wife in all her cheerful +speculations, and tried to make her amends for his sullen reticence and +irritability. Irene was staying on at Dubuque. There came a letter +from her, saying that her uncle's people wanted her to spend the winter +there. "Well, let her," said Lapham. "It'll be the best thing for +her." + +Lapham himself had letters from his brother at frequent intervals. His +brother was watching the G. L. & P., which as yet had made no offer for +the mills. Once, when one of these letters came, he submitted to his +wife whether, in the absence of any positive information that the road +wanted the property, he might not, with a good conscience, dispose of +it to the best advantage to anybody who came along. + +She looked wistfully at him; it was on the rise from a season of deep +depression with him. "No, Si," she said; "I don't see how you could do +that." + +He did not assent and submit, as he had done at first, but began to +rail at the unpracticality of women; and then he shut some papers he +had been looking over into his desk, and flung out of the room. + +One of the papers had slipped through the crevice of the lid, and lay +upon the floor. Mrs. Lapham kept on at her sewing, but after a while +she picked the paper up to lay it on the desk. Then she glanced at it, +and saw that it was a long column of dates and figures, recording +successive sums, never large ones, paid regularly to "Wm. M." The dates +covered a year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds. + +Mrs. Lapham laid the paper down on the desk, and then she took it up +again and put it into her work-basket, meaning to give it to him. When +he came in she saw him looking absent-mindedly about for something, and +then going to work upon his papers, apparently without it. She thought +she would wait till he missed it definitely, and then give him the +scrap she had picked up. It lay in her basket, and after some days it +found its way under the work in it, and she forgot it. + + + +XXIII. + + +SINCE New Year's there had scarcely been a mild day, and the streets +were full of snow, growing foul under the city feet and hoofs, and +renewing its purity from the skies with repeated falls, which in turn +lost their whiteness, beaten down, and beaten black and hard into a +solid bed like iron. The sleighing was incomparable, and the air was +full of the din of bells; but Lapham's turnout was not of those that +thronged the Brighton road every afternoon; the man at the +livery-stable sent him word that the mare's legs were swelling. + +He and Corey had little to do with each other. He did not know how +Penelope had arranged it with Corey; his wife said she knew no more +than he did, and he did not like to ask the girl herself, especially as +Corey no longer came to the house. He saw that she was cheerfuller +than she had been, and helpfuller with him and her mother. Now and +then Lapham opened his troubled soul to her a little, letting his +thought break into speech without preamble or conclusion. Once he +said-- + +"Pen, I presume you know I'm in trouble." + +"We all seem to be there," said the girl. + +"Yes, but there's a difference between being there by your own fault +and being there by somebody else's." + +"I don't call it his fault," she said. + +"I call it mine," said the Colonel. + +The girl laughed. Her thought was of her own care, and her father's +wholly of his. She must come to his ground. "What have you been doing +wrong?" + +"I don't know as you'd call it wrong. It's what people do all the +time. But I wish I'd let stocks alone. It's what I always promised +your mother I would do. But there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or +watered stock, either." + +"I don't think there's much use crying about anything. If it could +have been cried straight, it would have been all right from the start," +said the girl, going back to her own affair; and if Lapham had not been +so deeply engrossed in his, he might have seen how little she cared for +all that money could do or undo. He did not observe her enough to see +how variable her moods were in those days, and how often she sank from +some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely +defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably humble and +patient. But no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by his +wife, to whom Lapham said one day, when he came home, "Persis, what's +the reason Pen don't marry Corey?" + +"You know as well as I do, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham, with an inquiring +look at him for what lay behind his words. + +"Well, I think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's going on. There +ain't any rhyme nor reason to it." He stopped, and his wife waited. +"If she said the word, I could have some help from them." He hung his +head, and would not meet his wife's eye. + +"I guess you're in a pretty bad way, Si," she said pityingly, "or you +wouldn't have come to that." + +"I'm in a hole," said Lapham, "and I don't know where to turn. You +won't let me do anything about those mills----" + +"Yes, I'll let you," said his wife sadly. + +He gave a miserable cry. "You know I can't do anything, if you do. O +my Lord!" + +She had not seen him so low as that before. She did not know what to +say. She was frightened, and could only ask, "Has it come to the +worst?" + +"The new house has got to go," he answered evasively. + +She did not say anything. She knew that the work on the house had been +stopped since the beginning of the year. Lapham had told the architect +that he preferred to leave it unfinished till the spring, as there was +no prospect of their being able to get into it that winter; and the +architect had agreed with him that it would not hurt it to stand. Her +heart was heavy for him, though she could not say so. They sat +together at the table, where she had come to be with him at his belated +meal. She saw that he did not eat, and she waited for him to speak +again, without urging him to take anything. They were past that. + +"And I've sent orders to shut down at the Works," he added. + +"Shut down at the Works!" she echoed with dismay. She could not take +it in. The fire at the Works had never been out before since it was +first kindled. She knew how he had prided himself upon that; how he +had bragged of it to every listener, and had always lugged the fact in +as the last expression of his sense of success. "O Silas!" + +"What's the use?" he retorted. "I saw it was coming a month ago. +There are some fellows out in West Virginia that have been running the +paint as hard as they could. They couldn't do much; they used to put +it on the market raw. But lately they got to baking it, and now +they've struck a vein of natural gas right by their works, and they pay +ten cents for fuel, where I pay a dollar, and they make as good a +paint. Anybody can see where it's going to end. Besides, the market's +over-stocked. It's glutted. There wa'n't anything to do but to shut +DOWN, and I've SHUT down." + +"I don't know what's going to become of the hands in the middle of the +winter, this way," said Mrs. Lapham, laying hold of one definite +thought which she could grasp in the turmoil of ruin that whirled +before her eyes. + +"I don't care what becomes of the hands," cried Lapham. "They've +shared my luck; now let 'em share the other thing. And if you're so +very sorry for the hands, I wish you'd keep a little of your pity for +ME. Don't you know what shutting down the Works means?" + +"Yes, indeed I do, Silas," said his wife tenderly. + +"Well, then!" He rose, leaving his supper untasted, and went into the +sitting-room, where she presently found him, with that everlasting +confusion of papers before him on the desk. That made her think of the +paper in her work-basket, and she decided not to make the careworn, +distracted man ask her for it, after all. She brought it to him. + +He glanced blankly at it and then caught it from her, turning red and +looking foolish. "Where'd you get that?" + +"You dropped it on the floor the other night, and I picked it up. Who +is 'Wm. M.'?" + +"'Wm. M.'!" he repeated, looking confusedly at her, and then at the +paper. "Oh,--it's nothing." He tore the paper into small pieces, and +went and dropped them into the fire. When Mrs. Lapham came into the +room in the morning, before he was down, she found a scrap of the +paper, which must have fluttered to the hearth; and glancing at it she +saw that the words were "Mrs. M." She wondered what dealings with a +woman her husband could have, and she remembered the confusion he had +shown about the paper, and which she had thought was because she had +surprised one of his business secrets. She was still thinking of it +when he came down to breakfast, heavy-eyed, tremulous, with deep seams +and wrinkles in his face. + +After a silence which he did not seem inclined to break, "Silas," she +asked, "who is 'Mrs. M.'?" + +He stared at her. "I don't know what you're talking about." + +"Don't you?" she returned mockingly. "When you do, you tell me. Do +you want any more coffee?" + +"No." + +"Well, then, you can ring for Alice when you've finished. I've got +some things to attend to." She rose abruptly, and left the room. +Lapham looked after her in a dull way, and then went on with his +breakfast. While he still sat at his coffee, she flung into the room +again, and dashed some papers down beside his plate. "Here are some +more things of yours, and I'll thank you to lock them up in your desk +and not litter my room with them, if you please." Now he saw that she +was angry, and it must be with him. It enraged him that in such a time +of trouble she should fly out at him in that way. He left the house +without trying to speak to her. That day Corey came just before +closing, and, knocking at Lapham's door, asked if he could speak with +him a few moments. + +"Yes," said Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair and kicking +another towards Corey. "Sit down. I want to talk to you. I'd ought +to tell you you're wasting your time here. I spoke the other day about +your placin' yourself better, and I can help you to do it, yet. There +ain't going to be the out-come for the paint in the foreign markets +that we expected, and I guess you better give it up." + +"I don't wish to give it up," said the young fellow, setting his lips. +"I've as much faith in it as ever; and I want to propose now what I +hinted at in the first place. I want to put some money into the +business." + +"Some money!" Lapham leaned towards him, and frowned as if he had not +quite understood, while he clutched the arms of his chair. + +"I've got about thirty thousand dollars that I could put in, and if you +don't want to consider me a partner--I remember that you objected to a +partner--you can let me regard it as an investment. But I think I see +the way to doing something at once in Mexico, and I should like to feel +that I had something more than a drummer's interest in the venture." + +The men sat looking into each other's eyes. Then Lapham leaned back in +his chair, and rubbed his hand hard and slowly over his face. His +features were still twisted with some strong emotion when he took it +away. "Your family know about this?" + +"My Uncle James knows." + +"He thinks it would be a good plan for you?" + +"He thought that by this time I ought to be able to trust my own +judgment." + +"Do you suppose I could see your uncle at his office?" + +"I imagine he's there." + +"Well, I want to have a talk with him, one of these days." He sat +pondering a while, and then rose, and went with Corey to his door. "I +guess I shan't change my mind about taking you into the business in +that way," he said coldly. "If there was any reason why I shouldn't at +first, there's more now." + +"Very well, sir," answered the young man, and went to close his desk. +The outer office was empty; but while Corey was putting his papers in +order it was suddenly invaded by two women, who pushed by the +protesting porter on the stairs and made their way towards Lapham's +room. One of them was Miss Dewey, the type-writer girl, and the other +was a woman whom she would resemble in face and figure twenty years +hence, if she led a life of hard work varied by paroxysms of hard +drinking. + +"That his room, Z'rilla?" asked this woman, pointing towards Lapham's +door with a hand that had not freed itself from the fringe of dirty +shawl under which it had hung. She went forward without waiting for +the answer, but before she could reach it the door opened, and Lapham +stood filling its space. + +"Look here, Colonel Lapham!" began the woman, in a high key of +challenge. "I want to know if this is the way you're goin' back on me +and Z'rilla?" + +"What do you want?" asked Lapham. + +"What do I want? What do you s'pose I want? I want the money to pay my +month's rent; there ain't a bite to eat in the house; and I want some +money to market." + +Lapham bent a frown on the woman, under which she shrank back a step. +"You've taken the wrong way to get it. Clear out!" + +"I WON'T clear out!" said the woman, beginning to whimper. + +"Corey!" said Lapham, in the peremptory voice of a master,--he had +seemed so indifferent to Corey's presence that the young man thought he +must have forgotten he was there,--"Is Dennis anywhere round?" + +"Yissor," said Dennis, answering for himself from the head of the +stairs, and appearing in the ware-room. + +Lapham spoke to the woman again. "Do you want I should call a hack, or +do you want I should call an officer?" + +The woman began to cry into an end of her shawl. "I don't know what +we're goin' to do." + +"You're going to clear out," said Lapham. "Call a hack, Dennis. If +you ever come here again, I'll have you arrested. Mind that! Zerrilla, +I shall want you early to-morrow morning." + +"Yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her mother shrank out after +the porter. + +Lapham shut his door without a word. + +At lunch the next day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence +by talking a great deal. He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, +more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination +of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see +that little circus last night?" + +"What little circus?" asked Corey in his turn. + +"Those two women and the old man. Dennis told me about it. I told him +if he liked his place he'd better keep his mouth shut." + +"That was very good advice," said Corey. + +"Oh, all right, if you don't want to talk. Don't know as I should in +your place," returned Walker, in the easy security he had long felt +that Corey had no intention of putting on airs with him. "But I'll +tell you what: the old man can't expect it of everybody. If he keeps +this thing up much longer, it's going to be talked about. You can't +have a woman walking into your place of business, and trying to +bulldoze you before your porter, without setting your porter to +thinking. And the last thing you want a porter to do is to think; for +when a porter thinks, he thinks wrong." + +"I don't see why even a porter couldn't think right about that affair," +replied Corey. "I don't know who the woman was, though I believe she +was Miss Dewey's mother; but I couldn't see that Colonel Lapham showed +anything but a natural resentment of her coming to him in that way. I +should have said she was some rather worthless person whom he'd been +befriending, and that she had presumed upon his kindness." + +"Is that so? What do you think of his never letting Miss Dewey's name +go on the books?" + +"That it's another proof it's a sort of charity of his. That's the +only way to look at it." + +"Oh, I'M all right." Walker lighted a cigar and began to smoke, with +his eyes closed to a fine straight line. "It won't do for a +book-keeper to think wrong, any more than a porter, I suppose. But I +guess you and I don't think very different about this thing." + +"Not if you think as I do," replied Corey steadily; "and I know you +would do that if you had seen the 'circus' yourself. A man doesn't +treat people who have a disgraceful hold upon him as he treated them." + +"It depends upon who he is," said Walker, taking his cigar from his +mouth. "I never said the old man was afraid of anything." + +"And character," continued Corey, disdaining to touch the matter +further, except in generalities, "must go for something. If it's to be +the prey of mere accident and appearance, then it goes for nothing." + +"Accidents will happen in the best regulated families," said Walker, +with vulgar, good-humoured obtuseness that filled Corey with +indignation. Nothing, perhaps, removed his matter-of-fact nature +further from the commonplace than a certain generosity of instinct, +which I should not be ready to say was always infallible. + +That evening it was Miss Dewey's turn to wait for speech with Lapham +after the others were gone. He opened his door at her knock, and stood +looking at her with a worried air. "Well, what do you want, Zerrilla?" +he asked, with a sort of rough kindness. + +"I want to know what I'm going to do about Hen. He's back again; and +he and mother have made it up, and they both got to drinking last night +after I went home, and carried on so that the neighbours came in." + +Lapham passed his hand over his red and heated face. "I don't know +what I'm going to do. You're twice the trouble that my own family is, +now. But I know what I'd do, mighty quick, if it wasn't for you, +Zerrilla," he went on relentingly. "I'd shut your mother up +somewheres, and if I could get that fellow off for a three years' +voyage----" + +"I declare," said Miss Dewey, beginning to whimper, "it seems as if he +came back just so often to spite me. He's never gone more than a year +at the furthest, and you can't make it out habitual drunkenness, +either, when it's just sprees. I'm at my wit's end." + +"Oh, well, you mustn't cry around here," said Lapham soothingly. + +"I know it," said Miss Dewey. "If I could get rid of Hen, I could +manage well enough with mother. Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could +get the divorce. He's said so over and over again." + +"I don't know as I like that very well," said Lapham, frowning. "I +don't know as I want you should get married in any hurry again. I +don't know as I like your going with anybody else just yet." + +"Oh, you needn't be afraid but what it'll be all right. It'll be the +best thing all round, if I can marry him." + +"Well!" said Lapham impatiently; "I can't think about it now. I +suppose they've cleaned everything out again?" + +"Yes, they have," said Zerrilla; "there isn't a cent left." + +"You're a pretty expensive lot," said Lapham. "Well, here!" He took +out his pocket-book and gave her a note. "I'll be round to-night and +see what can be done." + +He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla dried her tears, put +the note into her bosom, and went her way. + +Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. It was then six o'clock, +the hour at which the Laphams usually had tea; but all custom had been +broken up with him during the past months, and he did not go home now. +He determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man finds relief in +combating one care with another, to keep his promise to Miss Dewey, and +at the moment when he might otherwise have been sitting down at his own +table he was climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned +dwelling which had been portioned off into flats. It was in a region +of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and "ladies' and gents'" +dining-rooms, and restaurants with bars, which abound near depots; and +Lapham followed to Miss Dewey's door a waiter from one of these, who +bore on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin. Zerrilla +had admitted them, and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby +shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue +flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one +side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of +receiving the visitor. The woman who sat on the other side did not +rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology. + +"Well, I don't suppose but what you'll think we're livin' on the fat o' +the land, right straight along, all the while. But it's just like +this. When that child came in from her work, she didn't seem to have +the spirit to go to cookin' anything, and I had such a bad night last +night I was feelin' all broke up, and s'd I, what's the use, anyway? By +the time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' bone, and made you pay for +the suet he cuts away, it comes to the same thing, and why not GIT it +from the rest'rant first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd I." + +"What have you got there under your apron? A bottle?" demanded Lapham, +who stood with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent +alike to the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair Zerrilla +had set him. + +"Well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with an assumption of +virtuous frankness. "It's whisky; I got to have something to rub my +rheumatism with." + +"Humph!" grumbled Lapham. "You've been rubbing HIS rheumatism too, I +see." + +He twisted his head in the direction of the sailor, now softly and +rhythmically waving to and fro on his feet. + +"He hain't had a drop to-day in THIS house!" cried the woman. + +"What are you doing around here?" said Lapham, turning fiercely upon +him. "You've got no business ashore. Where's your ship? Do you think +I'm going to let you come here and eat your wife out of house and home, +and then give money to keep the concern going?" + +"Just the very words I said when he first showed his face here, +yist'day. Didn't I, Z'rilla?" said the woman, eagerly joining in the +rebuke of her late boon companion. "You got no business here, Hen, s'd +I. You can't come here to live on me and Z'rilla, s'd I. You want to go +back to your ship, s'd I. That's what I said." + +The sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability for Lapham, +something about the crew being discharged. + +"Yes," the woman broke in, "that's always the way with these coasters. +Why don't you go off on some them long v'y'ges? s'd I. It's pretty hard +when Mr. Wemmel stands ready to marry Z'rilla and provide a comfortable +home for us both--I hain't got a great many years more to live, and I +SHOULD like to get some satisfaction out of 'em, and not be beholden +and dependent all my days,--to have Hen, here, blockin' the way. I +tell him there'd be more money for him in the end; but he can't seem to +make up his mind to it." + +"Well, now, look here," said Lapham. "I don't care anything about all +that. It's your own business, and I'm not going to meddle with it. +But it's my business who lives off me; and so I tell you all three, I'm +willing to take care of Zerrilla, and I'm willing to take care of her +mother----" + +"I guess if it hadn't been for that child's father," the mother +interpolated, "you wouldn't been here to tell the tale, Colonel Lapham." + +"I know all about that," said Lapham. "But I'll tell you what, Mr. +Dewey, I'm not going to support YOU." + +"I don't see what Hen's done," said the old woman impartially. + +"He hasn't done anything, and I'm going to stop it. He's got to get a +ship, and he's got to get out of this. And Zerrilla needn't come back +to work till he does. I'm done with you all." + +"Well, I vow," said the mother, "if I ever heard anything like it! +Didn't that child's father lay down his life for you? Hain't you said +it yourself a hundred times? And don't she work for her money, and +slave for it mornin', noon, and night? You talk as if we was beholden +to you for the very bread in our mouths. I guess if it hadn't been for +Jim, you wouldn't been here crowin' over us." + +"You mind what I say. I mean business this time," said Lapham, turning +to the door. + +The woman rose and followed him, with her bottle in her hand. "Say, +Colonel! what should you advise Z'rilla to do about Mr. Wemmel? I tell +her there ain't any use goin' to the trouble to git a divorce without +she's sure about him. Don't you think we'd ought to git him to sign a +paper, or something, that he'll marry her if she gits it? I don't like +to have things going at loose ends the way they are. It ain't sense. +It ain't right." + +Lapham made no answer to the mother anxious for her child's future, and +concerned for the moral questions involved. He went out and down the +stairs, and on the pavement at the lower door he almost struck against +Rogers, who had a bag in his hand, and seemed to be hurrying towards +one of the depots. He halted a little, as if to speak to Lapham; but +Lapham turned his back abruptly upon him, and took the other direction. + +The days were going by in a monotony of adversity to him, from which he +could no longer escape, even at home. He attempted once or twice to +talk of his troubles to his wife, but she repulsed him sharply; she +seemed to despise and hate him; but he set himself doggedly to make a +confession to her, and he stopped her one night, as she came into the +room where he sat--hastily upon some errand that was to take her +directly away again. + +"Persis, there's something I've got to tell you." + +She stood still, as if fixed against her will, to listen. + +"I guess you know something about it already, and I guess it set you +against me." + +"Oh, I guess not, Colonel Lapham. You go your way, and I go mine. +That's all." + +She waited for him to speak, listening with a cold, hard smile on her +face. + +"I don't say it to make favour with you, because I don't want you to +spare me, and I don't ask you; but I got into it through Milton K. +Rogers." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Lapham contemptuously. + +"I always felt the way I said about it--that it wa'n't any better than +gambling, and I say so now. It's like betting on the turn of a card; +and I give you my word of honour, Persis, that I never was in it at all +till that scoundrel began to load me up with those wild-cat securities +of his. Then it seemed to me as if I ought to try to do something to +get somewhere even. I know it's no excuse; but watching the market to +see what the infernal things were worth from day to day, and seeing it +go up, and seeing it go down, was too much for me; and, to make a long +story short, I began to buy and sell on a margin--just what I told you +I never would do. I seemed to make something--I did make something; +and I'd have stopped, I do believe, if I could have reached the figure +I'd set in my own mind to start with; but I couldn't fetch it. I began +to lose, and then I began to throw good money after bad, just as I +always did with everything that Rogers ever came within a mile of. +Well, what's the use? I lost the money that would have carried me out +of this, and I shouldn't have had to shut down the Works, or sell the +house, or----" + +Lapham stopped. His wife, who at first had listened with +mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of +relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity. "Silas +Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started to +tell me?" + +"Why, of course it is. What did you suppose I started to tell you?" + +"And--look me in the eyes!--you haven't got anything else on your mind +now?" + +"No! There's trouble enough, the Lord knows; but there's nothing else +to tell you. I suppose Pen gave you a hint about it. I dropped +something to her. I've been feeling bad about it, Persis, a good +while, but I hain't had the heart to speak of it. I can't expect you +to say you like it. I've been a fool, I'll allow, and I've been +something worse, if you choose to say so; but that's all. I haven't +hurt anybody but myself--and you and the children." + +Mrs. Lapham rose and said, with her face from him, as she turned +towards the door, "It's all right, Silas. I shan't ever bring it up +against you." + +She fled out of the room, but all that evening she was very sweet with +him, and seemed to wish in all tacit ways to atone for her past +unkindness. + +She made him talk of his business, and he told her of Corey's offer, +and what he had done about it. She did not seem to care for his part +in it, however; at which Lapham was silently disappointed a little, for +he would have liked her to praise him. + +"He did it on account of Pen!" + +"Well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said Lapham, who must have +obscurely expected that Corey would recognise his own magnanimity by +repeating his offer. If the doubt that follows a self-devoted +action--the question whether it was not after all a needless folly--is +mixed, as it was in Lapham's case, with the vague belief that we might +have done ourselves a good turn without great risk of hurting any one +else by being a little less unselfish, it becomes a regret that is hard +to bear. Since Corey spoke to him, some things had happened that gave +Lapham hope again. + +"I'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and she showed herself +impatient to make up for the time she had lost. "Why didn't you tell +me before, Silas?" + +"I didn't know we were on speaking terms before," said Lapham sadly. + +"Yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious flush. "I hope he +won't think Pen's known about it all this while." + + + +XXIV. + + +THAT evening James Bellingham came to see Corey after dinner, and went +to find him in his own room. + +"I've come at the instance of Colonel Lapham," said the uncle. "He was +at my office to-day, and I had a long talk with him. Did you know that +he was in difficulties?" + +"I fancied that he was in some sort of trouble. And I had the +book-keeper's conjectures--he doesn't really know much about it." + +"Well, he thinks it time--on all accounts--that you should know how he +stands, and why he declined that proposition of yours. I must say he +has behaved very well--like a gentleman." + +"I'm not surprised." + +"I am. It's hard to behave like a gentleman where your interest is +vitally concerned. And Lapham doesn't strike me as a man who's in the +habit of acting from the best in him always." + +"Do any of us?" asked Corey. + +"Not all of us, at any rate," said Bellingham. "It must have cost him +something to say no to you, for he's just in that state when he +believes that this or that chance, however small, would save him." + +Corey was silent. "Is he really in such a bad way?" + +"It's hard to tell just where he stands. I suspect that a hopeful +temperament and fondness for round numbers have always caused him to +set his figures beyond his actual worth. I don't say that he's been +dishonest about it, but he's had a loose way of estimating his assets; +he's reckoned his wealth on the basis of his capital, and some of his +capital is borrowed. He's lost heavily by some of the recent failures, +and there's been a terrible shrinkage in his values. I don't mean +merely in the stock of paint on hand, but in a kind of competition +which has become very threatening. You know about that West Virginian +paint?" + +Corey nodded. + +"Well, he tells me that they've struck a vein of natural gas out there +which will enable them to make as good a paint as his own at a cost of +manufacturing so low that they can undersell him everywhere. If this +proves to be the case, it will not only drive his paint out of the +market, but will reduce the value of his Works--the whole plant--at +Lapham to a merely nominal figure." + +"I see," said Corey dejectedly. "I've understood that he had put a +great deal of money into his Works." + +"Yes, and he estimated his mine there at a high figure. Of course it +will be worth little or nothing if the West Virginia paint drives his +out. Then, besides, Lapham has been into several things outside of his +own business, and, like a good many other men who try outside things, +he's kept account of them himself; and he's all mixed up about them. +He's asked me to look into his affairs with him, and I've promised to +do so. Whether he can be tided over his difficulties remains to be +seen. I'm afraid it will take a good deal of money to do it--a great +deal more than he thinks, at least. He believes comparatively little +would do it. I think differently. I think that anything less than a +great deal would be thrown away on him. If it were merely a question +of a certain sum--even a large sum--to keep him going, it might be +managed; but it's much more complicated. And, as I say, it must have +been a trial to him to refuse your offer." + +This did not seem to be the way in which Bellingham had meant to +conclude. But he said no more; and Corey made him no response. + +He remained pondering the case, now hopefully, now doubtfully, and +wondering, whatever his mood was, whether Penelope knew anything of the +fact with which her mother went nearly at the same moment to acquaint +her. + +"Of course, he's done it on your account," Mrs. Lapham could not help +saying. + +"Then he was very silly. Does he think I would let him give father +money? And if father lost it for him, does he suppose it would make it +any easier for me? I think father acted twice as well. It was very +silly." + +In repeating the censure, her look was not so severe as her tone; she +even smiled a little, and her mother reported to her father that she +acted more like herself than she had yet since Corey's offer. + +"I think, if he was to repeat his offer, she would have him now," said +Mrs. Lapham. + +"Well, I'll let her know if he does," said the Colonel. + +"I guess he won't do it to you!" she cried. + +"Who else will he do it to?" he demanded. + +They perceived that they had each been talking of a different offer. + +After Lapham went to his business in the morning the postman brought +another letter from Irene, which was full of pleasant things that were +happening to her; there was a great deal about her cousin Will, as she +called him. At the end she had written, "Tell Pen I don't want she +should be foolish." "There!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I guess it's going to +come out right, all round;" and it seemed as if even the Colonel's +difficulties were past. "When your father gets through this, Pen," she +asked impulsively, "what shall you do?" + +"What have you been telling Irene about me?" + +"Nothing much. What should you do?" + +"It would be a good deal easier to say what I should do if father +didn't," said the girl. + +"I know you think it was nice in him to make your father that offer," +urged the mother. + +"It was nice, yes; but it was silly," said the girl. "Most nice things +are silly, I suppose," she added. + +She went to her room and wrote a letter. It was very long, and very +carefully written; and when she read it over, she tore it into small +pieces. She wrote another one, short and hurried, and tore that up +too. Then she went back to her mother, in the family room, and asked +to see Irene's letter, and read it over to herself. "Yes, she seems to +be having a good time," she sighed. "Mother, do you think I ought to +let Mr. Corey know that I know about it?" + +"Well, I should think it would be a pleasure to him," said Mrs. Lapham +judicially. + +"I'm not so sure of that the way I should have to tell him. I should +begin by giving him a scolding. Of course, he meant well by it, but +can't you see that it wasn't very flattering! How did he expect it +would change me?" + +"I don't believe he ever thought of that." + +"Don't you? Why?" + +"Because you can see that he isn't one of that kind. He might want to +please you without wanting to change you by what he did." + +"Yes. He must have known that nothing would change me,--at least, +nothing that he could do. I thought of that. I shouldn't like him to +feel that I couldn't appreciate it, even if I did think it was silly. +Should you write to him?" + +"I don't see why not." + +"It would be too pointed. No, I shall just let it go. I wish he +hadn't done it." + +"Well, he has done it." "And I've tried to write to him about it--two +letters: one so humble and grateful that it couldn't stand up on its +edge, and the other so pert and flippant. Mother, I wish you could +have seen those two letters! I wish I had kept them to look at if I +ever got to thinking I had any sense again. They would take the +conceit out of me." + +"What's the reason he don't come here any more?" + +"Doesn't he come?" asked Penelope in turn, as if it were something she +had not noticed particularly. + +"You'd ought to know." + +"Yes." She sat silent a while. "If he doesn't come, I suppose it's +because he's offended at something I did." + +"What did you do?" + +"Nothing. I--wrote to him--a little while ago. I suppose it was very +blunt, but I didn't believe he would be angry at it. But this--this +that he's done shows he was angry, and that he wasn't just seizing the +first chance to get out of it." + +"What have you done, Pen?" demanded her mother sharply. + +"Oh, I don't know. All the mischief in the world, I suppose. I'll +tell you. When you first told me that father was in trouble with his +business, I wrote to him not to come any more till I let him. I said I +couldn't tell him why, and he hasn't been here since. I'm sure I don't +know what it means." + +Her mother looked at her with angry severity. "Well, Penelope Lapham! +For a sensible child, you ARE the greatest goose I ever saw. Did you +think he would come here and SEE if you wouldn't let him come?" + +"He might have written," urged the girl. + +Her mother made that despairing "Tchk!" with her tongue, and fell back +in her chair. "I should have DESPISED him if he had written. He's +acted just exactly right, and you--you've acted--I don't know HOW +you've acted. I'm ashamed of you. A girl that could be so sensible +for her sister, and always say and do just the right thing, and then +when it comes to herself to be such a DISGUSTING simpleton!" + +"I thought I ought to break with him at once, and not let him suppose +that there was any hope for him or me if father was poor. It was my +one chance, in this whole business, to do anything heroic, and I jumped +at it. You mustn't think, because I can laugh at it now, that I wasn't +in earnest, mother! I WAS--dead! But the Colonel has gone to ruin so +gradually, that he's spoilt everything. I expected that he would be +bankrupt the next day, and that then HE would understand what I meant. +But to have it drag along for a fortnight seems to take all the heroism +out of it, and leave it as flat!" She looked at her mother with a smile +that shone through her tears, and a pathos that quivered round her +jesting lips. "It's easy enough to be sensible for other people. But +when it comes to myself, there I am! Especially, when I want to do what +I oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing what I didn't want to do +MUST be doing what I ought! But it's been a great success one way, +mother. It's helped me to keep up before the Colonel. If it hadn't +been for Mr. Corey's staying away, and my feeling so indignant with him +for having been badly treated by me, I shouldn't have been worth +anything at all." + +The tears started down her cheeks, but her mother said, "Well, now, go +along, and write to him. It don't matter what you say, much; and don't +be so very particular." + +Her third attempt at a letter pleased her scarcely better than the +rest, but she sent it, though it seemed so blunt and awkward. She +wrote:-- + + +DEAR FRIEND,--I expected when I sent you that note, that you would +understand, almost the next day, why I could not see you any more. You +must know now, and you must not think that if anything happened to my +father, I should wish you to help him. But that is no reason why I +should not thank you, and I do thank you, for offering. It was like +you, I will say that. + +Yours sincerely, PENELOPE LAPHAM. + + +She posted her letter, and he sent his reply in the evening, by hand:-- + + +DEAREST,--What I did was nothing, till you praised it. Everything I +have and am is yours. Won't you send a line by the bearer, to say that +I may come to see you? I know how you feel; but I am sure that I can +make you think differently. You must consider that I loved you without +a thought of your father's circumstances, and always shall. + +T. C. + + +The generous words were blurred to her eyes by the tears that sprang +into them. But she could only write in answer:-- + + +"Please do not come; I have made up my mind. As long as this trouble +is hanging over us, I cannot see you. And if father is unfortunate, +all is over between us." + + +She brought his letter to her mother, and told her what she had written +in reply. Her mother was thoughtful a while before she said, with a +sigh, "Well, I hope you've begun as you can carry out, Pen." + +"Oh, I shall not have to carry out at all. I shall not have to do +anything. That's one comfort--the only comfort." She went away to her +own room, and when Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the affair, he was +silent at first, as she had been. Then he said, "I don't know as I +should have wanted her to done differently; I don't know as she could. +If I ever come right again, she won't have anything to feel meeching +about; and if I don't, I don't want she should be beholden to anybody. +And I guess that's the way she feels." + +The Coreys in their turn sat in judgment on the fact which their son +felt bound to bring to their knowledge. + +"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Corey, to whom her son had +spoken. + +"My dear," said her husband, with his laugh, "she has behaved TOO well. +If she had studied the whole situation with the most artful eye to its +mastery, she could not possibly have behaved better." + +The process of Lapham's financial disintegration was like the course of +some chronic disorder, which has fastened itself upon the constitution, +but advances with continual reliefs, with apparent amelioration, and at +times seems not to advance at all, when it gives hope of final recovery +not only to the sufferer, but to the eye of science itself. There were +moments when James Bellingham, seeing Lapham pass this crisis and that, +began to fancy that he might pull through altogether; and at these +moments, when his adviser could not oppose anything but experience and +probability to the evidence of the fact, Lapham was buoyant with +courage, and imparted his hopefulness to his household. Our theory of +disaster, of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets and +novelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage in our own lives +and in the lives of others, so far as we have witnessed them, teaches +us that this is false. The house of mourning is decorously darkened to +the world, but within itself it is also the house of laughing. Bursts +of gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve the gloom, and the +stricken survivors have their jests together, in which the thought of +the dead is tenderly involved, and a fond sense, not crazier than many +others, of sympathy and enjoyment beyond the silence, justifies the +sunnier mood before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing, and +making it all up again with the conventional fitness of things. +Lapham's adversity had this quality in common with bereavement. It was +not always like the adversity we figure in allegory; it had its moments +of being like prosperity, and if upon the whole it was continual, it +was not incessant. Sometimes there was a week of repeated reverses, +when he had to keep his teeth set and to hold on hard to all his +hopefulness; and then days came of negative result or slight success, +when he was full of his jokes at the tea-table, and wanted to go to the +theatre, or to do something to cheer Penelope up. In some miraculous +way, by some enormous stroke of success which should eclipse the +brightest of his past prosperity, he expected to do what would +reconcile all difficulties, not only in his own affairs, but in hers +too. "You'll see," he said to his wife; "it's going to come out all +right. Irene'll fix it up with Bill's boy, and then she'll be off +Pen's mind; and if things go on as they've been going for the last two +days, I'm going to be in a position to do the favours myself, and Pen +can feel that SHE'S makin' a sacrifice, and then I guess may be she'll +do it. If things turn out as I expect now, and times ever do get any +better generally, I can show Corey that I appreciate his offer. I can +offer him the partnership myself then." + +Even in the other moods, which came when everything had been going +wrong, and there seemed no way out of the net, there were points of +consolation to Lapham and his wife. They rejoiced that Irene was safe +beyond the range of their anxieties, and they had a proud satisfaction +that there had been no engagement between Corey and Penelope, and that +it was she who had forbidden it. In the closeness of interest and +sympathy in which their troubles had reunited them, they confessed to +each other that nothing would have been more galling to their pride +than the idea that Lapham should not have been able to do everything +for his daughter that the Coreys might have expected. Whatever +happened now, the Coreys could not have it to say that the Laphams had +tried to bring any such thing about. + +Bellingham had lately suggested an assignment to Lapham, as the best +way out of his difficulties. It was evident that he had not the money +to meet his liabilities at present, and that he could not raise it +without ruinous sacrifices, that might still end in ruin after all. If +he made the assignment, Bellingham argued, he could gain time and make +terms; the state of things generally would probably improve, since it +could not be worse, and the market, which he had glutted with his +paint, might recover and he could start again. Lapham had not agreed +with him. When his reverses first began it had seemed easy for him to +give up everything, to let the people he owed take all, so only they +would let him go out with clean hands; and he had dramatised this +feeling in his talk with his wife, when they spoke together of the +mills on the G. L. & P. But ever since then it had been growing harder, +and he could not consent even to seem to do it now in the proposed +assignment. He had not found other men so very liberal or faithful +with him; a good many of them appeared to have combined to hunt him +down; a sense of enmity towards all his creditors asserted itself in +him; he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too. Above +all, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment. It was open +confession that he had been a fool in some way; he could not bear to +have his family--his brother the judge, especially, to whom he had +always appeared the soul of business wisdom--think him imprudent or +stupid. He would make any sacrifice before it came to that. He +determined in parting with Bellingham to make the sacrifice which he +had oftenest in his mind, because it was the hardest, and to sell his +new house. That would cause the least comment. Most people would +simply think that he had got a splendid offer, and with his usual luck +had made a very good thing of it; others who knew a little more about +him would say that he was hauling in his horns, but they could not +blame him; a great many other men were doing the same in those hard +times--the shrewdest and safest men: it might even have a good effect. +He went straight from Bellingham's office to the real-estate broker in +whose hands he meant to put his house, for he was not the sort of man +to shilly-shally when he had once made up his mind. But he found it +hard to get his voice up out of his throat, when he said he guessed he +would get the broker to sell that new house of his on the water side of +Beacon. The broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed Colonel +Lapham knew it was a pretty dull time in real estate? and Lapham said +yes, he knew that, but he should not sell at a sacrifice, and he did +not care to have the broker name him or describe the house definitely +unless parties meant business. Again the broker said yes; and he +added, as a joke Lapham would appreciate, that he had half a dozen +houses on the water side of Beacon, on the same terms; that nobody +wanted to be named or to have his property described. + +It did, in fact, comfort Lapham a little to find himself in the same +boat with so many others; he smiled grimly, and said in his turn, yes, +he guessed that was about the size of it with a good many people. But +he had not the heart to tell his wife what he had done, and he sat +taciturn that whole evening, without even going over his accounts, and +went early to bed, where he lay tossing half the night before he fell +asleep. He slept at last only upon the promise he made himself that he +would withdraw the house from the broker's hands; but he went heavily +to his own business in the morning without doing so. There was no such +rush, anyhow, he reflected bitterly; there would be time to do that a +month later, probably. + +It struck him with a sort of dismay when a boy came with a note from a +broker, saying that a party who had been over the house in the fall had +come to him to know whether it could be bought, and was willing to pay +the cost of the house up to the time he had seen it. Lapham took +refuge in trying to think who the party could be; he concluded that it +must have been somebody who had gone over it with the architect, and he +did not like that; but he was aware that this was not an answer to the +broker, and he wrote that he would give him an answer in the morning. + +Now that it had come to the point, it did not seem to him that he could +part with the house. So much of his hope for himself and his children +had gone into it that the thought of selling it made him tremulous and +sick. He could not keep about his work steadily, and with his nerves +shaken by want of sleep, and the shock of this sudden and unexpected +question, he left his office early, and went over to look at the house +and try to bring himself to some conclusion here. The long procession +of lamps on the beautiful street was flaring in the clear red of the +sunset towards which it marched, and Lapham, with a lump in his throat, +stopped in front of his house and looked at their multitude. They were +not merely a part of the landscape; they were a part of his pride and +glory, his success, his triumphant life's work which was fading into +failure in his helpless hands. He ground his teeth to keep down that +lump, but the moisture in his eyes blurred the lamps, and the keen pale +crimson against which it made them flicker. He turned and looked up, +as he had so often done, at the window-spaces, neatly glazed for the +winter with white linen, and recalled the night when he had stopped +with Irene before the house, and she had said that she should never +live there, and he had tried to coax her into courage about it. There +was no such facade as that on the whole street, to his thinking. +Through his long talks with the architect, he had come to feel almost +as intimately and fondly as the architect himself the satisfying +simplicity of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail. It +appealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearned +ear, and he recognised the difference between this fine work and the +obstreperous pretentiousness of the many overloaded house-fronts which +Seymour had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere on the Back +Bay. Now, in the depths of his gloom, he tried to think what Italian +city it was where Seymour said he had first got the notion of treating +brick-work in that way. + +He unlocked the temporary door with the key he always carried, so that +he could let himself in and out whenever he liked, and entered the +house, dim and very cold with the accumulated frigidity of the whole +winter in it, and looking as if the arrest of work upon it had taken +place a thousand years before. It smelt of the unpainted woods and the +clean, hard surfaces of the plaster, where the experiments in +decoration had left it untouched; and mingled with these odours was +that of some rank pigments and metallic compositions which Seymour had +used in trying to realise a certain daring novelty of finish, which had +not proved successful. Above all, Lapham detected the peculiar odour +of his own paint, with which the architect had been greatly interested +one day, when Lapham showed it to him at the office. He had asked +Lapham to let him try the Persis Brand in realising a little idea he +had for the finish of Mrs. Lapham's room. If it succeeded they could +tell her what it was, for a surprise. + +Lapham glanced at the bay-window in the reception-room, where he sat +with his girls on the trestles when Corey first came by; and then he +explored the whole house to the attic, in the light faintly admitted +through the linen sashes. The floors were strewn with shavings and +chips which the carpenters had left, and in the music-room these had +been blown into long irregular windrows by the draughts through a wide +rent in the linen sash. Lapham tried to pin it up, but failed, and +stood looking out of it over the water. The ice had left the river, +and the low tide lay smooth and red in the light of the sunset. The +Cambridge flats showed the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bare +after a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked trees, the spires +and roofs had a black outline, as if they were objects in a landscape +of the French school. + +The whim seized Lapham to test the chimney in the music-room; it had +been tried in the dining-room below, and in his girls' fireplaces +above, but here the hearth was still clean. He gathered some shavings +and blocks together, and kindled them, and as the flame mounted gaily +from them, he pulled up a nail-keg which he found there and sat down to +watch it. Nothing could have been better; the chimney was a perfect +success; and as Lapham glanced out of the torn linen sash he said to +himself that that party, whoever he was, who had offered to buy his +house might go to the devil; he would never sell it as long as he had a +dollar. He said that he should pull through yet; and it suddenly came +into his mind that, if he could raise the money to buy out those West +Virginia fellows, he should be all right, and would have the whole game +in his own hand. He slapped himself on the thigh, and wondered that he +had never thought of that before; and then, lighting a cigar with a +splinter from the fire, he sat down again to work the scheme out in his +own mind. He did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the stairs, and +coming towards the room where he sat; and the policeman to whom the +feet belonged had to call out to him, smoking at his chimney-corner, +with his back turned to the door, "Hello! what are you doing here?" + +"What's that to you?" retorted Lapham, wheeling half round on his +nail-keg. + +"I'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon him, and then +stopping short as he recognised him. "Why, Colonel Lapham! I thought +it was some tramp got in here!" + +"Have a cigar?" said Lapham hospitably. "Sorry there ain't another +nail-keg." + +The officer took the cigar. "I'll smoke it outside. I've just come +on, and I can't stop. Tryin' your chimney?" + +"Yes, I thought I'd see how it would draw, in here. It seems to go +first-rate." + +The policeman looked about him with an eye of inspection. "You want to +get that linen window, there, mended up." + +"Yes, I'll speak to the builder about that. It can go for one night." + +The policeman went to the window and failed to pin the linen together +where Lapham had failed before. "I can't fix it." He looked round once +more, and saying, "Well, good night," went out and down the stairs. + +Lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked his cigar; then he rose +and stamped upon the embers that still burned with his heavy boots, and +went home. He was very cheerful at supper. He told his wife that he +guessed he had a sure thing of it now, and in another twenty-four hours +he should tell her just how. He made Penelope go to the theatre with +him, and when they came out, after the play, the night was so fine that +he said they must walk round by the new house and take a look at it in +the starlight. He said he had been there before he came home, and +tried Seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like a charm. + +As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware of unwonted stir and +tumult, and presently the still air transmitted a turmoil of sound, +through which a powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt. The +sky had reddened above them, and turning the corner at the Public +Garden, they saw a black mass of people obstructing the perspective of +the brightly-lighted street, and out of this mass a half-dozen engines, +whose strong heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes of +fire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels. Ladders were planted +against the facade of a building, from the roof of which a mass of +flame burnt smoothly upward, except where here and there it seemed to +pull contemptuously away from the heavy streams of water which the +firemen, clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in upon +it. + +Lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing and +gossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter, before the +burning house, to make sure that it was his. + +"I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said. + +Among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed to have +run out from dinner in some neighbouring house; the ladies were +fantastically wrapped up, as if they had flung on the first things they +could seize. + +"Isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl. "I wouldn't +have missed it on any account. Thank you so much, Mr. Symington, for +bringing us out!" + +"Ah, I thought you'd like it," said this Mr. Symington, who must have +been the host; "and you can enjoy it without the least compunction, +Miss Delano, for I happen to know that the house belongs to a man who +could afford to burn one up for you once a year." + +"Oh, do you think he would, if I came again?" + +"I haven't the least doubt of it. We don't do things by halves in +Boston." + +"He ought to have had a coat of his noncombustible paint on it," said +another gentleman of the party. + +Penelope pulled her father away toward the first carriage she could +reach of a number that had driven up. "Here, father! get into this." + +"No, no; I couldn't ride," he answered heavily, and he walked home in +silence. He greeted his wife with, "Well, Persis, our house is gone! +And I guess I set it on fire myself;" and while he rummaged among the +papers in his desk, still with his coat and hat on, his wife got the +facts as she could from Penelope. She did not reproach him. Here was +a case in which his self-reproach must be sufficiently sharp without +any edge from her. Besides, her mind was full of a terrible thought. + +"O Silas," she faltered, "they'll think you set it on fire to get the +insurance!" + +Lapham was staring at a paper which he held in his hand. "I had a +builder's risk on it, but it expired last week. It's a dead loss." + +"Oh, thank the merciful Lord!" cried his wife. + +"Merciful!" said Lapham. "Well, it's a queer way of showing it." + +He went to bed, and fell into the deep sleep which sometimes follows a +great moral shock. It was perhaps rather a torpor than a sleep. + + + +XXV. + + +LAPHAM awoke confused, and in a kind of remoteness from the loss of the +night before, through which it loomed mistily. But before he lifted +his head from the pillow, it gathered substance and weight against +which it needed all his will to bear up and live. In that moment he +wished that he had not wakened, that he might never have wakened; but +he rose, and faced the day and its cares. + +The morning papers brought the report of the fire, and the conjectured +loss. The reporters somehow had found out the fact that the loss fell +entirely upon Lapham; they lighted up the hackneyed character of their +statements with the picturesque interest OF the coincidence that the +policy had expired only the week before; heaven knows how they knew it. +They said that nothing remained of the building but the walls; and +Lapham, on his way to business, walked up past the smoke-stained shell. +The windows looked like the eye-sockets of a skull down upon the +blackened and trampled snow of the street; the pavement was a sheet of +ice, and the water from the engines had frozen, like streams of tears, +down the face of the house, and hung in icy tags from the window-sills +and copings. + +He gathered himself up as well as he could, and went on to his office. +The chance of retrieval that had flashed upon him, as he sat smoking by +that ruined hearth the evening before, stood him in such stead now as a +sole hope may; and he said to himself that, having resolved not to sell +his house, he was no more crippled by its loss than he would have been +by letting his money lie idle in it; what he might have raised by +mortgage on it could be made up in some other way; and if they would +sell he could still buy out the whole business of that West Virginia +company, mines, plant, stock on hand, good-will, and everything, and +unite it with his own. He went early in the afternoon to see +Bellingham, whose expressions of condolence for his loss he cut short +with as much politeness as he knew how to throw into his impatience. +Bellingham seemed at first a little dazzled with the splendid courage +of his scheme; it was certainly fine in its way; but then he began to +have his misgivings. + +"I happen to know that they haven't got much money behind them," urged +Lapham. "They'll jump at an offer." + +Bellingham shook his head. "If they can show profit on the old +manufacture, and prove they can make their paint still cheaper and +better hereafter, they can have all the money they want. And it will +be very difficult for you to raise it if you're threatened by them. +With that competition, you know what your plant at Lapham would be +worth, and what the shrinkage on your manufactured stock would be. +Better sell out to them," he concluded, "if they will buy." + +"There ain't money enough in this country to buy out my paint," said +Lapham, buttoning up his coat in a quiver of resentment. "Good +afternoon, sir." Men are but grown-up boys after all. Bellingham +watched this perversely proud and obstinate child fling petulantly out +of his door, and felt a sympathy for him which was as truly kind as it +was helpless. + +But Lapham was beginning to see through Bellingham, as he believed. +Bellingham was, in his way, part of that conspiracy by which Lapham's +creditors were trying to drive him to the wall. More than ever now he +was glad that he had nothing to do with that cold-hearted, +self-conceited race, and that the favours so far were all from his +side. He was more than ever determined to show them, every one of +them, high and low, that he and his children could get along without +them, and prosper and triumph without them. He said to himself that if +Penelope were engaged to Corey that very minute, he would make her +break with him. + +He knew what he should do now, and he was going to do it without loss +of time. He was going on to New York to see those West Virginia +people; they had their principal office there, and he intended to get +at their ideas, and then he intended to make them an offer. He managed +this business better than could possibly have been expected of a man in +his impassioned mood. But when it came really to business, his +practical instincts, alert and wary, came to his aid against the +passions that lay in wait to betray after they ceased to dominate him. +He found the West Virginians full of zeal and hope, but in ten minutes +he knew that they had not yet tested their strength in the money +market, and had not ascertained how much or how little capital they +could command. Lapham himself, if he had had so much, would not have +hesitated to put a million dollars into their business. He saw, as +they did not see, that they had the game in their own hands, and that +if they could raise the money to extend their business, they could ruin +him. It was only a question of time, and he was on the ground first. +He frankly proposed a union of their interests. He admitted that they +had a good thing, and that he should have to fight them hard; but he +meant to fight them to the death unless they could come to some sort of +terms. Now, the question was whether they had better go on and make a +heavy loss for both sides by competition, or whether they had better +form a partnership to run both paints and command the whole market. +Lapham made them three propositions, each of which was fair and open: +to sell out to them altogether; to buy them out altogether; to join +facilities and forces with them, and go on in an invulnerable alliance. +Let them name a figure at which they would buy, a figure at which they +would sell, a figure at which they would combine,--or, in other words, +the amount of capital they needed. + +They talked all day, going out to lunch together at the Astor House, +and sitting with their knees against the counter on a row of stools +before it for fifteen minutes of reflection and deglutition, with their +hats on, and then returning to the basement from which they emerged. +The West Virginia company's name was lettered in gilt on the wide low +window, and its paint, in the form of ore, burnt, and mixed, formed a +display on the window shelf Lapham examined it and praised it; from +time to time they all recurred to it together; they sent out for some +of Lapham's paint and compared it, the West Virginians admitting its +former superiority. They were young fellows, and country persons, like +Lapham, by origin, and they looked out with the same amused, undaunted +provincial eyes at the myriad metropolitan legs passing on the pavement +above the level of their window. He got on well with them. At last, +they said what they would do. They said it was nonsense to talk of +buying Lapham out, for they had not the money; and as for selling out, +they would not do it, for they knew they had a big thing. But they +would as soon use his capital to develop it as anybody else's, and if +he could put in a certain sum for this purpose, they would go in with +him. He should run the works at Lapham and manage the business in +Boston, and they would run the works at Kanawha Falls and manage the +business in New York. The two brothers with whom Lapham talked named +their figure, subject to the approval of another brother at Kanawha +Falls, to whom they would write, and who would telegraph his answer, so +that Lapham could have it inside of three days. But they felt +perfectly sure that he would approve; and Lapham started back on the +eleven o'clock train with an elation that gradually left him as he drew +near Boston, where the difficulties of raising this sum were to be over +come. It seemed to him, then, that those fellows had put it up on him +pretty steep, but he owned to himself that they had a sure thing, and +that they were right in believing they could raise the same sum +elsewhere; it would take all OF it, he admitted, to make their paint +pay on the scale they had the right to expect. At their age, he would +not have done differently; but when he emerged, old, sore, and +sleep-broken, from the sleeping-car in the Albany depot at Boston, he +wished with a pathetic self-pity that they knew how a man felt at his +age. A year ago, six months ago, he would have laughed at the notion +that it would be hard to raise the money. But he thought ruefully of +that immense stock of paint on hand, which was now a drug in the +market, of his losses by Rogers and by the failures of other men, of +the fire that had licked up so many thousands in a few hours; he +thought with bitterness of the tens of thousands that he had gambled +away in stocks, and of the commissions that the brokers had pocketed +whether he won or lost; and he could not think of any securities on +which he could borrow, except his house in Nankeen Square, or the mine +and works at Lapham. He set his teeth in helpless rage when he thought +of that property out on the G. L. & P., that ought to be worth so much, +and was worth so little if the Road chose to say so. + +He did not go home, but spent most of the day shining round, as he +would have expressed it, and trying to see if he could raise the money. +But he found that people of whom he hoped to get it were in the +conspiracy which had been formed to drive him to the wall. Somehow, +there seemed a sense of his embarrassments abroad. Nobody wanted to +lend money on the plant at Lapham without taking time to look into the +state of the business; but Lapham had no time to give, and he knew that +the state of the business would not bear looking into. He could raise +fifteen thousand on his Nankeen Square house, and another fifteen on +his Beacon Street lot, and this was all that a man who was worth a +million by rights could do! He said a million, and he said it in +defiance of Bellingham, who had subjected his figures to an analysis +which wounded Lapham more than he chose to show at the time, for it +proved that he was not so rich and not so wise as he had seemed. His +hurt vanity forbade him to go to Bellingham now for help or advice; and +if he could have brought himself to ask his brothers for money, it +would have been useless; they were simply well-to-do Western people, +but not capitalists on the scale he required. + +Lapham stood in the isolation to which adversity so often seems to +bring men. When its test was applied, practically or theoretically, to +all those who had seemed his friends, there was none who bore it; and +he thought with bitter self-contempt of the people whom he had +befriended in their time of need. He said to himself that he had been +a fool for that; and he scorned himself for certain acts of +scrupulosity by which he had lost money in the past. Seeing the moral +forces all arrayed against him, Lapham said that he would like to have +the chance offered him to get even with them again; he thought he +should know how to look out for himself. As he understood it, he had +several days to turn about in, and he did not let one day's failure +dishearten him. The morning after his return he had, in fact, a gleam +of luck that gave him the greatest encouragement for the moment. A man +came in to inquire about one of Rogers's wild-cat patents, as Lapham +called them, and ended by buying it. He got it, of course, for less +than Lapham took it for, but Lapham was glad to be rid of it for +something, when he had thought it worth nothing; and when the +transaction was closed, he asked the purchaser rather eagerly if he +knew where Rogers was; it was Lapham's secret belief that Rogers had +found there was money in the thing, and had sent the man to buy it. +But it appeared that this was a mistake; the man had not come from +Rogers, but had heard of the patent in another way; and Lapham was +astonished in the afternoon, when his boy came to tell him that Rogers +was in the outer office, and wished to speak with him. + +"All right," said Lapham, and he could not command at once the severity +for the reception of Rogers which he would have liked to use. He found +himself, in fact, so much relaxed towards him by the morning's touch of +prosperity that he asked him to sit down, gruffly, of course, but +distinctly; and when Rogers said in his lifeless way, and with the +effect of keeping his appointment of a month before, "Those English +parties are in town, and would like to talk with you in reference to +the mills," Lapham did not turn him out-of-doors. + +He sat looking at him, and trying to make out what Rogers was after; +for he did not believe that the English parties, if they existed, had +any notion of buying his mills. + +"What if they are not for sale?" he asked. "You know that I've been +expecting an offer from the G. L. & P." + +"I've kept watch of that. They haven't made you any offer," said +Rogers quietly. + +"And did you think," demanded Lapham, firing up, "that I would turn +them in on somebody else as you turned them in on me, when the chances +are that they won't be worth ten cents on the dollar six months from +now?" + +"I didn't know what you would do," said Rogers non-committally. "I've +come here to tell you that these parties stand ready to take the mills +off your hands at a fair valuation--at the value I put upon them when I +turned them in." + +"I don't believe you!" cried Lapham brutally, but a wild predatory hope +made his heart leap so that it seemed to turn over in his breast. "I +don't believe there are any such parties to begin with; and in the next +place, I don't believe they would buy at any such figure; +unless--unless you've lied to them, as you've lied to me. Did you tell +them about the G. L. & P.?" + +Rogers looked compassionately at him, but he answered, with unvaried +dryness, "I did not think that necessary." + +Lapham had expected this answer, and he had expected or intended to +break out in furious denunciation of Rogers when he got it; but he only +found himself saying, in a sort of baffled gasp, "I wonder what your +game is!" + +Rogers did not reply categorically, but he answered, with his impartial +calm, and as if Lapham had said nothing to indicate that he differed at +all with him as to disposing of the property in the way he had +suggested: "If we should succeed in selling, I should be able to repay +you your loans, and should have a little capital for a scheme that I +think of going into." + +"And do you think that I am going to steal these men's money to help +you plunder somebody in a new scheme?" answered Lapham. The sneer was +on behalf of virtue, but it was still a sneer. + +"I suppose the money would be useful to you too, just now." + +"Why?" + +"Because I know that you have been trying to borrow." + +At this proof of wicked omniscience in Rogers, the question whether he +had better not regard the affair as a fatality, and yield to his +destiny, flashed upon Lapham; but he answered, "I shall want money a +great deal worse than I've ever wanted it yet, before I go into such +rascally business with you. Don't you know that we might as well knock +these parties down on the street, and take the money out of their +pockets?" + +"They have come on," answered Rogers, "from Portland to see you. I +expected them some weeks ago, but they disappointed me. They arrived +on the Circassian last night; they expected to have got in five days +ago, but the passage was very stormy." + +"Where are they?" asked Lapham, with helpless irrelevance, and feeling +himself somehow drifted from his moorings by Rogers's shipping +intelligence. + +"They are at Young's. I told them we would call upon them after dinner +this evening; they dine late." + +"Oh, you did, did you?" asked Lapham, trying to drop another anchor for +a fresh clutch on his underlying principles. "Well, now, you go and +tell them that I said I wouldn't come." + +"Their stay is limited," remarked Rogers. "I mentioned this evening +because they were not certain they could remain over another night. +But if to-morrow would suit you better----" + +"Tell 'em I shan't come at all," roared Lapham, as much in terror as +defiance, for he felt his anchor dragging. "Tell 'em I shan't come at +all! Do you understand that?" + +"I don't see why you should stickle as to the matter of going to them," +said Rogers; "but if you think it will be better to have them approach +you, I suppose I can bring them to you." + +"No, you can't! I shan't let you! I shan't see them! I shan't have +anything to do with them. NOW do you understand?" + +"I inferred from our last interview," persisted Rogers, unmoved by all +this violent demonstration of Lapham's, "that you wished to meet these +parties. You told me that you would give me time to produce them; and +I have promised them that you would meet them; I have committed myself." + +It was true that Lapham had defied Rogers to bring on his men, and had +implied his willingness to negotiate with them. That was before he had +talked the matter over with his wife, and perceived his moral +responsibility in it; even she had not seen this at once. He could not +enter into this explanation with Rogers; he could only say, "I said I'd +give you twenty-four hours to prove yourself a liar, and you did it. I +didn't say twenty-four days." + +"I don't see the difference," returned Rogers. "The parties are here +now, and that proves that I was acting in good faith at the time. +There has been no change in the posture of affairs. You don't know now +any more than you knew then that the G. L. & P. is going to want the +property. If there's any difference, it's in favour of the Road's +having changed its mind." + +There was some sense in this, and Lapham felt it--felt it only too +eagerly, as he recognised the next instant. + +Rogers went on quietly: "You're not obliged to sell to these parties +when you meet them; but you've allowed me to commit myself to them by +the promise that you would talk with them." + +"'Twan't a promise," said Lapham. + +"It was the same thing; they have come out from England on my guaranty +that there was such and such an opening for their capital; and now what +am I to say to them? It places me in a ridiculous position." Rogers +urged his grievance calmly, almost impersonally, making his appeal to +Lapham's sense of justice. "I CAN'T go back to those parties and tell +them you won't see them. It's no answer to make. They've got a right +to know why you won't see them." + +"Very well, then!" cried Lapham; "I'll come and TELL them why. Who +shall I ask for? When shall I be there?" + +"At eight o'clock, please," said Rogers, rising, without apparent alarm +at his threat, if it was a threat. "And ask for me; I've taken a room +at the hotel for the present." + +"I won't keep you five minutes when I get there," said Lapham; but he +did not come away till ten o'clock. + +It appeared to him as if the very devil was in it. The Englishmen +treated his downright refusal to sell as a piece of bluff, and talked +on as though it were merely the opening of the negotiation. When he +became plain with them in his anger, and told them why he would not +sell, they seemed to have been prepared for this as a stroke of +business, and were ready to meet it. + +"Has this fellow," he demanded, twisting his head in the direction of +Rogers, but disdaining to notice him otherwise, "been telling you that +it's part of my game to say this? Well, sir, I can tell you, on my +side, that there isn't a slipperier rascal unhung in America than +Milton K. Rogers!" + +The Englishmen treated this as a piece of genuine American humour, and +returned to the charge with unabated courage. They owned now, that a +person interested with them had been out to look at the property, and +that they were satisfied with the appearance of things. They developed +further the fact that they were not acting solely, or even principally, +in their own behalf, but were the agents of people in England who had +projected the colonisation of a sort of community on the spot, somewhat +after the plan of other English dreamers, and that they were satisfied, +from a careful inspection, that the resources and facilities were those +best calculated to develop the energy and enterprise of the proposed +community. They were prepared to meet Mr. Lapham--Colonel, they begged +his pardon, at the instance of Rogers--at any reasonable figure, and +were quite willing to assume the risks he had pointed out. Something +in the eyes of these men, something that lurked at an infinite depth +below their speech, and was not really in their eyes when Lapham looked +again, had flashed through him a sense of treachery in them. He had +thought them the dupes of Rogers; but in that brief instant he had seen +them--or thought he had seen them--his accomplices, ready to betray the +interests of which they went on to speak with a certain comfortable +jocosity, and a certain incredulous slight of his show of integrity. +It was a deeper game than Lapham was used to, and he sat looking with a +sort of admiration from one Englishman to the other, and then to +Rogers, who maintained an exterior of modest neutrality, and whose air +said, "I have brought you gentlemen together as the friend of all +parties, and I now leave you to settle it among yourselves. I ask +nothing, and expect nothing, except the small sum which shall accrue to +me after the discharge of my obligations to Colonel Lapham." + +While Rogers's presence expressed this, one of the Englishmen was +saying, "And if you have any scruple in allowin' us to assume this +risk, Colonel Lapham, perhaps you can console yourself with the fact +that the loss, if there is to be any, will fall upon people who are +able to bear it--upon an association of rich and charitable people. +But we're quite satisfied there will be no loss," he added savingly. +"All you have to do is to name your price, and we will do our best to +meet it." + +There was nothing in the Englishman's sophistry very shocking to +Lapham. It addressed itself in him to that easy-going, not evilly +intentioned, potential immorality which regards common property as +common prey, and gives us the most corrupt municipal governments under +the sun--which makes the poorest voter, when he has tricked into place, +as unscrupulous in regard to others' money as an hereditary prince. +Lapham met the Englishman's eye, and with difficulty kept himself from +winking. Then he looked away, and tried to find out where he stood, or +what he wanted to do. He could hardly tell. He had expected to come +into that room and unmask Rogers, and have it over. But he had +unmasked Rogers without any effect whatever, and the play had only +begun. He had a whimsical and sarcastic sense of its being very +different from the plays at the theatre. He could not get up and go +away in silent contempt; he could not tell the Englishmen that he +believed them a pair of scoundrels and should have nothing to do with +them; he could no longer treat them as innocent dupes. He remained +baffled and perplexed, and the one who had not spoken hitherto +remarked-- + +"Of course we shan't 'aggle about a few pound, more or less. If +Colonel Lapham's figure should be a little larger than ours, I've no +doubt 'e'll not be too 'ard upon us in the end." + +Lapham appreciated all the intent of this subtle suggestion, and +understood as plainly as if it had been said in so many words, that if +they paid him a larger price, it was to be expected that a certain +portion of the purchase-money was to return to their own hands. Still +he could not move; and it seemed to him that he could not speak. + +"Ring that bell, Mr. Rogers," said the Englishman who had last spoken, +glancing at the annunciator button in the wall near Rogers's head, "and +'ave up something 'of, can't you? I should like TO wet me w'istle, as +you say 'ere, and Colonel Lapham seems to find it rather dry work." + +Lapham jumped to his feet, and buttoned his overcoat about him. He +remembered with terror the dinner at Corey's where he had disgraced and +betrayed himself, and if he went into this thing at all, he was going +into it sober. "I can't stop," he said, "I must be going." + +"But you haven't given us an answer yet, Mr. Lapham," said the first +Englishman with a successful show of dignified surprise. + +"The only answer I can give you now is, NO," said Lapham. "If you want +another, you must let me have time to think it over." + +"But 'ow much time?" said the other Englishman. "We're pressed for +time ourselves, and we hoped for an answer--'oped for a hanswer," he +corrected himself, "at once. That was our understandin' with Mr. +Rogers." + +"I can't let you know till morning, anyway," said Lapham, and he went +out, as his custom often was, without any parting salutation. He +thought Rogers might try to detain him; but Rogers had remained seated +when the others got to their feet, and paid no attention to his +departure. + +He walked out into the night air, every pulse throbbing with the strong +temptation. He knew very well those men would wait, and gladly wait, +till the morning, and that the whole affair was in his hands. It made +him groan in spirit to think that it was. If he had hoped that some +chance might take the decision from him, there was no such chance, in +the present or future, that he could see. It was for him alone to +commit this rascality--if it was a rascality--or not. + +He walked all the way home, letting one car after another pass him on +the street, now so empty of other passing, and it was almost eleven +o'clock when he reached home. A carriage stood before his house, and +when he let himself in with his key, he heard talking in the +family-room. It came into his head that Irene had got back +unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it +harder for him; then he thought it might be Corey, come upon some +desperate pretext to see Penelope; but when he opened the door he saw, +with a certain absence of surprise, that it was Rogers. He was +standing with his back to the fireplace, talking to Mrs. Lapham, and he +had been shedding tears; dry tears they seemed, and they had left a +sort of sandy, glistening trace on his cheeks. Apparently he was not +ashamed of them, for the expression with which he met Lapham was that +of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, which was +identical with that of humanity, if not that of justice. + +"I some expected," began Rogers, "to find you here----" + +"No, you didn't," interrupted Lapham; "you wanted to come here and make +a poor mouth to Mrs. Lapham before I got home." + +"I knew that Mrs. Lapham would know what was going on," said Rogers +more candidly, but not more virtuously, for that he could not, "and I +wished her to understand a point that I hadn't put to you at the hotel, +and that I want you should consider. And I want you should consider me +a little in this business too; you're not the only one that's +concerned, I tell you, and I've been telling Mrs. Lapham that it's my +one chance; that if you don't meet me on it, my wife and children will +be reduced to beggary." + +"So will mine," said Lapham, "or the next thing to it." + +"Well, then, I want you to give me this chance to get on my feet again. +You've no right to deprive me of it; it's unchristian. In our dealings +with each other we should be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying +to Mrs. Lapham before you came in. I told her that if I knew myself, I +should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who +had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obligations to me, and had +patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. I should consider that man's +family, I told Mrs. Lapham." + +"Did you tell her that if I went in with you and those fellows, I +should be robbing the people who trusted them?" + +"I don't see what you've got to do with the people that sent them here. +They are rich people, and could bear it if it came to the worst. But +there's no likelihood, now, that it will come to the worst; you can see +yourself that the Road has changed its mind about buying. And here am +I without a cent in the world; and my wife is an invalid. She needs +comforts, she needs little luxuries, and she hasn't even the +necessaries; and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! You don't +know in the first place that the Road will ever want to buy; and if it +does, the probability is that with a colony like that planted on its +line, it would make very different terms from what it would with you or +me. These agents are not afraid, and their principals are rich people; +and if there was any loss, it would be divided up amongst them so that +they wouldn't any of them feel it." + +Lapham stole a troubled glance at his wife, and saw that there was no +help in her. Whether she was daunted and confused in her own +conscience by the outcome, so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to +Rogers which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her +perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which Rogers +had now used, it would be difficult to say. Probably there was a +mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and +from which he turned, girding himself anew, to Rogers. + +"I have no wish to recur to the past," continued Rogers, with growing +superiority. "You have shown a proper spirit in regard to that, and +you have done what you could to wipe it out." + +"I should think I had," said Lapham. "I've used up about a hundred and +fifty thousand dollars trying." + +"Some of my enterprises," Rogers admitted, "have been unfortunate, +seemingly; but I have hopes that they will yet turn out well--in time. +I can't understand why you should be so mindful of others now, when you +showed so little regard for me then. I had come to your aid at a time +when you needed help, and when you got on your feet you kicked me out +of the business. I don't complain, but that is the fact; and I had to +begin again, after I had supposed myself settled in life, and establish +myself elsewhere." + +Lapham glanced again at his wife; her head had fallen; he could see +that she was so rooted in her old remorse for that questionable act of +his, amply and more than fully atoned for since, that she was helpless, +now in the crucial moment, when he had the utmost need of her insight. +He had counted upon her; he perceived now that when he had thought it +was for him alone to decide, he had counted upon her just spirit to +stay his own in its struggle to be just. He had not forgotten how she +held out against him only a little while ago, when he asked her whether +he might not rightfully sell in some such contingency as this; and it +was not now that she said or even looked anything in favour of Rogers, +but that she was silent against him, which dismayed Lapham. He +swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, the self-pity, the pity for +her, the despair, and said gently, "I guess you better go to bed, +Persis. It's pretty late." + +She turned towards the door, when Rogers said, with the obvious +intention of detaining her through her curiosity-- + +"But I let that pass. And I don't ask now that you should sell to +these men." + +Mrs. Lapham paused, irresolute. + +"What are you making this bother for, then?" demanded Lapham. "What DO +you want?" + +"What I've been telling your wife here. I want you should sell to me. +I don't say what I'm going to do with the property, and you will not +have an iota of responsibility, whatever happens." + +Lapham was staggered, and he saw his wife's face light up with eager +question. + +"I want that property," continued Rogers, "and I've got the money to +buy it. What will you take for it? If it's the price you're standing +out for----" + +"Persis," said Lapham, "go to bed," and he gave her a look that meant +obedience for her. She went out of the door, and left him with his +tempter. + +"If you think I'm going to help you whip the devil round the stump, +you're mistaken in your man, Milton Rogers," said Lapham, lighting a +cigar. "As soon as I sold to you, you would sell to that other pair of +rascals. I smelt 'em out in half a minute." + +"They are Christian gentlemen," said Rogers. "But I don't purpose +defending them; and I don't purpose telling you what I shall or shall +not do with the property when it is in my hands again. The question +is, Will you sell, and, if so, what is your figure? You have got +nothing whatever to do with it after you've sold." + +It was perfectly true. Any lawyer would have told him the same. He +could not help admiring Rogers for his ingenuity, and every selfish +interest of his nature joined with many obvious duties to urge him to +consent. He did not see why he should refuse. There was no longer a +reason. He was standing out alone for nothing, any one else would say. +He smoked on as if Rogers were not there, and Rogers remained before +the fire as patient as the clock ticking behind his head on the mantel, +and showing the gleam of its pendulum beyond his face on either side. +But at last he said, "Well?" + +"Well," answered Lapham, "you can't expect me to give you an answer +to-night, any more than before. You know that what you've said now +hasn't changed the thing a bit. I wish it had. The Lord knows, I want +to be rid of the property fast enough." "Then why don't you sell to me? +Can't you see that you will not be responsible for what happens after +you have sold?" + +"No, I can't see that; but if I can by morning, I'll sell." + +"Why do you expect to know any better by morning? You're wasting time +for nothing!" cried Rogers, in his disappointment. "Why are you so +particular? When you drove me out of the business you were not so very +particular." + +Lapham winced. It was certainly ridiculous for man who had once so +selfishly consulted his own interests to be stickling now about the +rights of others. + +"I guess nothing's going to happen overnight," he answered sullenly. +"Anyway, I shan't say what I shall do till morning." + +"What time can I see you in the morning?" + +"Half-past nine." + +Rogers buttoned his coat, and went out of the room without another +word. Lapham followed him to close the street-door after him. + +His wife called down to him from above as he approached the room again, +"Well?" + +"I've told him I'd let him know in the morning." + +"Want I should come down and talk with you?" + +"No," answered Lapham, in the proud bitterness which his isolation +brought, "you couldn't do any good." He went in and shut the door, and +by and by his wife heard him begin walking up and down; and then the +rest of the night she lay awake and listened to him walking up and +down. But when the first light whitened the window, the words of the +Scripture came into her mind: "And there wrestled a man with him until +the breaking of the day.... And he said, Let me go, for the day +breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." + +She could not ask him anything when they met, but he raised his dull +eyes after the first silence, and said, "I don't know what I'm going to +say to Rogers." + +She could not speak; she did not know what to say, and she saw her +husband when she followed him with her eyes from the window, drag +heavily down toward the corner, where he was to take, the horse-car. + +He arrived rather later than usual at his office, and he found his +letters already on his table. There was one, long and +official-looking, with a printed letter-heading on the outside, and +Lapham had no need to open it in order to know that it was the offer of +the Great Lacustrine & Polar Railroad for his mills. But he went +mechanically through the verification of his prophetic fear, which was +also his sole hope, and then sat looking blankly at it. + +Rogers came promptly at the appointed time, and Lapham handed him the +letter. He must have taken it all in at a glance, and seen the +impossibility of negotiating any further now, even with victims so +pliant and willing as those Englishmen. + +"You've ruined me!" Rogers broke out. "I haven't a cent left in the +world! God help my poor wife!" + +He went out, and Lapham remained staring at the door which closed upon +him. This was his reward for standing firm for right and justice to +his own destruction: to feel like a thief and a murderer. + + + +XXVI. + + +LATER in the forenoon came the despatch from the West Virginians in New +York, saying their brother assented to their agreement; and it now +remained for Lapham to fulfil his part of it. He was ludicrously far +from able to do this; and unless he could get some extension of time +from them, he must lose this chance, his only chance, to retrieve +himself. He spent the time in a desperate endeavour to raise the +money, but he had not raised the half of it when the banks closed. +With shame in his heart he went to Bellingham, from whom he had parted +so haughtily, and laid his plan before him. He could not bring himself +to ask Bellingham's help, but he told him what he proposed to do. +Bellingham pointed out that the whole thing was an experiment, and that +the price asked was enormous, unless a great success were morally +certain. He advised delay, he advised prudence; he insisted that +Lapham ought at least to go out to Kanawha Falls, and see the mines and +works before he put any such sum into the development of the enterprise. + +"That's all well enough," cried Lapham; "but if I don't clinch this +offer within twenty-four hours, they'll withdraw it, and go into the +market; and then where am I?" + +"Go on and see them again," said Bellingham. "They can't be so +peremptory as that with you. They must give you time to look at what +they want to sell. If it turns out what you hope, then--I'll see what +can be done. But look into it thoroughly." + +"Well!" cried Lapham, helplessly submitting. He took out his watch, +and saw that he had forty minutes to catch the four o'clock train. He +hurried back to his office, and put together some papers preparatory to +going, and despatched a note by his boy to Mrs. Lapham saying that he +was starting for New York, and did not know just when he should get +back. + +The early spring day was raw and cold. As he went out through the +office he saw the clerks at work with their street-coats and hats on; +Miss Dewey had her jacket dragged up on her shoulders, and looked +particularly comfortless as she operated her machine with her red +fingers. "What's up?" asked Lapham, stopping a moment. + +"Seems to be something the matter with the steam," she answered, with +the air of unmerited wrong habitual with so many pretty women who have +to work for a living. + +"Well, take your writer into my room. There's a fire in the stove +there," said Lapham, passing out. + +Half an hour later his wife came into the outer office. She had passed +the day in a passion of self-reproach, gradually mounting from the +mental numbness in which he had left her, and now she could wait no +longer to tell him that she saw how she had forsaken him in his hour of +trial and left him to bear it alone. She wondered at herself in shame +and dismay; she wondered that she could have been so confused as to the +real point by that old wretch of a Rogers, that she could have let him +hoodwink her so, even for a moment. It astounded her that such a thing +should have happened, for if there was any virtue upon which this good +woman prided herself, in which she thought herself superior to her +husband, it was her instant and steadfast perception of right and +wrong, and the ability to choose the right to her own hurt. But she +had now to confess, as each of us has had likewise to confess in his +own case, that the very virtue on which she had prided herself was the +thing that had played her false; that she had kept her mind so long +upon that old wrong which she believed her husband had done this man +that she could not detach it, but clung to the thought of reparation +for it when she ought to have seen that he was proposing a piece of +roguery as the means. The suffering which Lapham must inflict on him +if he decided against him had been more to her apprehension than the +harm he might do if he decided for him. But now she owned her +limitations to herself, and above everything in the world she wished +the man whom her conscience had roused and driven on whither her +intelligence had not followed, to do right, to do what he felt to be +right, and nothing else. She admired and revered him for going beyond +her, and she wished to tell him that she did not know what he had +determined to do about Rogers, but that she knew it was right, and +would gladly abide the consequences with him, whatever they were. + +She had not been near his place of business for nearly a year, and her +heart smote her tenderly as she looked about her there, and thought of +the early days when she knew as much about the paint as he did; she +wished that those days were back again. She saw Corey at his desk, and +she could not bear to speak to him; she dropped her veil that she need +not recognise him, and pushed on to Lapham's room, and opening the door +without knocking, shut it behind her. + +Then she became aware with intolerable disappointment that her husband +was not there. Instead, a very pretty girl sat at his desk, operating +a typewriter. She seemed quite at home, and she paid Mrs. Lapham the +scant attention which such young women often bestow upon people not +personally interesting to them. It vexed the wife that any one else +should seem to be helping her husband about business that she had once +been so intimate with; and she did not at all like the girl's +indifference to her presence. Her hat and sack hung on a nail in one +corner, and Lapham's office coat, looking intensely like him to his +wife's familiar eye, hung on a nail in the other corner; and Mrs. +Lapham liked even less than the girl's good looks this domestication of +her garments in her husband's office. She began to ask herself +excitedly why he should be away from his office when she happened to +come; and she had not the strength at the moment to reason herself out +of her unreasonableness. + +"When will Colonel Lapham be in, do you suppose?" she sharply asked of +the girl. + +"I couldn't say exactly," replied the girl, without looking round. + +"Has he been out long?" + +"I don't know as I noticed," said the girl, looking up at the clock, +without looking at Mrs. Lapham. She went on working her machine. + +"Well, I can't wait any longer," said the wife abruptly. "When Colonel +Lapham comes in, you please tell him Mrs. Lapham wants to see him." + +The girl started to her feet and turned toward Mrs. Lapham with a red +and startled face, which she did not lift to confront her. +"Yes--yes--I will," she faltered. + +The wife went home with a sense of defeat mixed with an irritation +about this girl which she could not quell or account for. She found +her husband's message, and it seemed intolerable that he should have +gone to New York without seeing her; she asked herself in vain what the +mysterious business could be that took him away so suddenly. She said +to herself that he was neglecting her; he was leaving her out a little +too much; and in demanding of herself why he had never mentioned that +girl there in his office, she forgot how much she had left herself out +of his business life. That was another curse of their prosperity. +Well, she was glad the prosperity was going; it had never been +happiness. After this she was going to know everything as she used. + +She tried to dismiss the whole matter till Lapham returned; and if +there had been anything for her to do in that miserable house, as she +called it in her thought, she might have succeeded. But again the +curse was on her; there was nothing to do; and the looks of that girl +kept coming back to her vacancy, her disoccupation. She tried to make +herself something to do, but that beauty, which she had not liked, +followed her amid the work of overhauling the summer clothing, which +Irene had seen to putting away in the fall. Who was the thing, anyway? +It was very strange, her being there; why did she jump up in that +frightened way when Mrs. Lapham had named herself? + +After dark, that evening, when the question had worn away its poignancy +from mere iteration, a note for Mrs. Lapham was left at the door by a +messenger who said there was no answer. "A note for me?" she said, +staring at the unknown, and somehow artificial-looking, handwriting of +the superscription. Then she opened it and read: "Ask your husband +about his lady copying-clerk. A Friend and Well-wisher," who signed +the note, gave no other name. + +Mrs. Lapham sat helpless with it in her hand. Her brain reeled; she +tried to fight the madness off; but before Lapham came back the second +morning, it had become, with lessening intervals of sanity and release, +a demoniacal possession. She passed the night without sleep, without +rest, in the frenzy of the cruellest of the passions, which covers with +shame the unhappy soul it possesses, and murderously lusts for the +misery of its object. If she had known where to find her husband in +New York, she would have followed him; she waited his return in an +ecstasy of impatience. In the morning he came back, looking spent and +haggard. She saw him drive up to the door, and she ran to let him in +herself. + +"Who is that girl you've got in your office, Silas Lapham?" she +demanded, when her husband entered. + +"Girl in my office?" + +"Yes! Who is she? What is she doing there?" + +"Why, what have you heard about her?" + +"Never you mind what I've heard. Who is she? IS IT MRS. M. THAT YOU +GAVE THAT MONEY TO? I want to know who she is! I want to know what a +respectable man, with grown-up girls of his own, is doing with such a +looking thing as that in his office? I want to know how long she's been +there? I want to know what she's there at all for?" + +He had mechanically pushed her before him into the long, darkened +parlour, and he shut himself in there with her now, to keep the +household from hearing her lifted voice. For a while he stood +bewildered, and could not have answered if he would, and then he would +not. He merely asked, "Have I ever accused you of anything wrong, +Persis?" + +"You no need to!" she answered furiously, placing herself against the +closed door. + +"Did you ever know me to do anything out of the way?" + +"That isn't what I asked you." + +"Well, I guess you may find out about that girl yourself. Get away +from the door." + +"I won't get away from the door." + +She felt herself set lightly aside, and her husband opened the door and +went out. "I WILL find out about her," she screamed after him. "I'll +find out, and I'll disgrace you. I'll teach you how to treat me----" + +The air blackened round her: she reeled to the sofa and then she found +herself waking from a faint. She did not know how long she had lain +there, she did not care. In a moment her madness came whirling back +upon her. She rushed up to his room; it was empty; the closet-doors +stood ajar and the drawers were open; he must have packed a bag hastily +and fled. She went out and wandered crazily up and down till she found +a hack. She gave the driver her husband's business address, and told +him to drive there as fast as he could; and three times she lowered the +window to put her head out and ask him if he could not hurry. A +thousand things thronged into her mind to support her in her evil will. +She remembered how glad and proud that man had been to marry her, and +how everybody said she was marrying beneath her when she took him. She +remembered how good she had always been to him, how perfectly devoted, +slaving early and late to advance him, and looking out for his +interests in all things, and sparing herself in nothing. If it had not +been for her, he might have been driving stage yet; and since their +troubles had begun, the troubles which his own folly and imprudence had +brought on them, her conduct had been that of a true and faithful wife. +Was HE the sort of man to be allowed to play her false with impunity? +She set her teeth and drew her breath sharply through them when she +thought how willingly she had let him befool her, and delude her about +that memorandum of payments to Mrs. M., because she loved him so much, +and pitied him for his cares and anxieties. She recalled his +confusion, his guilty looks. + +She plunged out of the carriage so hastily when she reached the office +that she did not think of paying the driver; and he had to call after +her when she had got half-way up the stairs. Then she went straight to +Lapham's room, with outrage in her heart. There was again no one there +but that type-writer girl; she jumped to her feet in a fright, as Mrs. +Lapham dashed the door to behind her and flung up her veil. + +The two women confronted each other. + +"Why, the good land!" cried Mrs. Lapham, "ain't you Zerrilla Millon?" + +"I--I'm married," faltered the girl "My name's Dewey, now." + +"You're Jim Millon's daughter, anyway. How long have you been here?" + +"I haven't been here regularly; I've been here off and on ever since +last May." + +"Where's your mother?" + +"She's here--in Boston." + +Mrs. Lapham kept her eyes on the girl, but she dropped, trembling, into +her husband's chair, and a sort of amaze and curiosity were in her +voice instead of the fury she had meant to put there. + +"The Colonel," continued Zerrilla, "he's been helping us, and he's got +me a type-writer, so that I can help myself a little. Mother's doing +pretty well now; and when Hen isn't around we can get along." + +"That your husband?" + +"I never wanted to marry him; but he promised to try to get something +to do on shore; and mother was all for it, because he had a little +property then, and I thought may be I'd better. But it's turned out +just as I said and if he don't stay away long enough this time to let +me get the divorce,--he's agreed to it, time and again,--I don't know +what we're going to do." Zerrilla's voice fell, and the trouble which +she could keep out of her face usually, when she was comfortably warmed +and fed and prettily dressed, clouded it in the presence of a +sympathetic listener. "I saw it was you, when you came in the other +day," she went on; "but you didn't seem to know me. I suppose the +Colonel's told you that there's a gentleman going to marry me--Mr. +Wemmel's his name--as soon as I get the divorce; but sometimes I'm +completely discouraged; it don't seem as if I ever could get it." + +Mrs. Lapham would not let her know that she was ignorant of the fact +attributed to her knowledge. She remained listening to Zerrilla, and +piecing out the whole history of her presence there from the facts of +the past, and the traits of her husband's character. One of the things +she had always had to fight him about was that idea of his that he was +bound to take care of Jim Millon's worthless wife and her child because +Millon had got the bullet that was meant for him. It was a perfect +superstition of his; she could not beat it out of him; but she had made +him promise the last time he had done anything for that woman that it +should BE the last time. He had then got her a little house in one of +the fishing ports, where she could take the sailors to board and wash +for, and earn an honest living if she would keep straight. That was +five or six years ago, and Mrs. Lapham had heard nothing of Mrs. Millon +since; she had heard quite enough of her before; and had known her idle +and baddish ever since she was the worst little girl at school in +Lumberville, and all through her shameful girlhood, and the married +days which she had made so miserable to the poor fellow who had given +her his decent name and a chance to behave herself. Mrs. Lapham had no +mercy on Moll Millon, and she had quarrelled often enough with her +husband for befriending her. As for the child, if the mother would put +Zerrilla out with some respectable family, that would be ONE thing; but +as long as she kept Zerrilla with her, she was against letting her +husband do anything for either of them. He had done ten times as much +for them now as he had any need to, and she had made him give her his +solemn word that he would do no more. She saw now that she was wrong +to make him give it, and that he must have broken it again and again +for the reason that he had given when she once scolded him for throwing +away his money on that hussy-- + +"When I think of Jim Millon, I've got to; that's all." + +She recalled now that whenever she had brought up the subject of Mrs. +Millon and her daughter, he had seemed shy of it, and had dropped it +with some guess that they were getting along now. She wondered that +she had not thought at once of Mrs. Millon when she saw that memorandum +about Mrs. M.; but the woman had passed so entirely out of her life, +that she had never dreamt of her in connection with it. Her husband +had deceived her, yet her heart was no longer hot against him, but +rather tenderly grateful that his deceit was in this sort, and not in +that other. All cruel and shameful doubt of him went out of it. She +looked at this beautiful girl, who had blossomed out of her knowledge +since she saw her last, and she knew that she was only a blossomed +weed, of the same worthless root as her mother, and saved, if saved, +from the same evil destiny, by the good of her father in her; but so +far as the girl and her mother were concerned, Mrs. Lapham knew that +her husband was to blame for nothing but his wilful, wrong-headed, +kind-heartedness, which her own exactions had turned into deceit. She +remained a while, questioning the girl quietly about herself and her +mother, and then, with a better mind towards Zerrilla, at least, than +she had ever had before, she rose up and went out. There must have +been some outer hint of the exhaustion in which the subsidence of her +excitement had left her within, for before she had reached the head of +the stairs, Corey came towards her. + +"Can I be of any use to you, Mrs. Lapham? The Colonel was here just +before you came in, on his way to the train." + +"Yes,--yes. I didn't know--I thought perhaps I could catch him here. +But it don't matter. I wish you would let some one go with me to get a +carriage," she begged feebly. + +"I'll go with you myself," said the young fellow, ignoring the +strangeness in her manner. He offered her his arm in the twilight of +the staircase, and she was glad to put her trembling hand through it, +and keep it there till he helped her into a hack which he found for +her. He gave the driver her direction, and stood looking a little +anxiously at her. + +"I thank you; I am all right now," she said, and he bade the man drive +on. + +When she reached home she went to bed, spent with the tumult of her +emotions and sick with shame and self-reproach. She understood now, as +clearly as if he had told her in as many words, that if he had +befriended those worthless jades--the Millons characterised themselves +so, even to Mrs. Lapham's remorse--secretly and in defiance of her, it +was because he dreaded her blame, which was so sharp and bitter, for +what he could not help doing. It consoled her that he had defied her, +deceived her; when he came back she should tell him that; and then it +flashed upon her that she did not know where he was gone, or whether he +would ever come again. If he never came, it would be no more than she +deserved; but she sent for Penelope, and tried to give herself hopes of +escape from this just penalty. + +Lapham had not told his daughter where he was going; she had heard him +packing his bag, and had offered to help him; but he had said he could +do it best, and had gone off, as he usually did, without taking leave +of any one. + +"What were you talking about so loud, down in the parlour," she asked +her mother, "just before he came up. Is there any new trouble?" + +"No; it was nothing." + +"I couldn't tell. Once I thought you were laughing." She went about, +closing the curtains on account of her mother's headache, and doing +awkwardly and imperfectly the things that Irene would have done so +skilfully for her comfort. + +The day wore away to nightfall, and then Mrs. Lapham said she MUST +know. Penelope said there was no one to ask; the clerks would all be +gone home, and her mother said yes, there was Mr. Corey; they could +send and ask him; he would know. + +The girl hesitated. "Very well," she said, then, scarcely above a +whisper, and she presently laughed huskily. "Mr. Corey seems fated to +come in, somewhere. I guess it's a Providence, mother." + +She sent off a note, inquiring whether he could tell her just where her +father had expected to be that night; and the answer came quickly back +that Corey did not know, but would look up the book-keeper and inquire. +This office brought him in person, an hour later, to tell Penelope that +the Colonel was to be at Lapham that night and next day. + +"He came in from New York, in a great hurry, and rushed off as soon as +he could pack his bag," Penelope explained, "and we hadn't a chance to +ask him where he was to be to-night. And mother wasn't very well, +and----" + +"I thought she wasn't looking well when she was at the office to-day. +And so I thought I would come rather than send," Corey explained in his +turn. + +"Oh, thank you!" + +"If there is anything I can do--telegraph Colonel Lapham, or anything?" + +"Oh no, thank you; mother's better now. She merely wanted to be sure +where he was." + +He did not offer to go, upon this conclusion of his business, but hoped +he was not keeping her from her mother. She thanked him once again, +and said no, that her mother was much better since she had had a cup of +tea; and then they looked at each other, and without any apparent +exchange of intelligence he remained, and at eleven o'clock he was +still there. He was honest in saying he did not know it was so late; +but he made no pretence of being sorry, and she took the blame to +herself. + +"I oughtn't to have let you stay," she said. "But with father gone, +and all that trouble hanging over us----" + +She was allowing him to hold her hand a moment at the door, to which +she had followed him. + +"I'm so glad you could let me!" he said, "and I want to ask you now +when I may come again. But if you need me, you'll----" + +A sharp pull at the door-bell outside made them start asunder, and at a +sign from Penelope, who knew that the maids were abed by this time, he +opened it. + +"Why, Irene!" shrieked the girl. + +Irene entered with the hackman, who had driven her unheard to the door, +following with her small bags, and kissed her sister with resolute +composure. "That's all," she said to the hackman. "I gave my checks +to the expressman," she explained to Penelope. + +Corey stood helpless. Irene turned upon him, and gave him her hand. +"How do you do, Mr. Corey?" she said, with a courage that sent a thrill +of admiring gratitude through him. "Where's mamma, Pen? Papa gone to +bed?" + +Penelope faltered out some reply embodying the facts, and Irene ran up +the stairs to her mother's room. Mrs. Lapham started up in bed at her +apparition. + +"Irene Lapham." + +"Uncle William thought he ought to tell me the trouble papa was in; and +did you think I was going to stay off there junketing, while you were +going through all this at home, and Pen acting so silly, too? You ought +to have been ashamed to let me stay so long! I started just as soon as +I could pack. Did you get my despatch? I telegraphed from Springfield. +But it don't matter, now. Here I am. And I don't think I need have +hurried on Pen's account," she added, with an accent prophetic of the +sort of old maid she would become, if she happened not to marry. + +"Did you see him?" asked her mother. "It's the first time he's been +here since she told him he mustn't come." + +"I guess it isn't the last time, by the looks," said Irene, and before +she took off her bonnet she began to undo some of Penelope's mistaken +arrangements of the room. + +At breakfast, where Corey and his mother met the next morning before +his father and sisters came down, he told her, with embarrassment which +told much more, that he wished now that she would go and call upon the +Laphams. + +Mrs. Corey turned a little pale, but shut her lips tight and mourned in +silence whatever hopes she had lately permitted herself. She answered +with Roman fortitude: "Of course, if there's anything between you and +Miss Lapham, your family ought to recognise it." + +"Yes," said Corey. + +"You were reluctant to have me call at first, but now if the affair is +going on----" + +"It is! I hope--yes, it is!" + +"Then I ought to go and see her, with your sisters; and she ought to +come here and--we ought all to see her and make the matter public. We +can't do so too soon. It will seem as if we were ashamed if we don't." + +"Yes, you are quite right, mother," said the young man gratefully, "and +I feel how kind and good you are. I have tried to consider you in this +matter, though I don't seem to have done so; I know what your rights +are, and I wish with all my heart that I were meeting even your tastes +perfectly. But I know you will like her when you come to know her. +It's been very hard for her every way--about her sister,--and she's +made a great sacrifice for me. She's acted nobly." + +Mrs. Corey, whose thoughts cannot always be reported, said she was sure +of it, and that all she desired was her son's happiness. + +"She's been very unwilling to consider it an engagement on that +account, and on account of Colonel Lapham's difficulties. I should +like to have you go, now, for that very reason. I don't know just how +serious the trouble is; but it isn't a time when we can seem +indifferent." + +The logic of this was not perhaps so apparent to the glasses of fifty +as to the eyes of twenty-six; but Mrs. Corey, however she viewed it, +could not allow herself to blench before the son whom she had taught +that to want magnanimity was to be less than gentlemanly. She +answered, with what composure she could, "I will take your sisters," +and then she made some natural inquiries about Lapham's affairs. "Oh, +I hope it will come out all right," Corey said, with a lover's vague +smile, and left her. When his father came down, rubbing his long hands +together, and looking aloof from all the cares of the practical world, +in an artistic withdrawal, from which his eye ranged over the +breakfast-table before he sat down, Mrs. Corey told him what she and +their son had been saying. + +He laughed, with a delicate impersonal appreciation of the predicament. +"Well, Anna, you can't say but if you ever were guilty of supposing +yourself porcelain, this is a just punishment of your arrogance. Here +you are bound by the very quality on which you've prided yourself to +behave well to a bit of earthenware who is apparently in danger of +losing the gilding that rendered her tolerable." + +"We never cared for the money," said Mrs. Corey. "You know that." + +"No; and now we can't seem to care for the loss of it. That would be +still worse. Either horn of the dilemma gores us. Well, we still have +the comfort we had in the beginning; we can't help ourselves; and we +should only make bad worse by trying. Unless we can look to Tom's +inamorata herself for help." + +Mrs. Corey shook her head so gloomily that her husband broke off with +another laugh. But at the continued trouble of her face, he said, +sympathetically: "My dear, I know it's a very disagreeable affair; and +I don't think either of us has failed to see that it was so from the +beginning. I have had my way of expressing my sense of it, and you +yours, but we have always been of the same mind about it. We would +both have preferred to have Tom marry in his own set; the Laphams are +about the last set we could have wished him to marry into. They ARE +uncultivated people, and so far as I have seen them, I'm not able to +believe that poverty will improve them. Still, it may. Let us hope +for the best, and let us behave as well as we know how. I'm sure YOU +will behave well, and I shall try. I'm going with you to call on Miss +Lapham. This is a thing that can't be done by halves!" + +He cut his orange in the Neapolitan manner, and ate it in quarters. + + + +XXVII. + + +IRENE did not leave her mother in any illusion concerning her cousin +Will and herself. She said they had all been as nice to her as they +could be, and when Mrs. Lapham hinted at what had been in her +thoughts,--or her hopes, rather,--Irene severely snubbed the notion. +She said that he was as good as engaged to a girl out there, and that +he had never dreamt of her. Her mother wondered at her severity; in +these few months the girl had toughened and hardened; she had lost all +her babyish dependence and pliability; she was like iron; and here and +there she was sharpened to a cutting edge. It had been a life and +death struggle with her; she had conquered, but she had also +necessarily lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth +keeping; but at any rate she had lost it. + +She required from her mother a strict and accurate account of her +father's affairs, so far as Mrs Lapham knew them; and she showed a +business-like quickness in comprehending them that Penelope had never +pretended to. With her sister she ignored the past as completely as it +was possible to do; and she treated both Corey and Penelope with the +justice which their innocence of voluntary offence deserved. It was a +difficult part, and she kept away from them as much as she could. She +had been easily excused, on a plea of fatigue from her journey, when +Mr. and Mrs. Corey had called the day after her arrival, and Mrs. +Lapham being still unwell, Penelope received them alone. + +The girl had instinctively judged best that they should know the worst +at once, and she let them have the full brunt of the drawing-room, +while she was screwing her courage up to come down and see them. She +was afterwards--months afterwards--able to report to Corey that when +she entered the room his father was sitting with his hat on his knees, +a little tilted away from the Emancipation group, as if he expected the +Lincoln to hit him, with that lifted hand of benediction; and that Mrs. +Corey looked as if she were not sure but the Eagle pecked. But for the +time being Penelope was as nearly crazed as might be by the +complications of her position, and received her visitors with a piteous +distraction which could not fail of touching Bromfield Corey's +Italianised sympatheticism. He was very polite and tender with her at +first, and ended by making a joke with her, to which Penelope +responded, in her sort. He said he hoped they parted friends, if not +quite acquaintances; and she said she hoped they would be able to +recognise each other if they ever met again. + +"That is what I meant by her pertness," said Mrs Corey, when they were +driving away. + +"Was it very pert?" he queried. "The child had to answer something." + +"I would much rather she had answered nothing, under the +circumstances," said Mrs. Corey. "However!" she added hopelessly. +"Oh, she's a merry little grig, you can see that, and there's no harm +in her. I can understand a little why a formal fellow like Tom should +be taken with her. She hasn't the least reverence, I suppose, and +joked with the young man from the beginning. You must remember, Anna, +that there was a time when you liked my joking." + +"It was a very different thing!" + +"But that drawing-room," pursued Corey; "really, I don't see how Tom +stands that. Anna, a terrible thought occurs to me! Fancy Tom being +married in front of that group, with a floral horse-shoe in tuberoses +coming down on either side of it!" + +"Bromfield!" cried his wife, "you are unmerciful." + +"No, no, my dear," he argued; "merely imaginative. And I can even +imagine that little thing finding Tom just the least bit slow, at +times, if it were not for his goodness. Tom is so kind that I'm +convinced he sometimes feels your joke in his heart when his head isn't +quite clear about it. Well, we will not despond, my dear." + +"Your father seemed actually to like her," Mrs. Corey reported to her +daughters, very much shaken in her own prejudices by the fact. If the +girl were not so offensive to his fastidiousness, there might be some +hope that she was not so offensive as Mrs. Corey had thought. "I +wonder how she will strike YOU," she concluded, looking from one +daughter to another, as if trying to decide which of them would like +Penelope least. + +Irene's return and the visit of the Coreys formed a distraction for the +Laphams in which their impending troubles seemed to hang further aloof; +but it was only one of those reliefs which mark the course of +adversity, and it was not one of the cheerful reliefs. At any other +time, either incident would have been an anxiety and care for Mrs. +Lapham which she would have found hard to bear; but now she almost +welcomed them. At the end of three days Lapham returned, and his wife +met him as if nothing unusual had marked their parting; she reserved +her atonement for a fitter time; he would know now from the way she +acted that she felt all right towards him. He took very little note of +her manner, but met his family with an austere quiet that puzzled her, +and a sort of pensive dignity that refined his rudeness to an effect +that sometimes comes to such natures after long sickness, when the +animal strength has been taxed and lowered. He sat silent with her at +the table after their girls had left them alone, and seeing that he did +not mean to speak, she began to explain why Irene had come home, and to +praise her. + +"Yes, she done right," said Lapham. "It was time for her to come," he +added gently. + +Then he was silent again, and his wife told him of Corey's having been +there, and of his father's and mother's calling. "I guess Pen's +concluded to make it up," she said. + +"Well, we'll see about that," said Lapham; and now she could no longer +forbear to ask him about his affairs. + +"I don't know as I've got any right to know anything about it," she +said humbly, with remote allusion to her treatment of him. "But I +can't help wanting to know. How ARE things going, Si?" + +"Bad," he said, pushing his plate from him, and tilting himself back in +his chair. "Or they ain't going at all. They've stopped." + +"What do you mean, Si?" she persisted, tenderly. + +"I've got to the end of my string. To-morrow I shall call a meeting of +my creditors, and put myself in their hands. If there's enough left to +satisfy them, I'm satisfied." His voice dropped in his throat; he +swallowed once or twice, and then did not speak. + +"Do you mean that it's all over with you?" she asked fearfully. + +He bowed his big head, wrinkled and grizzled; and after awhile he said, +"It's hard to realise it; but I guess there ain't any doubt about it." +He drew a long breath, and then he explained to her about the West +Virginia people, and how he had got an extension of the first time they +had given him, and had got a man to go up to Lapham with him and look +at the works,--a man that had turned up in New York, and wanted to put +money in the business. His money would have enabled Lapham to close +with the West Virginians. "The devil was in it, right straight along," +said Lapham. "All I had to do was to keep quiet about that other +company. It was Rogers and his property right over again. He liked +the look of things, and he wanted to go into the business, and he had +the money--plenty; it would have saved me with those West Virginia +folks. But I had to tell him how I stood. I had to tell him all about +it, and what I wanted to do. He began to back water in a minute, and +the next morning I saw that it was up with him. He's gone back to New +York. I've lost my last chance. Now all I've got to do is to save the +pieces." + +"Will--will--everything go?" she asked. + +"I can't tell, yet. But they shall have a chance at everything--every +dollar, every cent. I'm sorry for you, Persis--and the girls." + +"Oh, don't talk of US!" She was trying to realise that the simple, rude +soul to which her heart clove in her youth, but which she had put to +such cruel proof, with her unsparing conscience and her unsparing +tongue, had been equal to its ordeals, and had come out unscathed and +unstained. He was able in his talk to make so little of them; he +hardly seemed to see what they were; he was apparently not proud of +them, and certainly not glad; if they were victories of any sort, he +bore them with the patience of defeat. His wife wished to praise him, +but she did not know how; so she offered him a little reproach, in +which alone she touched the cause of her behaviour at parting. +"Silas," she asked, after a long gaze at him, "why didn't you tell me +you had Jim Millon's girl there?" + +"I didn't suppose you'd like it, Persis," he answered. "I did intend +to tell you at first, but then I put--I put it off. I thought you'd +come round some day, and find it out for yourself." + +"I'm punished," said his wife, "for not taking enough interest in your +business to even come near it. If we're brought back to the day of +small things, I guess it's a lesson for me, Silas." + +"Oh, I don't know about the lesson," he said wearily. + +That night she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her +fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess +I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you +do too, Persis." + +"But how--how could he----" + +"Mebbe he believed it," said Lapham, with patience that cut her more +keenly than any reproach. "YOU did." + +Perhaps because the process of his ruin had been so gradual, perhaps +because the excitement of preceding events had exhausted their capacity +for emotion, the actual consummation of his bankruptcy brought a +relief, a repose to Lapham and his family, rather than a fresh +sensation of calamity. In the shadow of his disaster they returned to +something like their old, united life; they were at least all together +again; and it will be intelligible to those whom life has blessed with +vicissitude, that Lapham should come home the evening after he had +given up everything, to his creditors, and should sit down to his +supper so cheerful that Penelope could joke him in the old way, and +tell him that she thought from his looks they had concluded to pay him +a hundred cents on every dollar he owed them. + +As James Bellingham had taken so much interest in his troubles from the +first, Lapham thought he ought to tell him, before taking the final +step, just how things stood with him, and what he meant to do. +Bellingham made some futile inquiries about his negotiations with the +West Virginians, and Lapham told him they had come to nothing. He +spoke of the New York man, and the chance that he might have sold out +half his business to him. "But, of course, I had to let him know how +it was about those fellows." + +"Of course," said Bellingham, not seeing till afterwards the full +significance of Lapham's action. + +Lapham said nothing about Rogers and the Englishmen. He believed that +he had acted right in that matter, and he was satisfied; but he did not +care to have Bellingham, or anybody, perhaps, think he had been a fool. + +All those who were concerned in his affairs said he behaved well, and +even more than well, when it came to the worst. The prudence, the good +sense, which he had shown in the first years of his success, and of +which his great prosperity seemed to have bereft him, came back, and +these qualities, used in his own behalf, commended him as much to his +creditors as the anxiety he showed that no one should suffer by him; +this even made some of them doubtful of his sincerity. They gave him +time, and there would have been no trouble in his resuming on the old +basis, if the ground had not been cut from under him by the competition +of the West Virginia company. He saw himself that it was useless to +try to go on in the old way, and he preferred to go back and begin the +world anew where he had first begun it, in the hills at Lapham. He put +the house at Nankeen Square, with everything else he had, into the +payment of his debts, and Mrs. Lapham found it easier to leave it for +the old farmstead in Vermont than it would have been to go from that +home of many years to the new house on the water side of Beacon. This +thing and that is embittered to us, so that we may be willing to +relinquish it; the world, life itself, is embittered to most of us, so +that we are glad to have done with them at last; and this home was +haunted with such memories to each of those who abandoned it that to go +was less exile than escape. Mrs. Lapham could not look into Irene's +room without seeing the girl there before her glass, tearing the poor +little keep-sakes of her hapless fancy from their hiding-places to take +them and fling them in passionate renunciation upon her sister; she +could not come into the sitting-room, where her little ones had grown +up, without starting at the thought of her husband sitting so many +weary nights at his desk there, trying to fight his way back to hope +out of the ruin into which he was slipping. When she remembered that +night when Rogers came, she hated the place. Irene accepted her +release from the house eagerly, and was glad to go before and prepare +for the family at Lapham. Penelope was always ashamed of her +engagement there; it must seem better somewhere else and she was glad +to go too. No one but Lapham in fact, felt the pang of parting in all +its keenness. Whatever regret the others had was softened to them by +the likeness of their flitting to many of those removals for the summer +which they made in the late spring when they left Nankeen Square; they +were going directly into the country instead of to the seaside first; +but Lapham, who usually remained in town long after they had gone, knew +all the difference. For his nerves there was no mechanical sense of +coming back; this was as much the end of his proud, prosperous life as +death itself could have been. He was returning to begin life anew, but +he knew as well as he knew that he should not find his vanished youth +in his native hills, that it could never again be the triumph that it +had been. That was impossible, not only in his stiffened and weakened +forces, but in the very nature of things. He was going back, by grace +of the man whom he owed money, to make what he could out of the one +chance which his successful rivals had left him. + +In one phase his paint had held its own against bad times and ruinous +competition, and it was with the hope of doing still more with the +Persis Brand that he now set himself to work. The West Virginia people +confessed that they could not produce those fine grades, and they +willingly left the field to him. A strange, not ignoble friendliness +existed between Lapham and the three brothers; they had used him +fairly; it was their facilities that had conquered him, not their +ill-will; and he recognised in them without enmity the necessity to +which he had yielded. If he succeeded in his efforts to develop his +paint in this direction, it must be for a long time on a small scale +compared with his former business, which it could never equal, and he +brought to them the flagging energies of an elderly man. He was more +broken than he knew by his failure; it did not kill, as it often does, +but it weakened the spring once so strong and elastic. He lapsed more +and more into acquiescence with his changed condition, and that +bragging note of his was rarely sounded. He worked faithfully enough +in his enterprise, but sometimes he failed to seize occasions that in +his younger days he would have turned to golden account. His wife saw +in him a daunted look that made her heart ache for him. + +One result of his friendly relations with the West Virginia people was +that Corey went in with them, and the fact that he did so solely upon +Lapham's advice, and by means of his recommendation, was perhaps the +Colonel's proudest consolation. Corey knew the business thoroughly, +and after half a year at Kanawha Falls and in the office at New York, +he went out to Mexico and Central America, to see what could be done +for them upon the ground which he had theoretically studied with Lapham. + +Before he went he came up to Vermont, and urged Penelope to go with +him. He was to be first in the city of Mexico, and if his mission was +successful he was to be kept there and in South America several years, +watching the new railroad enterprises and the development of mechanical +agriculture and whatever other undertakings offered an opening for the +introduction of the paint. They were all young men together, and +Corey, who had put his money into the company, had a proprietary +interest in the success which they were eager to achieve. + +"There's no more reason now and no less than ever there was," mused +Penelope, in counsel with her mother, "why I should say Yes, or why I +should say No. Everything else changes, but this is just where it was a +year ago. It don't go backward, and it don't go forward. Mother, I +believe I shall take the bit in my teeth--if anybody will put it there!" + +"It isn't the same as it was," suggested her mother. "You can see that +Irene's all over it." + +"That's no credit to me," said Penelope. "I ought to be just as much +ashamed as ever." + +"You no need ever to be ashamed." + +"That's true, too," said the girl. "And I can sneak off to Mexico with +a good conscience if I could make up my mind to it." She laughed. +"Well, if I could be SENTENCED to be married, or somebody would up and +forbid the banns! I don't know what to do about it." + +Her mother left her to carry her hesitation back to Corey, and she said +now, they had better go all over it and try to reason it out. "And I +hope that whatever I do, it won't be for my own sake, but for--others!" + +Corey said he was sure of that, and looked at her with eyes of patient +tenderness. + +"I don't say it is wrong," she proceeded, rather aimlessly, "but I +can't make it seem right. I don't know whether I can make you +understand, but the idea of being happy, when everybody else is so +miserable, is more than I can endure. It makes me wretched." + +"Then perhaps that's your share of the common suffering," suggested +Corey, smiling. + +"Oh, you know it isn't! You know it's nothing. Oh! One of the reasons +is what I told you once before, that as long as father is in trouble I +can't let you think of me. Now that he's lost everything--?" She bent +her eyes inquiringly upon him, as if for the effect of this argument. + +"I don't think that's a very good reason," he answered seriously, but +smiling still. "Do you believe me when I tell you that I love you?" + +"Why, I suppose I must," she said, dropping her eyes. + +"Then why shouldn't I think all the more of you on account of your +father's loss? You didn't suppose I cared for you because he was +prosperous?" + +There was a shade of reproach, ever so delicate and gentle, in his +smiling question, which she felt. + +"No, I couldn't think such a thing of you. I--I don't know what I +meant. I meant that----" She could not go on and say that she had felt +herself more worthy of him because of her father's money; it would not +have been true; yet there was no other explanation. She stopped, and +cast a helpless glance at him. + +He came to her aid. "I understand why you shouldn't wish me to suffer +by your father's misfortunes." + +"Yes, that was it; and there is too great a difference every way. We +ought to look at that again. You mustn't pretend that you don't know +it, for that wouldn't be true. Your mother will never like me, and +perhaps--perhaps I shall not like her." + +"Well," said Corey, a little daunted, "you won't have to marry my +family." + +"Ah, that isn't the point!" + +"I know it," he admitted. "I won't pretend that I don't see what you +mean; but I'm sure that all the differences would disappear when you +came to know my family better. I'm not afraid but you and my mother +will like each other--she can't help it!" he exclaimed, less judicially +than he had hitherto spoken, and he went on to urge some points of +doubtful tenability. "We have our ways, and you have yours; and while +I don't say but what you and my mother and sisters would be a little +strange together at first, it would soon wear off, on both sides. +There can't be anything hopelessly different in you all, and if there +were it wouldn't be any difference to me." + +"Do you think it would be pleasant to have you on my side against your +mother?" + +"There won't be any sides. Tell me just what it is you're afraid of." + +"Afraid?" + +"Thinking of, then." + +"I don't know. It isn't anything they say or do," she explained, with +her eyes intent on his. "It's what they are. I couldn't be natural +with them, and if I can't be natural with people, I'm disagreeable." + +"Can you be natural with me?" + +"Oh, I'm not afraid of you. I never was. That was the trouble, from +the beginning." + +"Well, then, that's all that's necessary. And it never was the least +trouble to me!" + +"It made me untrue to Irene." + +"You mustn't say that! You were always true to her." + +"She cared for you first." + +"Well, but I never cared for her at all!" he besought her. + +"She thought you did." + +"That was nobody's fault, and I can't let you make it yours. My +dear----" + +"Wait. We must understand each other," said Penelope, rising from her +seat to prevent an advance he was making from his; "I want you to +realise the whole affair. Should you want a girl who hadn't a cent in +the world, and felt different in your mother's company, and had cheated +and betrayed her own sister?" + +"I want you!" + +"Very well, then, you can't have me. I should always despise myself. +I ought to give you up for all these reasons. Yes, I must." She looked +at him intently, and there was a tentative quality in her affirmations. + +"Is this your answer?" he said. "I must submit. If I asked too much +of you, I was wrong. And--good-bye." + +He held out his hand, and she put hers in it. "You think I'm +capricious and fickle!" she said. "I can't help it--I don't know +myself. I can't keep to one thing for half a day at a time. But it's +right for us to part--yes, it must be. It must be," she repeated; "and +I shall try to remember that. Good-bye! I will try to keep that in my +mind, and you will too--you won't care, very soon! I didn't mean +THAT--no; I know how true you are; but you will soon look at me +differently; and see that even IF there hadn't been this about Irene, I +was not the one for you. You do think so, don't you?" she pleaded, +clinging to his hand. "I am not at all what they would like--your +family; I felt that. I am little, and black, and homely, and they +don't understand my way of talking, and now that we've lost +everything--No, I'm not fit. Good-bye. You're quite right, not to have +patience with me any longer. I've tried you enough. I ought to be +willing to marry you against their wishes if you want me to, but I +can't make the sacrifice--I'm too selfish for that----" All at once she +flung herself on his breast. "I can't even give you up! I shall never +dare look any one in the face again. Go, go! But take me with you! I +tried to do without you! I gave it a fair trial, and it was a dead +failure. O poor Irene! How could she give you up?" + +Corey went back to Boston immediately, and left Penelope, as he must, +to tell her sister that they were to be married. She was spared from +the first advance toward this by an accident or a misunderstanding. +Irene came straight to her after Corey was gone, and demanded, +"Penelope Lapham, have you been such a ninny as to send that man away +on my account?" + +Penelope recoiled from this terrible courage; she did not answer +directly, and Irene went on, "Because if you did, I'll thank you to +bring him back again. I'm not going to have him thinking that I'm +dying for a man that never cared for me. It's insulting, and I'm not +going to stand it. Now, you just send for him!" + +"Oh, I will, 'Rene," gasped Penelope. And then she added, shamed out +of her prevarication by Irene's haughty magnanimity, "I have. That +is--he's coming back----" + +Irene looked at her a moment, and then, whatever thought was in her +mind, said fiercely, "Well!" and left her to her dismay--her dismay and +her relief, for they both knew that this was the last time they should +ever speak of that again. + +The marriage came after so much sorrow and trouble, and the fact was +received with so much misgiving for the past and future, that it +brought Lapham none of the triumph in which he had once exulted at the +thought of an alliance with the Coreys. Adversity had so far been his +friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for +which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and +doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly +stolen from him. Neither he nor his wife thought now that their +daughter was marrying a Corey; they thought only that she was giving +herself to the man who loved her, and their acquiescence was sobered +still further by the presence of Irene. Their hearts were far more +with her. + +Again and again Mrs. Lapham said she did not see how she could go +through it. "I can't make it seem right," she said. + +"It IS right," steadily answered the Colonel. + +"Yes, I know. But it don't SEEM so." + + +It would be easy to point out traits in Penelope's character which +finally reconciled all her husband's family and endeared her to them. +These things continually happen in novels; and the Coreys, as they had +always promised themselves to do, made the best, and not the worst of +Tom's marriage. + +They were people who could value Lapham's behaviour as Tom reported it +to them. They were proud of him, and Bromfield Corey, who found a +delicate, aesthetic pleasure in the heroism with which Lapham had +withstood Rogers and his temptations--something finely dramatic and +unconsciously effective,--wrote him a letter which would once have +flattered the rough soul almost to ecstasy, though now he affected to +slight it in showing it. "It's all right if it makes it more +comfortable for Pen," he said to his wife. + +But the differences remained uneffaced, if not uneffaceable, between +the Coreys and Tom Corey's wife. "If he had only married the Colonel!" +subtly suggested Nanny Corey. + +There was a brief season of civility and forbearance on both sides, +when he brought her home before starting for Mexico, and her +father-in-law made a sympathetic feint of liking Penelope's way of +talking, but it is questionable if even he found it so delightful as +her husband did. Lily Corey made a little, ineffectual sketch of her, +which she put by with other studies to finish up, sometime, and found +her rather picturesque in some ways. Nanny got on with her better than +the rest, and saw possibilities for her in the country to which she was +going. "As she's quite unformed, socially," she explained to her +mother, "there is a chance that she will form herself on the Spanish +manner, if she stays there long enough, and that when she comes back +she will have the charm of, not olives, perhaps, but tortillas, +whatever they are: something strange and foreign, even if it's +borrowed. I'm glad she's going to Mexico. At that distance we +can--correspond." + +Her mother sighed, and said bravely that she was sure they all got on +very pleasantly as it was, and that she was perfectly satisfied if Tom +was. + +There was, in fact, much truth in what she said of their harmony with +Penelope. Having resolved, from the beginning, to make the best of the +worst, it might almost be said that they were supported and consoled in +their good intentions by a higher power. This marriage had not, thanks +to an over-ruling Providence, brought the succession of Lapham teas +upon Bromfield Corey which he had dreaded; the Laphams were far off in +their native fastnesses, and neither Lily nor Nanny Corey was obliged +to sacrifice herself to the conversation of Irene; they were not even +called upon to make a social demonstration for Penelope at a time when, +most people being still out of town, it would have been so easy; she +and Tom had both begged that there might be nothing of that kind; and +though none of the Coreys learned to know her very well in the week she +spent with them, they did not find it hard to get on with her. There +were even moments when Nanny Corey, like her father, had glimpses of +what Tom had called her humour, but it was perhaps too unlike their own +to be easily recognisable. + +Whether Penelope, on her side, found it more difficult to harmonise, I +cannot say. She had much more of the harmonising to do, since they +were four to one; but then she had gone through so much greater trials +before. When the door of their carriage closed and it drove off with +her and her husband to the station, she fetched a long sigh. + +"What is it?" asked Corey, who ought to have known better. + +"Oh, nothing. I don't think I shall feel strange amongst the Mexicans +now." + +He looked at her with a puzzled smile, which grew a little graver, and +then he put his arm round her and drew her closer to him. This made +her cry on his shoulder. "I only meant that I should have you all to +myself." There is no proof that she meant more, but it is certain that +our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. The +price that we pay for civilisation is the fine yet impassable +differentiation of these. Perhaps we pay too much; but it will not be +possible to persuade those who have the difference in their favour that +this is so. They may be right; and at any rate, the blank misgiving, +the recurring sense of disappointment to which the young people's +departure left the Coreys is to be considered. That was the end of +their son and brother for them; they felt that; and they were not mean +or unamiable people. + +He remained three years away. Some changes took place in that time. +One of these was the purchase by the Kanawha Falls Company of the mines +and works at Lapham. The transfer relieved Lapham of the load of debt +which he was still labouring under, and gave him an interest in the +vaster enterprise of the younger men, which he had once vainly hoped to +grasp all in his own hand. He began to tell of this coincidence as +something very striking; and pushing on more actively the special +branch of the business left to him, he bragged, quite in his old way, +of its enormous extension. His son-in-law, he said, was pushing it in +Mexico and Central America: an idea that they had originally had in +common. Well, young blood was what was wanted in a thing of that kind. +Now, those fellows out in West Virginia: all young, and a perfect team! + +For himself, he owned that he had made mistakes; he could see just +where the mistakes were--put his finger right on them. But one thing +he could say: he had been no man's enemy but his own; every dollar, +every cent had gone to pay his debts; he had come out with clean hands. +He said all this, and much more, to Mr. Sewell the summer after he sold +out, when the minister and his wife stopped at Lapham on their way +across from the White Mountains to Lake Champlain; Lapham had found +them on the cars, and pressed them to stop off. + +There were times when Mrs. Lapham had as great pride in the +clean-handedness with which Lapham had come out as he had himself, but +her satisfaction was not so constant. At those times, knowing the +temptations he had resisted, she thought him the noblest and grandest +of men; but no woman could endure to live in the same house with a +perfect hero, and there were other times when she reminded him that if +he had kept his word to her about speculating in stocks, and had looked +after the insurance of his property half as carefully as he had looked +after a couple of worthless women who had no earthly claim on him, they +would not be where they were now. He humbly admitted it all, and left +her to think of Rogers herself. She did not fail to do so, and the +thought did not fail to restore him to her tenderness again. + + +I do not know how it is that clergymen and physicians keep from telling +their wives the secrets confided to them; perhaps they can trust their +wives to find them out for themselves whenever they wish. Sewell had +laid before his wife the case of the Laphams after they came to consult +with him about Corey's proposal to Penelope, for he wished to be +confirmed in his belief that he had advised them soundly; but he had +not given her their names, and he had not known Corey's himself. Now +he had no compunctions in talking the affair over with her without the +veil of ignorance which she had hitherto assumed, for she declared that +as soon as she heard of Corey's engagement to Penelope, the whole thing +had flashed upon her. "And that night at dinner I could have told the +child that he was in love with her sister by the way he talked about +her; I heard him; and if she had not been so blindly in love with him +herself, she would have known it too. I must say, I can't help feeling +a sort of contempt for her sister." + +"Oh, but you must not!" cried Sewell. "That is wrong, cruelly wrong. +I'm sure that's out of your novel-reading, my dear, and not out of your +heart. Come! It grieves me to hear you say such a thing as that." + +"Oh, I dare say this pretty thing has got over it--how much character +she has got!--and I suppose she'll see somebody else." + +Sewell had to content himself with this partial concession. As a +matter of fact, unless it was the young West Virginian who had come on +to arrange the purchase of the Works, Irene had not yet seen any one, +and whether there was ever anything between them is a fact that would +need a separate inquiry. It is certain that at the end of five years +after the disappointment which she met so bravely, she was still +unmarried. But she was even then still very young, and her life at +Lapham had been varied by visits to the West. It had also been varied +by an invitation, made with the politest resolution by Mrs. Corey, to +visit in Boston, which the girl was equal to refusing in the same +spirit. + +Sewell was intensely interested in the moral spectacle which Lapham +presented under his changed conditions. The Colonel, who was more the +Colonel in those hills than he could ever have been on the Back Bay, +kept him and Mrs. Sewell over night at his house; and he showed the +minister minutely round the Works and drove him all over his farm. For +this expedition he employed a lively colt which had not yet come of +age, and an open buggy long past its prime, and was no more ashamed of +his turnout than of the finest he had ever driven on the Milldam. He +was rather shabby and slovenly in dress, and he had fallen unkempt, +after the country fashion, as to his hair and beard and boots. The +house was plain, and was furnished with the simpler moveables out of +the house in Nankeen Square. There were certainly all the necessaries, +but no luxuries unless the statues of Prayer and Faith might be so +considered. The Laphams now burned kerosene, of course, and they had +no furnace in the winter; these were the only hardships the Colonel +complained of; but he said that as soon as the company got to paying +dividends again,--he was evidently proud of the outlays that for the +present prevented this,--he should put in steam heat and naphtha-gas. +He spoke freely of his failure, and with a confidence that seemed +inspired by his former trust in Sewell, whom, indeed, he treated like +an intimate friend, rather than an acquaintance of two or three +meetings. He went back to his first connection with Rogers, and he put +before Sewell hypothetically his own conclusions in regard to the +matter. + +"Sometimes," he said, "I get to thinking it all over, and it seems to +me I done wrong about Rogers in the first place; that the whole trouble +came from that. It was just like starting a row of bricks. I tried to +catch up and stop 'em from going, but they all tumbled, one after +another. It wa'n't in the nature of things that they could be stopped +till the last brick went. I don't talk much with my wife, any more +about it; but I should like to know how it strikes you." + +"We can trace the operation of evil in the physical world," replied the +minister, "but I'm more and more puzzled about it in the moral world. +There its course is often so very obscure; and often it seems to +involve, so far as we can see, no penalty whatever. And in your own +case, as I understand, you don't admit--you don't feel sure--that you +ever actually did wrong this man----" + +"Well, no; I don't. That is to say----" + +He did not continue, and after a while Sewell said, with that subtle +kindness of his, "I should be inclined to think--nothing can be thrown +quite away; and it can't be that our sins only weaken us--that your +fear of having possibly behaved selfishly toward this man kept you on +your guard, and strengthened you when you were brought face to face +with a greater"--he was going to say temptation, but he saved Lapham's +pride, and said--"emergency." + +"Do you think so?" + +"I think that there may be truth in what I suggest." + +"Well, I don't know what it was," said Lapham; "all I know is that when +it came to the point, although I could see that I'd got to go under +unless I did it--that I couldn't sell out to those Englishmen, and I +couldn't let that man put his money into my business without I told him +just how things stood." + +As Sewell afterwards told his wife, he could see that the loss of his +fortune had been a terrible trial to Lapham, just because his +prosperity had been so gross and palpable; and he had now a burning +desire to know exactly how, at the bottom of his heart, Lapham still +felt. "And do you ever have any regrets?" he delicately inquired of +him. + +"About what I done? Well, it don't always seem as if I done it," +replied Lapham. "Seems sometimes as if it was a hole opened for me, +and I crept out of it. I don't know," he added thoughtfully, biting +the corner of his stiff moustache. "I don't know as I should always +say it paid; but if I done it, and the thing was to do over again, +right in the same way, I guess I should have to do it." + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM *** + +***** This file should be named 154.txt or 154.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/154/ + +Produced by John Hamm. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Rise of Silas Lapham +by William Dean Howells + + + + +THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM +by William Dean Howells + + + +I. + + +WHEN Bartley Hubbard went to interview Silas Lapham +for the "Solid Men of Boston" series, which he undertook +to finish up in The Events, after he replaced their +original projector on that newspaper, Lapham received +him in his private office by previous appointment. + +"Walk right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he +caught sight of through the door of the counting-room. + +He did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, +but he gave Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he +rolled his large head in the direction of a vacant chair. +"Sit down! I'll he with you in just half a minute." + +"Take your time," said Bartley, with the ease he instantly felt. +"I'm in no hurry." He took a note-book from his pocket, +laid it on his knee, and began to sharpen a pencil. + +"There!" Lapham pounded with his great hairy fist +on the envelope he had been addressing. + +"William!" he called out, and he handed the letter +to a boy who came to get it. "I want that to go +right away. Well, sir," he continued, wheeling round +in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing Bartley, +seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you +want my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do you, +young man?" + +"That's what I'm after," said Bartley. "Your money +or your life." + +"I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money," +said Lapham, as if he were willing to prolong these moments +of preparation. + +"Take 'em both," Bartley suggested. "Don't want your +money without your life, if you come to that. But you're +just one million times more interesting to the public than +if you hadn't a dollar; and you know that as well as I do, +Mr. Lapham. There 's no use beating about the bush." + +"No," said Lapham, somewhat absently. He put out his huge +foot and pushed the ground-glass door shut between his +little den and the book-keepers, in their larger den outside. + +"In personal appearance," wrote Bartley in the sketch +for which he now studied his subject, while he waited +patiently for him to continue, "Silas Lapham is a fine type +of the successful American. He has a square, bold chin, +only partially concealed by the short reddish-grey beard, +growing to the edges of his firmly closing lips. +His nose is short and straight; his forehead good, +but broad rather than high; his eyes blue, and with a light +in them that is kindly or sharp according to his mood. +He is of medium height, and fills an average arm-chair +with a solid bulk, which on the day of our interview was +unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue serge. +His head droops somewhat from a short neck, which does +not trouble itself to rise far from a pair of massive +shoulders." + +"I don't know as I know just where you want me to begin," +said Lapham. + +"Might begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin," +replied Bartley. + +A gleam of humorous appreciation shot into Lapham's +blue eyes. + +"I didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far +back as that," he said. "But there's no disgrace in +having been born, and I was born in the State of Vermont, +pretty well up under the Canada line--so well up, in fact, +that I came very near being an adoptive citizen; for I +was bound to be an American of SOME sort, from the word +Go! That was about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty +years ago: this is '75, and that was '20. Well, say I'm +fifty-five years old; and I've LIVED 'em, too; not an hour +of waste time about ME, anywheres! I was born on a farm, +and----" + +"Worked in the fields summers and went to school winters: +regulation thing?" Bartley cut in. + +"Regulation thing," said Lapham, accepting this irreverent +version of his history somewhat dryly. + +"Parents poor, of course," suggested the journalist. +"Any barefoot business? Early deprivations of any kind, +that would encourage the youthful reader to go and do +likewise? Orphan myself, you know," said Bartley, with a +smile of cynical good-comradery. + +Lapham looked at him silently, and then said with quiet +self-respect, "I guess if you see these things as a joke, +my life won't interest you." + +"Oh yes, it will," returned Bartley, unabashed. "You'll see; +it'll come out all right." And in fact it did so, +in the interview which Bartley printed. + +"Mr. Lapham," he wrote, "passed rapidly over the story +of his early life, its poverty and its hardships, +sweetened, however, by the recollections of a devoted mother, +and a father who, if somewhat her inferior in education, +was no less ambitious for the advancement of his children. +They were quiet, unpretentious people, religious, +after the fashion of that time, and of sterling morality, +and they taught their children the simple virtues +of the Old Testament and Poor Richard's Almanac." + +Bartley could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted +to Lapham's unliterary habit of mind for his security +in making it, and most other people would consider it +sincere reporter's rhetoric. + +"You know," he explained to Lapham, "that we have to look +at all these facts as material, and we get the habit +of classifying them. Sometimes a leading question will +draw out a whole line of facts that a man himself would +never think of." He went on to put several queries, +and it was from Lapham's answers that he generalised the +history of his childhood. "Mr. Lapham, although he did +not dwell on his boyish trials and struggles, spoke of them +with deep feeling and an abiding sense of their reality." +This was what he added in the interview, and by the time +he had got Lapham past the period where risen Americans +are all pathetically alike in their narrow circumstances, +their sufferings, and their aspirations, he had beguiled him +into forgetfulness of the check he had received, and had +him talking again in perfect enjoyment of his autobiography. + +"Yes, sir," said Lapham, in a strain which Bartley was +careful not to interrupt again, "a man never sees all +that his mother has been to him till it's too late to let +her know that he sees it. Why, my mother--" he stopped. +"It gives me a lump in the throat," he said apologetically, +with an attempt at a laugh. Then he went on: "She +was a little frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized +intermediate school-girl; but she did the whole work +of a family of boys, and boarded the hired men besides. +She cooked, swept, washed, ironed, made and mended +from daylight till dark--and from dark till daylight, +I was going to say; for I don't know how she got any +time for sleep. But I suppose she did. She got time +to go to church, and to teach us to read the Bible, +and to misunderstand it in the old way. She was GOOD. +But it ain't her on her knees in church that comes back +to me so much like the sight of an angel as her on her knees +before me at night, washing my poor, dirty little feet, +that I'd run bare in all day, and making me decent for bed. +There were six of us boys; it seems to me we were all +of a size; and she was just so careful with all of us. +I can feel her hands on my feet yet!" Bartley looked at +Lapham's No. 10 boots, and softly whistled through his teeth. +"We were patched all over; but we wa'n't ragged. +I don't know how she got through it. She didn't seem +to think it was anything; and I guess it was no more +than my father expected of her. HE worked like a horse +in doors and out--up at daylight, feeding the stock, +and groaning round all day with his rheumatism, but not +stopping." + +Bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, +if he could have spoken his mind, he would have suggested +to Lapham that he was not there for the purpose of +interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had learned +to practise a patience with his victims which he did +not always feel, and to feign an interest in their +digressions till he could bring them up with a round turn. + +"I tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife +into the writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear +women complaining nowadays that their lives are stunted +and empty, I want to tell 'em about my MOTHER'S life. +I could paint it out for 'em." + +Bartley saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in. +"And you say, Mr. Lapham, that you discovered this mineral +paint on the old farm yourself?" + +Lapham acquiesced in the return to business. "I didn't +discover it," he said scrupulously. "My father found +it one day, in a hole made by a tree blowing down. +There it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the +roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I +don't know what give him the idea that there was money +in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, +if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered +him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying +as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; +but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they +couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't +any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke with us; +and I guess that paint-mine did as much as any one thing +to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old enough. +All my brothers went West, and took up land; but I +hung on to New England and I hung on to the old farm, +not because the paint-mine was on it, but because the +old house was--and the graves. Well," said Lapham, +as if unwilling to give himself too much credit, +"there wouldn't been any market for it, anyway. You can go +through that part of the State and buy more farms than you +can shake a stick at for less money than it cost to build +the barns on 'em. Of course, it's turned out a good thing. +I keep the old house up in good shape, and we spend a month +or so there every summer. M' wife kind of likes it, +and the girls. Pretty place; sightly all round it. +I've got a force of men at work there the whole time, +and I've got a man and his wife in the house. Had a +family meeting there last year; the whole connection from +out West. There!" Lapham rose from his seat and took +down a large warped, unframed photograph from the top +of his desk, passing his hand over it, and then blowing +vigorously upon it, to clear it of the dust. "There we are, +ALL of us." + +"I don't need to look twice at YOU," said Bartley, +putting his finger on one of the heads. + +"Well, that's Bill," said Lapham, with a gratified laugh. +"He's about as brainy as any of us, I guess. He's one +of their leading lawyers, out Dubuque way; been judge +of the Common Pleas once or twice. That's his son--just +graduated at Yale--alongside of my youngest girl. +Good-looking chap, ain't he?" + +"SHE'S a good-looking chap," said Bartley, with prompt +irreverence. He hastened to add, at the frown which +gathered between Lapham's eyes, "What a beautiful creature +she is! What a lovely, refined, sensitive face! And she looks GOOD, too." + +"She is good," said the father, relenting. + +"And, after all, that's about the best thing in a woman," +said the potential reprobate. "If my wife wasn't good +enough to keep both of us straight, I don't know what +would become of me." "My other daughter," said Lapham, +indicating a girl with eyes that showed large, and a face +of singular gravity. "Mis' Lapham," he continued, +touching his wife's effigy with his little finger. +"My brother Willard and his family--farm at Kankakee. +Hazard Lapham and his wife--Baptist preacher in Kansas. +Jim and his three girls--milling business at Minneapolis. +Ben and his family--practising medicine in Fort Wayne." + +The figures were clustered in an irregular group +in front of an old farm-house, whose original ugliness +had been smartened up with a coat of Lapham's +own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza. +The photographer had not been able to conceal the fact +that they were all decent, honest-looking, sensible people, +with a very fair share of beauty among the young girls; +some of these were extremely pretty, in fact. He had put +them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of course; +and they all looked as if they had the instrument of torture +which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs. +Here and there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur; +and some of the younger children had twitched +themselves into wavering shadows, and might have passed +for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts. +It was the standard family-group photograph, in which most +Americans have figured at some time or other; and Lapham +exhibited a just satisfaction in it. "I presume," +he mused aloud, as he put it back on top of his desk, +"that we sha'n't soon get together again, all of us." + +"And you say," suggested Bartley, "that you stayed right +along on the old place, when the rest cleared out West?" + +"No o-o-o," said Lapham, with a long, loud drawl; +"I cleared out West too, first off. Went to Texas. +Texas was all the cry in those days. But I got enough +of the Lone Star in about three months, and I come back +with the idea that Vermont was good enough for me." + +"Fatted calf business?" queried Bartley, with his pencil +poised above his note-book. + +"I presume they were glad to see me," said Lapham, +with dignity. "Mother," he added gently, "died that winter, +and I stayed on with father. I buried him in the spring; +and then I came down to a little place called Lumberville, +and picked up what jobs I could get. I worked round at +the saw-mills, and I was ostler a while at the hotel--I +always DID like a good horse. Well, I WA'N'T exactly +a college graduate, and I went to school odd times. +I got to driving the stage after while, and by and +by I BOUGHT the stage and run the business myself. +Then I hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long +story short, then I got married. Yes," said Lapham, +with pride, "I married the school-teacher. We did +pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she was always +at me to paint up. Well, I put it off, and PUT it off, +as a man will, till one day I give in, and says I, +'Well, let's paint up. Why, Pert,'--m'wife's name's +Persis,--'I've got a whole paint-mine out on the farm. +Let's go out and look at it.' So we drove out. I'd let +the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less +kind of a Kanuck that had come down that way; and I'd +hated to see the house with him in it; but we drove out +one Saturday afternoon, and we brought back about a bushel +of the stuff in the buggy-seat, and I tried it crude, and I +tried it burnt; and I liked it. M'wife she liked it too. +There wa'n't any painter by trade in the village, and I +mixed it myself. Well, sir, that tavern's got that coat +of paint on it yet, and it hain't ever had any other, +and I don't know's it ever will. Well, you know, +I felt as if it was a kind of harumscarum experiment, +all the while; and I presume I shouldn't have tried it +but I kind of liked to do it because father'd always +set so much store by his paint-mine. And when I'd got +the first coat on,"--Lapham called it CUT,--"I presume I +must have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and +thinking how he would have enjoyed it. I've had my share +of luck in this world, and I ain't a-going to complain +on my OWN account, but I've noticed that most things get +along too late for most people. It made me feel bad, +and it took all the pride out my success with the paint, +thinking of father. Seemed to me I might 'a taken more +interest in it when he was by to see; but we've got to +live and learn. Well, I called my wife out,--I'd tried +it on the back of the house, you know,--and she left +her dishes,--I can remember she came out with her sleeves +rolled up and set down alongside of me on the trestle,-- +and says I, 'What do you think, Persis?' And says she, +'Well, you hain't got a paint-mine, Silas Lapham; +you've got a GOLD-mine.' She always was just so enthusiastic +about things. Well, it was just after two or three +boats had burnt up out West, and a lot of lives lost, +and there was a great cry about non-inflammable paint, +and I guess that was what was in her mind. 'Well, I +guess it ain't any gold-mine, Persis,' says I; 'but I +guess it IS a paint-mine. I'm going to have it analysed, +and if it turns out what I think it is, I'm going +to work it. And if father hadn't had such a long name, +I should call it the Nehemiah Lapham Mineral Paint. +But, any rate, every barrel of it, and every keg, +and every bottle, and every package, big or little, +has got to have the initials and figures N.L.f. 1835, +S.L.t. 1855, on it. Father found it in 1835, and I tried it +in 1855.'" + +"'S.T.--1860--X.' business," said Bartley. + +"Yes," said Lapham, "but I hadn't heard of Plantation +Bitters then, and I hadn't seen any of the fellow's labels. +I set to work and I got a man down from Boston; and I +carried him out to the farm, and he analysed it--made +a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and we +kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; +kept the Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence +of iron in the ore showed with the magnet from the start; +and when he came to test it, he found out that it +contained about seventy-five per cent. of the peroxide +of iron." + +Lapham pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort +of reverent satisfaction, as if awed through his pride +by a little lingering uncertainty as to what peroxide was. +He accented it as if it were purr-ox-EYED; and Bartley +had to get him to spell it. + +"Well, and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note +of the percentage. + +"What then?" echoed Lapham. "Well, then, the fellow set +down and told me, 'You've got a paint here,' says he, +'that's going to drive every other mineral paint out of +the market. Why' says he, 'it'll drive 'em right into +the Back Bay!' Of course, I didn't know what the Back Bay +was then, but I begun to open my eyes; thought I'd had 'em +open before, but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint +has got hydraulic cement in it, and it can stand fire +and water and acids;' he named over a lot of things. +Says he, 'It'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you +want to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going +to crack nor fade any; and it ain't a-going to scale. +When you've got your arrangements for burning it properly, +you're going to have a paint that will stand like the +everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.' +Then he went into a lot of particulars, and I begun +to think he was drawing a long-bow, and meant to make his +bill accordingly. So I kept pretty cool; but the fellow's +bill didn't amount to anything hardly--said I might pay +him after I got going; young chap, and pretty easy; +but every word he said was gospel. Well, I ain't a-going +to brag up my paint; I don't suppose you came here to hear +me blow" + +"Oh yes, I did," said Bartley. "That's what I want. +Tell all there is to tell, and I can boil it down afterward. +A man can't make a greater mistake with a reporter than +to hold back anything out of modesty. It may be the very +thing we want to know. What we want is the whole truth; +and more; we've got so much modesty of our own that we can +temper almost any statement." + +Lapham looked as if he did not quite like this tone, +and he resumed a little more quietly. "Oh, there isn't +really very much more to say about the paint itself. +But you can use it for almost anything where a paint is wanted, +inside or out. It'll prevent decay, and it'll stop it, +after it's begun, in tin or iron. You can paint the inside +of a cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it; +and you can paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't. +You can cover a brick wall with it, or a railroad car, +or the deck of a steamboat, and you can't do a better thing +for either." + +"Never tried it on the human conscience, I suppose," +suggested Bartley. + +"No, sir," replied Lapham gravely. "I guess you want to keep +that as free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it. +I never cared to try any of it on mine." Lapham suddenly +lifted his bulk up out of his swivel-chair, and led the +way out into the wareroom beyond the office partitions, +where rows and ranks of casks, barrels, and kegs stretched +dimly back to the rear of the building, and diffused +an honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint. +They were labelled and branded as containing each so many +pounds of Lapham's Mineral Paint, and each bore the mystic +devices, N.L.f. 1835--S.L.t. 1855. "There!" said Lapham, +kicking one of the largest casks with the toe of his boot, +"that's about our biggest package; and here," he added, +laying his hand affectionately on the head of a very small keg, +as if it were the head of a child, which it resembled +in size, "this is the smallest. We used to put the paint +on the market dry, but now we grind every ounce of it +in oil--very best quality of linseed oil--and warrant it. +We find it gives more satisfaction. Now, come back +to the office, and I'll show you our fancy brands." + +It was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom, +with the rafters showing overhead in a cloudy perspective, +and darkening away into the perpetual twilight at the rear +of the building; and Bartley had found an agreeable seat +on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he was +reluctant to leave. But he rose and followed the vigorous +lead of Lapham back to the office, where the sun of a +long summer afternoon was just beginning to glare in at +the window. On shelves opposite Lapham's desk were tin +cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders, +and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top, +the same label borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom. +Lapham merely waved his hand toward these; but when Bartley, +after a comprehensive glance at them, gave his whole +attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where different +tints of the paint showed through flawless glass, +Lapham smiled, and waited in pleased expectation. + +"Hello!" said Bartley. "That's pretty!" + +"Yes," assented Lapham, "it is rather nice. +It's our latest thing, and we find it takes with +customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking down +one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label. + +Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked +at Lapham and smiled. + +"After HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and +put the first of it on the market her last birthday. +She was pleased." + +"I should think she might have been," said Bartley, +while he made a note of the appearance of the jars. + +"I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," +said Lapham dubiously. + +"That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing +else does. Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel." +It was in the dawn of Bartley's prosperity on the Boston +Events, before his troubles with Marcia had seriously begun. + +"Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile +another of the vast majority of married Americans; +a few underrate their wives, but the rest think them +supernal in intelligence and capability. "Well," he added, +"we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?" + +"We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place." + +"Well, we've all got to commence that way," +suggested Lapham consolingly. + +"Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. +I expect to be under a roof of my own on Clover Street +before long. I suppose," said Bartley, returning to business, +"that you didn't let the grass grow under your feet much +after you found out what was in your paint-mine?" + +"No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long +stare at Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself +a young man again, in the first days of his married life. +"I went right back to Lumberville and sold out everything, +and put all I could rake and scrape together into paint. +And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back +about HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!" + +Bartley laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry." + +"No, we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly +little girls grown up to LOOK like women." + +"Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, +as if upon second thought. + +"If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint +wouldn't have come to anything. I used to tell her it +wa'n't the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed +of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it was +the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER." + +"Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that." + +"In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor +a bridge-girder, nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face +of rock in that whole region that didn't have 'Lapham's +Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three colours we begun +by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the window-sill, +and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge +foot close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that. + +"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860-- +X. man, and the stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, +because they advertised in that way; and I've read articles +about it in the papers; but I don't see where the joke +comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own the barns +and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has +got to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred +about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it +wouldn't do to put mineral paint on it in three colours. +I wish some of the people that talk about the landscape, +and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks OUT +of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, +as we used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd +sing a little different tune about the profanation +of scenery. There ain't any man enjoys a sightly bit +of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a dozen +good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do. +But I ain't a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock +I come across, as if we were all a set of dumn Druids. +I say the landscape was made for man, and not man for +the landscape." + +"Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the +stove-polish man and the kidney-cure man." + +"It was made for any man that knows how to use it," +Lapham returned, insensible to Bartley's irony. +"Let 'em go and live with nature in the WINTER, up there +along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough +of her for one while. Well--where was I?" + +"Decorating the landscape," said Bartley. + +"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville, +and it give the place a start too. You won't find it +on the map now; and you won't find it in the gazetteer. +I give a pretty good lump of money to build a town-hall, +about five years back, and the first meeting they held +in it they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T +a name,--and it's Lapham now." + +"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get +the old Brandon red?" asked Bartley. + +"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's +a good paint," said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show +you round up at our place some odd time, if you get off." + +"Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?" + +"Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time I +got started, the war broke out; and it knocked my paint +higher than a kite. The thing dropped perfectly dead. +I presume that if I'd had any sort of influence, I might +have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages +and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels. +But I hadn't, and we had to face the music. I was about +broken-hearted, but m'wife she looked at it another way. +'I guess it's a providence,' says she. 'Silas, I guess +you've got a country that's worth fighting for. Any rate, +you better go out and give it a chance.' Well, sir, I went. +I knew she meant business. It might kill her to have +me go, but it would kill her sure if I stayed. +She was one of that kind. I went. Her last words was, +'I'll look after the paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one +little girl then,--boy'd died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother +was livin' with us; and I knew if times DID anyways come +up again, m'wife'd know just what to do. So I went. +I got through; and you can call me Colonel, if you want to. +Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and forefinger +and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee. +"Anything hard?" + +"Ball?" + +Lapham nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer. +If it wa'n't for that, I shouldn't know enough to come +in when it rains." + +Bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences +of wear. "And when you came back, you took hold +of the paint and rushed it." + +"I took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could," +said Lapham, with less satisfaction than he had hitherto +shown in his autobiography. "But I found that I had got +back to another world. The day of small things was past, +and I don't suppose it will ever come again in this country. +My wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody +with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear the idea. +That paint was like my own blood to me. To have anybody +else concerned in it was like--well, I don't know what. +I saw it was the thing to do; but I tried to fight it off, +and I tried to joke it off. I used to say, 'Why didn't +you take a partner yourself, Persis, while I was away?' +And she'd say, 'Well, if you hadn't come back, I should, +Si.' Always DID like a joke about as well as any woman I +ever saw. Well, I had to come to it. I took a partner." +Lapham dropped the bold blue eyes with which he had been +till now staring into Bartley's face, and the reporter +knew that here was a place for asterisks in his interview, +if interviews were faithful. "He had money enough," +continued Lapham, with a suppressed sigh; "but he didn't know +anything about paint. We hung on together for a year or two. +And then we quit." + +"And he had the experience," suggested Bartley, +with companionable ease. + +"I had some of the experience too," said Lapham, +with a scowl; and Bartley divined, through the freemasonry +of all who have sore places in their memories, that this +was a point which he must not touch again. + +"And since that, I suppose, you've played it alone." + +"I've played it alone." + +"You must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries, +Colonel?" suggested Bartley, putting on a professional air. + +"We ship it to all parts of the world. It goes to South America, +lots of it. It goes to Australia, and it goes to India, +and it goes to China, and it goes to the Cape of Good Hope. +It'll stand any climate. Of course, we don't export +these fancy brands much. They're for home use. But we're +introducing them elsewhere. Here." Lapham pulled open +a drawer, and showed Bartley a lot of labels in different +languages--Spanish, French, German, and Italian. +"We expect to do a good business in all those countries. +We've got our agencies in Cadiz now, and in Paris, +and in Hamburg, and in Leghorn. It's a thing that's bound +to make its way. Yes, sir. Wherever a man has got a ship, +or a bridge, or a lock, or a house, or a car, or a fence, +or a pig-pen anywhere in God's universe to paint, that's the +paint for him, and he's bound to find it out sooner or later. +You pass a ton of that paint dry through a blast-furnace, +and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig-iron. I believe +in my paint. I believe it's a blessing to the world. +When folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me +what I mix it with, I always say, 'Well, in the first place, +I mix it with FAITH, and after that I grind it up +with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that money +will buy.'" + +Lapham took out his watch and looked at it, and Bartley +perceived that his audience was drawing to a close. +"'F you ever want to run down and take a look at our works, +pass you over the road,"--he called it RUD--"and it sha'n't cost +you a cent." "Well, may be I shall, sometime," said Bartley. +"Good afternoon, Colonel." + +"Good afternoon. Or--hold on! My horse down there yet, +William?" he called to the young man in the counting-room +who had taken his letter at the beginning of the interview. +"Oh! All right!" he added, in response to something +the young man said. + +"Can't I set you down somewhere, Mr. Hubbard? I've got +my horse at the door, and I can drop you on my way home. +I'm going to take Mis' Lapham to look at a house I'm driving +piles for, down on the New Land." + +"Don't care if I do," said Bartley. + +Lapham put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying +on his desk, pulled down its rolling cover, turned the +key in it, and gave the papers to an extremely handsome +young woman at one of the desks in the outer office. +She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her smooth, +yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, +white forehead. "Here," said Lapham, with the same +prompt gruff kindness that he had used in addressing +the young man, "I want you should put these in shape, +and give me a type-writer copy to-morrow." + +"What an uncommonly pretty girl!" said Bartley, as they +descended the rough stairway and found their way out to +the street, past the dangling rope of a block and tackle +wandering up into the cavernous darkness overhead. + +"She does her work," said Lapham shortly. + +Bartley mounted to the left side of the open buggy standing at +the curb-stone, and Lapham, gathering up the hitching-weight, +slid it under the buggy-seat and mounted beside him. + +"No chance to speed a horse here, of course," said Lapham, +while the horse with a spirited gentleness picked her way, +with a high, long action, over the pavement of the street. +The streets were all narrow, and most of them crooked, +in that quarter of the town; but at the end of one +the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately +against the cool blue of the afternoon sky. The air +was full of a smell pleasantly compounded of oakum, +of leather, and of oil. It was not the busy season, +and they met only two or three trucks heavily straggling +toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the +cobble-stones of the pavement were worn with the dint of +ponderous wheels, and discoloured with iron-rust from them; +here and there, in wandering streaks over its surface, +was the grey stain of the salt water with which the street +had been sprinkled. + +After an interval of some minutes, which both men +spent in looking round the dash-board from opposite +sides to watch the stride of the horse, Bartley said, +with a light sigh, "I had a colt once down in Maine +that stepped just like that mare." + +"Well!" said Lapham, sympathetically recognising the +bond that this fact created between them. "Well, now, +I tell you what you do. You let me come for you 'most +any afternoon, now, and take you out over the Milldam, +and speed this mare a little. I'd like to show you what +this mare can do. Yes, I would." + +"All right," answered Bartley; "I'll let you know +my first day off." + +"Good," cried Lapham. + +"Kentucky?" queried Bartley. + +"No, sir. I don't ride behind anything but Vermont; never did. +Touch of Morgan, of course; but you can't have much Morgan +in a horse if you want speed. Hambletonian mostly. +Where'd you say you wanted to get out?" + +"I guess you may put me down at the Events Office, +just round the corner here. I've got to write up this +interview while it's fresh." + +"All right," said Lapham, impersonally assenting +to Bartley's use of him as material. + +He had not much to complain of in Bartley's treatment, +unless it was the strain of extravagant compliment which +it involved. But the flattery was mainly for the paint, +whose virtues Lapham did not believe could be overstated, +and himself and his history had been treated with as much +respect as Bartley was capable of showing any one. +He made a very picturesque thing of the discovery of the +paint-mine. "Deep in the heart of the virgin forests +of Vermont, far up toward the line of the Canadian snows, +on a desolate mountain-side, where an autumnal storm had done +its wild work, and the great trees, strewn hither and thither, +bore witness to its violence, Nehemiah Lapham discovered, +just forty years ago, the mineral which the alchemy +of his son's enterprise and energy has transmuted +into solid ingots of the most precious of metals. +The colossal fortune of Colonel Silas Lapham lay at the +bottom of a hole which an uprooted tree had dug for him, +and which for many years remained a paint-mine of no more +appreciable value than a soap-mine." + +Here Bartley had not been able to forego another grin; +but he compensated for it by the high reverence with which +he spoke of Colonel Lapham's record during the war of the +rebellion, and of the motives which impelled him to turn aside +from an enterprise in which his whole heart was engaged, and +take part in the struggle. "The Colonel bears embedded in the +muscle of his right leg a little memento of the period in the +shape of a minie-ball, which he jocularly referred to as his +thermometer, and which relieves him from the necessity of +reading 'The Probabilities' in his morning paper. This saves +him just so much time; and for a man who, as he said, has not a +moment of waste time on him anywhere, five minutes a day are +something in the course of a year. Simple, clear, bold, and +straightforward in mind and action, Colonel Silas Lapham, with +a prompt comprehensiveness and a never-failing business +sagacity, is, in the best sense of that much-abused term, one +of nature's noblemen, to the last inch of his five eleven and a +half. His life affords an example of single-minded application +and unwavering perseverance which our young business men would +do well to emulate. There is nothing showy or meretricious +about the man. He believes in mineral paint, and he puts his +heart and soul into it. He makes it a religion; though we would +not imply that it IS his religion. Colonel Lapham is a regular +attendant at the Rev. Dr. Langworthy's church. He subscribes +liberally to the Associated Charities, and no good object or +worthy public enterprise fails to receive his support. He is +not now actively in politics, and his paint is not partisan; +but it is an open secret that he is, and always has been, a +staunch Republican. Without violating the sanctities of private +life, we cannot speak fully of various details which came out +in the free and unembarrassed interview which Colonel Lapham +accorded our representative. But we may say that the success of +which he is justly proud he is also proud to attribute in great +measure to the sympathy and energy of his wife--one of those +women who, in whatever walk of life, seem born to honour the +name of American Woman, and to redeem it from the national +reproach of Daisy Millerism. Of Colonel Lapham's family, we +will simply add that it consists of two young lady daughters. + +"The subject of this very inadequate sketch is building +a house on the water side of Beacon Street, after designs +by one of our leading architectural firms, which, +when complete, will be one of the finest ornaments +of that exclusive avenue. It will, we believe, be ready +for the occupancy of the family sometime in the spring." + +When Bartley had finished his article, which he did +with a good deal of inward derision, he went home +to Marcia, still smiling over the thought of Lapham, +whose burly simplicity had peculiarly amused him. +"He regularly turned himself inside out to me," he said, +as he sat describing his interview to Marcia. + +"Then I know you could make something nice out of it," +said his wife; "and that will please Mr. Witherby." + +"Oh yes, I've done pretty well; but I couldn't let myself +loose on him the way I wanted to. Confound the limitations +of decency, anyway! I should like to have told just +what Colonel Lapham thought of landscape advertising +in Colonel Lapham's own words. I'll tell you one thing, +Marsh: he had a girl there at one of the desks that you +wouldn't let ME have within gunshot of MY office. +Pretty? It ain't any name for it!" Marcia's eyes +began to blaze, and Bartley broke out into a laugh, +in which he arrested himself at sight of a formidable +parcel in the corner of the room. + +"Hello! What's that?" + +"Why, I don't know what it is," replied Marcia tremulously. +"A man brought it just before you came in, and I didn't +like to open it." + +"Think it was some kind of infernal machine?" asked Bartley, +getting down on his knees to examine the package. +"MRS. B. Hubbard, heigh?" He cut the heavy hemp string +with his penknife. "We must look into this thing. +I should like to know who's sending packages to Mrs. Hubbard +in my absence." He unfolded the; wrappings of paper, +growing softer and finer inward, and presently pulled +out a handsome square glass jar, through which a crimson +mass showed richly. "The Persis Brand!" he yelled. +"I knew it!" + +"Oh, what is it, Bartley?" quavered Marcia. Then, +courageously drawing a little nearer: "Is it some kind +of jam?" she implored. "Jam? No!" roared Bartley. +"It's PAINT! It's mineral paint--Lapham's paint!" + +"Paint?" echoed Marcia, as she stood over him while he +stripped their wrappings from the jars which showed +the dark blue, dark green, light brown, dark brown, +and black, with the dark crimson, forming the gamut +of colour of the Lapham paint. "Don't TELL me it's +paint that I can use, Bartley!" + +"Well, I shouldn't advise you to use much of it--all +at once," replied her husband. "But it's paint that you +can use in moderation." + +Marcia cast her arms round his neck and kissed him. +"O Bartley, I think I'm the happiest girl in the world! +I was just wondering what I should do. There are places +in that Clover Street house that need touching up +so dreadfully. I shall be very careful. You needn't +be afraid I shall overdo. But, this just saves my life. +Did you BUY it, Bartley? You know we couldn't afford it, +and you oughtn't to have done it! And what does the Persis +Brand mean?" + +"Buy it?" cried Bartley. "No! The old fool's sent it to +you as a present. You'd better wait for the facts before +you pitch into me for extravagance, Marcia. Persis is +the name of his wife; and he named it after her because +it's his finest brand. You'll see it in my interview. +Put it on the market her last birthday for a surprise +to her." + +"What old fool?" faltered Marcia. + +"Why, Lapham--the mineral paint man." + +"Oh, what a good man!" sighed Marcia from the bottom +of her soul. "Bartley! you WON'T make fun of him as you +do of some of those people? WILL you?" + +"Nothing that HE'LL ever find out," said Bartley, +getting up and brushing off the carpet-lint from his knees. + + + +II. + + +AFTER dropping Bartley Hubbard at the Events building, +Lapham drove on down Washington Street to Nankeen Square +at the South End, where he had lived ever since the +mistaken movement of society in that direction ceased. +He had not built, but had bought very cheap of a terrified +gentleman of good extraction who discovered too late that +the South End was not the thing, and who in the eagerness +of his flight to the Back Bay threw in his carpets and +shades for almost nothing. Mrs. Lapham was even better +satisfied with their bargain than the Colonel himself, +and they had lived in Nankeen Square for twelve years. +They had seen the saplings planted in the pretty oval +round which the houses were built flourish up into sturdy +young trees, and their two little girls in the same period +had grown into young ladies; the Colonel's tough frame had +expanded into the bulk which Bartley's interview indicated; +and Mrs. Lapham, while keeping a more youthful outline, +showed the sharp print of the crow's-foot at the corners +of her motherly eyes, and certain slight creases in +her wholesome cheeks. The fact that they lived in an +unfashionable neighbourhood was something that they had +never been made to feel to their personal disadvantage, +and they had hardly known it till the summer before +this story opens, when Mrs. Lapham and her daughter +Irene had met some other Bostonians far from Boston, +who made it memorable. They were people whom chance had +brought for the time under a singular obligation to the +Lapham ladies, and they were gratefully recognisant of it. +They had ventured--a mother and two daughters--as far +as a rather wild little Canadian watering-place on the +St. Lawrence, below Quebec, and had arrived some days +before their son and brother was expected to join them. +Two of their trunks had gone astray, and on the night +of their arrival the mother was taken violently ill. +Mrs. Lapham came to their help, with her skill as nurse, +and with the abundance of her own and her daughter's wardrobe, +and a profuse, single-hearted kindness. When a doctor could +be got at, he said that but for Mrs. Lapham's timely care, +the lady would hardly have lived. He was a very effusive +little Frenchman, and fancied he was saying something very +pleasant to everybody. + +A certain intimacy inevitably followed, and when the +son came he was even more grateful than the others. +Mrs. Lapham could not quite understand why he should +be as attentive to her as to Irene; but she compared +him with other young men about the place, and thought +him nicer than any of them. She had not the means +of a wider comparison; for in Boston, with all her +husband's prosperity, they had not had a social life. +Their first years there were given to careful getting +on Lapham's part, and careful saving on his wife's. +Suddenly the money began to come so abundantly that she +need not save; and then they did not know what to do +with it. A certain amount could be spent on horses, +and Lapham spent it; his wife spent on rich and rather +ugly clothes and a luxury of household appointments. +Lapham had not yet reached the picture-buying stage +of the rich man's development, but they decorated their +house with the costliest and most abominable frescoes; +they went upon journeys, and lavished upon cars and hotels; +they gave with both hands to their church and to all the +charities it brought them acquainted with; but they did +not know how to spend on society. Up to a certain period +Mrs. Lapham had the ladies of her neighbourhood in to tea, +as her mother had done in the country in her younger days. +Lapham's idea of hospitality was still to bring a +heavy-buying customer home to pot-luck; neither of them +imagined dinners. + +Their two girls had gone to the public schools, where they +had not got on as fast as some of the other girls; +so that they were a year behind in graduating from the +grammar-school, where Lapham thought that they had got +education enough. His wife was of a different mind; +she would have liked them to go to some private school +for their finishing. But Irene did not care for study; +she preferred house-keeping, and both the sisters were +afraid of being snubbed by the other girls, who were of +a different sort from the girls of the grammar-school; +these were mostly from the parks and squares, like themselves. +It ended in their going part of a year. But the elder +had an odd taste of her own for reading, and she took some +private lessons, and read books out of the circulating library; +the whole family were amazed at the number she read, +and rather proud of it. + +They were not girls who embroidered or abandoned +themselves to needle-work. Irene spent her abundant +leisure in shopping for herself and her mother, of whom +both daughters made a kind of idol, buying her caps +and laces out of their pin-money, and getting her dresses +far beyond her capacity to wear. Irene dressed herself +very stylishly, and spent hours on her toilet every day. +Her sister had a simpler taste, and, if she had done +altogether as she liked, might even have slighted dress. +They all three took long naps every day, and sat hours +together minutely discussing what they saw out of the window. +In her self-guided search for self-improvement, the elder +sister went to many church lectures on a vast variety +of secular subjects, and usually came home with a comic +account of them, and that made more matter of talk for the +whole family. She could make fun of nearly everything; +Irene complained that she scared away the young men whom +they got acquainted with at the dancing-school sociables. +They were, perhaps, not the wisest young men. + +The girls had learned to dance at Papanti's; but they had +not belonged to the private classes. They did not even know +of them, and a great gulf divided them from those who did. +Their father did not like company, except such as came +informally in their way; and their mother had remained +too rustic to know how to attract it in the sophisticated +city fashion. None of them had grasped the idea of +European travel; but they had gone about to mountain +and sea-side resorts, the mother and the two girls, +where they witnessed the spectacle which such resorts +present throughout New England, of multitudes of girls, +lovely, accomplished, exquisitely dressed, humbly glad +of the presence of any sort of young man; but the Laphams +had no skill or courage to make themselves noticed, far less +courted by the solitary invalid, or clergyman, or artist. +They lurked helplessly about in the hotel parlours, +looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward. +Perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so. +They had not a conceit of themselves, but a sort of content +in their own ways that one may notice in certain families. +The very strength of their mutual affection was a barrier +to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one another; +they equipped their house for their own satisfaction; +they lived richly to themselves, not because they were selfish, +but because they did not know how to do otherwise. +The elder daughter did not care for society, apparently. +The younger, who was but three years younger, was not yet +quite old enough to be ambitious of it. With all her +wonderful beauty, she had an innocence almost vegetable. +When her beauty, which in its immaturity was crude and harsh, +suddenly ripened, she bloomed and glowed with the unconsciousness +of a flower; she not merely did not feel herself admired, +but hardly knew herself discovered. If she dressed well, +perhaps too well, it was because she had the instinct +of dress; but till she met this young man who was so nice +to her at Baie St. Paul, she had scarcely lived a detached, +individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother +and her sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. +She took account of everything he did and said, +pondering it, and trying to make out exactly what he meant, +to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest movement +or gesture. In this way she began for the first time +to form ideas which she had not derived from her family, +and they were none the less her own because they were +often mistaken. + +Some of the things that he partly said, partly looked, +she reported to her mother, and they talked them over, +as they did everything relating to these new acquaintances, +and wrought them into the novel point of view which +they were acquiring. When Mrs. Lapham returned home, +she submitted all the accumulated facts of the case, +and all her own conjectures, to her husband, and canvassed +them anew. + +At first he was disposed to regard the whole affair as of +small importance, and she had to insist a little beyond +her own convictions in order to counteract his indifference. + +"Well, I can tell you," she said, "that if you +think they were not the nicest people you ever saw, +you're mightily mistaken. They had about the best manners; +and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. I declare +it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods. +I don't know but the mother and the daughters would have let +you feel so a little, if they'd showed out all they thought; +but they never did; and the son--well, I can't express it, +Silas! But that young man had about perfect ways." + +"Seem struck up on Irene?" asked the Colonel. + +"How can I tell? He seemed just about as much struck up +on me. Anyway, he paid me as much attention as he did her. +Perhaps it's more the way, now, to notice the mother than +it used to be." + +Lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had +asked already, who the people were. + +Mrs. Lapham repeated their name. Lapham nodded his head. +"Do you know them? What business is he in?" + +"I guess he ain't in anything," said Lapham. + +"They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham impartially. + +"Well, they'd ought to be," returned the Colonel. +"Never done anything else." + +"They didn't seem stuck up," urged his wife. + +"They'd no need to--with you. I could buy him and sell him, +twice over." + +This answer satisfied Mrs. Lapham rather with the fact than +with her husband. "Well, I guess I wouldn't brag, Silas," she said. + +In the winter the ladies of this family, who returned +to town very late, came to call on Mrs. Lapham. +They were again very polite. But the mother let drop, +in apology for their calling almost at nightfall, +that the coachman had not known the way exactly. + +"Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill." + +There was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies +had gone; and on comparing notes with her daughter, +Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had been left to rankle +in her mind also. + +"They said they had never been in this part of the town before." + +Upon a strict search of her memory, Irene could not report +that the fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, +but it was that which gave it a more penetrating effect. + +"Oh, well, of course," said Lapham, to whom these facts +were referred. "Those sort of people haven't got much +business up our way, and they don't come. It's a fair +thing all round. We don't trouble the Hill or the New +Land much." + +"We know where they are," suggested his wife thoughtfully. + +"Yes," assented the Colonel. "I know where they are. +I've got a lot of land over on the Back Bay." + +"You have?" eagerly demanded his wife. + +"Want me to build on it?" he asked in reply, with a +quizzical smile. + +"I guess we can get along here for a while." + +This was at night. In the morning Mrs. Lapham said-- + +"I suppose we ought to do the best we can for the children, +in every way." + +"I supposed we always had," replied her husband. + +"Yes, we have, according to our light." + +"Have you got some new light?" + +"I don't know as it's light. But if the girls are going +to keep on living in Boston and marry here, I presume +we ought to try to get them into society, some way; +or ought to do something." + +"Well, who's ever done more for their children than we have?" +demanded Lapham, with a pang at the thought that he could +possibly have been out-done. "Don't they have everything +they want? Don't they dress just as you say? Don't you +go everywhere with 'em? Is there ever anything going +on that's worth while that they don't see it or hear +it? I don't know what you mean. Why don't you get them +into society? There's money enough!" + +"There's got to be something besides money, I guess," +said Mrs. Lapham, with a hopeless sigh. "I presume we +didn't go to work just the right way about their schooling. +We ought to have got them into some school where they'd +have got acquainted with city girls--girls who could help +them along. + +Nearly everybody at Miss Smillie's was from some where else." + +"Well, it's pretty late to think about that now," +grumbled Lapham. + +"And we've always gone our own way, and not looked +out for the future. We ought to have gone out more, +and had people come to the house. Nobody comes." + +"Well, is that my fault? I guess nobody ever makes +people welcomer." + +"We ought to have invited company more." + +"Why don't you do it now? If it's for the girls, I don't +care if you have the house full all the while." + +Mrs. Lapham was forced to a confession full of humiliation. +"I don't know who to ask." + +"Well, you can't expect me to tell you." + +"No; we're both country people, and we've kept our +country ways, and we don't, either of us, know what to do. +You've had to work so hard, and your luck was so long coming, +and then it came with such a rush, that we haven't had any +chance to learn what to do with it. It's just the same +with Irene's looks; I didn't expect she was ever going +to have any, she WAS such a plain child, and, all at once, +she's blazed out this way. As long as it was Pen that didn't +seem to care for society, I didn't give much mind to it. +But I can see it's going to be different with Irene. +I don't believe but what we're in the wrong neighbourhood." + +"Well," said the Colonel, "there ain't a prettier lot on +the Back Bay than mine. It's on the water side of Beacon, +and it's twenty-eight feet wide and a hundred and fifty deep. +Let's build on it." + +Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. "No," she said finally; +"we've always got along well enough here, and I guess we +better stay." + +At breakfast she said casually: "Girls, how would you +like to have your father build on the New Land?" + +The girls said they did not know. It was more convenient +to the horse-cars where they were. + +Mrs. Lapham stole a look of relief at her husband, +and nothing more was said of the matter. + +The mother of the family who had called upon Mrs. Lapham +brought her husband's cards, and when Mrs. Lapham returned +the visit she was in some trouble about the proper form +of acknowledging the civility. The Colonel had no card +but a business card, which advertised the principal +depot and the several agencies of the mineral paint; +and Mrs. Lapham doubted, till she wished to goodness +that she had never seen nor heard of those people, +whether to ignore her husband in the transaction altogether, +or to write his name on her own card. She decided +finally upon this measure, and she had the relief of not +finding the family at home. As far as she could judge, +Irene seemed to suffer a little disappointment from the fact. + +For several months there was no communication between +the families. Then there came to Nankeen Square +a lithographed circular from the people on the Hill, +signed in ink by the mother, and affording Mrs. Lapham +an opportunity to subscribe for a charity of undeniable +merit and acceptability. She submitted it to her husband, +who promptly drew a cheque for five hundred dollars. + +She tore it in two. "I will take a cheque +for a hundred, Silas," she said. + +"Why?" he asked, looking up guiltily at her. + +"Because a hundred is enough; and I don't want to show +off before them." + +"Oh, I thought may be you did. Well, Pert," he added, +having satisfied human nature by the preliminary thrust, +"I guess you're about right. When do you want I should begin +to build on Beacon Street?" He handed her the new cheque, +where she stood over him, and then leaned back in his chair +and looked up at her. + +"I don't want you should begin at all. What do +you mean, Silas?" She rested against the side of his desk. + +"Well, I don't know as I mean anything. But shouldn't +you like to build? Everybody builds, at least once +in a lifetime." + +"Where is your lot? They say it's unhealthy, over there." + +Up to a certain point in their prosperity Mrs. Lapham +had kept strict account of all her husband's affairs; +but as they expanded, and ceased to be of the retail nature +with which women successfully grapple, the intimate knowledge +of them made her nervous. There was a period in which she +felt that they were being ruined, but the crash had not come; +and, since his great success, she had abandoned herself +to a blind confidence in her husband's judgment, which she +had hitherto felt needed her revision. He came and went, +day by day, unquestioned. He bought and sold and got gain. +She knew that he would tell her if ever things went wrong, +and he knew that she would ask him whenever she was anxious. + +"It ain't unhealthy where I've bought," said Lapham, +rather enjoying her insinuation. "I looked after that +when I was trading; and I guess it's about as healthy +on the Back Bay as it is here, anyway. I got that lot +for you, Pert; I thought you'd want to build on the Back +Bay some day." + +"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Lapham, deeply pleased inwardly, +but not going to show it, as she would have said. +"I guess you want to build there yourself." She insensibly +got a little nearer to her husband. They liked to talk +to each other in that blunt way; it is the New England way +of expressing perfect confidence and tenderness. + +"Well, I guess I do," said Lapham, not insisting upon +the unselfish view of the matter. "I always did like +the water side of Beacon. There ain't a sightlier +place in the world for a house. And some day there's +bound to be a drive-way all along behind them houses, +between them and the water, and then a lot there is +going to be worth the gold that will cover it--COIN. +I've had offers for that lot, Pert, twice over what I give +for it. Yes, I have. Don't you want to ride over there +some afternoon with me and see it?" "I'm satisfied where +we be, Si," said Mrs. Lapham, recurring to the parlance +of her youth in her pathos at her husband's kindness. +She sighed anxiously, for she felt the trouble a woman +knows in view of any great change. They had often talked +of altering over the house in which they lived, but they +had never come to it; and they had often talked of building, +but it had always been a house in the country that they +had thought of. "I wish you had sold that lot." + +"I hain't," said the colonel briefly. + +"I don't know as I feel much like changing our way of living." + +"Guess we could live there pretty much as we live here. +There's all kinds of people on Beacon Street; you mustn't +think they're all big-bugs. I know one party that lives in a +house he built to sell, and his wife don't keep any girl. +You can have just as much style there as you want, or just +as little. I guess we live as well as most of 'em now, +and set as good a table. And if you come to style, +I don't know as anybody has got more of a right to put it +on than what we have." + +"Well, I don't want to build on Beacon Street, Si," +said Mrs. Lapham gently. + +"Just as you please, Persis. I ain't in any hurry to leave." + +Mrs. Lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held +in her right hand against the edge of her left. + +The Colonel still sat looking up at her face, and watching +the effect of the poison of ambition which he had artfully +instilled into her mind. + +She sighed again--a yielding sigh. "What are you going +to do this afternoon?" + +"I'm going to take a turn on the Brighton road," +said the Colonel. + +"I don't believe but what I should like to go along," +said his wife. + +"All right. You hain't ever rode behind that mare yet, +Pert, and I want you should see me let her out once. +They say the snow's all packed down already, and the going +is A 1." + +At four o'clock in the afternoon, with a cold, +red winter sunset before them, the Colonel and his wife +were driving slowly down Beacon Street in the light, +high-seated cutter, where, as he said, they were a pretty +tight fit. He was holding the mare in till the time +came to speed her, and the mare was springily jolting +over the snow, looking intelligently from side to side, +and cocking this ear and that, while from her nostrils, +her head tossing easily, she blew quick, irregular whiffs +of steam. + +"Gay, ain't she?" proudly suggested the Colonel. + +"She IS gay," assented his wife. + +They met swiftly dashing sleighs, and let them pass +on either hand, down the beautiful avenue narrowing +with an admirably even sky-line in the perspective. +They were not in a hurry. The mare jounced easily along, +and they talked of the different houses on either side +of the way. They had a crude taste in architecture, +and they admired the worst. There were women's faces at +many of the handsome windows, and once in a while a young +man on the pavement caught his hat suddenly from his head, +and bowed in response to some salutation from within. + +"I don't think our girls would look very bad behind +one of those big panes," said the Colonel. + +"No," said his wife dreamily. + +"Where's the YOUNG man? Did he come with them?" + +"No; he was to spend the winter with a friend of his that +has a ranch in Texas. I guess he's got to do something." + +"Yes; gentlemaning as a profession has got to play out +in a generation or two." + +Neither of them spoke of the lot, though Lapham knew +perfectly well what his wife had come with him for, +and she was aware that he knew it. The time came when he +brought the mare down to a walk, and then slowed up almost +to a stop, while they both turned their heads to the right +and looked at the vacant lot, through which showed the frozen +stretch of the Back Bay, a section of the Long Bridge, +and the roofs and smoke-stacks of Charlestown. + +"Yes, it's sightly," said Mrs. Lapham, lifting her hand +from the reins, on which she had unconsciously laid it. + +Lapham said nothing, but he let the mare out a little. + +The sleighs and cutters were thickening round them. +On the Milldam it became difficult to restrict the mare +to the long, slow trot into which he let her break. +The beautiful landscape widened to right and left of them, +with the sunset redder and redder, over the low, +irregular hills before them. They crossed the Milldam +into Longwood; and here, from the crest of the first upland, +stretched two endless lines, in which thousands of cutters +went and came. Some of the drivers were already speeding +their horses, and these shot to and fro on inner lines, +between the slowly moving vehicles on either side +of the road. Here and there a burly mounted policeman, +bulging over the pommel of his M'Clellan saddle, jolted by, +silently gesturing and directing the course, and keeping +it all under the eye of the law. It was what Bartley +Hubbard called "a carnival of fashion and gaiety on the +Brighton road," in his account of it. But most of the +people in those elegant sleighs and cutters had so little +the air of the great world that one knowing it at all +must have wondered where they and their money came from; +and the gaiety of the men, at least, was expressed, +like that of Colonel Lapham, in a grim almost fierce, +alertness; the women wore an air of courageous apprehension. +At a certain point the Colonel said, "I'm going to let +her out, Pert," and he lifted and then dropped the reins +lightly on the mare's back. + +She understood the signal, and, as an admirer said, +"she laid down to her work." Nothing in the immutable +iron of Lapham's face betrayed his sense of triumph +as the mare left everything behind her on the road. +Mrs. Lapham, if she felt fear, was too busy holding her +flying wraps about her, and shielding her face from the +scud of ice flung from the mare's heels, to betray it; +except for the rush of her feet, the mare was as silent +as the people behind her; the muscles of her back and +thighs worked more and more swiftly, like some mechanism +responding to an alien force, and she shot to the end +of the course, grazing a hundred encountered and rival +sledges in her passage, but unmolested by the policemen, +who probably saw that the mare and the Colonel knew +what they were about, and, at any rate, were not the sort +of men to interfere with trotting like that. At the end +of the heat Lapham drew her in, and turned off on a side +street into Brookline. + +"Tell you what, Pert," he said, as if they had been quietly +jogging along, with time for uninterrupted thought since he +last spoke, "I've about made up my mind to build on that lot." + +"All right, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham; "I suppose you +know what you're about. Don't build on it for me, +that's all." + +When she stood in the hall at home, taking off her things, +she said to the girls, who were helping her, "Some day +your father will get killed with that mare." + +"Did he speed her?" asked Penelope, the elder. + +She was named after her grandmother, who had in her turn +inherited from another ancestress the name of the Homeric +matron whose peculiar merits won her a place even among +the Puritan Faiths, Hopes, Temperances, and Prudences. +Penelope was the girl whose odd serious face had struck +Bartley Hubbard in the photograph of the family group Lapham +showed him on the day of the interview. Her large eyes, +like her hair, were brown; they had the peculiar look of +near-sighted eyes which is called mooning; her complexion +was of a dark pallor. + +Her mother did not reply to a question which might be +considered already answered. "He says he's going to build +on that lot of his," she next remarked, unwinding the long +veil which she had tied round her neck to hold her +bonnet on. She put her hat and cloak on the hall table, +to be carried upstairs later, and they all went in to tea: +creamed oysters, birds, hot biscuit, two kinds of cake, +and dishes of stewed and canned fruit and honey. +The women dined alone at one, and the Colonel at the same +hour down-town. But he liked a good hot meal when he +got home in the evening. The house flared with gas; +and the Colonel, before he sat down, went about shutting +the registers, through which a welding heat came voluming +up from the furnace. + +"I'll be the death of that darkey YET," he said, +"if he don't stop making on such a fire. The only way +to get any comfort out of your furnace is to take care +of it yourself." + +"Well," answered his wife from behind the teapot, as he +sat down at table with this threat, "there's nothing +to prevent you, Si. And you can shovel the snow too, +if you want to--till you get over to Beacon Street, anyway." + +"I guess I can keep my own sidewalk on Beacon Street clean, +if I take the notion." + +"I should like to see you at it," retorted his wife. + +"Well, you keep a sharp lookout, and may be you will." + +Their taunts were really expressions of affectionate pride +in each other. They liked to have it, give and take, +that way, as they would have said, right along. + +"A man can be a man on Beacon Street as well as anywhere, +I guess." + +"Well, I'll do the wash, as I used to in Lumberville," +said Mrs. Lapham. "I presume you'll let me have +set tubs, Si. You know I ain't so young any more." +She passed Irene a cup of Oolong tea,--none of them +had a sufficiently cultivated palate for Sou-chong,--and +the girl handed it to her father. "Papa," she asked, +"you don't really mean that you're going to build over there?" + +"Don't I? You wait and see," said the Colonel, stirring his tea. + +"I don't believe you do," pursued the girl. + +"Is that so? I presume you'd hate to have me. +Your mother does." He said DOOS, of course. + +Penelope took the word. "I go in for it. I don't see +any use in not enjoying money, if you've got it to enjoy. +That's what it's for, I suppose; though you mightn't +always think so." She had a slow, quaint way of talking, +that seemed a pleasant personal modification of some +ancestral Yankee drawl, and her voice was low and cozy, +and so far from being nasal that it was a little hoarse. + +"I guess the ayes has it, Pen," said her father. +"How would it do to let Irene and your mother stick +in the old place here, and us go into the new house?" +At times the Colonel's grammar failed him. + +The matter dropped, and the Laphams lived on as before, +with joking recurrences to the house on the water side +of Beacon. The Colonel seemed less in earnest than any +of them about it; but that was his way, his girls said; +you never could tell when he really meant a thing. + + + +III. + + +TOWARD the end of the winter there came a newspaper, +addressed to Miss Irene Lapham; it proved to be a +Texas newspaper, with a complimentary account of the ranch +of the Hon. Loring G. Stanton, which the representative +of the journal had visited. + +"It must be his friend," said Mrs. Lapham, to whom her +daughter brought the paper; "the one he's staying with." + +The girl did not say anything, but she carried the +paper to her room, where she scanned every line of it +for another name. She did not find it, but she cut +the notice out and stuck it into the side of her mirror, +where she could read it every morning when she brushed +her hair, and the last thing at night when she looked +at herself in the glass just before turning off the gas. +Her sister often read it aloud, standing behind her +and rendering it with elocutionary effects. + +"The first time I ever heard of a love-letter in the form +of a puff to a cattle-ranch. But perhaps that's the style +on the Hill." + +Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the arrival of the paper, +treating the fact with an importance that he refused to see +in it. + +"How do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I know he did." + +"I don't see why he couldn't write to 'Rene, if he really +meant anything." + +"Well, I guess that wouldn't be their way," said Mrs. Lapham; +she did not at all know what their way would be. + +When the spring opened Colonel Lapham showed that he had +been in earnest about building on the New Land. His idea +of a house was a brown-stone front, four stories high, +and a French roof with an air-chamber above. Inside, +there was to be a reception-room on the street and a +dining-room back. The parlours were to be on the second floor, +and finished in black walnut or party-coloured paint. +The chambers were to be on the three floors above, +front and rear, with side-rooms over the front door. +Black walnut was to be used everywhere except in the attic, +which was to be painted and grained to look like +black walnut. The whole was to be very high-studded, +and there were to be handsome cornices and elaborate +centre-pieces throughout, except, again, in the attic. + +These ideas he had formed from the inspection of many +new buildings which he had seen going up, and which he +had a passion for looking into. He was confirmed in his +ideas by a master builder who had put up a great many +houses on the Back Bay as a speculation, and who told +him that if he wanted to have a house in the style, +that was the way to have it. + +The beginnings of the process by which Lapham escaped +from the master builder and ended in the hands of an +architect are so obscure that it would be almost impossible +to trace them. But it all happened, and Lapham promptly +developed his ideas of black walnut finish, high studding, +and cornices. The architect was able to conceal the shudder +which they must have sent through him. He was skilful, +as nearly all architects are, in playing upon that simple +instrument Man. He began to touch Colonel Lapham's stops. + +"Oh, certainly, have the parlours high-studded. But you've +seen some of those pretty old-fashioned country-houses, +haven't you, where the entrance-story is very low-studded?" +"Yes," Lapham assented. + +"Well, don't you think something of that kind would have +a very nice effect? Have the entrance-story low-studded, +and your parlours on the next floor as high as you please. +Put your little reception-room here beside the door, and get +the whole width of your house frontage for a square hall, +and an easy low-tread staircase running up three sides of it. +I'm sure Mrs. Lapham would find it much pleasanter." +The architect caught toward him a scrap of paper lying on +the table at which they were sitting and sketched his idea. +"Then have your dining-room behind the hall, looking on +the water." + +He glanced at Mrs. Lapham, who said, "Of course," +and the architect went on-- + +"That gets you rid of one of those long, straight, ugly +staircases,"--until that moment Lapham had thought a long, +straight staircase the chief ornament of a house,--"and +gives you an effect of amplitude and space." + +"That's so!" said Mrs. Lapham. Her husband merely made +a noise in his throat. + +"Then, were you thinking of having your parlours together, +connected by folding doors?" asked the architect deferentially. + +"Yes, of course," said Lapham. "They're always so, +ain't they?" + +"Well, nearly," said the architect. "I was wondering +how would it do to make one large square room at the front, +taking the whole breadth of the house, and, with this +hall-space between, have a music-room back for the +young ladies?" + +Lapham looked helplessly at his wife, whose quicker +apprehension had followed the architect's pencil +with instant sympathy. "First-rate!" she cried. + +The Colonel gave way. "I guess that would do. +It'll be kind of odd, won't it?" + +"Well, I don't know," said the architect. "Not so odd, +I hope, as the other thing will be a few years from now." +He went on to plan the rest of the house, and he showed +himself such a master in regard to all the practical +details that Mrs. Lapham began to feel a motherly affection +for the young man, and her husband could not deny in his +heart that the fellow seemed to understand his business. +He stopped walking about the room, as he had begun to +do when the architect and Mrs. Lapham entered into the +particulars of closets, drainage, kitchen arrangements, +and all that, and came back to the table. "I presume," +he said, "you'll have the drawing-room finished in +black walnut?" + +"Well, yes," replied the architect, "if you like. +But some less expensive wood can be made just as effective +with paint. Of course you can paint black walnut too." + +"Paint it?" gasped the Colonel. + +"Yes," said the architect quietly. "White, or a little +off white." + +Lapham dropped the plan he had picked up from the table. +His wife made a little move toward him of consolation +or support. + +"Of course," resumed the architect, "I know there has been +a great craze for black walnut. But it's an ugly wood; +and for a drawing-room there is really nothing like +white paint. We should want to introduce a little gold +here and there. Perhaps we might run a painted frieze round +under the cornice--garlands of roses on a gold ground; +it would tell wonderfully in a white room." + +The Colonel returned less courageously to the charge. +"I presume you'll want Eastlake mantel-shelves and tiles?" +He meant this for a sarcastic thrust at a prevailing foible +of the profession. + +"Well, no," gently answered the architect. "I was +thinking perhaps a white marble chimney-piece, treated +in the refined Empire style, would be the thing for that room." + +"White marble!" exclaimed the Colonel. "I thought +that had gone out long ago." + +"Really beautiful things can't go out. They may +disappear for a little while, but they must come back. +It's only the ugly things that stay out after they've +had their day." + +Lapham could only venture very modestly, "Hard-wood floors?" + +"In the music-room, of course," consented the architect. + +"And in the drawing-room?" + +"Carpet. Some sort of moquette, I should say. But I +should prefer to consult Mrs. Lapham's taste in that matter." + +"And in the other rooms?" + +"Oh, carpets, of course." + +"And what about the stairs?" + +"Carpet. And I should have the rail and banisters +white--banisters turned or twisted." + +The Colonel said under his breath, "Well, I'm dumned!" +but he gave no utterance to his astonishment in the +architect's presence. When he went at last,--the session +did not end till eleven o'clock,--Lapham said, "Well, Pert, +I guess that fellow's fifty years behind, or ten years ahead. +I wonder what the Ongpeer style is?" + +"I don't know. I hated to ask. But he seemed to +understand what he was talking about. I declare, he knows +what a woman wants in a house better than she does herself." + +"And a man's simply nowhere in comparison," said Lapham. +But he respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, +and have a reason ready, as this architect had; +and when he recovered from the daze into which the complete +upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left him, +he was in a fit state to swear by the architect. +It seemed to him that he had discovered the fellow (as +he always called him) and owned him now, and the fellow +did nothing to disturb this impression. He entered +into that brief but intense intimacy with the Laphams +which the sympathetic architect holds with his clients. +He was privy to all their differences of opinion +and all their disputes about the house. He knew just +where to insist upon his own ideas, and where to yield. +He was really building several other houses, but he +gave the Laphams the impression that he was doing none +but theirs. + +The work was not begun till the frost was thoroughly +out of the ground, which that year was not before the end +of April. Even then it did not proceed very rapidly. +Lapham said they might as well take their time to it; +if they got the walls up and the thing closed in before +the snow flew, they could be working at it all winter. +It was found necessary to dig for the kitchen; at that +point the original salt-marsh lay near the surface, +and before they began to put in the piles for the foundation +they had to pump. The neighbourhood smelt like the hold +of a ship after a three years' voyage. People who had +cast their fortunes with the New Land went by professing +not to notice it; people who still "hung on to the Hill" +put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and told each other +the old terrible stories of the material used in filling up +the Back Bay. + +Nothing gave Lapham so much satisfaction in the whole +construction of his house as the pile-driving. When +this began, early in the summer, he took Mrs. Lapham +every day in his buggy and drove round to look at it; +stopping the mare in front of the lot, and watching +the operation with even keener interest than the little +loafing Irish boys who superintended it in force. +It pleased him to hear the portable engine chuckle +out a hundred thin whiffs of steam in carrying the big +iron weight to the top of the framework above the pile, +then seem to hesitate, and cough once or twice in +pressing the weight against the detaching apparatus. +There was a moment in which the weight had the effect +of poising before it fell; then it dropped with a mighty +whack on the iron-bound head of the pile, and drove it +a foot into the earth. + +"By gracious!" he would say, "there ain't anything +like that in THIS world for BUSINESS, Persis!" + +Mrs. Lapham suffered him to enjoy the sight twenty +or thirty times before she said, "Well, now drive on, Si." + +By the time the foundation was in and the brick walls had begun +to go up, there were so few people left in the neighbourhood +that she might indulge with impunity her husband's passion +for having her clamber over the floor-timbers and the +skeleton stair-cases with him. Many of the householders +had boarded up their front doors before the buds had +begun to swell and the assessor to appear in early May; +others had followed soon; and Mrs. Lapham was as safe from +remark as if she had been in the depth of the country. +Ordinarily she and her girls left town early in July, +going to one of the hotels at Nantasket, where it was +convenient for the Colonel to get to and from his business +by the boat. But this summer they were all lingering a few +weeks later, under the novel fascination of the new house, +as they called it, as if there were no other in the world. + +Lapham drove there with his wife after he had set +Bartley Hubbard down at the Events office, but on this +day something happened that interfered with the solid +pleasure they usually took in going over the house. +As the Colonel turned from casting anchor at the mare's head +with the hitching-weight, after helping his wife to alight, +he encountered a man to whom he could not help speaking, +though the man seemed to share his hesitation if not his +reluctance at the necessity. He was a tallish, thin man, +with a dust-coloured face, and a dead, clerical air, +which somehow suggested at once feebleness and tenacity. + +Mrs. Lapham held out her hand to him. + +"Why, Mr. Rogers!" she exclaimed; and then, turning toward +her husband, seemed to refer the two men to each other. +They shook hands, but Lapham did not speak. "I didn't know +you were in Boston," pursued Mrs. Lapham. "Is Mrs. Rogers +with you?" + +"No," said Mr. Rogers, with a voice which had the flat, +succinct sound of two pieces of wood clapped together. +"Mrs. Rogers is still in Chicago" + +A little silence followed, and then Mrs Lapham said-- + +"I presume you are quite settled out there." + +"No; we have left Chicago. Mrs. Rogers has merely +remained to finish up a little packing." + +"Oh, indeed! Are you coming back to Boston?" + +"I cannot say as yet. We sometimes think of so doing." + +Lapham turned away and looked up at the building. +His wife pulled a little at her glove, as if embarrassed, +or even pained. She tried to make a diversion. + +"We are building a house," she said, with a meaningless laugh. + +"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Rogers, looking up at it. + +Then no one spoke again, and she said helplessly-- + +"If you come to Boston, I hope I shall see Mrs. Rogers." + +"She will be happy to have you call," said Mr Rogers. + +He touched his hat-brim, and made a bow forward rather +than in Mrs. Lapham's direction. + +She mounted the planking that led into the shelter of +the bare brick walls, and her husband slowly followed. +When she turned her face toward him her cheeks were burning, +and tears that looked hot stood in her eyes. + +"You left it all to me!" she cried. "Why couldn't you +speak a word?" + +"I hadn't anything to say to him," replied Lapham sullenly. + +They stood a while, without looking at the work which they +had come to enjoy, and without speaking to each other. + +"I suppose we might as well go on," said Mrs. Lapham +at last, as they returned to the buggy. The Colonel drove +recklessly toward the Milldam. His wife kept her veil +down and her face turned from him. After a time she put +her handkerchief up under her veil and wiped her eyes, +and he set his teeth and squared his jaw. + +"I don't see how he always manages to appear just at the +moment when he seems to have gone fairly out of our lives, +and blight everything," she whimpered. + +"I supposed he was dead," said Lapham. + +"Oh, don't SAY such a thing! It sounds as if you wished it." + +"Why do you mind it? What do you let him blight everything for?" + +"I can't help it, and I don't believe I ever shall. +I don't know as his being dead would help it any. +I can't ever see him without feeling just as I did +at first." + +"I tell you," said Lapham, "it was a perfectly square thing. +And I wish, once for all, you would quit bothering about it. +My conscience is easy as far as he is concerned, and it +always was." + +"And I can't look at him without feeling as if you'd +ruined him, Silas." + +"Don't look at him, then," said her husband, with a scowl. +"I want you should recollect in the first place, Persis, +that I never wanted a partner." + +"If he hadn't put his money in when he did, you'd 'a' +broken down." + +"Well, he got his money out again, and more, too," +said the Colonel, with a sulky weariness. + +"He didn't want to take it out." + +"I gave him his choice: buy out or go out." + +"You know he couldn't buy out then. It was no choice +at all." + +"It was a business chance." + +"No; you had better face the truth, Silas. It was no chance +at all. You crowded him out. A man that had saved you! No, +you had got greedy, Silas. You had made your paint your god, +and you couldn't bear to let anybody else share in its blessings." + +"I tell you he was a drag and a brake on me from the word go. +You say he saved me. Well, if I hadn't got him out he'd +'a' ruined me sooner or later. So it's an even thing, +as far forth as that goes." + +"No, it ain't an even thing, and you know it, Silas. Oh, if I +could only get you once to acknowledge that you did +wrong about it, then I should have some hope. I don't +say you meant wrong exactly, but you took an advantage. +Yes, you took an advantage! You had him where he couldn't +help himself, and then you wouldn't show him any mercy." + +"I'm sick of this," said Lapham. "If you'll 'tend +to the house, I'll manage my business without your help." + +"You were very glad of my help once." + +"Well, I'm tired of it now. Don't meddle." + +"I WILL meddle. When I see you hardening yourself in a +wrong thing, it's time for me to meddle, as you call it, +and I will. I can't ever get you to own up the least +bit about Rogers, and I feel as if it was hurting you +all the while." + +"What do you want I should own up about a thing for when I +don't feel wrong? I tell you Rogers hain't got anything +to complain of, and that's what I told you from the start. +It's a thing that's done every day. I was loaded up +with a partner that didn't know anything, and couldn't +do anything, and I unloaded; that's all." + +"You unloaded just at the time when you knew that your paint +was going to be worth about twice what it ever had been; +and you wanted all the advantage for yourself." + +"I had a right to it. I made the success." + +"Yes, you made it with Rogers's money; and when you'd +made it you took his share of it. I guess you thought +of that when you saw him, and that's why you couldn't +look him in the face." + +At these words Lapham lost his temper. + +"I guess you don't want to ride with me any more to-day," +he said, turning the mare abruptly round. + +"I'm as ready to go back as what you are," replied his wife. +"And don't you ask me to go to that house with you any more. +You can sell it, for all me. I sha'n't live in it. +There's blood on it." + + + +IV. + + +THE silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain +of wrong and insult to which no other human relation can +be subjected without lesion; and sometimes the strength +that knits society together might appear to the eye of +faltering faith the curse of those immediately bound by it. +Two people by no means reckless of each other's rights +and feelings, but even tender of them for the most part, +may tear at each other's heart-strings in this sacred +bond with perfect impunity; though if they were any +other two they would not speak or look at each other +again after the outrages they exchange. It is certainly +a curious spectacle, and doubtless it ought to convince +an observer of the divinity of the institution. +If the husband and wife are blunt, outspoken people +like the Laphams, they do not weigh their words; +if they are more refined, they weigh them very carefully, +and know accurately just how far they will carry, and in +what most sensitive spot they may be planted with most effect. + +Lapham was proud of his wife, and when he married her it +had been a rise in life for him. For a while he stood +in awe of his good fortune, but this could not last, +and he simply remained supremely satisfied with it. +The girl who had taught school with a clear head and a strong +hand was not afraid of work; she encouraged and helped him +from the first, and bore her full share of the common burden. +She had health, and she did not worry his life out with +peevish complaints and vagaries; she had sense and principle, +and in their simple lot she did what was wise and right. +Their marriage was hallowed by an early sorrow: they +lost their boy, and it was years before they could look +each other in the face and speak of him. No one gave up +more than they when they gave up each other and Lapham +went to the war. When he came back and began to work, +her zeal and courage formed the spring of his enterprise. +In that affair of the partnership she had tried to be +his conscience, but perhaps she would have defended him +if he had accused himself; it was one of those things +in this life which seem destined to await justice, +or at least judgment, in the next. As he said, Lapham had +dealt fairly by his partner in money; he had let Rogers +take more money out of the business than he put into it; +he had, as he said, simply forced out of it a timid +and inefficient participant in advantages which he +had created. But Lapham had not created them all. +He had been dependent at one time on his partner's capital. +It was a moment of terrible trial. Happy is the man +for ever after who can choose the ideal, the unselfish +part in such an exigency! Lapham could not rise to it. +He did what he could maintain to be perfectly fair. +The wrong, if any, seemed to be condoned to him, +except when from time to time his wife brought it up. +Then all the question stung and burned anew, and had +to be reasoned out and put away once more. It seemed +to have an inextinguishable vitality. It slept, but it did +not die. + +His course did not shake Mrs. Lapham's faith in him. +It astonished her at first, and it always grieved +her that he could not see that he was acting solely +in his own interest. But she found excuses for him, +which at times she made reproaches. She vaguely perceived +that his paint was something more than business to him; +it was a sentiment, almost a passion. He could not +share its management and its profit with another without +a measure of self-sacrifice far beyond that which he must +make with something less personal to him. It was the +poetry of that nature, otherwise so intensely prosaic; +and she understood this, and for the most part forbore. +She knew him good and true and blameless in all his life, +except for this wrong, if it were a wrong; and it was only +when her nerves tingled intolerably with some chance renewal +of the pain she had suffered, that she shared her anguish +with him in true wifely fashion. + +With those two there was never anything like an +explicit reconciliation. They simply ignored a quarrel; +and Mrs. Lapham had only to say a few days after +at breakfast, "I guess the girls would like to go round +with you this afternoon, and look at the new house," +in order to make her husband grumble out as he looked +down into his coffee-cup. "I guess we better all go, hadn't we?" + +"Well, I'll see," she said. + +There was not really a great deal to look at when Lapham +arrived on the ground in his four-seated beach-wagon. +But the walls were up, and the studding had already +given skeleton shape to the interior. The floors were +roughly boarded over, and the stairways were in place, +with provisional treads rudely laid. They had not begun +to lath and plaster yet, but the clean, fresh smell of the +mortar in the walls mingling with the pungent fragrance +of the pine shavings neutralised the Venetian odour that +drew in over the water. It was pleasantly shady there, +though for the matter of that the heat of the morning had +all been washed out of the atmosphere by a tide of east +wind setting in at noon, and the thrilling, delicious cool +of a Boston summer afternoon bathed every nerve. + +The foreman went about with Mrs. Lapham, showing her +where the doors were to be; but Lapham soon tired +of this, and having found a pine stick of perfect grain, +he abandoned himself to the pleasure of whittling it +in what was to be the reception-room, where he sat looking +out on the street from what was to be the bay-window. Here +he was presently joined by his girls, who, after locating +their own room on the water side above the music-room, +had no more wish to enter into details than their father. + +"Come and take a seat in the bay-window, ladies," +be called out to them, as they looked in at him through +the ribs of the wall. He jocosely made room for them +on the trestle on which he sat. + +They came gingerly and vaguely forward, as young ladies +do when they wish not to seem to be going to do a thing +they have made up their minds to do. When they had +taken their places on their trestle, they could not help +laughing with scorn, open and acceptable to their father; +and Irene curled her chin up, in a little way she had, +and said, "How ridiculous!" to her sister. + +"Well, I can tell you what," said the Colonel, in fond +enjoyment of their young ladyishness, "your mother wa'n't +ashamed to sit with me on a trestle when I called her out +to look at the first coat of my paint that I ever tried on a house." + +"Yes; we've heard that story," said Penelope, with easy +security of her father's liking what she said. +"We were brought up on that story." + +"Well, it's a good story," said her father. + +At that moment a young man came suddenly in range, who began +to look up at the signs of building as he approached. +He dropped his eyes in coming abreast of the bay-window, +where Lapham sat with his girls, and then his face lightened, +and he took off his hat and bowed to Irene. She rose +mechanically from the trestle, and her face lightened too. + +She was a very pretty figure of a girl, after our +fashion of girls, round and slim and flexible, +and her face was admirably regular. But her great +beauty--and it was very great--was in her colouring. +This was of an effect for which there is no word +but delicious, as we use it of fruit or flowers. +She had red hair, like her father in his earlier days, +and the tints of her cheeks and temples were such as +suggested May-flowers and apple-blossoms and peaches. +Instead of the grey that often dulls this complexion, +her eyes were of a blue at once intense and tender, +and they seemed to burn on what they looked at with a soft, +lambent flame. It was well understood by her sister +and mother that her eyes always expressed a great deal +more than Irene ever thought or felt; but this is not +saying that she was not a very sensible girl and very honest. + +The young man faltered perceptibly, and Irene came +a little forward, and then there gushed from them +both a smiling exchange of greeting, of which the sum +was that he supposed she was out of town, and that she +had not known that he had got back. A pause ensued, +and flushing again in her uncertainty as to whether +she ought or ought not to do it, she said, "My father, +Mr. Corey; and my sister." + +The young man took off his hat again, showing his +shapely head, with a line of wholesome sunburn ceasing +where the recently and closely clipped hair began. +He was dressed in a fine summer check, with a blue white- +dotted neckerchief, and he had a white hat, in which he +looked very well when he put it back on his head. +His whole dress seemed very fresh and new, and in fact he +had cast aside his Texan habiliments only the day before. + +"How do you do, sir?" said the Colonel, stepping to the window, +and reaching out of it the hand which the young man +advanced to take. "Won't you come in? We're at home here. +House I'm building." + +"Oh, indeed?" returned the young man; and he came promptly +up the steps, and through its ribs into the reception-room. + +"Have a trestle?" asked the Colonel, while the girls +exchanged little shocks of terror and amusement at the eyes. + +"Thank you," said the young man simply, and sat down. + +"Mrs. Lapham is upstairs interviewing the carpenter, +but she'll be down in a minute." + +"I hope she's quite well," said Corey. "I supposed--I +was afraid she might be out of town." + +"Well, we are off to Nantasket next week. The house kept +us in town pretty late." + +"It must be very exciting, building a house," said Corey +to the elder sister. + +"Yes, it is," she assented, loyally refusing in Irene's +interest the opportunity of saying anything more. + +Corey turned to the latter. "I suppose you've all helped +to plan it?" + +"Oh no; the architect and mamma did that." + +"But they allowed the rest of us to agree, when we were good," +said Penelope. + +Corey looked at her, and saw that she was shorter than +her sister, and had a dark complexion. + +"It's very exciting," said Irene. + +"Come up," said the Colonel, rising, "and look round +if you'd like to." + +"I should like to, very much," said the young man. +He helped the young ladies over crevasses of carpentry +and along narrow paths of planking, on which they had +made their way unassisted before. The elder sister left +the younger to profit solely by these offices as much +as possible. She walked between them and her father, +who went before, lecturing on each apartment, and taking +the credit of the whole affair more and more as he +talked on. + +"There!" he said, "we're going to throw out a bay- +window here, so as get the water all the way up and down. +This is my girls' room," he added, looking proudly at +them both. + +It seemed terribly intimate. Irene blushed deeply +and turned her head away. + +But the young man took it all, apparently, as simply +as their father. "What a lovely lookout!" he said. +The Back Bay spread its glassy sheet before them, +empty but for a few small boats and a large schooner, +with her sails close-furled and dripping like snow from +her spars, which a tug was rapidly towing toward Cambridge. +The carpentry of that city, embanked and embowered +in foliage, shared the picturesqueness of Charlestown in +the distance. + +"Yes," said Lapham, "I go in for using the best rooms +in your house yourself. If people come to stay with you, +they can put up with the second best. Though we don't +intend to have any second best. There ain't going to be +an unpleasant room in the whole house, from top to bottom." + +"Oh, I wish papa wouldn't brag so!" breathed Irene to her sister, +where they stood, a little apart, looking away together. + +The Colonel went on. "No, sir," he swelled out, "I have +gone in for making a regular job of it. I've got the best +architect in Boston, and I'm building a house to suit myself. +And if money can do it, guess I'm going to be suited." + +"It seems very delightful," said Corey, "and very original." + +"Yes, sir. That fellow hadn't talked five minutes +before I saw that he knew what he was about every time." + +"I wish mamma would come!" breathed Irene again. +"I shall certainly go through the floor if papa says +anything more." + +"They are making a great many very pretty houses nowadays," +said the young man. "It's very different from the +old-fashioned building." + +"Well," said the Colonel, with a large toleration of tone +and a deep breath that expanded his ample chest, "we spend +more on our houses nowadays. I started out to build +a forty-thousand-dollar house. Well, sir! that fellow +has got me in for more than sixty thousand already, +and I doubt if I get out of it much under a hundred. +You can't have a nice house for nothing. It's just like +ordering a picture of a painter. You pay him enough, +and he can afford to paint you a first-class picture; +and if you don't, he can't. That's all there is of it. +Why, they tell me that A. T. Stewart gave one of those +French fellows sixty thousand dollars for a little +seven-by-nine picture the other day. Yes, sir, give an +architect money enough, and he'll give you a nice house +every time." + +"I've heard that they're sharp at getting money to realise +their ideas," assented the young man, with a laugh. + +"Well, I should say so!" exclaimed the Colonel. +"They come to you with an improvement that you can't resist. +It has good looks and common-sense and everything in +its favour, and it's like throwing money away to refuse. +And they always manage to get you when your wife is around, +and then you're helpless." + +The Colonel himself set the example of laughing at this joke, +and the young man joined him less obstreperously. +The girls turned, and he said, "I don't think I ever saw +this view to better advantage. It s surprising how well +the Memorial Hall and the Cambridge spires work up, +over there. And the sunsets must be magnificent." + +Lapham did not wait for them to reply. + +"Yes, sir, it's about the sightliest view I know of. +I always did like the water side of Beacon. Long before I +owned property here, or ever expected to, m'wife and I used +to ride down this way, and stop the buggy to get this view +over the water. When people talk to me about the Hill, +I can understand 'em. It's snug, and it's old-fashioned, +and it's where they've always lived. But when they talk +about Commonwealth Avenue, I don't know what they mean. +It don't hold a candle to the water side of Beacon. +You've got just as much wind over there, and you've got just +as much dust, and all the view you've got is the view across +the street. No, sir! when you come to the Back Bay at all, +give me the water side of Beacon." + +"Oh, I think you're quite right," said the young man. +"The view here is everything." + +Irene looked "I wonder what papa is going to say next!" +at her sister, when their mother's voice was heard overhead, +approaching the opening in the floor where the stairs were +to be; and she presently appeared, with one substantial +foot a long way ahead. She was followed by the carpenter, +with his rule sticking out of his overalls pocket, and she +was still talking to him about some measurements they had +been taking, when they reached the bottom, so that Irene +had to say, "Mamma, Mr. Corey," before Mrs. Lapham was +aware of him. + +He came forward with as much grace and speed as the +uncertain footing would allow, and Mrs. Lapham gave +him a stout squeeze of her comfortable hand. + +"Why, Mr. Corey! When did you get back?" + +"Yesterday. It hardly seems as if I HAD got back. +I didn't expect to find you in a new house." + +"Well, you are our first caller. I presume you won't +expect I should make excuses for the state you find it in. +Has the Colonel been doing the honours?" + +"Oh yes. And I've seen more of your house than I ever +shall again, I suppose." + +"Well, I hope not," said Lapham. "There'll be several +chances to see us in the old one yet, before we leave." + +He probably thought this a neat, off-hand way of making +the invitation, for he looked at his woman-kind as if he +might expect their admiration. + +"Oh yes, indeed!" said his wife. "We shall be very glad +to see Mr. Corey, any time." + +"Thank you; I shall be glad to come." + +He and the Colonel went before, and helped the ladies +down the difficult descent. Irene seemed less sure- +footed than the others; she clung to the young man's +hand an imperceptible moment longer than need be, +or else he detained her. He found opportunity of saying, +"It's so pleasant seeing you again," adding, "all of you." + +"Thank you," said the girl. "They must all be glad +to have you at home again." + +Corey laughed. + +"Well, I suppose they would be, if they were at home +to have me. But the fact is, there's nobody in the house +but my father and myself, and I'm only on my way to Bar Harbour." + +"Oh! Are they there?" + +"Yes; it seems to be the only place where my mother +can get just the combination of sea and mountain air +that she wants." + +"We go to Nantasket--it's convenient for papa; and I +don't believe we shall go anywhere else this summer, +mamma's so taken up with building. We do nothing +but talk house; and Pen says we eat and sleep house. +She says it would be a sort of relief to go and live +in tents for a while." + +"She seems to have a good deal of humour," the young +man ventured, upon the slender evidence. + +The others had gone to the back of the house a moment, +to look at some suggested change. Irene and Corey were +left standing in the doorway. A lovely light of happiness +played over her face and etherealised its delicious beauty. +She had some ado to keep herself from smiling outright, +and the effort deepened the dimples in her cheeks; +she trembled a little, and the pendants shook in the tips +of her pretty ears. + +The others came back directly, and they all descended +the front steps together. The Colonel was about to renew +his invitation, but he caught his wife's eye, and, +without being able to interpret its warning exactly, +was able to arrest himself, and went about gathering +up the hitching-weight, while the young man handed +the ladies into the phaeton. Then he lifted his hat, +and the ladies all bowed, and the Laphams drove off, +Irene's blue ribbons fluttering backward from her hat, +as if they were her clinging thoughts. + +"So that's young Corey, is it?" said the Colonel, +letting the stately stepping, tall coupe horse make +his way homeward at will with the beach-wagon. "Well, +he ain't a bad-looking fellow, and he's got a good, +fair and square, honest eye. But I don't see how a fellow +like that, that's had every advantage in this world, +can hang round home and let his father support him. +Seems to me, if I had his health and his education, +I should want to strike out and do something for myself." + +The girls on the back seat had hold of each other's hands, +and they exchanged electrical pressures at the different +points their father made. + +"I presume," said Mrs. Lapham, "that he was down in Texas +looking after something" + +"He's come back without finding it, I guess." + +"Well, if his father has the money to support him, +and don't complain of the burden, I don't see why WE should." + +"Oh, I know it's none of my business, but I don't like +the principle. I like to see a man ACT like a man. +I don't like to see him taken care of like a young lady. +Now, I suppose that fellow belongs to two or three clubs, +and hangs around 'em all day, lookin' out the window,--I've +seen 'em,--instead of tryin' to hunt up something to do +for an honest livin'." + +"If I was a young man," Penelope struck in, "I would belong +to twenty clubs, if I could find them and I would hang +around them all, and look out the window till I dropped." + +"Oh, you would, would you?" demanded her father, +delighted with her defiance, and twisting his fat head +around over his shoulder to look at her. "Well, you +wouldn't do it on my money, if you were a son of MINE, +young lady." + +"Oh, you wait and see," retorted the girl. + +This made them all laugh. But the Colonel recurred +seriously to the subject that night, as he was winding +up his watch preparatory to putting it under his pillow. + +"I could make a man of that fellow, if I had him in the +business with me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke +up the way I did because I didn't choose Irene should +think I would stand any kind of a loafer 'round--I don't +care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. +And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw +what I was driving at." + +The girl, apparently, was less anxious about her +father's ideas and principles than about the impression +which he had made upon the young man. She had talked +it over and over with her sister before they went +to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking +at Penelope brushing out her hair before the glass-- + +"Do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that +bragging way?" + +"He'll be right if he does," answered her sister. +"It's the way father always does talk. You never noticed +it so much, that's all. And I guess if he can't make +allowance for father's bragging, he'll be a little too good. +I enjoyed hearing the Colonel go on." + +"I know you did," returned Irene in distress. +Then she sighed. "Didn't you think he looked very nice?" + +"Who? The Colonel?" Penelope had caught up the habit +of calling her father so from her mother, and she used +his title in all her jocose and perverse moods. + +"You know very well I don't mean papa," pouted Irene. +"Oh! Mr. Corey! Why didn't you say Mr. Corey if you meant +Mr. Corey? If I meant Mr. Corey, I should say Mr. Corey. +It isn't swearing! Corey, Corey, Co----" + +Her sister clapped her hand over her mouth "Will you HUSH, +you wretched thing?" she whimpered. "The whole house can +hear you." + +"Oh yes, they can hear me all over the square. +Well, I think he looked well enough for a plain youth, +who hadn't taken his hair out of curl-papers for some time." + +"It WAS clipped pretty close," Irene admitted; and they +both laughed at the drab effect of Mr. Corey's skull, +as they remembered it. "Did you like his nose?" +asked Irene timorously. + +"Ah, now you're COMING to something," said Penelope. +"I don't know whether, if I had so much of a nose, +I should want it all Roman." + +"I don't see how you can expect to have a nose part +one kind and part another," argued Irene. + +"Oh, I do. Look at mine!" She turned aside her face, +so as to get a three-quarters view of her nose in the glass, +and crossing her hands, with the brush in one of them, +before her, regarded it judicially. "Now, my nose +started Grecian, but changed its mind before it got over +the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way." + +"You've got a very pretty nose, Pen," said Irene, +joining in the contemplation of its reflex in the glass. + +"Don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment HIS, +Mrs."--she stopped, and then added deliberately--"C.!" + +Irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now +she sprang at her sister and beat her very softly on +the shoulder with the flat of it. "You mean thing!" +she cried, between her shut teeth, blushing hotly. + +"Well, D., then," said Penelope. "You've nothing to say +against D.? Though I think C. is just as nice an initial." + +"Oh!" cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things. + +"I think he has very good eyes," admitted Penelope. + +"Oh, he HAS! And didn't you like the way his sackcoat +set? So close to him, and yet free--kind of peeling away +at the lapels?" + +"Yes, I should say he was a young man of great judgment. +He knows how to choose his tailor." + +Irene sat down on the edge of a chair. "It was so nice +of you, Pen, to come in, that way, about clubs." + +"Oh, I didn't mean anything by it except opposition," +said Penelope. "I couldn't have father swelling on so, +without saying something." + +"How he did swell!" sighed Irene. "Wasn't it a relief +to have mamma come down, even if she did seem to be all +stocking at first?" + +The girls broke into a wild giggle, and hid their faces +in each other's necks. "I thought I SHOULD die," +said Irene. + +"'It's just like ordering a painting,'" said Penelope, +recalling her father's talk, with an effect of dreamy +absent-mindedness. "'You give the painter money enough, +and he can afford to paint you a first-class picture. +Give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a +first-class house, every time.'" + +"Oh, wasn't it awful!" moaned her sister. "No one would +ever have supposed that he had fought the very idea +of an architect for weeks, before he gave in." + +Penelope went on. "'I always did like the water side +of Beacon,--long before I owned property there. +When you come to the Back Bay at all, give me the water +side of Beacon.'" + +"Ow-w-w-w!" shrieked Irene. "DO stop!" + +The door of their mother's chamber opened below, +and the voice of the real Colonel called, "What are you +doing up there, girls? Why don't you go to bed?" + +This extorted nervous shrieks from both of them. +The Colonel heard a sound of scurrying feet, whisking drapery, +and slamming doors. Then he heard one of the doors +opened again, and Penelope said, "I was only repeating +something you said when you talked to Mr. Corey." + +"Very well, now," answered the Colonel. "You postpone +the rest of it till to-morrow at breakfast, and see +that you're up in time to let ME hear it." + + + +V. + + +AT the same moment young Corey let himself in at his own door +with his latch-key, and went to the library, where he found +his father turning the last leaves of a story in the Revue +des Deux Mondes. He was a white-moustached old gentleman, +who had never been able to abandon his pince-nez for the +superior comfort of spectacles, even in the privacy of his +own library. He knocked the glasses off as his son came +in and looked up at him with lazy fondness, rubbing the +two red marks that they always leave on the side of the nose. + +"Tom," he said, "where did you get such good clothes?" + +"I stopped over a day in New York," replied the son, +finding himself a chair. "I'm glad you like them." + +"Yes, I always do like your clothes, Tom," returned the +father thoughtfully, swinging his glasses, "But I don't +see how you can afford 'em, I can't." + +"Well, sir," said the son, who dropped the "sir" into +his speech with his father, now and then, in an old- +fashioned way that was rather charming, "you see, +I have an indulgent parent." + +"Smoke?" suggested the father, pushing toward his son +a box of cigarettes, from which he had taken one. + +"No, thank you," said the son. "I've dropped that." + +"Ah, is that so?" The father began to feel about on the +table for matches, in the purblind fashion of elderly men. +His son rose, lighted one, and handed it to him. +"Well,--oh, thank you, Tom!--I believe some statisticians +prove that if you will give up smoking you can dress +very well on the money your tobacco costs, even if you +haven't got an indulgent parent. But I'm too old to try. +Though, I confess, I should rather like the clothes. +Whom did you find at the club?" + +"There were a lot of fellows there," said young Corey, +watching the accomplished fumigation of his father in an +absent way. + +"It's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," +observed his father. "All summer through, in weather +that sends the sturdiest female flying to the sea-shore, +you find the clubs filled with young men, who don't seem +to mind the heat in the least." + +"Boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," +said the son, declining to take up the matter in its +ironical shape. + +"I dare say it isn't, compared with Texas," returned the +father, smoking tranquilly on. "But I don't suppose +you find many of your friends in town outside of the club." + +"No; you're requested to ring at the rear door, all the +way down Beacon Street and up Commonwealth Avenue. +It's rather a blank reception for the returning prodigal." + +"Ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back +out of season. But I'm glad to have you back, Tom, +even as it is, and I hope you're not going to hurry away. +You must give your energies a rest." + +"I'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity," +suggested the son, taking his father's jokes in good part. + +"No, I don't know that I have," admitted the elder. +"You've always shown a fair degree of moderation, after all. +What do you think of taking up next? I mean after you +have embraced your mother and sisters at Mount Desert. +Real estate? It seems to me that it is about time for you +to open out as a real-estate broker. Or did you ever think +of matrimony?" + +"Well, not just in that way, sir," said the young man. +"I shouldn't quite like to regard it as a career, +you know." + +"No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. +But you know I've always contended that the affections +could be made to combine pleasure and profit. I wouldn't +have a man marry for money,--that would be rather bad,--but +I don't see why, when it comes to falling in love, +a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily +as a poor one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, +and I should say that the chances of a quiet life with them +were rather greater. They've always had everything, +and they wouldn't be so ambitious and uneasy. Don't you +think so?" + +"It would depend," said the son, "upon whether a girl's +people had been rich long enough to have given her position +before she married. If they hadn't, I don't see how she +would be any better than a poor girl in that respect." + +"Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich +are on a level with any of us nowadays. Money buys +position at once. I don't say that it isn't all right. +The world generally knows what it's about, and knows +how to drive a bargain. I dare say it makes the new rich +pay too much. But there's no doubt but money is to the +fore now. It is the romance, the poetry of our age. +It's the thing that chiefly strikes the imagination. +The Englishmen who come here are more curious about the +great new millionaires than about any one else, and they +respect them more. It's all very well. I don't complain +of it." + +"And you would like a rich daughter-in-law, quite regardless, then?" + +"Oh, not quite so bad as that, Tom," said his father. +"A little youth, a little beauty, a little good sense +and pretty behaviour--one mustn't object to those things; +and they go just as often with money as without it. And I +suppose I should like her people to be rather grammatical." + +"It seems to me that you're exacting, sir," said the son. +"How can you expect people who have been strictly devoted +to business to be grammatical? Isn't that rather too much?" + +"Perhaps it is. Perhaps you're right. But I understood +your mother to say that those benefactors of hers, +whom you met last summer, were very passably grammatical." + +"The father isn't." + +The elder, who had been smoking with his profile toward +his son, now turned his face full upon him. "I didn't +know you had seen him?" + +"I hadn't until to-day," said young Corey, with a little +heightening of his colour. "But I was walking down street +this afternoon, and happened to look round at a new house +some one was putting up, and I saw the whole family +in the window. It appears that Mr. Lapham is building +the house." + +The elder Corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into +the holder at his elbow. "I am more and more convinced, +the longer I know you, Tom, that we are descended from +Giles Corey. The gift of holding one's tongue seems +to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. +I can't say just how you would behave under peine forte +et dure, but under ordinary pressure you are certainly +able to keep your own counsel. Why didn't you mention +this encounter at dinner? You weren't asked to plead +to an accusation of witchcraft." + +"No, not exactly," said the young man. "But I didn't +quite see my way to speaking of it. We had a good many +other things before us." + +"Yes, that's true. I suppose you wouldn't have mentioned +it now if I hadn't led up to it, would you?" + +"I don't know, sir. It was rather on my mind to do so. +Perhaps it was I who led up to it." + +His father laughed. "Perhaps you did, Tom; perhaps you did. +Your mother would have known you were leading up to something, +but I'll confess that I didn't. What is it?" + +"Nothing very definite. But do you know that in spite +of his syntax I rather liked him?" + +The father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's full +confidence was offered, Corey was not the man to ask it. +"Well?" was all that he said. + +"I suppose that in a new country one gets to looking +at people a little out of our tradition; and I dare +say that if I hadn't passed a winter in Texas I might +have found Colonel Lapham rather too much." + +"You mean that there are worse things in Texas?" + +"Not that exactly. I mean that I saw it wouldn't be quite +fair to test him by our standards." + +"This comes of the error which I have often deprecated," +said the elder Corey. "In fact I am always saying +that the Bostonian ought never to leave Boston. +Then he knows--and then only--that there can BE no standard +but ours. But we are constantly going away, and coming +back with our convictions shaken to their foundations. +One man goes to England, and returns with the conception +of a grander social life; another comes home from Germany +with the notion of a more searching intellectual activity; +a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdest ideas +of art and literature; and you revert to us from the +cowboys of Texas, and tell us to our faces that we ought +to try Papa Lapham by a jury of his peers. It ought +to be stopped--it ought, really. The Bostonian who leaves +Boston ought to be condemned to perpetual exile." + +The son suffered the father to reach his climax with +smiling patience. When he asked finally, "What are +the characteristics of Papa Lapham that place him beyond +our jurisdiction?" the younger Corey crossed his long legs, +and leaned forward to take one of his knees between his hands. + +"Well, sir, he bragged, rather." + +"Oh, I don't know that bragging should exempt him from +the ordinary processes. I've heard other people brag +in Boston." + +"Ah, not just in that personal way--not about money." + +"No, that was certainly different." + +"I don't mean," said the young fellow, with the scrupulosity +which people could not help observing and liking in him, +"that it was more than an indirect expression of satisfaction +in the ability to spend." + +"No. I should be glad to express something of the kind myself, +if the facts would justify me." + +The son smiled tolerantly again. "But if he was enjoying +his money in that way, I didn't see why he shouldn't show +his pleasure in it. It might have been vulgar, but it +wasn't sordid. And I don't know that it was vulgar. +Perhaps his successful strokes of business were the romance +of his life----" + +The father interrupted with a laugh. "The girl must +be uncommonly pretty. What did she seem to think +of her father's brag?" + +"There were two of them," answered the son evasively. + +"Oh, two! And is the sister pretty too?" + +"Not pretty, but rather interesting. She is like her mother." + +"Then the pretty one isn't the father's pet?" + +"I can't say, sir. I don't believe," added the young fellow, +"that I can make you see Colonel Lapham just as I did. +He struck me as very simple-hearted and rather wholesome. +Of course he could be tiresome; we all can; and I suppose +his range of ideas is limited. But he is a force, and not +a bad one. If he hasn't got over being surprised at the +effect of rubbing his lamp" + +"Oh, one could make out a case. I suppose you know +what you are about, Tom. But remember that we are Essex +County people, and that in savour we are just a little +beyond the salt of the earth. I will tell you plainly +that I don't like the notion of a man who has rivalled the +hues of nature in her wildest haunts with the tints of his +mineral paint; but I don't say there are not worse men. +He isn't to my taste, though he might be ever so much +to my conscience." + +"I suppose," said the son, "that there is nothing really +to be ashamed of in mineral paint. People go into all +sorts of things." + +His father took his cigarette from his mouth and once +more looked his son full in the face. "Oh, is THAT it?" + +"It has crossed my mind," admitted the son. "I must +do something. I've wasted time and money enough. +I've seen much younger men all through the West +and South-west taking care of themselves. I don't +think I was particularly fit for anything out there, +but I am ashamed to come back and live upon you, sir." + +His father shook his head with an ironical sigh. +"Ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this +plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife +continues the animating spirit of our youth. +It strikes at the root of the whole feudal system. +I really think you owe me an apology, Tom. I supposed +you wished to marry the girl's money, and here you are, +basely seeking to go into business with her father." + +Young Corey laughed again like a son who perceives that +his father is a little antiquated, but keeps a filial +faith in his wit. "I don't know that it's quite so bad +as that; but the thing had certainly crossed my mind. +I don't know how it's to be approached, and I don't know +that it's at all possible. But I confess that I 'took to' +Colonel Lapham from the moment I saw him. He looked +as if he 'meant business,' and I mean business too." + +The father smoked thoughtfully. "Of course people do +go into all sorts of things, as you say, and I don't +know that one thing is more ignoble than another, +if it's decent and large enough. In my time you would +have gone into the China trade or the India trade--though +I didn't; and a little later cotton would have been +your manifest destiny--though it wasn't mine; but now +a man may do almost anything. The real-estate business +is pretty full. Yes, if you have a deep inward vocation +for it, I don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do. +I fancy it's easy enough approaching the matter. We will +invite Papa Lapham to dinner, and talk it over with him." + +"Oh, I don't think that would be exactly the way, sir," +said the son, smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness. + +"No? Why not?" + +"I'm afraid it would be a bad start. I don't think it +would strike him as business-like." + +"I don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not." + +"Ah, we might say that if he were making the advances." + +"Well, perhaps you are right, Tom. What is your idea?" + +"I haven't a very clear one. It seems to me I ought +to get some business friend of ours, whose judgment he +would respect, to speak a good word for me." + +"Give you a character?" + +"Yes. And of course I must go to Colonel Lapham. +My notion would be to inquire pretty thoroughly about him, +and then, if I liked the look of things, to go right down +to Republic Street and let him see what he could do with me, +if anything." + +"That sounds tremendously practical to me, Tom, though it +may be just the wrong way. When are you going down +to Mount Desert?" + +"To-morrow, I think, sir," said the young man. "I shall +turn it over in my mind while I'm off." + +The father rose, showing something more than his son's height, +with a very slight stoop, which the son's figure had not. +"Well," he said, whimsically, "I admire your spirit, +and I don't deny that it is justified by necessity. +It's a consolation to think that while I've been spending +and enjoying, I have been preparing the noblest future +for you--a future of industry and self-reliance. You never +could draw, but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint +business shows that you have inherited something of my +feeling for colour." + +The son laughed once more, and waiting till his father +was well on his way upstairs, turned out the gas and then +hurried after him and preceded him into his chamber. +He glanced over it to see that everything was there, +to his father's hand. Then he said, "Good night, sir," +and the elder responded, "Good night, my son," and the son +went to his own room. + +Over the mantel in the elder Corey's room hung a portrait +which he had painted of his own father, and now he stood +a moment and looked at this as if struck by something +novel in it. The resemblance between his son and the old +India merchant, who had followed the trade from Salem to +Boston when the larger city drew it away from the smaller, +must have been what struck him. Grandfather and grandson had +both the Roman nose which appears to have flourished chiefly +at the formative period of the republic, and which occurs +more rarely in the descendants of the conscript fathers, +though it still characterises the profiles of a good many +Boston ladies. Bromfield Corey had not inherited it, +and he had made his straight nose his defence when the +old merchant accused him of a want of energy. He said, +"What could a man do whose unnatural father had left his +own nose away from him?" This amused but did not satisfy +the merchant. "You must do something," he said; "and it's +for you to choose. If you don't like the India trade, +go into something else. Or, take up law or medicine. +No Corey yet ever proposed to do nothing." "Ah, then, +it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urged the man +who was then young, and who was now old, looking into +the somewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait. +He had inherited as little of the fierceness as of the nose, +and there was nothing predatory in his son either, +though the aquiline beak had come down to him in such force. +Bromfield Corey liked his son Tom for the gentleness which +tempered his energy. + +"Well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his +father's portrait. "I will travel." "Travel? How long?" +the keen eyes demanded. "Oh, indefinitely. I won't +be hard with you, father." He could see the eyes soften, +and the smile of yielding come over his father's face; +the merchant could not resist a son who was so much +like his dead mother. There was some vague understanding +between them that Bromfield Corey was to come back +and go into business after a time, but he never did so. +He travelled about over Europe, and travelled handsomely, +frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself +presented at several courts, at a period when it +was a distinction to do so. He had always sketched, +and with his father's leave he fixed himself at Rome, +where he remained studying art and rounding the being +inherited from his Yankee progenitors, till there +was very little left of the ancestral angularities. +After ten years he came home and painted that portrait +of his father. It was very good, if a little amateurish, +and he might have made himself a name as a painter +of portraits if he had not had so much money. But he +had plenty of money, though by this time he was married +and beginning to have a family. It was absurd for him +to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint +them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all. +He continued a dilettante, never quite abandoning his art, +but working at it fitfully, and talking more about it +than working at it. He had his theory of Titian's method; +and now and then a Bostonian insisted upon buying a +picture of him. After a while he hung it more and more +inconspicuously, and said apologetically, "Oh yes! that's +one of Bromfield Corey's things. It has nice qualities, +but it's amateurish." + +In process of time the money seemed less abundant. +There were shrinkages of one kind and another, +and living had grown much more expensive and luxurious. +For many years he talked about going back to Rome, but he +never went, and his children grew up in the usual way. +Before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day +spread at Harvard, and then he had his son on his hands. +The son made various unsuccessful provisions for himself, +and still continued upon his father's hands, to their +common dissatisfaction, though it was chiefly the younger +who repined. He had the Roman nose and the energy without +the opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father +said to him, "You ought not to have that nose, Tom; +then you would do very well. You would go and travel, +as I did." + + +LAPHAM and his wife continued talking after he had +quelled the disturbance in his daughters' room overhead; +and their talk was not altogether of the new house. + +"I tell you," he said, "if I had that fellow in the +business with me I would make a man of him." + +"Well, Silas Lapham," returned his wife, "I do believe +you've got mineral paint on the brain. Do you suppose +a fellow like young Corey, brought up the way he's been, +would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot pole?" + +"Why not?" haughtily asked the Colonel. + +"Well, if you don't know already, there's no use trying +to tell you." + + + +VI. + + +THE Coreys had always had a house at Nahant, but after +letting it for a season or two they found they could +get on without it, and sold it at the son's instance, +who foresaw that if things went on as they were going, +the family would be straitened to the point of changing +their mode of life altogether. They began to be +of the people of whom it was said that they stayed +in town very late; and when the ladies did go away, +it was for a brief summering in this place and that. +The father remained at home altogether; and the son joined +them in the intervals of his enterprises, which occurred +only too often. + +At Bar Harbour, where he now went to find them, +after his winter in Texas, he confessed to his mother +that there seemed no very good opening there for him. +He might do as well as Loring Stanton, but he doubted +if Stanton was doing very well. Then he mentioned +the new project which he had been thinking over. +She did not deny that there was something in it, +but she could not think of any young man who had gone +into such a business as that, and it appeared to her that +he might as well go into a patent medicine or a stove-polish. + +"There was one of his hideous advertisements," she said, +"painted on a reef that we saw as we came down." + +Corey smiled. "Well, I suppose, if it was in a good state +of preservation, that is proof positive of the efficacy +of the paint on the hulls of vessels." + +"It's very distasteful to me, Tom," said his mother; +and if there was something else in her mind, she did +not speak more plainly of it than to add: "It's not only +the kind of business, but the kind of people you would +be mixed up with." + +"I thought you didn't find them so very bad," suggested Corey. + +"I hadn't seen them in Nankeen Square then." + +"You can see them on the water side of Beacon Street +when you go back." + +Then he told of his encounter with the Lapham family +in their new house. At the end his mother merely said, +"It is getting very common down there," and she did not +try to oppose anything further to his scheme. + +The young man went to see Colonel Lapham shortly after his +return to Boston. He paid his visit at Lapham's office, +and if he had studied simplicity in his summer dress +he could not have presented himself in a figure more +to the mind of a practical man. His hands and neck +still kept the brown of the Texan suns and winds, +and he looked as business-like as Lapham himself. + +He spoke up promptly and briskly in the outer office, +and caused the pretty girl to look away from her copying +at him. "Is Mr. Lapham in?" he asked; and after that +moment for reflection which an array of book-keepers +so addressed likes to give the inquirer, a head was lifted +from a ledger and nodded toward the inner office. + +Lapham had recognised the voice, and he was standing, +in considerable perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young +man opened his painted glass door. It was a hot afternoon, +and Lapham was in his shirt sleeves. Scarcely a trace +of the boastful hospitality with which he had welcomed +Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his +present address. He looked at the young man's face, +as if he expected him to despatch whatever unimaginable +affair he had come upon. + +"Won't you sit down? How are you? You'll excuse me," +he added, in brief allusion to the shirt-sleeves. "I'm +about roasted." + +Corey laughed. "I wish you'd let me take off MY coat." + +"Why, TAKE it off!" cried the Colonel, with instant pleasure. +There is something in human nature which causes the man +in his shirt-sleeves to wish all other men to appear +in the same deshabille. + +"I will, if you ask me after I've talked with you two minutes," +said the young fellow, companionably pulling up the chair offered +him toward the desk where Lapham had again seated himself. +"But perhaps you haven't got two minutes to give me?" + +"Oh yes, I have," said the Colonel. "I was just going +to knock off. I can give you twenty, and then I shall +have fifteen minutes to catch the boat." + +"All right," said Corey. "I want you to take me into +the mineral paint business." + +The Colonel sat dumb. He twisted his thick neck, +and looked round at the door to see if it was shut. +He would not have liked to have any of those fellows +outside hear him, but there is no saying what sum of money +he would not have given if his wife had been there to hear +what Corey had just said. + +"I suppose," continued the young man, "I could have got +several people whose names you know to back my industry +and sobriety, and say a word for my business capacity. +But I thought I wouldn't trouble anybody for certificates +till I found whether there was a chance, or the ghost of one, +of your wanting me. So I came straight to you." + +Lapham gathered himself together as well as he could. +He had not yet forgiven Corey for Mrs. Lapham's insinuation +that he would feel himself too good for the mineral +paint business; and though he was dispersed by that +astounding shot at first, he was not going to let any one +even hypothetically despise his paint with impunity. +"How do you think I am going to take you on?" They took +on hands at the works; and Lapham put it as if Corey +were a hand coming to him for employment. Whether he +satisfied himself by this or not, he reddened a little +after he had said it. + +Corey answered, ignorant of the offence: "I haven't +a very clear idea, I'm afraid; but I've been looking +a little into the matter from the outside" + +"I hope you hain't been paying any attention to that +fellow's stuff in the Events?" Lapham interrupted. +Since Bartley's interview had appeared, Lapham had +regarded it with very mixed feelings. At first it +gave him a glow of secret pleasure, blended with doubt +as to how his wife would like the use Bartley had made +of her in it. But she had not seemed to notice it much, +and Lapham had experienced the gratitude of the man +who escapes. Then his girls had begun to make fun of it; +and though he did not mind Penelope's jokes much, he did +not like to see that Irene's gentility was wounded. +Business friends met him with the kind of knowing smile +about it that implied their sense of the fraudulent +character of its praise--the smile of men who had been +there and who knew how it was themselves. Lapham had his +misgivings as to how his clerks and underlings looked at it; +he treated them with stately severity for a while after it +came out, and he ended by feeling rather sore about it. +He took it for granted that everybody had read it. + +"I don't know what you mean," replied Corey, "I don't +see the Events regularly." + +"Oh, it was nothing. They sent a fellow down here to +interview me, and he got everything about as twisted +as he could." + +"I believe they always do," said Corey. "I hadn't seen it. +Perhaps it came out before I got home." + +"Perhaps it did." + +"My notion of making myself useful to you was based +on a hint I got from one of your own circulars." + +Lapham was proud of those circulars; he thought they read +very well. "What was that?" + +"I could put a little capital into the business," said Corey, +with the tentative accent of a man who chances a thing. +"I've got a little money, but I didn't imagine you cared +for anything of that kind." + +"No, sir, I don't," returned the Colonel bluntly. +"I've had one partner, and one's enough." + +"Yes," assented the young man, who doubtless had his own +ideas as to eventualities--or perhaps rather had the vague +hopes of youth. "I didn't come to propose a partnership. +But I see that you are introducing your paint into the +foreign markets, and there I really thought I might be +of use to you, and to myself too." + +"How?" asked the Colonel scantly. + +"Well, I know two or three languages pretty well. +I know French, and I know German, and I've got a pretty +fair sprinkling of Spanish." + +"You mean that you can talk them?" asked the Colonel, +with the mingled awe and slight that such a man feels +for such accomplishments. "Yes; and I can write +an intelligible letter in either of them." + +Lapham rubbed his nose. "It's easy enough to get all +the letters we want translated." + +"Well," pursued Corey, not showing his discouragement +if he felt any, "I know the countries where you want +to introduce this paint of yours. I've been there. +I've been in Germany and France and I've been in South +America and Mexico; I've been in Italy, of course. +I believe I could go to any of those countries and place it +to advantage." + +Lapham had listened with a trace of persuasion in his face, +but now he shook his head. + +"It's placing itself as fast as there's any call for it. +It wouldn't pay us to send anybody out to look after it. +Your salary and expenses would eat up about all we should make +on it." + +"Yes," returned the young man intrepidly, "if you had +to pay me any salary and expenses." + +"You don't propose to work for nothing?" + +"I propose to work for a commission." The Colonel was +beginning to shake his head again, but Corey hurried on. +"I haven't come to you without making some inquiries about +the paint, and I know how it stands with those who know best. +I believe in it." + +Lapham lifted his head and looked at the young man, +deeply moved. + +"It's the best paint in God's universe," he said with +the solemnity of prayer. + +"It's the best in the market," said Corey; and he repeated, +"I believe in it." + +"You believe in it," began the Colonel, and then he stopped. +If there had really been any purchasing power in money, a year's +income would have bought Mrs. Lapham's instant presence. +He warmed and softened to the young man in every way, +not only because he must do so to any one who believed +in his paint, but because he had done this innocent person +the wrong of listening to a defamation of his instinct +and good sense, and had been willing to see him suffer +for a purely supposititious offence. + +Corey rose. + +"You mustn't let me outstay my twenty minutes," he said, +taking out his watch. "I don't expect you to give a +decided answer on the spot. All that I ask is that you'll +consider my proposition." + +"Don't hurry," said Lapham. "Sit still! I want to tell +you about this paint," he added, in a voice husky +with the feeling that his hearer could not divine. +"I want to tell you ALL about it." + +"I could walk with you to the boat," suggested the young man. + +"Never mind the boat! I can take the next one. Look here!" +The Colonel pulled open a drawer, as Corey sat down again, +and took out a photograph of the locality of the mine. +"Here's where we get it. This photograph don't half +do the place justice," he said, as if the imperfect +art had slighted the features of a beloved face. +"It's one of the sightliest places in the country, +and here's the very spot "--he covered it with his huge +forefinger--"where my father found that paint, more than +forty--years--ago. Yes, sir!" + +He went on, and told the story in unsparing detail, +while his chance for the boat passed unheeded, and the +clerks in the outer office hung up their linen office coats +and put on their seersucker or flannel street coats. +The young lady went too, and nobody was left but the porter, +who made from time to time a noisy demonstration of +fastening a distant blind, or putting something in place. +At last the Colonel roused himself from the autobiographical +delight of the history of his paint. "Well, sir, +that's the story." + +"It's an interesting story," said Corey, with a long breath, +as they rose together, and Lapham put on his coat. + +"That's what it is," said the Colonel. "Well!" he added, +"I don't see but what we've got to have another talk +about this thing. It's a surprise to me, and I don't see +exactly how you're going to make it pay." + +"I'm willing to take the chances," answered Corey. "As I said, +I believe in it. I should try South America first. +I should try Chili." + +"Look here!" said Lapham, with his watch in his hand. +"I like to get things over. We've just got time for +the six o'clock boat. Why don't you come down with me +to Nantasket? I can give you a bed as well as not. +And then we can finish up." + +The impatience of youth in Corey responded to the +impatience of temperament in his elder. "Why, I don't +see why I shouldn't," he allowed himself to say. +"I confess I should like to have it finished up myself, +if it could be finished up in the right way." + +"Well, we'll see. Dennis!" Lapham called to the remote +porter, and the man came. "Want to send any word home?" +he asked Corey. + +"No; my father and I go and come as we like, without +keeping account of each other. If I don't come home, +he knows that I'm not there. That's all." + +"Well, that's convenient. You'll find you can't do that +when you're married. Never mind, Dennis," said the Colonel. + +He had time to buy two newspapers on the wharf +before he jumped on board the steam-boat with Corey. +"Just made it," he said; "and that's what I like to do. +I can't stand it to be aboard much more than a minute +before she shoves out." He gave one of the newspapers +to Corey as he spoke, and set him the example of catching +up a camp-stool on their way to that point on the boat +which his experience had taught him was the best. +He opened his paper at once and began to run over its news, +while the young man watched the spectacular recession +of the city, and was vaguely conscious of the people +about him, and of the gay life of the water round the boat. +The air freshened; the craft thinned in number; they met +larger sail, lagging slowly inward in the afternoon light; +the islands of the bay waxed and waned as the steamer +approached and left them behind. + +"I hate to see them stirring up those Southern fellows again," +said the Colonel, speaking into the paper on his lap. +"Seems to me it's time to let those old issues go." + +"Yes," said the young man. "What are they doing now?" + +"Oh, stirring up the Confederate brigadiers in Congress. +I don't like it. Seems to me, if our party hain't got any +other stock-in-trade, we better shut up shop altogether." +Lapham went on, as he scanned his newspaper, to give +his ideas of public questions, in a fragmentary way, +while Corey listened patiently, and waited for him to +come back to business. He folded up his paper at last, +and stuffed it into his coat pocket. "There's one thing I +always make it a rule to do," he said, "and that is to give +my mind a complete rest from business while I'm going down +on the boat. I like to get the fresh air all through me, +soul and body. I believe a man can give his mind a rest, +just the same as he can give his legs a rest, or his back. +All he's got to do is to use his will-power. Why, I suppose, +if I hadn't adopted some such rule, with the strain I've +had on me for the last ten years, I should 'a' been +a dead man long ago. That's the reason I like a horse. +You've got to give your mind to the horse; you can't help it, +unless you want to break your neck; but a boat's different, +and there you got to use your will-power. You got +to take your mind right up and put it where you want it. +I make it a rule to read the paper on the boat----Hold on!" +he interrupted himself to prevent Corey from paying +his fare to the man who had come round for it. +"I've got tickets. And when I get through the paper, +I try to get somebody to talk to, or I watch the people. +It's an astonishing thing to me where they all come from. +I've been riding up and down on these boats for six or +seven years, and I don't know but very few of the faces +I see on board. Seems to be a perfectly fresh lot +every time. Well, of course! Town's full of strangers +in the summer season, anyway, and folks keep coming +down from the country. They think it's a great thing +to get down to the beach, and they've all heard of the +electric light on the water, and they want to see it. +But you take faces now! The astonishing thing to me +is not what a face tells, but what it don't tell. +When you think of what a man is, or a woman is, and what +most of 'em have been through before they get to be thirty, +it seems as if their experience would burn right through. +But it don't. I like to watch the couples, and try to make +out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, +or better be. But half the time I can't make any sort +of guess. Of course, where they're young and kittenish, +you can tell; but where they're anyways on, you can't. +Heigh?" + +"Yes, I think you're right," said Corey, not perfectly +reconciled to philosophy in the place of business, +but accepting it as he must. + +"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't suppose it was meant we +should know what was in each other's minds. It would take +a man out of his own hands. As long as he's in his own hands, +there's some hopes of his doing something with himself; +but if a fellow has been found out--even if he hasn't been +found out to be so very bad--it's pretty much all up with him. +No, sir. I don't want to know people through and through." + +The greater part of the crowd on board--and, of course, +the boat was crowded--looked as if they might not only +be easily but safely known. There was little style +and no distinction among them; they were people who were +going down to the beach for the fun or the relief of it, +and were able to afford it. In face they were commonplace, +with nothing but the American poetry of vivid purpose +to light them up, where they did not wholly lack fire. +But they were nearly all shrewd and friendly-looking, +with an apparent readiness for the humorous intimacy +native to us all. The women were dandified in dress, +according to their means and taste, and the men differed +from each other in degrees of indifference to it. +To a straw-hatted population, such as ours is in summer, +no sort of personal dignity is possible. We have not even +the power over observers which comes from the fantasticality +of an Englishman when he discards the conventional dress. +In our straw hats and our serge or flannel sacks we are no +more imposing than a crowd of boys. + +"Some day," said Lapham, rising as the boat drew near +the wharf of the final landing, "there s going to be +an awful accident on these boats. Just look at that jam." + +He meant the people thickly packed on the pier, and under +strong restraint of locks and gates, to prevent them +from rushing on board the boat and possessing her for the +return trip before she had landed her Nantasket passengers. + +"Overload 'em every time," he continued, with a sort +of dry, impersonal concern at the impending calamity, +as if it could not possibly include him. "They take +about twice as many as they ought to carry, and about ten +times as many as they could save if anything happened. +Yes, sir, it's bound to come. Hello! There's my girl!" +He took out his folded newspaper and waved it toward a group +of phaetons and barouches drawn up on the pier a little +apart from the pack of people, and a lady in one of them +answered with a flourish of her parasol. + +When he had made his way with his guest through the crowd, +she began to speak to her father before she noticed Corey. +"Well, Colonel, you've improved your last chance. +We've been coming to every boat since four o'clock,--or +Jerry has,--and I told mother that I would come myself once, +and see if I couldn't fetch you; and if I failed, you could +walk next time. You're getting perfectly spoiled." + +The Colonel enjoyed letting her scold him to the end +before he said, with a twinkle of pride in his guest +and satisfaction in her probably being able to hold her +own against any discomfiture, "I've brought Mr. Corey +down for the night with me, and I was showing him things +all the way, and it took time." + +The young fellow was at the side of the open beach-wagon, +making a quick bow, and Penelope Lapham was cozily drawling, +"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Corey?" before the Colonel had +finished his explanation. + +"Get right in there, alongside of Miss Lapham, Mr. Corey," +he said, pulling himself up into the place beside the driver. +"No, no," he had added quickly, at some signs of polite +protest in the young man, "I don't give up the best place +to anybody. Jerry, suppose you let me have hold of the +leathers a minute." + +This was his way of taking the reins from the driver; +and in half the time he specified, he had skilfully +turned the vehicle on the pier, among the crooked lines +and groups of foot-passengers, and was spinning up the road +toward the stretch of verandaed hotels and restaurants +in the sand along the shore. "Pretty gay down here," +he said, indicating all this with a turn of his whip, as he +left it behind him. "But I've got about sick of hotels; +and this summer I made up my mind that I'd take a cottage. +Well, Pen, how are the folks?" He looked half-way round +for her answer, and with the eye thus brought to bear upon +her he was able to give her a wink of supreme content. +The Colonel, with no sort of ulterior design, and nothing +but his triumph over Mrs. Lapham definitely in his mind, +was feeling, as he would have said, about right. + + +The girl smiled a daughter's amusement at her +father's boyishness. "I don't think there's much change +since morning. Did Irene have a headache when you left?" + +"No," said the Colonel. + +"Well, then, there's that to report." + +"Pshaw!" said the Colonel with vexation in his tone. + +"I'm sorry Miss Irene isn't well," said Corey politely. + +"I think she must have got it from walking too long +on the beach. The air is so cool here that you forget +how hot the sun is." + +"Yes, that's true," assented Corey. + +"A good night's rest will make it all right," suggested the Colonel, +without looking round. "But you girls have got to look out." + +"If you're fond of walking," said Corey, "I suppose you +find the beach a temptation." + +"Oh, it isn't so much that," returned the girl. +"You keep walking on and on because it's so smooth and +straight before you. We've been here so often that we +know it all by heart--just how it looks at high tide, +and how it looks at low tide, and how it looks after +a storm. We're as well acquainted with the crabs and +stranded jelly-fish as we are with the children digging +in the sand and the people sitting under umbrellas. +I think they're always the same, all of them." + +The Colonel left the talk to the young people. +When he spoke next it was to say, "Well, here we are!" +and he turned from the highway and drove up in front +of a brown cottage with a vermilion roof, and a group +of geraniums clutching the rock that cropped up in the loop +formed by the road. It was treeless and bare all round, +and the ocean, unnecessarily vast, weltered away a little +more than a stone's-cast from the cottage. A hospitable +smell of supper filled the air, and Mrs. Lapham was on +the veranda, with that demand in her eyes for her belated +husband's excuses, which she was obliged to check on her +tongue at sight of Corey. + + + +VII. + + +THE exultant Colonel swung himself lightly down from his seat. +"I've brought Mr. Corey with me," he nonchalantly explained. + +Mrs. Lapham made their guest welcome, and the Colonel showed +him to his room, briefly assuring himself that there was +nothing wanting there. Then he went to wash his own hands, +carelessly ignoring the eagerness with which his wife +pursued him to their chamber. + +"What gave Irene a headache?" he asked, making himself +a fine lather for his hairy paws. + +"Never you mind Irene," promptly retorted his wife. +"How came he to come? Did you press him? If you DID, +I'll never forgive you, Silas!" + +The Colonel laughed, and his wife shook him by the +shoulder to make him laugh lower. "'Sh!" she whispered. +"Do you want him to hear EVERY thing? DID you urge him?" + +The Colonel laughed the more. He was going to get +all the good out of this. "No, I didn't urge him. +Seemed to want to come." + +"I don't believe it. Where did you meet him?" + +"At the office." + +"What office?" + +"Mine." + +"Nonsense! What was he doing there?" + +"Oh, nothing much." + +"What did he come for?" "Come for? Oh! he SAID he wanted +to go into the mineral paint business." + +Mrs. Lapham dropped into a chair, and watched his bulk +shaken with smothered laughter. "Silas Lapham," she gasped, +"if you try to get off any more of those things on me----" + +The Colonel applied himself to the towel. "Had a notion +he could work it in South America. I don't know what he's +up to." + +"Never mind!" cried his wife. "I'll get even with you YET." + +"So I told him he had better come down and talk it over," +continued the Colonel, in well-affected simplicity. +"I knew he wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole." + +"Go on!" threatened Mrs. Lapham. + +"Right thing to do, wa'n't it?" + +A tap was heard at the door, and Mrs. Lapham answered it. +A maid announced supper. "Very well," she said, "come to +tea now. But I'll make you pay for this, Silas." + +Penelope had gone to her sister's room as soon as she +entered the house. + +"Is your head any better, 'Rene?" she asked. + +"Yes, a little," came a voice from the pillows. +"But I shall not come to tea. I don't want anything. +If I keep still, I shall be all right by morning." + +"Well, I'm sorry," said the elder sister. "He's come +down with father." + +"He hasn't! Who?" cried Irene, starting up in simultaneous +denial and demand. + +"Oh, well, if you say he hasn't, what's the use of my +telling you who?" + +"Oh, how can you treat me so!" moaned the sufferer. +"What do you mean, Pen?" + +"I guess I'd better not tell you," said Penelope, +watching her like a cat playing with a mouse. "If you're +not coming to tea, it would just excite you for nothing." + +The mouse moaned and writhed upon the bed. + +"Oh, I wouldn't treat YOU so!" + +The cat seated herself across the room, and asked quietly-- + + +"Well, what could you do if it WAS Mr. Corey? You +couldn't come to tea, you say. But HE'LL excuse you. +I've told him you had a headache. Why, of course you +can't come! It would be too barefaced But you needn't +be troubled, Irene; I'll do my best to make the time pass +pleasantly for him." Here the cat gave a low titter, +and the mouse girded itself up with a momentary courage +and self-respect. + +"I should think you would be ashamed to come here +and tease me so." + +"I don't see why you shouldn't believe me," argued Penelope. +"Why shouldn't he come down with father, if father +asked him? and he'd be sure to if he thought of it. +I don't see any p'ints about that frog that's any better +than any other frog." + +The sense of her sister's helplessness was too much for +the tease; she broke down in a fit of smothered laughter, +which convinced her victim that it was nothing but an +ill-timed joke. + +"Well, Pen, I wouldn't use you so," she whimpered. + +Penelope threw herself on the bed beside her. + +"Oh, poor Irene! He IS here. It's a solemn fact." +And she caressed and soothed her sister, while she +choked with laughter. "You must get up and come out. +I don't know what brought him here, but here he is." + +"It's too late now," said Irene desolately. Then she added, +with a wilder despair: "What a fool I was to take that walk!" + +"Well," coaxed her sister, "come out and get some tea. +The tea will do you good." + +"No, no; I can't come. But send me a cup here." + +"Yes, and then perhaps you can see him later in the evening." + +"I shall not see him at all." + +An hour after Penelope came back to her sister's room +and found her before her glass. "You might as well have +kept still, and been well by morning, 'Rene," she said. +"As soon as we were done father said, 'Well, Mr. Corey +and I have got to talk over a little matter of business, +and we'll excuse you, ladies.' He looked at mother in a +way that I guess was pretty hard to bear. 'Rene, you +ought to have heard the Colonel swelling at supper. +It would have made you feel that all he said the other day +was nothing." + +Mrs. Lapham suddenly opened the door. + +"Now, see here, Pen," she said, as she closed it behind her, +"I've had just as much as I can stand from your father, +and if you don't tell me this instant what it all means----" + +She left the consequences to imagination, and Penelope +replied with her mock soberness-- + +"Well, the Colonel does seem to be on his high horse, +ma'am. But you mustn't ask me what his business with +Mr. Corey is, for I don't know. All that I know is +that I met them at the landing, and that they conversed +all the way down--on literary topics." + +"Nonsense! What do you think it is?" + +"Well, if you want my candid opinion, I think this +talk about business is nothing but a blind. It seems +a pity Irene shouldn't have been up to receive him," +she added. + +Irene cast a mute look of imploring at her mother, +who was too much preoccupied to afford her the protection +it asked. + +"Your father said he wanted to go into the business +with him." + +Irene's look changed to a stare of astonishment +and mystification, but Penelope preserved her imperturbability. + +"Well, it's a lucrative business, I believe." + +"Well, I don't believe a word of it!" cried Mrs. Lapham. +"And so I told your father." + +"Did it seem to convince him?" inquired Penelope. + +Her mother did not reply. "I know one thing," she said. +"He's got to tell me every word, or there'll be no sleep +for him THIS night." + +"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, breaking down in one +of her queer laughs, "I shouldn't be a bit surprised +if you were right." + +"Go on and dress, Irene," ordered her mother, "and then +you and Pen come out into the parlour. They can have just +two hours for business, and then we must all be there +to receive him. You haven't got headache enough to hurt you." + +"Oh, it's all gone now," said the girl. + +At the end of the limit she had given the Colonel, +Mrs. Lapham looked into the dining-room, which she found +blue with his smoke. + +"I think you gentlemen will find the parlour pleasanter now, +and we can give it up to you." + +"Oh no, you needn't," said her husband. "We've got +about through." Corey was already standing, and Lapham +rose too. "I guess we can join the ladies now. +We can leave that little point till to-morrow." + +Both of the young ladies were in the parlour when Corey +entered with their father, and both were frankly indifferent +to the few books and the many newspapers scattered +about on the table where the large lamp was placed. +But after Corey had greeted Irene he glanced at the novel +under his eye, and said, in the dearth that sometimes befalls +people at such times: "I see you're reading Middlemarch. +Do you like George Eliot?" + +"Who?" asked the girl. + +Penelope interposed. "I don't believe Irene's read +it yet. I've just got it out of the library; I heard +so much talk about it. I wish she would let you find +out a little about the people for yourself," she added. +But here her father struck in-- + +"I can't get the time for books. It's as much as I can +do to keep up with the newspapers; and when night comes, +I'm tired, and I'd rather go out to the theatre, or a lecture, +if they've got a good stereopticon to give you views of +the places. But I guess we all like a play better than 'most +anything else. I want something that'll make me laugh. +I don't believe in tragedy. I think there's enough +of that in real life without putting it on the stage. +Seen 'Joshua Whitcomb'?" + +The whole family joined in the discussion, and it appeared +that they all had their opinions of the plays and actors. +Mrs. Lapham brought the talk back to literature. "I guess +Penelope does most of our reading." + +"Now, mother, you're not going to put it all on me!" +said the girl, in comic protest. + +Her mother laughed, and then added, with a sigh: "I used +to like to get hold of a good book when I was a girl; +but we weren't allowed to read many novels in those days. +My mother called them all LIES. And I guess she wasn't so +very far wrong about some of them." + +"They're certainly fictions," said Corey, smiling. + +"Well, we do buy a good many books, first and last," +said the Colonel, who probably had in mind the costly +volumes which they presented to one another on birthdays +and holidays. "But I get about all the reading I want +in the newspapers. And when the girls want a novel, +I tell 'em to get it out of the library. That's what the +library's for. Phew!" he panted, blowing away the whole +unprofitable subject. "How close you women-folks like +to keep a room! You go down to the sea-side or up to the +mountains for a change of air, and then you cork yourselves +into a room so tight you don't have any air at all. +Here! You girls get on your bonnets, and go and show +Mr. Corey the view of the hotels from the rocks." + +Corey said that he should be delighted. The girls exchanged +looks with each other, and then with their mother. +Irene curved her pretty chin in comment upon her +father's incorrigibility, and Penelope made a droll mouth, +but the Colonel remained serenely content with his finesse. +"I got 'em out of the way," he said, as soon as they +were gone, and before his wife had time to fall upon him, +"because I've got through my talk with him, and now I want +to talk with YOU. It's just as I said, Persis; he wants +to go into the business with me." + +"It's lucky for you," said his wife, meaning that now he +would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. +But she was too intensely interested to pursue that +matter further. "What in the world do you suppose he +means by it?" + +"Well, I should judge by his talk that he had been trying +a good many different things since he left college, +and he hain't found just the thing he likes--or the thing +that likes him. It ain't so easy. And now he's got an idea +that he can take hold of the paint and push it in other +countries--push it in Mexico and push it in South America. +He's a splendid Spanish scholar,"--this was Lapham's version +of Corey's modest claim to a smattering of the language,--"and +he's been among the natives enough to know their ways. +And he believes in the paint," added the Colonel. + +"I guess he believes in something else besides the paint," +said Mrs. Lapham. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Well, Silas Lapham, if you can't see NOW that he's +after Irene, I don't know what ever CAN open your eyes. +That's all." + +The Colonel pretended to give the idea silent consideration, +as if it had not occurred to him before. "Well, then, +all I've got to say is, that he's going a good way round. +I don't say you're wrong, but if it's Irene, I don't see +why he should want to go off to South America to get her. +And that's what he proposes to do. I guess there's +some paint about it too, Persis. He says he believes +in it,"--the Colonel devoutly lowered his voice,--"and he's +willing to take the agency on his own account down there, +and run it for a commission on what he can sell." + +"Of course! He isn't going to take hold of it any way +so as to feel beholden to you. He's got too much pride +for that." + +"He ain't going to take hold of it at all, if he don't +mean paint in the first place and Irene afterward. +I don't object to him, as I know, either way, but the two +things won't mix; and I don't propose he shall pull the wool +over my eyes--or anybody else. But, as far as heard from, +up to date, he means paint first, last, and all the time. +At any rate, I'm going to take him on that basis. +He's got some pretty good ideas about it, and he's been +stirred up by this talk, just now, about getting our +manufactures into the foreign markets. There's an overstock +in everything, and we've got to get rid of it, or we've +got to shut down till the home demand begins again. +We've had two or three such flurries before now, +and they didn't amount to much. They say we can't extend +our commerce under the high tariff system we've got now, +because there ain't any sort of reciprocity on our side,--we +want to have the other fellows show all the reciprocity,--and +the English have got the advantage of us every time. +I don't know whether it's so or not; but I don't see +why it should apply to my paint. Anyway, he wants +to try it, and I've about made up my mind to let him. +Of course I ain't going to let him take all the risk. +I believe in the paint TOO, and I shall pay his expenses +anyway." + +"So you want another partner after all?" Mrs. Lapham +could not forbear saying. + +"Yes, if that's your idea of a partner. It isn't mine," +returned her husband dryly. + +"Well, if you've made up your mind, Si, I suppose you're +ready for advice," said Mrs. Lapham. + +The Colonel enjoyed this. "Yes, I am. What have you +got to say against it?" + +"I don't know as I've got anything. I'm satisfied +if you are." + +"Well?" + +"When is he going to start for South America?" + +"I shall take him into the office a while. He'll get +off some time in the winter. But he's got to know +the business first." + +"Oh, indeed! Are you going to take him to board in the family?" + +"What are you after, Persis?" + +"Oh, nothing! I presume he will feel free to visit +in the family, even if he don't board with us." + +"I presume he will." + +"And if he don't use his privileges, do you think he'll +be a fit person to manage your paint in South America?" + +The Colonel reddened consciously. "I'm not taking him +on that basis." + +"Oh yes, you are! You may pretend you ain't to yourself, +but you mustn't pretend so to me. Because I know you." + +The Colonel laughed. "Pshaw!" he said. + +Mrs. Lapham continued: "I don't see any harm in +hoping that he'll take a fancy to her. But if you +really think it won't do to mix the two things, +I advise you not to take Mr. Corey into the business. +It will do all very well if he DOES take a fancy to her; +but if he don't, you know how you'll feel about it. +And I know you well enough, Silas, to know that you can't +do him justice if that happens. And I don't think it's +right you should take this step unless you're pretty sure. +I can see that you've set your heart on this thing" + +"I haven't set my heart on it at all," protested Lapham. + +"And if you can't bring it about, you're going to feel +unhappy over it," pursued his wife, regardless of his protest. + +"Oh, very well," he said. "If you know more about +what's in my mind than I do, there's no use arguing, +as I can see." + +He got up, to carry off his consciousness, and sauntered +out of the door on to his piazza. He could see the +young people down on the rocks, and his heart swelled +in his breast. He had always said that he did not care +what a man's family was, but the presence of young Corey +as an applicant to him for employment, as his guest, +as the possible suitor of his daughter, was one of the +sweetest flavours that he had yet tasted in his success. +He knew who the Coreys were very well, and, in his simple, +brutal way, he had long hated their name as a symbol +of splendour which, unless he should live to see at +least three generations of his descendants gilded with +mineral paint, he could not hope to realise in his own. +He was acquainted in a business way with the tradition +of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many +things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad +and his father's money everywhere, and done nothing +but say smart things. Lapham could not see the smartness +of some of them which had been repeated to him. Once he +had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that +the tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, +was everything that was offensively aristocratic. +He had bristled up aggressively at the name when his wife +told how she had made the acquaintance of the fellow's +family the summer before, and he had treated the notion +of young Corey's caring for Irene with the contempt +which such a ridiculous superstition deserved. +He had made up his mind about young Corey beforehand; +yet when he met him he felt an instant liking for him, +which he frankly acknowledged, and he had begun to assume +the burden of his wife's superstition, of which she seemed +now ready to accuse him of being the inventor. + +Nothing had moved his thick imagination like this day's +events since the girl who taught him spelling and grammar +in the school at Lumberville had said she would have him +for her husband. + +The dark figures, stationary on the rocks, began to move, +and he could see that they were coming toward the house. +He went indoors, so as not to appear to have been +watching them. + + + +VIII. + + +A WEEK after she had parted with her son at Bar Harbour, +Mrs. Corey suddenly walked in upon her husband in their +house in Boston. He was at breakfast, and he gave her +the patronising welcome with which the husband who has +been staying in town all summer receives his wife when she +drops down upon him from the mountains or the sea-side. For +a little moment she feels herself strange in the house, +and suffers herself to be treated like a guest, before envy +of his comfort vexes her back into possession and authority. +Mrs. Corey was a lady, and she did not let her envy take +the form of open reproach. + +"Well, Anna, you find me here in the luxury you left me to. +How did you leave the girls?" + +"The girls were well," said Mrs. Corey, looking absently at +her husband's brown velvet coat, in which he was so handsome. +No man had ever grown grey more beautifully. His hair, +while not remaining dark enough to form a theatrical +contrast with his moustache, was yet some shades darker, +and, in becoming a little thinner, it had become a little +more gracefully wavy. His skin had the pearly tint +which that of elderly men sometimes assumes, and the lines +which time had traced upon it were too delicate for the +name of wrinkles. He had never had any personal vanity, +and there was no consciousness in his good looks now. + +"I am glad of that. The boy I have with me," he returned; +"that is, when he IS with me." + +"Why, where is he?" demanded the mother. + +"Probably carousing with the boon Lapham somewhere. +He left me yesterday afternoon to go and offer his +allegiance to the Mineral Paint King, and I haven't seen +him since." + +"Bromfield!" cried Mrs. Corey. "Why didn't you stop him?" + +"Well, my dear, I'm not sure that it isn't a very good thing." + +"A good thing? It's horrid!" + +"No, I don't think so. It's decent. Tom had found +out--without consulting the landscape, which I believe +proclaims it everywhere----" + +"Hideous!" + +"That it's really a good thing; and he thinks that he has +some ideas in regard to its dissemination in the parts +beyond seas." + +"Why shouldn't he go into something else?" lamented the mother. + +"I believe he has gone into nearly everything else +and come out of it. So there is a chance of his coming +out of this. But as I had nothing to suggest in place +of it, I thought it best not to interfere. In fact, +what good would my telling him that mineral paint was +nasty have done? I dare say YOU told him it was nasty." + +"Yes! I did." + +"And you see with what effect, though he values +your opinion three times as much as he values mine. +Perhaps you came up to tell him again that it was nasty?" + +"I feel very unhappy about it. He is throwing himself away. +Yes, I should like to prevent it if I could!" + +The father shook his head. + +"If Lapham hasn't prevented it, I fancy it's too late. +But there may be some hopes of Lapham. As for Tom's +throwing himself away, I don't know. There's no question +but he is one of the best fellows under the sun. +He's tremendously energetic, and he has plenty of the kind +of sense which we call horse; but he isn't brilliant. +No, Tom is not brilliant. I don't think he would get +on in a profession, and he's instinctively kept out of +everything of the kind. But he has got to do something. +What shall he do? He says mineral paint, and really +I don't see why he shouldn't. If money is fairly and +honestly earned, why should we pretend to care what it +comes out of, when we don't really care? That superstition +is exploded everywhere." + +"Oh, it isn't the paint alone," said Mrs. Corey; and then +she perceptibly arrested herself, and made a diversion +in continuing: "I wish he had married some one." + +"With money?" suggested her husband. "From time to time +I have attempted Tom's corruption from that side, but I +suspect Tom has a conscience against it, and I rather +like him for it. I married for love myself," said Corey, +looking across the table at his wife. + +She returned his look tolerantly, though she felt it +right to say, "What nonsense!" + +"Besides," continued her husband, "if you come to money, +there is the paint princess. She will have plenty." + +"Ah, that's the worst of it," sighed the mother. +"I suppose I could get on with the paint----" + +"But not with the princess? I thought you said she was +a very pretty, well-behaved girl?" + +"She is very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there +is nothing of her. She is insipid; she is very insipid." + +"But Tom seemed to like her flavour, such as it was?" + +"How can I tell? We were under a terrible obligation +to them, and I naturally wished him to be polite to them. +In fact, I asked him to be so." + +"And he was too polite" + +"I can't say that he was. But there is no doubt that +the child is extremely pretty." + +"Tom says there are two of them. Perhaps they will +neutralise each other." + +"Yes, there is another daughter," assented Mrs. Corey. +"I don't see how you can joke about such things, Bromfield," +she added. + +"Well, I don't either, my dear, to tell you the truth. +My hardihood surprises me. Here is a son of mine whom I +see reduced to making his living by a shrinkage in values. +It's very odd," interjected Corey, "that some values should +have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never hear of values +in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate--all +those values shrink abominably. Perhaps it might be +argued that one should put all his values into pictures; +I've got a good many of mine there." + +"Tom needn't earn his living," said Mrs. Corey, refusing her +husband's jest. "There's still enough for all of us." + +"That is what I have sometimes urged upon Tom. I have proved +to him that with economy, and strict attention to business, +he need do nothing as long as he lives. Of course he +would be somewhat restricted, and it would cramp the rest +of us; but it is a world of sacrifices and compromises. +He couldn't agree with me, and he was not in the least +moved by the example of persons of quality in Europe, +which I alleged in support of the life of idleness. +It appears that he wishes to do something--to do something +for himself. I am afraid that Tom is selfish." + +Mrs. Corey smiled wanly. Thirty years before, she had +married the rich young painter in Rome, who said so much +better things than he painted--charming things, just the +things to please the fancy of a girl who was disposed +to take life a little too seriously and practically. +She saw him in a different light when she got him home +to Boston; but he had kept on saying the charming things, +and he had not done much else. In fact, he had fulfilled +the promise of his youth. It was a good trait in him +that he was not actively but only passively extravagant. +He was not adventurous with his money; his tastes were +as simple as an Italian's; he had no expensive habits. +In the process of time he had grown to lead a more and +more secluded life. It was hard to get him out anywhere, +even to dinner. His patience with their narrowing +circumstances had a pathos which she felt the more +the more she came into charge of their joint life. +At times it seemed too bad that the children and +their education and pleasures should cost so much. +She knew, besides, that if it had not been for them +she would have gone back to Rome with him, and lived +princely there for less than it took to live respectably +in Boston. + +"Tom hasn't consulted me," continued his father, "but he +has consulted other people. And he has arrived at the +conclusion that mineral paint is a good thing to go into. +He has found out all about it, and about its founder +or inventor. It's quite impressive to hear him talk. +And if he must do something for himself, I don't see why +his egotism shouldn't as well take that form as another. +Combined with the paint princess, it isn't so agreeable; +but that's only a remote possibility, for which your +principal ground is your motherly solicitude. +But even if it were probable and imminent, what could +you do? The chief consolation that we American parents +have in these matters is that we can do nothing. +If we were Europeans, even English, we should take some +cognisance of our children's love affairs, and in some +measure teach their young affections how to shoot. +But it is our custom to ignore them until they have shot, +and then they ignore us. We are altogether too delicate +to arrange the marriages of our children; and when they +have arranged them we don't like to say anything, +for fear we should only make bad worse. The right +way is for us to school ourselves to indifference. +That is what the young people have to do elsewhere, +and that is the only logical result of our position here. +It is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we don't +interfere with." + +"Oh, people do interfere with their children's marriages +very often," said Mrs. Corey. + +"Yes, but only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make +it disagreeable for themselves if the marriages go on in +spite of them, as they're pretty apt to do. Now, my idea +is that I ought to cut Tom off with a shilling. +That would be very simple, and it would be economical. +But you would never consent, and Tom wouldn't mind it." + +"I think our whole conduct in regard to such things +is wrong," said Mrs. Corey. + +"Oh, very likely. But our whole civilisation is based upon it. +And who is going to make a beginning? To which father +in our acquaintance shall I go and propose an alliance +for Tom with his daughter? I should feel like an ass. +And will you go to some mother, and ask her sons in +marriage for our daughters? You would feel like a goose. +No; the only motto for us is, Hands off altogether." + +"I shall certainly speak to Tom when the time comes," +said Mrs. Corey. + +"And I shall ask leave to be absent from your discomfiture, +my dear," answered her husband. + +The son returned that afternoon, and confessed his +surprise at finding his mother in Boston. He was so +frank that she had not quite the courage to confess +in turn why she had come, but trumped up an excuse. + +"Well, mother," he said promptly, "I have made an engagement +with Mr. Lapham." + +"Have you, Tom?" she asked faintly. + +"Yes. For the present I am going to have charge of his +foreign correspondence, and if I see my way to the +advantage I expect to find in it, I am going out to manage +that side of his business in South America and Mexico. +He's behaved very handsomely about it. He says that if it +appears for our common interest, he shall pay me a salary +as well as a commission. I've talked with Uncle Jim, +and he thinks it's a good opening." + +"Your Uncle Jim does?" queried Mrs. Corey in amaze. + +"Yes; I consulted him the whole way through, and I've +acted on his advice." + +This seemed an incomprehensible treachery on her brother's part. + +"Yes; I thought you would like to have me. And besides, +I couldn't possibly have gone to any one so well fitted +to advise me." + +His mother said nothing. In fact, the mineral paint business, +however painful its interest, was, for the moment, +superseded by a more poignant anxiety. She began to feel +her way cautiously toward this. + +"Have you been talking about your business with Mr. Lapham +all night?" + +"Well, pretty much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh. +"I went to see him yesterday afternoon, after I had gone +over the whole ground with Uncle Jim, and Mr. Lapham asked +me to go down with him and finish up." + +"Down?" repeated Mrs. Corey. "Yes, to Nantasket. +He has a cottage down there." + +"At Nantasket?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows a little. +"What in the world can a cottage at Nantasket be like?" + +"Oh, very much like a 'cottage' anywhere. It has the +usual allowance of red roof and veranda. There are the +regulation rocks by the sea; and the big hotels on the +beach about a mile off, flaring away with electric lights +and roman-candles at night. We didn't have them at Nahant." + +"No," said his mother. "Is Mrs. Lapham well? And +her daughter?" + +"Yes, I think so," said the young man. "The young ladies +walked me down to the rocks in the usual way after dinner, +and then I came back and talked paint with Mr. Lapham +till midnight. We didn't settle anything till this +morning coming up on the boat." + +"What sort of people do they seem to be at home?" + +"What sort? Well, I don't know that I noticed." Mrs. Corey +permitted herself the first part of a sigh of relief; +and her son laughed, but apparently not at her. +"They're just reading Middlemarch. They say there's so much +talk about it. Oh, I suppose they're very good people. +They seemed to be on very good terms with each other." + +"I suppose it's the plain sister who's reading Middlemarch." + +"Plain? Is she plain?" asked the young man, as if +searching his consciousness. "Yes, it's the older one +who does the reading, apparently. But I don't believe +that even she overdoes it. They like to talk better. +They reminded me of Southern people in that." The young +man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions +of the Lapham family. "The living, as the country +people call it, is tremendously good. The Colonel--he's +a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's coffee, +as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, +though I believe it was merely inspired by her. +And there was everything in the house that money could buy. +But money has its limitations." + +This was a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realise more +and more unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring +her a certain comfort in its application to the Laphams. +"Yes, there is a point where taste has to begin," she said. + +"They seemed to want to apologise to me for not having +more books," said Corey. "I don't know why they should. +The Colonel said they bought a good many books, first and last; +but apparently they don't take them to the sea-side." + +"I dare say they NEVER buy a NEW book. I've met some +of these moneyed people lately, and they lavish on every +conceivable luxury, and then borrow books, and get them +in the cheap paper editions." + +"I fancy that's the way with the Lapham family," said the +young man, smilingly. "But they are very good people. +The other daughter is humorous." + +"Humorous?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows in some perplexity. +"Do you mean like Mrs. Sayre?" she asked, naming the lady +whose name must come into every Boston mind when humour +is mentioned. + +"Oh no; nothing like that. She never says anything +that you can remember; nothing in flashes or ripples; +nothing the least literary. But it's a sort of droll +way of looking at things; or a droll medium through +which things present themselves. I don't know. +She tells what she's seen, and mimics a little." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey coldly. After a moment she asked: +"And is Miss Irene as pretty as ever?" + +"She's a wonderful complexion," said the son unsatisfactorily. +"I shall want to be by when father and Colonel Lapham meet," +he added, with a smile. + +"Ah, yes, your father!" said the mother, in that way +in which a wife at once compassionates and censures +her husband to their children. + +"Do you think it's really going to be a trial to him?" +asked the young man quickly. + +"No, no, I can't say it is. But I confess I wish it +was some other business, Tom." + +"Well, mother, I don't see why. The principal thing +looked at now is the amount of money; and while I +would rather starve than touch a dollar that was dirty +with any sort of dishonesty----" + +"Of course you would, my son!" interposed his mother proudly. + +"I shouldn't at all mind its having a little mineral paint +on it. I'll use my influence with Colonel Lapham--if I +ever have any--to have his paint scraped off the landscape." + +"I suppose you won't begin till the autumn." + +"Oh yes, I shall," said the son, laughing at his mother's +simple ignorance of business. "I shall begin to-morrow morning." + +"To-morrow morning!" + +"Yes. I've had my desk appointed already, and I shall +be down there at nine in the morning to take possession." + +"Tom" cried his mother, "why do you think Mr. Lapham has +taken you into business so readily? I've always heard +that it was so hard for young men to get in." + +"And do you think I found it easy with him? We had about +twelve hours' solid talk." + +"And you don't suppose it was any sort of--personal consideration?" + +"Why, I don't know exactly what you mean, mother. +I suppose he likes me." + +Mrs. Corey could not say just what she meant. She answered, +ineffectually enough-- + +"Yes. You wouldn't like it to be a favour, would you?" + +"I think he's a man who may be trusted to look after his +own interest. But I don't mind his beginning by liking me. +It'll be my own fault if I don't make myself essential +to him." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey. + +"Well," demanded her husband, at their first meeting after +her interview with their son, "what did you say to Tom?" + +"Very little, if anything. I found him with his mind +made up, and it would only have distressed him if I +had tried to change it." + +"That is precisely what I said, my dear." + +"Besides, he had talked the matter over fully with James, +and seems to have been advised by him. I can't understand James." + +"Oh! it's in regard to the paint, and not the princess, +that he's made up his mind. Well, I think you were wise +to let him alone, Anna. We represent a faded tradition. +We don't really care what business a man is in, so it is +large enough, and he doesn't advertise offensively; but we +think it fine to affect reluctance." + +"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" asked his wife seriously. + +"Certainly I do. There was a long time in my misguided +youth when I supposed myself some sort of porcelain; +but it's a relief to be of the common clay, after all, +and to know it. If I get broken, I can be easily replaced." + +"If Tom must go into such a business," said Mrs. Corey, +"I'm glad James approves of it." + +"I'm afraid it wouldn't matter to Tom if he didn't; +and I don't know that I should care," said Corey, +betraying the fact that he had perhaps had a good deal +of his brother-in-law's judgment in the course of his life. +"You had better consult him in regard to Tom's marrying +the princess." + +"There is no necessity at present for that," said Mrs. Corey, +with dignity. After a moment, she asked, "Should you feel +quite so easy if it were a question of that, Bromfield?" + +"It would be a little more personal." + +"You feel about it as I do. Of course, we have both +lived too long, and seen too much of the world, +to suppose we can control such things. The child is good, +I haven't the least doubt, and all those things can +be managed so that they wouldn't disgrace us. But she +has had a certain sort of bringing up. I should prefer +Tom to marry a girl with another sort, and this business +venture of his increases the chances that he won't. That's all." + +"''Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, +but 'twill serve.'" + +"I shouldn't like it." + +"Well, it hasn't happened yet." + +"Ah, you never can realise anything beforehand." + +"Perhaps that has saved me some suffering. But you +have at least the consolation of two anxieties at once. +I always find that a great advantage. You can play one off +against the other." + +Mrs. Corey drew a long breath as if she did not experience +the suggested consolation; and she arranged to quit, +the following afternoon, the scene of her defeat, +which she had not had the courage to make a battlefield. +Her son went down to see her off on the boat, after +spending his first day at his desk in Lapham's office. +He was in a gay humour, and she departed in a reflected +gleam of his good spirits. He told her all about it, +as he sat talking with her at the stern of the boat, +lingering till the last moment, and then stepping ashore, +with as little waste of time as Lapham himself, on the +gang-plank which the deck-hands had laid hold of. +He touched his hat to her from the wharf to reassure +her of his escape from being carried away with her, +and the next moment his smiling face hid itself in +the crowd. + +He walked on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with +trucks and hacks and piles of freight, and, taking his way +through the deserted business streets beyond this bustle, +made a point of passing the door of Lapham's warehouse, +on the jambs of which his name and paint were lettered in +black on a square ground of white. The door was still open, +and Corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to go +upstairs and fetch away some foreign letters which he +had left on his desk, and which he thought he might finish +up at home. He was in love with his work, and he felt +the enthusiasm for it which nothing but the work we can +do well inspires in us. He believed that he had found +his place in the world, after a good deal of looking, +and he had the relief, the repose, of fitting into it. +Every little incident of the momentous, uneventful day +was a pleasure in his mind, from his sitting down +at his desk, to which Lapham's boy brought him the +foreign letters, till his rising from it an hour ago. +Lapham had been in view within his own office, but he +had given Corey no formal reception, and had, in fact, +not spoken to him till toward the end of the forenoon, +when he suddenly came out of his den with some more +letters in his hand, and after a brief "How d'ye do?" +had spoken a few words about them, and left them with him. +He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person +seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. +He did not go out to lunch, but had it brought to him +in his office, where Corey saw him eating it before he +left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging seat +before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. +He observed that all the others lunched at twelve, and he +resolved to anticipate his usual hour. When he returned, +the pretty girl who had been clicking away at a type-writer +all the morning was neatly putting out of sight the +evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood, +and was preparing to go on with her copying. In his office +Lapham lay asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over +his face. + +Now, while Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway, +these two came down the stairs together, and he heard +Lapham saying, "Well, then, you better get a divorce." + +He looked red and excited, and the girl's face, which she +veiled at sight of Corey, showed traces of tears. +She slipped round him into the street. + +But Lapham stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling +but surprise: "Hello, Corey! Did you want to go up?" + +"Yes; there were some letters I hadn't quite got through with." + +"You'll find Dennis up there. But I guess you better let +them go till to-morrow. I always make it a rule to stop +work when I'm done." + +"Perhaps you're right," said Corey, yielding. + +"Come along down as far as the boat with me. There's a +little matter I want to talk over with you." + +It was a business matter, and related to Corey's proposed +connection with the house. + +The next day the head book-keeper, who lunched at the long +counter of the same restaurant with Corey, began to talk +with him about Lapham. Walker had not apparently got +his place by seniority; though with his forehead, bald far +up toward the crown, and his round smooth face, one might +have taken him for a plump elder, if he had not looked +equally like a robust infant. The thick drabbish yellow +moustache was what arrested decision in either direction, +and the prompt vigour of all his movements was that of +a young man of thirty, which was really Walker's age. +He knew, of course, who Corey was, and he had waited +for a man who might look down on him socially to make +the overtures toward something more than business +acquaintance; but, these made, he was readily responsive, +and drew freely on his philosophy of Lapham and his affairs. + +"I think about the only difference between people in +this world is that some know what they want, and some +don't. Well, now," said Walker, beating the bottom of his +salt-box to make the salt come out, "the old man knows +what he wants every time. And generally he gets it. +Yes, sir, he generally gets it. He knows what he's about, +but I'll be blessed if the rest of us do half the time. +Anyway, we don't till he's ready to let us. You take +my position in most business houses. It's confidential. +The head book-keeper knows right along pretty much +everything the house has got in hand. I'll give you +my word I don't. He may open up to you a little more +in your department, but, as far as the rest of us go, +he don't open up any more than an oyster on a hot brick. +They say he had a partner once; I guess he's dead. +I wouldn't like to be the old man's partner. Well, +you see, this paint of his is like his heart's blood. +Better not try to joke him about it. I've seen people +come in occasionally and try it. They didn't get much +fun out of it." + +While he talked, Walker was plucking up morsels from his plate, +tearing off pieces of French bread from the long loaf, +and feeding them into his mouth in an impersonal way, +as if he were firing up an engine. + +"I suppose he thinks," suggested Corey, "that if he +doesn't tell, nobody else will." + +Walker took a draught of beer from his glass, and wiped +the foam from his moustache. + +"Oh, but he carries it too far! It's a weakness with him. +He's just so about everything. Look at the way he keeps +it up about that type-writer girl of his. You'd think +she was some princess travelling incognito. There isn't +one of us knows who she is, or where she came from, +or who she belongs to. He brought her and her machine +into the office one morning, and set 'em down at a table, +and that's all there is about it, as far as we're concerned. +It's pretty hard on the girl, for I guess she'd like +to talk; and to any one that didn't know the old man----" +Walker broke off and drained his glass of what was left +in it. + +Corey thought of the words he had overheard from Lapham +to the girl. But he said, "She seems to be kept pretty busy." + +"Oh yes," said Walker; "there ain't much loafing round +the place, in any of the departments, from the old man's down. +That's just what I say. He's got to work just twice as hard, +if he wants to keep everything in his own mind. But he +ain't afraid of work. That's one good thing about him. +And Miss Dewey has to keep step with the rest of us. +But she don't look like one that would take to it naturally. +Such a pretty girl as that generally thinks she does enough +when she looks her prettiest." + +"She's a pretty girl," said Corey, non-committally. "But I +suppose a great many pretty girls have to earn their living." + +"Don't any of 'em like to do it," returned the book-keeper. +"They think it's a hardship, and I don't blame 'em. They have +got a right to get married, and they ought to have the chance. +And Miss Dewey's smart, too. She's as bright as a biscuit. +I guess she's had trouble. I shouldn't be much more than +half surprised if Miss Dewey wasn't Miss Dewey, or hadn't +always been. Yes, sir," continued the book-keeper, +who prolonged the talk as they walked back to Lapham's +warehouse together, "I don't know exactly what it is,--it +isn't any one thing in particular,--but I should say that +girl had been married. I wouldn't speak so freely to any +of the rest, Mr. Corey,--I want you to understand that,--and +it isn't any of my business, anyway; but that's my opinion." + +Corey made no reply, as he walked beside the book-keeper, +who continued-- + +"It's curious what a difference marriage makes in people. +Now, I know that I don't look any more like a bachelor +of my age than I do like the man in the moon, and yet I +couldn't say where the difference came in, to save me. +And it's just so with a woman. The minute you catch +sight of her face, there's something in it that tells +you whether she's married or not. What do you suppose +it is?" + +"I'm sure I don't know," said Corey, willing to laugh away +the topic. "And from what I read occasionally of some +people who go about repeating their happiness, I shouldn't +say that the intangible evidences were always unmistakable." + +"Oh, of course," admitted Walker, easily surrendering +his position. "All signs fail in dry weather. +Hello! What's that?" He caught Corey by the arm, +and they both stopped. + +At a corner, half a block ahead of them, the summer noon +solitude of the place was broken by a bit of drama. +A man and woman issued from the intersecting street, +and at the moment of coming into sight the man, who looked +like a sailor, caught the woman by the arm, as if to +detain her. A brief struggle ensued, the woman trying +to free herself, and the man half coaxing, half scolding. +The spectators could now see that he was drunk; +but before they could decide whether it was a case for +their interference or not, the woman suddenly set both +hands against the man's breast and gave him a quick push. +He lost his footing and tumbled into a heap in the gutter. +The woman faltered an instant, as if to see whether he was +seriously hurt, and then turned and ran. + +When Corey and the book-keeper re-entered the office, +Miss Dewey had finished her lunch, and was putting a sheet +of paper into her type-writer. She looked up at them with +her eyes of turquoise blue, under her low white forehead, +with the hair neatly rippled over it, and then began +to beat the keys of her machine. + + + +IX. + + +LAPHAM had the pride which comes of self-making, and he +would not openly lower his crest to the young fellow he +had taken into his business. He was going to be obviously +master in his own place to every one; and during the hours +of business he did nothing to distinguish Corey from the +half-dozen other clerks and book-keepers in the outer office, +but he was not silent about the fact that Bromfield +Corey's son had taken a fancy to come to him. "Did you +notice that fellow at the desk facing my type-writer +girl? Well, sir, that's the son of Bromfield Corey--old +Phillips Corey's grandson. And I'll say this for him, +that there isn't a man in the office that looks after his +work better. There isn't anything he's too good for. +He's right here at nine every morning, before the clock +gets in the word. I guess it's his grandfather coming out +in him. He's got charge of the foreign correspondence. +We're pushing the paint everywhere." He flattered himself +that he did not lug the matter in. He had been warned +against that by his wife, but he had the right to do +Corey justice, and his brag took the form of illustration. +"Talk about training for business--I tell you it's all +in the man himself! I used to believe in what old Horace +Greeley said about college graduates being the poorest +kind of horned cattle; but I've changed my mind a little. +You take that fellow Corey. He's been through Harvard, +and he's had about every advantage that a fellow could have. +Been everywhere, and talks half a dozen languages +like English. I suppose he's got money enough to live +without lifting a hand, any more than his father does; +son of Bromfield Corey, you know. But the thing was in him. +He's a natural-born business man; and I've had many +a fellow with me that had come up out of the street, +and worked hard all his life, without ever losing his +original opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it. +I believe the fellow would like to stick at that desk +of his night and day. I don't know where he got it. +I guess it must be his grandfather, old Phillips Corey; +it often skips a generation, you know. But what I say is, +a thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain't born +in him, all the privations in the world won't put it there, +and if it is, all the college training won't take it +out." + +Sometimes Lapham advanced these ideas at his own table, +to a guest whom he had brought to Nantasket for the night. +Then he suffered exposure and ridicule at the hands of +his wife, when opportunity offered. She would not let him +bring Corey down to Nantasket at all. + +"No, indeed!" she said. "I am not going to have them +think we're running after him. If he wants to see Irene, +he can find out ways of doing it for himself." + +"Who wants him to see Irene?" retorted the Colonel angrily. + +"I do," said Mrs. Lapham. "And I want him to see +her without any of your connivance, Silas. I'm not +going to have it said that I put my girls at anybody. +Why don't you invite some of your other clerks?" + +"He ain't just like the other clerks. He's going to take +charge of a part of the business. It's quite another thing." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Lapham vexatiously. "Then you +ARE going to take a partner." + +"I shall ask him down if I choose!" returned the Colonel, +disdaining her insinuation. + +His wife laughed with the fearlessness of a woman +who knows her husband. + +"But you won't choose when you've thought it over, Si." +Then she applied an emollient to his chafed surface. +"Don't you suppose I feel as you do about it? I know +just how proud you are, and I'm not going to have you +do anything that will make you feel meeching afterward. +You just let things take their course. If he wants Irene, +he's going to find out some way of seeing her; and if he +don't, all the plotting and planning in the world isn't going +to make him." + +"Who's plotting?" again retorted the Colonel, shuddering at +the utterance of hopes and ambitions which a man hides +with shame, but a woman talks over as freely and coolly +as if they were items of a milliner's bill. + +"Oh, not you!" exulted his wife. "I understand what +you want. You want to get this fellow, who is neither +partner nor clerk, down here to talk business with him. +Well, now, you just talk business with him at the office." + +The only social attention which Lapham succeeded in +offering Corey was to take him in his buggy, now and then, +for a spin out over the Mill-dam. He kept the mare in town, +and on a pleasant afternoon he liked to knock off early, +as he phrased it, and let the mare out a little. +Corey understood something about horses, though in a +passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk +business when obliged to talk horse. But he deferred to his +business superior with the sense of discipline which is +innate in the apparently insubordinate American nature. +If Corey could hardly have helped feeling the social +difference between Lapham and himself, in his presence he +silenced his traditions, and showed him all the respect +that he could have exacted from any of his clerks. +He talked horse with him, and when the Colonel wished he +talked house. Besides himself and his paint Lapham had +not many other topics; and if he had a choice between the +mare and the edifice on the water side of Beacon Street, +it was just now the latter. Sometimes, in driving in or out, +he stopped at the house, and made Corey his guest there, +if he might not at Nantasket; and one day it happened +that the young man met Irene there again. She had come +up with her mother alone, and they were in the house, +interviewing the carpenter as before, when the Colonel +jumped out of his buggy and cast anchor at the pavement. +More exactly, Mrs. Lapham was interviewing the carpenter, +and Irene was sitting in the bow-window on a trestle, +and looking out at the driving. She saw him come up +with her father, and bowed and blushed. Her father went +on up-stairs to find her mother, and Corey pulled up another +trestle which he found in the back part of the room. +The first floorings had been laid throughout the house, +and the partitions had been lathed so that one could realise the +shape of the interior. + +"I suppose you will sit at this window a good deal," +said the young man. + +"Yes, I think it will be very nice. There's so much +more going on than there is in the Square." + +"It must be very interesting to you to see the house grow." + +"It is. Only it doesn't seem to grow so fast as I expected." + +"Why, I'm amazed at the progress your carpenter has made +every time I come." + +The girl looked down, and then lifting her eyes she said, +with a sort of timorous appeal-- + +"I've been reading that book since you were down at Nantasket." + +"Book?" repeated Corey, while she reddened with disappointment. +"Oh yes. Middlemarch. Did you like it?" + +"I haven't got through with it yet. Pen has finished it." + +"What does she think of it?" + +"Oh, I think she likes it very well. I haven't heard +her talk about it much. Do you like it?" + +"Yes; I liked it immensely. But it's several years +since I read it." + +"I didn't know it was so old. It's just got into +the Seaside Library," she urged, with a little sense +of injury in her tone. + +"Oh, it hasn't been out such a very great while," +said Corey politely. "It came a little before DANIEL DERONDA." + +The girl was again silent. She followed the curl +of a shaving on the floor with the point of her parasol. + +"Do you like that Rosamond Vincy?" she asked, without looking up. + +Corey smiled in his kind way. + +"I didn't suppose she was expected to have any friends. +I can't say I liked her. But I don't think I disliked +her so much as the author does. She's pretty hard on her +good-looking"--he was going to say girls, but as if that +might have been rather personal, he said--"people." + +"Yes, that's what Pen says. She says she doesn't give +her any chance to be good. She says she should have been +just as bad as Rosamond if she had been in her place." + +The young man laughed. "Your sister is very satirical, +isn't she?" + +"I don't know," said Irene, still intent upon the +convolutions of the shaving. "She keeps us laughing. +Papa thinks there's nobody that can talk like her." +She gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took +the parasol up across her lap. The unworldliness +of the Lapham girls did not extend to their dress; +Irene's costume was very stylish, and she governed her +head and shoulders stylishly. "We are going to have +the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," +she said abruptly. + +"Yes?" returned Corey. "I should think that would +be charming." + +"We expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants +to build the shelves in." + +The fact seemed to be referred to Corey for his comment. + +"It seems to me that would be the best way. They'll look +like part of the room then. You can make them low, +and hang your pictures above them." + +"Yes, that's what he said." The girl looked out of +the window in adding, "I presume with nice bindings +it will look very well." + +"Oh, nothing furnishes a room like books." + +"No. There will have to be a good many of them." + +"That depends upon the size of your room and the number +of your shelves." + +"Oh, of course! I presume," said Irene, thoughtfully, +"we shall have to have Gibbon." + +"If you want to read him," said Corey, with a laugh +of sympathy for an imaginable joke. + +"We had a great deal about him at school. I believe we +had one of his books. Mine's lost, but Pen will remember." + +The young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, +"You'll want Greene, of course, and Motley, and Parkman." + +"Yes. What kind of writers are they?" + +"They're historians too." + +"Oh yes; I remember now. That's what Gibbon was. +Is it Gibbon or Gibbons?" + +The young man decided the point with apparently +superfluous delicacy. "Gibbon, I think." + +"There used to be so many of them," said Irene gaily. +"I used to get them mixed up with each other, and I +couldn't tell them from the poets. Should you want to +have poetry?" + +"Yes; I suppose some edition of the English poets." + +"We don't any of us like poetry. Do you like it?" + +"I'm afraid I don't very much," Corey owned. +"But, of course, there was a time when Tennyson +was a great deal more to me than he is now." + +"We had something about him at school too. I think I remember +the name. I think we ought to have ALL the American poets." + +"Well, not all. Five or six of the best: you want Longfellow +and Bryant and Whittier and Holmes and Emerson and Lowell." + +The girl listened attentively, as if making mental note +of the names. + +"And Shakespeare," she added. "Don't you like Shakespeare's plays?" + +"Oh yes, very much." + +"I used to be perfectly crazy about his plays. +Don't you think 'Hamlet' is splendid? We had ever so much +about Shakespeare. Weren't you perfectly astonished +when you found out how many other plays of his there +were? I always thought there was nothing but 'Hamlet' +and 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Macbeth' and 'Richard III.' +and 'King Lear,' and that one that Robeson and Crane +have--oh yes! 'Comedy of Errors.'" + +"Those are the ones they usually play," said Corey. + +"I presume we shall have to have Scott's works," said Irene, +returning to the question of books. + +"Oh yes." + +"One of the girls used to think he was GREAT. She was +always talking about Scott." Irene made a pretty little +amiably contemptuous mouth. "He isn't American, though?" +she suggested. + +"No," said Corey; "he's Scotch, I believe." + +Irene passed her glove over her forehead. "I always get +him mixed up with Cooper. Well, papa has got to get them. +If we have a library, we have got to have books in it. +Pen says it's perfectly ridiculous having one. But papa +thinks whatever the architect says is right. He fought +him hard enough at first. I don't see how any one can +keep the poets and the historians and novelists separate +in their mind. Of course papa will buy them if we say so. +But I don't see how I'm ever going to tell him which ones." +The joyous light faded out of her face and left +it pensive. + +"Why, if you like," said the young man, taking out his pencil, +"I'll put down the names we've been talking about." + +He clapped himself on his breast pockets to detect some +lurking scrap of paper. + +"Will you?" she cried delightedly. "Here! take one of my cards," +and she pulled out her card-case. "The carpenter writes +on a three-cornered block and puts it into his pocket, +and it's so uncomfortable he can't help remembering it. +Pen says she's going to adopt the three-cornered-block +plan with papa." + +"Thank you," said Corey. "I believe I'll use your card." +He crossed over to her, and after a moment sat down on the +trestle beside her. She looked over the card as he wrote. +"Those are the ones we mentioned, but perhaps I'd better +add a few others." + +"Oh, thank you," she said, when he had written the card +full on both sides. "He has got to get them in the +nicest binding, too. I shall tell him about their +helping to furnish the room, and then he can't object." +She remained with the card, looking at it rather wistfully. + +Perhaps Corey divined her trouble of mind. "If he will +take that to any bookseller, and tell him what bindings +he wants, he will fill the order for him." + +"Oh, thank you very much," she said, and put the card back +into her card-case with great apparent relief. Then she +turned her lovely face toward the young man, beaming with +the triumph a woman feels in any bit of successful manoeuvring, +and began to talk with recovered gaiety of other things, as if, +having got rid of a matter annoying out of all proportion +to its importance, she was now going to indemnify herself. + +Corey did not return to his own trestle. She found another +shaving within reach of her parasol, and began poking +that with it, and trying to follow it through its folds. +Corey watched her a while. + +"You seem to have a great passion for playing with shavings," +he said. "Is it a new one?" + +"New what?" + +"Passion." + +"I don't know," she said, dropping her eyelids, and keeping +on with her effort. She looked shyly aslant at him. +"Perhaps you don't approve of playing with shavings?" + +"Oh yes, I do. I admire it very much. But it seems +rather difficult. I've a great ambition to put my foot +on the shaving's tail and hold it for you." + +"Well," said the girl. + +"Thank you," said the young man. He did so, and now she +ran her parasol point easily through it. They looked +at each other and laughed. "That was wonderful. +Would you like to try another?" he asked. + +"No, I thank you," she replied. "I think one will do." + +They both laughed again, for whatever reason or no reason, +and then the young girl became sober. To a girl everything +a young man does is of significance; and if he holds +a shaving down with his foot while she pokes through it +with her parasol, she must ask herself what he means +by it. + +"They seem to be having rather a long interview with the +carpenter to-day," said Irene, looking vaguely toward +the ceiling. She turned with polite ceremony to Corey. +"I'm afraid you're letting them keep you. You mustn't." + +"Oh no. You're letting me stay," he returned. + +She bridled and bit her lip for pleasure. "I presume +they will be down before a great while. Don't you +like the smell of the wood and the mortar? It's so fresh." + +"Yes, it's delicious." He bent forward and picked up from +the floor the shaving with which they had been playing, +and put it to his nose. "It's like a flower. May I offer +it to you?" he asked, as if it had been one. + +"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She took it from him and put +it into her belt, and then they both laughed once more. + +Steps were heard descending. When the elder people +reached the floor where they were sitting, Corey rose +and presently took his leave. + +"What makes you so solemn, 'Rene?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"Solemn?" echoed the girl. "I'm not a BIT solemn. +What CAN you mean?" + +Corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking +across the table at his father, he said, "I wonder +what the average literature of non-cultivated people is." + +"Ah," said the elder, "I suspect the average is pretty +low even with cultivated people. You don't read a great +many books yourself, Tom." + +"No, I don't," the young man confessed. "I read more books +when I was with Stanton, last winter, than I had since I was +a boy. But I read them because I must--there was nothing +else to do. It wasn't because I was fond of reading. +Still I think I read with some sense of literature and +the difference between authors. I don't suppose that +people generally do that; I have met people who had read +books without troubling themselves to find out even the +author's name, much less trying to decide upon his quality. +I suppose that's the way the vast majority of people read." + +"Yes. If authors were not almost necessarily recluses, +and ignorant of the ignorance about them, I don't see +how they could endure it. Of course they are fated to be +overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor fellows; but to see +it weltering all round them while they are in the very act +of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. +I don't suppose that we who have the habit of reading, +and at least a nodding acquaintance with literature, +can imagine the bestial darkness of the great mass of +people--even people whose houses are rich and whose linen +is purple and fine. But occasionally we get glimpses of it. +I suppose you found the latest publications lying all about +in Lapham cottage when you were down there?" + +Young Corey laughed. "It wasn't exactly cumbered with them." + +"No?" + +"To tell the truth, I don't suppose they ever buy books. +The young ladies get novels that they hear talked of out +of the circulating library." + +"Had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?" + +"Yes, in certain ways--to a certain degree." + +"It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation," +said the elder musingly. "We think it is an affair of epochs +and of nations. It's really an affair of individuals. +One brother will be civilised and the other a barbarian. +I've occasionally met young girls who were so brutally, +insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make +civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the +skins of wild beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs +over their shoulders. Yet they were of polite origin, +and their parents were at least respectful of the things +that these young animals despised." + +"I don't think that is exactly the case with the +Lapham family," said the son, smiling. "The father +and mother rather apologised about not getting +time to read, and the young ladies by no means scorned it." + +"They are quite advanced!" + +"They are going to have a library in their Beacon +Street house." + +"Oh, poor things! How are they ever going to get +the books together?" + +"Well, sir," said the son, colouring a little, "I have +been indirectly applied to for help." + +"You, Tom!" His father dropped back in his chair and laughed. + +"I recommended the standard authors," said the son. + +"Oh, I never supposed your PRUDENCE would be at fault, Tom!" + +"But seriously," said the young man, generously smiling +in sympathy with his father's enjoyment, "they're not +unintelligent people. They are very quick, and they +are shrewd and sensible." + +"I have no doubt that some of the Sioux are so. But that +is not saying that they are civilised. All civilisation +comes through literature now, especially in our country. +A Greek got his civilisation by talking and looking, +and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, +who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we +must barbarise. Once we were softened, if not polished, +by religion; but I suspect that the pulpit counts for much +less now in civilising." + +"They're enormous devourers of newspapers, and theatre-goers; +and they go a great deal to lectures. The Colonel +prefers them with the stereopticon." + +"They might get a something in that way," said the elder +thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose one must take those things +into account--especially the newspapers and the lectures. +I doubt if the theatre is a factor in civilisation among us. +I dare say it doesn't deprave a great deal, but from what I've +seen of it I should say that it was intellectually degrading. +Perhaps they might get some sort of lift from it; +I don't know. Tom!" he added, after a moment's reflection. +"I really think I ought to see this patron of yours. +Don't you think it would be rather decent in me to make +his acquaintance?" + +"Well, if you have the fancy, sir," said the young man. +"But there's no sort of obligation. Colonel Lapham would +be the last man in the world to want to give our relation +any sort of social character. The meeting will come about +in the natural course of things." + +"Ah, I didn't intend to propose anything immediate," +said the father. "One can't do anything in the summer, +and I should prefer your mother's superintendence. +Still, I can't rid myself of the idea of a dinner. +It appears to me that there ought to be a dinner." + +"Oh, pray don't feel that there's any necessity." + +"Well," said the elder, with easy resignation, "there's at +least no hurry." + + +"There is one thing I don't like," said Lapham, +in the course of one of those talks which came up +between his wife and himself concerning Corey, "or at +least I don't understand it; and that's the way his +father behaves. I don't want to force myself on any man; +but it seems to me pretty queer the way he holds off. +I should think he would take enough interest in his +son to want to know something about his business. +What is he afraid of?" demanded Lapham angrily. "Does he +think I'm going to jump at a chance to get in with him, +if he gives me one? He's mightily mistaken if he does. +I don't want to know him." + +"Silas," said his wife, making a wife's free version +of her husband's words, and replying to their spirit +rather than their letter, "I hope you never said a word +to Mr. Corey to let him know the way you feel." + +"I never mentioned his father to him!" roared the Colonel. +"That's the way I feel about it!" + +"Because it would spoil everything. I wouldn't have +them think we cared the least thing in the world for +their acquaintance. We shouldn't be a bit better off. +We don't know the same people they do, and we don't care +for the same kind of things." + +Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication. +"Don't I tell you," he gasped, "that I don't want to know +them? Who began it? They're friends of yours if they're anybody's." + +"They're distant acquaintances of mine," returned Mrs. Lapham +quietly; "and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I +want we should hold ourselves so that when they get ready +to make the advances we can meet them half-way or not, +just as we choose." + +"That's what grinds me," cried her husband. +"Why should we wait for them to make the advances? Why +shouldn't we make 'em? Are they any better than we are? +My note of hand would be worth ten times what Bromfield +Corey's is on the street to-day. And I made MY money. +I haven't loafed my life away." + +"Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've +done exactly. It's what you are." + +"Well, then, what's the difference?" + +"None that really amounts to anything, or that need give +you any trouble, if you don't think of it. But he's +been all his life in society, and he knows just what to +say and what to do, and he can talk about the things +that society people like to talk about, and you--can't." + +Lapham gave a furious snort. "And does that make him +any better?" + +"No. But it puts him where he can make the advances +without demeaning himself, and it puts you where you +can't. Now, look here, Silas Lapham! You understand this +thing as well as I do. You know that I appreciate you, +and that I'd sooner die than have you humble yourself +to a living soul. But I'm not going to have you coming +to me, and pretending that you can meet Bromfield Corey +as an equal on his own ground. You can't. He's got +a better education than you, and if he hasn't got more +brains than you, he's got different. And he and his wife, +and their fathers and grandfathers before 'em, have always +had a high position, and you can't help it. If you want +to know them, you've got to let them make the advances. +If you don't, all well and good." + +"I guess," said the chafed and vanquished Colonel, +after a moment for swallowing the pill, "that they'd +have been in a pretty fix if you'd waited to let them +make the advances last summer." + +"That was a different thing altogether. I didn't +know who they were, or may be I should have waited. +But all I say now is that if you've got young Corey +into business with you, in hopes of our getting into +society with his father, you better ship him at once. +For I ain't going to have it on that basis." + +"Who wants to have it on that basis?" retorted her husband. + +"Nobody, if you don't," said Mrs. Lapham tranquilly. + +Irene had come home with the shaving in her belt, +unnoticed by her father, and unquestioned by her mother. +But her sister saw it at once, and asked her what she was +doing with it. + +"Oh, nothing," said Irene, with a joyful smile +of self-betrayal, taking the shaving carefully out, +and laying it among the laces and ribbons in her drawer. + +"Hadn't you better put it in water, 'Rene? It'll be all +wilted by morning," said Pen. + +"You mean thing!" cried the happy girl. "It isn't a flower!" + +"Oh, I thought it was a whole bouquet. Who gave it to you?" + +"I shan't tell you," said Irene saucily. + +"Oh, well, never mind. Did you know Mr. Corey had been +down here this afternoon, walking on the beach with me?" + +"He wasn't--he wasn't at all! He was at the house with ME. +There! I've caught you fairly." + +"Is that so?" drawled Penelope. "Then I never could +guess who gave you that precious shaving." + +"No, you couldn't!" said Irene, flushing beautifully. +"And you may guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!" +With her lovely eyes she coaxed her sister to keep on +teasing her, and Penelope continued the comedy with the +patience that women have for such things. + +"Well, I'm not going to try, if it's no use. But I +didn't know it had got to be the fashion to give shavings +instead of flowers. But there's some sense in it. +They can be used for kindlings when they get old, and you +can't do anything with old flowers. Perhaps he'll get +to sending 'em by the barrel." + +Irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. "O Pen, +I want to tell you how it all happened." + +"Oh, he DID give it to you, then? Well, I guess I don't +care to hear." + +"You shall, and you've got to!" Irene ran and caught +her sister, who feigned to be going out of the room, +and pushed her into a chair. "There, now!" She pulled up +another chair, and hemmed her in with it. "He came over, +and sat down on the trestle alongside of me----" + +"What? As close as you are to me now?" + +"You wretch! I will GIVE it to you! No, at a proper distance. +And here was this shaving on the floor, that I'd been +poking with my parasol----" + +"To hide your embarrassment." + +"Pshaw! I wasn't a bit embarrassed. I was just as much at +my ease! And then he asked me to let him hold the shaving +down with his foot, while I went on with my poking. +And I said yes he might----" + +"What a bold girl! You said he might hold a shaving +down for you?" + +"And then--and then----" continued Irene, lifting her eyes +absently, and losing herself in the beatific recollection, +"and then----Oh yes! Then I asked him if he didn't like +the smell of pine shavings. And then he picked it up, +and said it smelt like a flower. And then he asked +if he might offer it to me--just for a joke, you know. +And I took it, and stuck it in my belt. And we had +such a laugh! We got into a regular gale. And O Pen, +what do you suppose he meant by it?" She suddenly caught +herself to her sister's breast, and hid her burning face +on her shoulder. + +"Well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. +But I never knew much about the language of shavings, +and I can't say exactly----" + +"Oh, don't--DON'T, Pen!" and here Irene gave over laughing, +and began to sob in her sister's arms. + +"Why, 'Rene!" cried the elder girl. + +"You KNOW he didn't mean anything. He doesn't care a bit +about me. He hates me! He despises me! Oh, what shall +I do?" + +A trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently +comforted the child in her arms; then the drolling light +came back into her eyes. "Well, 'Rene, YOU haven't got +to do ANYthing. That's one advantage girls have got--if +it IS an advantage. I'm not always sure." + +Irene's tears turned to laughing again. When she lifted +her head it was to look into the mirror confronting them, +where her beauty showed all the more brilliant for the +shower that had passed over it. She seemed to gather +courage from the sight. + +"It must be awful to have to DO," she said, smiling into +her own face. "I don't see how they ever can." + +"Some of 'em can't--especially when there's such a tearing +beauty around." + +"Oh, pshaw, Pen! you know that isn't so. You've got +a real pretty mouth, Pen," she added thoughtfully, +surveying the feature in the glass, and then pouting +her own lips for the sake of that effect on them. + +"It's a useful mouth," Penelope admitted; "I don't believe +I could get along without it now, I've had it so long." + +"It's got such a funny expression--just the mate +of the look in your eyes; as if you were just going +to say something ridiculous. He said, the very +first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous." + +"Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. +Why didn't you tell me so before, and not let me keep on +going round just like a common person?" + +Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take +his praises in that way rather than another. + +"I've got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth," she said, +drawing it down, and then looking anxiously at it. + +"I hope you didn't put on that expression when he offered +you the shaving. If you did, I don't believe he'll ever +give you another splinter." + +The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then +pressed itself in a kiss against Penelope's cheek. + +"There! Be done, you silly thing! I'm not going to have +you accepting ME before I've offered myself, ANYWAY." +She freed herself from her sister's embrace, and ran +from her round the room. + +Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against +her shoulder again. "O Pen! O Pen!" she cried. + + +The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone +with her eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing +that Penelope must have already made it subject of inquiry: +"What was Irene doing with that shaving in her belt yesterday?" + +"Oh, just some nonsense of hers with Mr. Corey. +He gave it to her at the new house." Penelope did not +choose to look up and meet her mother's grave glance. + +"What do you think he meant by it?" + +Penelope repeated Irene's account of the affair, +and her mother listened without seeming to derive much +encouragement from it. + +"He doesn't seem like one to flirt with her," she said +at last. Then, after a thoughtful pause: "Irene is as good +a girl as ever breathed, and she's a perfect beauty. +But I should hate the day when a daughter of mine was +married for her beauty." + +"You're safe as far as I'm concerned, mother." + +Mrs. Lapham smiled ruefully. "She isn't really equal +to him, Pen. I misdoubted that from the first, +and it's been borne in upon me more and more ever since. +She hasn't mind enough." "I didn't know that a man fell +in love with a girl's intellect," said Penelope quietly. + +"Oh no. He hasn't fallen in love with Irene at all. +If he had, it wouldn't matter about the intellect." + +Penelope let the self-contradiction pass. + +"Perhaps he has, after all." + +"No," said Mrs. Lapham. "She pleases him when he sees her. +But he doesn't try to see her." + +"He has no chance. You won't let father bring him here." + +"He would find excuses to come without being brought, +if he wished to come," said the mother. "But she isn't +in his mind enough to make him. He goes away and +doesn't think anything more about her. She's a child. +She's a good child, and I shall always say it; but she's +nothing but a child. No, she's got to forget him." + +"Perhaps that won't be so easy." + +"No, I presume not. And now your father has got the notion +in his head, and he will move heaven and earth to bring +it to pass. I can see that he's always thinking about it." + +"The Colonel has a will of his own," observed the girl, +rocking to and fro where she sat looking at her mother. + +"I wish we had never met them!" cried Mrs. Lapham. +"I wish we had never thought of building! I wish he had +kept away from your father's business!" + +"Well, it's too late now, mother," said the girl. +"Perhaps it isn't so bad as you think." + +"Well, we must stand it, anyway," said Mrs. Lapham, +with the grim antique Yankee submission. + +"Oh yes, we've got to stand it," said Penelope, +with the quaint modern American fatalism. + + + +X. + + +IT was late June, almost July, when Corey took up his life +in Boston again, where the summer slips away so easily. +If you go out of town early, it seems a very long +summer when you come back in October; but if you stay, +it passes swiftly, and, seen foreshortened in its flight, +seems scarcely a month's length. It has its days of heat, +when it is very hot, but for the most part it is cool, +with baths of the east wind that seem to saturate the soul +with delicious freshness. Then there are stretches of grey +westerly weather, when the air is full of the sentiment +of early autumn, and the frying, of the grasshopper +in the blossomed weed of the vacant lots on the Back +Bay is intershot with the carol of crickets; and the +yellowing leaf on the long slope of Mt. Vernon Street +smites the sauntering observer with tender melancholy. +The caterpillar, gorged with the spoil of the lindens +on Chestnut, and weaving his own shroud about him in his +lodgment on the brick-work, records the passing of summer +by mid-July; and if after that comes August, its breath +is thick and short, and September is upon the sojourner +before he has fairly had time to philosophise the character +of the town out of season. + +But it must have appeared that its most characteristic +feature was the absence of everybody he knew. This was +one of the things that commended Boston to Bromfield +Corey during the summer; and if his son had any qualms +about the life he had entered upon with such vigour, +it must have been a relief to him that there was scarcely +a soul left to wonder or pity. By the time people got back +to town the fact of his connection with the mineral paint +man would be an old story, heard afar off with different +degrees of surprise, and considered with different +degrees of indifference. A man has not reached the age +of twenty-six in any community where he was born and reared +without having had his capacity pretty well ascertained; +and in Boston the analysis is conducted with an unsparing +thoroughness which may fitly impress the un-Bostonian mind, +darkened by the popular superstition that the Bostonians +blindly admire one another. A man's qualities are sifted +as closely in Boston as they doubtless were in Florence +or Athens; and, if final mercy was shown in those cities +because a man was, with all his limitations, an Athenian +or Florentine, some abatement might as justly be made +in Boston for like reason. Corey's powers had been gauged +in college, and he had not given his world reason to think +very differently of him since he came out of college. +He was rated as an energetic fellow, a little indefinite +in aim, with the smallest amount of inspiration that can save +a man from being commonplace. If he was not commonplace, +it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was +simply clear and practical, but through some combination +of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women +call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise +indefinable excellences. Some of the more nervous and +excitable said that Tom Corey was as sweet as he could live; +but this perhaps meant no more than the word alone. +No man ever had a son less like him than Bromfield Corey. +If Tom Corey had ever said a witty thing, no one could +remember it; and yet the father had never said a witty +thing to a more sympathetic listener than his own son. +The clear mind which produced nothing but practical +results reflected everything with charming lucidity; +and it must have been this which endeared Tom Corey to every +one who spoke ten words with him. In a city where people +have good reason for liking to shine, a man who did +not care to shine must be little short of universally +acceptable without any other effort for popularity; +and those who admired and enjoyed Bromfield Corey loved +his son. Yet, when it came to accounting for Tom Corey, +as it often did in a community where every one's generation +is known to the remotest degrees of cousinship, they could +not trace his sweetness to his mother, for neither Anna +Bellingham nor any of her family, though they were so many +blocks of Wenham ice for purity and rectangularity, had ever +had any such savour; and, in fact, it was to his father, +whose habit of talk wronged it in himself, that they +had to turn for this quality of the son's. They traced +to the mother the traits of practicality and common-sense +in which he bordered upon the commonplace, and which, +when they had dwelt upon them, made him seem hardly worth +the close inquiry they had given him. + +While the summer wore away he came and went methodically +about his business, as if it had been the business +of his life, sharing his father's bachelor liberty +and solitude, and expecting with equal patience the return +of his mother and sisters in the autumn. Once or twice +he found time to run down to Mt. Desert and see them; +and then he heard how the Philadelphia and New York people +were getting in everywhere, and was given reason to regret +the house at Nahant which he had urged to be sold. +He came back and applied himself to his desk with a +devotion that was exemplary rather than necessary; +for Lapham made no difficulty about the brief absences +which he asked, and set no term to the apprenticeship +that Corey was serving in the office before setting off +upon that mission to South America in the early winter, +for which no date had yet been fixed. + +The summer was a dull season for the paint as well +as for everything else. Till things should brisk up, +as Lapham said, in the fall, he was letting the new +house take a great deal of his time. AEsthetic ideas +had never been intelligibly presented to him before, +and he found a delight in apprehending them that was very +grateful to his imaginative architect. At the beginning, +the architect had foreboded a series of mortifying +defeats and disastrous victories in his encounters +with his client; but he had never had a client who could +be more reasonably led on from one outlay to another. +It appeared that Lapham required but to understand or feel +the beautiful effect intended, and he was ready to pay +for it. His bull-headed pride was concerned in a thing +which the architect made him see, and then he believed +that he had seen it himself, perhaps conceived it. +In some measure the architect seemed to share his delusion, +and freely said that Lapham was very suggestive. +Together they blocked out windows here, and bricked them +up there; they changed doors and passages; pulled down +cornices and replaced them with others of different design; +experimented with costly devices of decoration, +and went to extravagant lengths in novelties of finish. +Mrs. Lapham, beginning with a woman's adventurousness in the +unknown region, took fright at the reckless outlay at last, +and refused to let her husband pass a certain limit. +He tried to make her believe that a far-seeing economy +dictated the expense; and that if he put the money into +the house, he could get it out any time by selling it. +She would not be persuaded. + +"I don't want you should sell it. And you've put more money +into it now than you'll ever get out again, unless you can +find as big a goose to buy it, and that isn't likely. +No, sir! You just stop at a hundred thousand, and don't you let +him get you a cent beyond. Why, you're perfectly bewitched +with that fellow! You've lost your head, Silas Lapham, +and if you don't look out you'll lose your money too." + +The Colonel laughed; he liked her to talk that way, +and promised he would hold up a while. + +"But there's no call to feel anxious, Pert. It's only +a question what to do with the money. I can reinvest it; +but I never had so much of it to spend before." + +"Spend it, then," said his wife; "don't throw it away! +And how came you to have so much more money than you know +what to do with, Silas Lapham?" she added. + +"Oh, I've made a very good thing in stocks lately." + +"In stocks? When did you take up gambling for a living?" + +"Gambling? Stuff! What gambling? Who said it was gambling?" + +"You have; many a time." + +"Oh yes, buying and selling on a margin. But this +was a bona fide transaction. I bought at forty-three +for an investment, and I sold at a hundred and seven; +and the money passed both times." + +"Well, you better let stocks alone," said his wife, +with the conservatism of her sex. "Next time you'll +buy at a hundred and seven and sell at forty three. +Then where'll you be?" + +"Left," admitted the Colonel. + +"You better stick to paint a while yet." The Colonel +enjoyed this too, and laughed again with the ease of a man +who knows what he is about. A few days after that he +came down to Nantasket with the radiant air which he wore +when he had done a good thing in business and wanted +his wife's sympathy. He did not say anything of what had +happened till he was alone with her in their own room; +but he was very gay the whole evening, and made several +jokes which Penelope said nothing but very great prosperity +could excuse: they all understood these moods of his. + +"Well, what is it, Silas?" asked his wife when the time came. +"Any more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint +business with you?" + +"Something better than that." + +"I could think of a good many better things," said his wife, +with a sigh of latent bitterness. "What's this one?" + +"I've had a visitor." + +"Who?" + +"Can't you guess?" + +"I don't want to try. Who was it?" + +"Rogers." + +Mrs. Lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared +at the smile on her husband's face, where he sat facing her. + +"I guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, Si," +she said, a little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin +about it unless you had some good news. I don't know +what the miracle is, but if you could tell quick----" + +She stopped like one who can say no more. + +"I will, Persis," said her husband, and with that awed +tone in which he rarely spoke of anything but the virtues +of his paint. "He came to borrow money of me, and I +lent him it. That's the short of it. The long----" + +"Go on," said his wife, with gentle patience. + +"Well, Pert, I was never so much astonished in my +life as I was to see that man come into my office. +You might have knocked me down with--I don't know what." + +"I don't wonder. Go on!" + +"And he was as much embarrassed as I was. There we stood, +gaping at each other, and I hadn't hardly sense enough +to ask him to take a chair. I don't know just how we +got at it. And I don't remember just how it was that he +said he came to come to me. But he had got hold of a +patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, +and there he was wanting me to supply him the funds." + +"Go on!" said Mrs. Lapham, with her voice further +in her throat. + +"I never felt the way you did about Rogers, but I know how you +always did feel, and I guess I surprised him with my answer. +He had brought along a lot of stock as security----" + +"You didn't take it, Silas!" his wife flashed out. + +"Yes, I did, though," said Lapham. "You wait. We settled +our business, and then we went into the old thing, +from the very start. And we talked it all over. +And when we got through we shook hands. Well, I don't know +when it's done me so much good to shake hands with anybody." + +"And you told him--you owned up to him that you were +in the wrong, Silas?" + +"No, I didn't," returned the Colonel promptly; "for I +wasn't. And before we got through, I guess he saw it +the same as I did." + +"Oh, no matter! so you had the chance to show how you felt." + +"But I never felt that way," persisted the Colonel. +"I've lent him the money, and I've kept his stocks. +And he got what he wanted out of me." + +"Give him back his stocks!" + +"No, I shan't. Rogers came to borrow. He didn't come +to beg. You needn't be troubled about his stocks. +They're going to come up in time; but just now they're +so low down that no bank would take them as security, +and I've got to hold them till they do rise. I hope you're +satisfied now, Persis," said her husband; and he looked +at her with the willingness to receive the reward of a good +action which we all feel when we have performed one. +"I lent him the money you kept me from spending on +the house." + +"Truly, Si? Well, I'm satisfied," said Mrs. Lapham, +with a deep tremulous breath. "The Lord has been good +to you, Silas," she continued solemnly. "You may laugh +if you choose, and I don't know as I believe in his +interfering a great deal; but I believe he's interfered +this time; and I tell you, Silas, it ain't always he gives +people a chance to make it up to others in this life. +I've been afraid you'd die, Silas, before you got the chance; +but he's let you live to make it up to Rogers." + +"I'm glad to be let live," said Lapham stubbornly, +"but I hadn't anything to make up to Milton K. Rogers. +And if God has let me live for that----" + +"Oh, say what you please, Si! Say what you please, +now you've done it! I shan't stop you. You've taken +the one spot--the one SPECK--off you that was ever there, +and I'm satisfied." + +"There wa'n't ever any speck there," Lapham held out, +lapsing more and more into his vernacular; "and what I +done I done for you, Persis." + +"And I thank you for your own soul's sake, Silas." + +"I guess my soul's all right," said Lapham. + +"And I want you should promise me one thing more." + +"Thought you said you were satisfied?" + +"I am. But I want you should promise me this: that you +won't let anything tempt you--anything!--to ever trouble +Rogers for that money you lent him. No matter what +happens--no matter if you lose it all. Do you promise?" + +"Why, I don't ever EXPECT to press him for it. +That's what I said to myself when I lent it. And of course +I'm glad to have that old trouble healed up. I don't THINK +I ever did Rogers any wrong, and I never did think so; +but if I DID do it--IF I did--I'm willing to call it square, +if I never see a cent of my money back again." + +"Well, that's all," said his wife. + +They did not celebrate his reconciliation with his old +enemy--for such they had always felt him to be since he +ceased to be an ally--by any show of joy or affection. +It was not in their tradition, as stoical for the woman +as for the man, that they should kiss or embrace each +other at such a moment. She was content to have told +him that he had done his duty, and he was content with +her saying that. But before she slept she found words +to add that she always feared the selfish part he had +acted toward Rogers had weakened him, and left him less +able to overcome any temptation that might beset him; +and that was one reason why she could never be easy about it. +Now she should never fear for him again. + +This time he did not explicitly deny her forgiving impeachment. +"Well, it's all past and gone now, anyway; and I don't +want you should think anything more about it." + +He was man enough to take advantage of the high favour +in which he stood when he went up to town, and to abuse it +by bringing Corey down to supper. His wife could not help +condoning the sin of disobedience in him at such a time. +Penelope said that between the admiration she felt +for the Colonel's boldness and her mother's forbearance, +she was hardly in a state to entertain company that evening; +but she did what she could. + +Irene liked being talked to better than talking, and when +her sister was by she was always, tacitly or explicitly, +referring to her for confirmation of what she said. +She was content to sit and look pretty as she looked +at the young man and listened to her sister's drolling. +She laughed and kept glancing at Corey to make sure that he +was understanding her. When they went out on the veranda +to see the moon on the water, Penelope led the way and +Irene followed. + +They did not look at the moonlight long. The young +man perched on the rail of the veranda, and Irene took +one of the red-painted rocking-chairs where she could +conveniently look at him and at her sister, who sat +leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase is. +That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, +glimpsed now and then in the moonlight as she turned it +or lifted it a little, had a fascination which kept his eye. +Her talk was very unliterary, and its effect seemed +hardly conscious. She was far from epigram in her funning. +She told of this trifle and that; she sketched the +characters and looks of people who had interested her, +and nothing seemed to have escaped her notice; she mimicked +a little, but not much; she suggested, and then the +affair represented itself as if without her agency. +She did not laugh; when Corey stopped she made a soft +cluck in her throat, as if she liked his being amused, +and went on again. + +The Colonel, left alone with his wife for the first time +since he had come from town, made haste to take the word. +"Well, Pert, I've arranged the whole thing with Rogers, +and I hope you'll be satisfied to know that he owes me +twenty thousand dollars, and that I've got security from him +to the amount of a fourth of that, if I was to force his +stocks to a sale." + +"How came he to come down with you?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"Who? Rogers?" + +"Mr. Corey." + +"Corey? Oh!" said Lapham, affecting not to have thought +she could mean Corey. "He proposed it." + +"Likely!" jeered his wife, but with perfect amiability. + +"It's so," protested the Colonel. "We got talking about +a matter just before I left, and he walked down to the boat +with me; and then he said if I didn't mind he guessed +he'd come along down and go back on the return boat. +Of course I couldn't let him do that." + +"It's well for you you couldn't." + +"And I couldn't do less than bring him here to tea." + +"Oh, certainly not." + +"But he ain't going to stay the night--unless," +faltered Lapham, "you want him to." + +"Oh, of course, I want him to! I guess he'll stay, probably." + +"Well, you know how crowded that last boat always is, +and he can't get any other now." + +Mrs. Lapham laughed at the simple wile. "I hope you'll +be just as well satisfied, Si, if it turns out he doesn't +want Irene after all." + +"Pshaw, Persis! What are you always bringing that up for?" +pleaded the Colonel. Then he fell silent, and presently +his rude, strong face was clouded with an unconscious frown. + +"There!" cried his wife, startling him from his abstraction. +"I see how you'd feel; and I hope that you'll remember +who you've got to blame." + +"I'll risk it," said Lapham, with the confidence of a man +used to success. + +From the veranda the sound of Penelope's lazy tone came +through the closed windows, with joyous laughter from +Irene and peals from Corey. + +"Listen to that!" said her father within, swelling up with +inexpressible satisfaction. "That girl can talk for twenty, +right straight along. She's better than a circus any day. +I wonder what she's up to now." + +"Oh, she's probably getting off some of those yarns +of hers, or telling about some people. She can't step +out of the house without coming back with more things +to talk about than most folks would bring back from Japan. +There ain't a ridiculous person she's ever seen but what +she's got something from them to make you laugh at; +and I don't believe we've ever had anybody in the house +since the girl could talk that she hain't got some +saying from, or some trick that'll paint 'em out so't you +can see 'em and hear 'em. Sometimes I want to stop her; +but when she gets into one of her gales there ain't any +standing up against her. I guess it 's lucky for Irene +that she's got Pen there to help entertain her company. +I can't ever feel down where Pen is." + +"That's so," said the Colonel. "And I guess she's got +about as much culture as any of them. Don't you?" + +"She reads a great deal," admitted her mother. "She seems +to be at it the whole while. I don't want she should +injure her health, and sometimes I feel like snatchin' +the books away from her. I don't know as it's good +for a girl to read so much, anyway, especially novels. +I don't want she should get notions." + +"Oh, I guess Pen'll know how to take care of herself," +said Lapham. + +"She's got sense enough. But she ain't so practical +as Irene. She's more up in the clouds--more of what you +may call a dreamer. Irene's wide-awake every minute; +and I declare, any one to see these two together when +there's anything to be done, or any lead to be taken, +would say Irene was the oldest, nine times out of ten. +It's only when they get to talking that you can see Pen's got +twice as much brains." + +"Well," said Lapham, tacitly granting this point, +and leaning back in his chair in supreme content. +"Did you ever see much nicer girls anywhere?" + +His wife laughed at his pride. "I presume they're as much +swans as anybody's geese." + +"No; but honestly, now!" + +"Oh, they'll do; but don't you be silly, if you can +help it, Si." + +The young people came in, and Corey said it was time for +his boat. Mrs. Lapham pressed him to stay, but he persisted, +and he would not let the Colonel send him to the boat; +he said he would rather walk. Outside, he pushed along toward +the boat, which presently he could see lying at her landing +in the bay, across the sandy tract to the left of the hotels. +From time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk, +as a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then +he went forward at a swifter pace. "She's charming!" +he said, and he thought he had spoken aloud. +He found himself floundering about in the deep sand, +wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat +just before she started. The clerk came to take his fare, +and Corey looked radiantly up at him in his lantern-light, +with a smile that he must have been wearing a long time; +his cheek was stiff with it. Once some people who stood +near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then he +suspected himself of having laughed outright. + + + +XI. + + +COREY put off his set smile with the help of a frown, +of which he first became aware after reaching home, +when his father asked-- + +"Anything gone wrong with your department of the fine +arts to-day, Tom?" + +"Oh no--no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving +his brows from the strain upon them, and beaming again. +"But I was thinking whether you were not perhaps right +in your impression that it might be well for you to make +Colonel Lapham's acquaintance before a great while." + +"Has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked Bromfield Corey, +laying aside his book and taking his lean knee between +his clasped hands. + +"Oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to reply. +"I was merely thinking whether it might not begin to +seem intentional, your not doing it." + +"Well, Tom, you know I have been leaving it altogether +to you----" + +"Oh, I understand, of course, and I didn't mean to urge +anything of the kind----" + +"You are so very much more of a Bostonian than I am, you know, +that I've been waiting your motion in entire confidence +that you would know just what to do, and when to do it. +If I had been left quite to my own lawless impulses, +I think I should have called upon your padrone at once. +It seems to me that my father would have found some way of +showing that he expected as much as that from people placed +in the relation to him that we hold to Colonel Lapham." + +"Do you think so?" asked the young man. + +"Yes. But you know I don't pretend to be an authority +in such matters. As far as they go, I am always +in the hands of your mother and you children." + +"I'm very sorry, sir. I had no idea I was over-ruling +your judgment. I only wanted to spare you a formality +that didn't seem quite a necessity yet. I'm very sorry," +he said again, and this time with more comprehensive regret. +"I shouldn't like to have seemed remiss with a man who has +been so considerate of me. They are all very good-natured." + +"I dare say," said Bromfield Corey, with the satisfaction +which no elder can help feeling in disabling the judgment +of a younger man, "that it won't be too late if I go +down to your office with you to-morrow." + +"No, no. I didn't imagine your doing it at once, sir." + +"Ah, but nothing can prevent me from doing a thing +when once I take the bit in my teeth," said the father, +with the pleasure which men of weak will sometimes take +in recognising their weakness. "How does their new house +get on?" + +"I believe they expect to be in it before New Year." + +"Will they be a great addition to society?" +asked Bromfield Corey, with unimpeachable seriousness. + +"I don't quite know what you mean," returned the son, +a little uneasily. + +"Ah, I see that you do, Tom." + +"No one can help feeling that they are all people of good +sense and--right ideas." + +"Oh, that won't do. If society took in all the people +of right ideas and good sense, it would expand beyond +the calling capacity of its most active members. +Even your mother's social conscientiousness could not +compass it. Society is a very different sort of thing +from good sense and right ideas. It is based upon them, +of course, but the airy, graceful, winning superstructure +which we all know demands different qualities. +Have your friends got these qualities,--which may be felt, +but not defined?" + +The son laughed. "To tell you the truth, sir, I don't +think they have the most elemental ideas of society, +as we understand it. I don't believe Mrs. Lapham ever +gave a dinner." + +"And with all that money!" sighed the father. + +"I don't believe they have the habit of wine at table. +I suspect that when they don't drink tea and coffee with +their dinner, they drink ice-water." + +"Horrible!" said Bromfield Corey. + +"It appears to me that this defines them." + +"Oh yes. There are people who give dinners, and who are +not cognoscible. But people who have never yet given +a dinner, how is society to assimilate them?" + +"It digests a great many people," suggested the young man. + +"Yes; but they have always brought some sort of sauce +piquante with them. Now, as I understand you, +these friends of yours have no such sauce." + +"Oh, I don't know about that!" cried the son. + +"Oh, rude, native flavours, I dare say. But that isn't +what I mean. Well, then, they must spend. There is no +other way for them to win their way to general regard. +We must have the Colonel elected to the Ten O'clock Club, +and he must put himself down in the list of those willing +to entertain. Any one can manage a large supper. Yes, I see +a gleam of hope for him in that direction." + +In the morning Bromfield Corey asked his son whether he +should find Lapham at his place as early as eleven. + +"I think you might find him even earlier. I've never +been there before him. I doubt if the porter is there +much sooner." + +"Well, suppose I go with you, then?" + +"Why, if you like, sir," said the son, with some deprecation. + +"Oh, the question is, will HE like?" + +"I think he will, sir;" and the father could see that +his son was very much pleased. + +Lapham was rending an impatient course through the morning's +news when they appeared at the door of his inner room. +He looked up from the newspaper spread on the desk before him, +and then he stood up, making an indifferent feint of not +knowing that he knew Bromfield Corey by sight. + +"Good morning, Colonel Lapham," said the son, and Lapham +waited for him to say further, "I wish to introduce +my father." Then he answered, "Good morning," and added +rather sternly for the elder Corey, "How do you do, +sir? Will you take a chair?" and he pushed him one. + +They shook hands and sat down, and Lapham said +to his subordinate, "Have a seat;" but young Corey +remained standing, watching them in their observance of +each other with an amusement which was a little uneasy. +Lapham made his visitor speak first by waiting for him to do so. + +"I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Colonel Lapham, +and I ought to have come sooner to do so. My father +in your place would have expected it of a man in my place +at once, I believe. But I can't feel myself altogether +a stranger as it is. I hope Mrs. Lapham is well? And +your daughter?" + +"Thank you," said Lapham, "they're quite well." + +"They were very kind to my wife----" + +"Oh, that was nothing!" cried Lapham. "There's nothing +Mrs. Lapham likes better than a chance of that sort. +Mrs. Corey and the young ladies well?" + +"Very well, when I heard from them. They're out of town." + +"Yes, so I understood," said Lapham, with a nod toward +the son. "I believe Mr. Corey, here, told Mrs. Lapham." +He leaned back in his chair, stiffly resolute to show that he +was not incommoded by the exchange of these civilities. + +"Yes," said Bromfield Corey. "Tom has had the pleasure +which I hope for of seeing you all. I hope you're +able to make him useful to you here?" Corey looked +round Lapham's room vaguely, and then out at the clerks +in their railed enclosure, where his eye finally rested +on an extremely pretty girl, who was operating a type-writer. + +"Well, sir," replied Lapham, softening for the first time +with this approach to business, "I guess it will be our own +fault if we don't. By the way, Corey," he added, to the +younger man, as he gathered up some letters from his desk, +"here's something in your line. Spanish or French, +I guess." + +"I'll run them over," said Corey, taking them to his desk. + +His father made an offer to rise. + +"Don't go," said Lapham, gesturing him down again. +"I just wanted to get him away a minute. I don't care +to say it to his face,--I don't like the principle,--but +since you ask me about it, I'd just as lief say that I've +never had any young man take hold here equal to your son. +I don't know as you care" + +"You make me very happy," said Bromfield Corey. +"Very happy indeed. I've always had the idea that there +was something in my son, if he could only find the way +to work it out. And he seems to have gone into your +business for the love of it." + +"He went to work in the right way, sir! He told me about it. +He looked into it. And that paint is a thing that will +bear looking into." + +"Oh yes. You might think he had invented it, if you +heard him celebrating it." + +"Is that so?" demanded Lapham, pleased through +and through. "Well, there ain't any other way. +You've got to believe in a thing before you can put any +heart in it. Why, I had a partner in this thing once, +along back just after the war, and he used to be always +wanting to tinker with something else. 'Why,' says I, +'you've got the best thing in God's universe now. +Why ain't you satisfied?' I had to get rid of him at last. +I stuck to my paint, and that fellow's drifted round pretty +much all over the whole country, whittling his capital +down all the while, till here the other day I had to lend +him some money to start him new. No, sir, you've got +to believe in a thing. And I believe in your son. +And I don't mind telling you that, so far as he's gone, +he's a success." + +"That's very kind of you." + +"No kindness about it. As I was saying the other day +to a friend of mine, I've had many a fellow right out +of the street that had to work hard all his life, +and didn't begin to take hold like this son of yours." + +Lapham expanded with profound self-satisfaction. As he +probably conceived it, he had succeeded in praising, +in a perfectly casual way, the supreme excellence +of his paint, and his own sagacity and benevolence; +and here he was sitting face to face with Bromfield Corey, +praising his son to him, and receiving his grateful +acknowledgments as if he were the father of some office-boy +whom Lapham had given a place half but of charity. + +"Yes, sir, when your son proposed to take hold here, +I didn't have much faith in his ideas, that's the truth. +But I had faith in him, and I saw that he meant business +from the start. I could see it was born in him. +Any one could." + +"I'm afraid he didn't inherit it directly from me," +said Bromfield Corey; "but it's in the blood, +on both sides." "Well, sir, we can't help those things," +said Lapham compassionately. "Some of us have got it, +and some of us haven't. The idea is to make the most of +what we HAVE got." + +"Oh yes; that is the idea. By all means." + +"And you can't ever tell what's in you till you try. +Why, when I started this thing, I didn't more than half +understand my own strength. I wouldn't have said, +looking back, that I could have stood the wear and tear +of what I've been through. But I developed as I went along. +It's just like exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. +You can lift twice or three times as much after you've +been in training a month as you could before. And I +can see that it's going to be just so with your son. +His going through college won't hurt him,--he'll soon slough +all that off,--and his bringing up won't; don't be anxious +about it. I noticed in the army that some of the fellows +that had the most go-ahead were fellows that hadn't ever +had much more to do than girls before the war broke out. +Your son will get along." + +"Thank you," said Bromfield Corey, and smiled--whether +because his spirit was safe in the humility he +sometimes boasted, or because it was triply armed +in pride against anything the Colonel's kindness could do. + +"He'll get along. He's a good business man, and he's +a fine fellow. MUST you go?" asked Lapham, as Bromfield +Corey now rose more resolutely. "Well, glad to see you. +It was natural you should want to come and see what he +was about, and I'm glad you did. I should have felt +just so about it. Here is some of our stuff," he said, +pointing out the various packages in his office, +including the Persis Brand. + +"Ah, that's very nice, very nice indeed," said his visitor. +"That colour through the jar--very rich--delicious. +Is Persis Brand a name?" + +Lapham blushed. + +"Well, Persis is. I don't know as you saw an interview +that fellow published in the Events a while back?" + +"What is the Events?" + +"Well, it's that new paper Witherby's started." + +"No," said Bromfield Corey, "I haven't seen it. +I read The Daily," he explained; by which he meant The +Daily Advertiser, the only daily there is in the old- +fashioned Bostonian sense. + +"He put a lot of stuff in my mouth that I never said," +resumed Lapham; "but that's neither here nor there, +so long as you haven't seen it. Here's the department +your son's in," and he showed him the foreign labels. +Then he took him out into the warehouse to see the +large packages. At the head of the stairs, where his +guest stopped to nod to his son and say "Good-bye, Tom," +Lapham insisted upon going down to the lower door with him +"Well, call again," he said in hospitable dismissal. +"I shall always be glad to see you. There ain't a great +deal doing at this season." Bromfield Corey thanked him, +and let his hand remain perforce in Lapham's lingering grasp. +"If you ever like to ride after a good horse----" +the Colonel began. + +"Oh, no, no, no; thank you! The better the horse, the more +I should be scared. Tom has told me of your driving!" + +"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Colonel. "Well! every one +to his taste. Well, good morning, sir!" and he suffered +him to go. + +"Who is the old man blowing to this morning?" asked Walker, +the book-keeper, making an errand to Corey's desk. + +"My father." + +"Oh! That your father? I thought he must be one of your +Italian correspondents that you'd been showing round, +or Spanish." + +In fact, as Bromfield Corey found his way at his leisurely +pace up through the streets on which the prosperity +of his native city was founded, hardly any figure could +have looked more alien to its life. He glanced up and down +the facades and through the crooked vistas like a stranger, +and the swarthy fruiterer of whom he bought an apple, +apparently for the pleasure of holding it in his hand, +was not surprised that the purchase should be transacted +in his own tongue. + +Lapham walked back through the outer office to his own +room without looking at Corey, and during the day he spoke +to him only of business matters. That must have been +his way of letting Corey see that he was not overcome +by the honour of his father's visit. But he presented +himself at Nantasket with the event so perceptibly on +his mind that his wife asked: "Well, Silas, has Rogers +been borrowing any more money of you? I don't want you +should let that thing go too far. You've done enough." + +"You needn't be afraid. I've seen the last of Rogers +for one while." He hesitated, to give the fact an effect +of no importance. "Corey's father called this morning." + +"Did he?" said Mrs. Lapham, willing to humour his feint +of indifference. "Did HE want to borrow some money too?" +"Not as I understood." Lapham was smoking at great ease, +and his wife had some crocheting on the other side of the +lamp from him. + +The girls were on the piazza looking at the moon on +the water again. "There's no man in it to-night," +Penelope said, and Irene laughed forlornly. + +"What DID he want, then?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"Oh, I don't know. Seemed to be just a friendly call. +Said he ought to have come before." + +Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. Then she said: "Well, +I hope you're satisfied now." + +Lapham rejected the sympathy too openly offered. +"I don't know about being satisfied. I wa'n't in any +hurry to see him." + +His wife permitted him this pretence also. "What sort +of a person is he, anyway?" + +"Well, not much like his son. There's no sort of business +about him. I don't know just how you'd describe him. +He's tall; and he's got white hair and a moustache; +and his fingers are very long and limber. I couldn't help +noticing them as he sat there with his hands on the top +of his cane. Didn't seem to be dressed very much, and acted +just like anybody. Didn't talk much. Guess I did most +of the talking. Said he was glad I seemed to be getting +along so well with his son. He asked after you and Irene; +and he said he couldn't feel just like a stranger. +Said you had been very kind to his wife. Of course I turned +it off. Yes," said Lapham thoughtfully, with his hands +resting on his knees, and his cigar between the fingers +of his left hand, "I guess he meant to do the right thing, +every way. Don't know as I ever saw a much pleasanter man. +Dunno but what he's about the pleasantest man I ever +did see." He was not letting his wife see in his averted +face the struggle that revealed itself there--the +struggle of stalwart achievement not to feel flattered +at the notice of sterile elegance, not to be sneakingly +glad of its amiability, but to stand up and look at it +with eyes on the same level. God, who made us so much +like himself, but out of the dust, alone knows when +that struggle will end. The time had been when Lapham +could not have imagined any worldly splendour which his +dollars could not buy if he chose to spend them for it; +but his wife's half discoveries, taking form again in his +ignorance of the world, filled him with helpless misgiving. +A cloudy vision of something unpurchasable, where he +had supposed there was nothing, had cowed him in spite +of the burly resistance of his pride. + +"I don't see why he shouldn't be pleasant," said Mrs. Lapham. +"He's never done anything else." + +Lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy laugh. +"Pshaw, Persis! you never forget anything?" + +"Oh, I've got more than that to remember. I suppose you +asked him to ride after the mare?" + +"Well," said Lapham, reddening guiltily, "he said he +was afraid of a good horse." + +"Then, of course, you hadn't asked him." Mrs. Lapham +crocheted in silence, and her husband leaned back +in his chair and smoked. + +At last he said, "I'm going to push that house forward. +They're loafing on it. There's no reason why we shouldn't +be in it by Thanksgiving. I don't believe in moving in +the dead of winter." + +"We can wait till spring. We're very comfortable in the +old place," answered his wife. Then she broke out on him: +"What are you in such a hurry to get into that house +for? Do you want to invite the Coreys to a house-warming?" + +Lapham looked at her without speaking. + +"Don't you suppose I can see through you I declare, +Silas Lapham, if I didn't know different, I should say +you were about the biggest fool! Don't you know ANYthing? +Don't you know that it wouldn't do to ask those people +to our house before they've asked us to theirs? They'd +laugh in our faces!" + +"I don't believe they'd laugh in our faces. What's the +difference between our asking them and their asking us?" +demanded the Colonel sulkily. + +"Oh, well! If you don t see!" + +"Well, I DON'T see. But I don't want to ask them +to the house. I suppose, if I want to, I can invite +him down to a fish dinner at Taft's." + +Mrs. Lapham fell back in her chair, and let her work +drop in her lap with that "Tckk!" in which her sex knows +how to express utter contempt and despair. + +"What's the matter?" + +"Well, if you DO such a thing, Silas, I'll never speak +to you again! It's no USE! It's NO use! I did think, +after you'd behaved so well about Rogers, I might trust +you a little. But I see I can't. I presume as long as you +live you'll have to be nosed about like a perfect--I don't +know what!" + +"What are you making such a fuss about?" demanded Lapham, +terribly crestfallen, but trying to pluck up a spirit. +"I haven't done anything yet. I can't ask your advice +about anything any more without having you fly out. +Confound it! I shall do as I please after this." + +But as if he could not endure that contemptuous atmosphere, +he got up, and his wife heard him in the dining-room +pouring himself out a glass of ice-water, and then heard +him mount the stairs to their room, and slam its door +after him. + +"Do you know what your father's wanting to do now?" +Mrs. Lapham asked her eldest daughter, who lounged +into the parlour a moment with her wrap stringing +from her arm, while the younger went straight to bed. +"He wants to invite Mr. Corey's father to a fish dinner +at Taft's!" + +Penelope was yawning with her hand on her mouth; +she stopped, and, with a laugh of amused expectance, +sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged forward. + +"Why! what in the world has put the Colonel up to that?" + +"Put him up to it! There's that fellow, who ought have come +to see him long ago, drops into his office this morning, +and talks five minutes with him, and your father is +flattered out of his five senses. He's crazy to get +in with those people, and I shall have a perfect battle +to keep him within bounds." + +"Well, Persis, ma'am, you can't say but what you began it," +said Penelope. + +"Oh yes, I began it," confessed Mrs. Lapham. "Pen," she +broke out, "what do you suppose he means by it?" + +"Who? Mr. Corey's father? What does the Colonel think?" + +"Oh, the Colonel!" cried Mrs. Lapham. She added tremulously: +"Perhaps he IS right. He DID seem to take a fancy to her +last summer, and now if he's called in that way . . ." She left +her daughter to distribute the pronouns aright, and resumed: +"Of course, I should have said once that there wasn't +any question about it. I should have said so last year; +and I don't know what it is keeps me from saying so now. +I suppose I know a little more about things than I did; +and your father's being so bent on it sets me all in +a twitter. He thinks his money can do everything. +Well, I don't say but what it can, a good many. And 'Rene +is as good a child as ever there was; and I don't see +but what she's pretty-appearing enough to suit any one. +She's pretty-behaved, too; and she IS the most capable girl. +I presume young men don't care very much for such +things nowadays; but there ain't a great many girls +can go right into the kitchen, and make such a custard +as she did yesterday. And look at the way she does, +through the whole house! She can't seem to go into a room +without the things fly right into their places. And if she +had to do it to-morrow, she could make all her own dresses +a great deal better than them we pay to do it. I don't +say but what he's about as nice a fellow as ever stepped. +But there! I'm ashamed of going on so." + +"Well, mother," said the girl after a pause, in which she +looked as if a little weary of the subject, "why do you +worry about it? If it's to be it'll be, and if it isn't----" + +"Yes, that's what I tell your father. But when it comes +to myself, I see how hard it is for him to rest quiet. +I'm afraid we shall all do something we'll repent +of afterwards." + +"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, "I don't intend to do anything wrong; +but if I do, I promise not to be sorry for it. I'll go +that far. And I think I wouldn't be sorry for it beforehand, +if I were in your place, mother. Let the Colonel go on! He +likes to manoeuvre, and he isn't going to hurt any one. +The Corey family can take care of themselves, I guess." + +She laughed in her throat, drawing down the corners +of her mouth, and enjoying the resolution with which her +mother tried to fling off the burden of her anxieties. +"Pen! I believe you're right. You always do see things +in such a light! There! I don't care if he brings him +down every day." + +"Well, ma'am," said Pen, "I don't believe +'Rene would, either. She's just so indifferent!" + +The Colonel slept badly that night, and in the morning +Mrs. Lapham came to breakfast without him. + +"Your father ain't well," she reported. "He's had one +of his turns." + +"I should have thought he had two or three of them," +said Penelope, "by the stamping round I heard. Isn't he +coming to breakfast?" + +"Not just yet," said her mother. "He's asleep, +and he'll be all right if he gets his nap out. +I don't want you girls should make any great noise." +"Oh, we'll be quiet enough," returned Penelope. +"Well, I'm glad the Colonel isn't sojering. At first I +thought he might be sojering." She broke into a laugh, +and, struggling indolently with it, looked at her sister. +"You don't think it'll be necessary for anybody to come +down from the office and take orders from him while he's +laid up, do you, mother?" she inquired. + +"Pen!" cried Irene. + +"He'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock boat," +said the mother sharply. + +"I think papa works too hard all through the summer. +Why don't you make him take a rest, mamma?" asked Irene. + +"Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every year. +It used to be so that he'd take a little time off now and then; +but I declare, he hardly ever seems to breathe now away from +his office. And this year he says he doesn't intend to go +down to Lapham, except to see after the works for a few days. +I don't know what to do with the man any more! Seems +as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. +It scares me to think what would happen to him if he +lost it. I know one thing," concluded Mrs. Lapham. +"He shall not go back to the office to-day." + +"Then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat," +Pen reminded her. + +"No, he won't. You can just drive over to the hotel as soon +as you're through, girls, and telegraph that he's not well, +and won't be at the office till to-morrow. I'm not going +to have them send anybody down here to bother him." + +"That's a blow," said Pen. "I didn't know but they +might send----" she looked demurely at her sister--"Dennis!" + +"Mamma!" cried Irene. + +"Well, I declare, there's no living with this family +any more," said Penelope. + +"There, Pen, be done!" commanded her mother. But perhaps she +did not intend to forbid her teasing. It gave a pleasant +sort of reality to the affair that was in her mind, +and made what she wished appear not only possible but probable. + +Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling +as each boat departed without him, through the day; +before night he became very cross, in spite of the efforts +of the family to soothe him, and grumbled that he had been +kept from going up to town. "I might as well have gone +as not," he repeated, till his wife lost her patience. + +"Well, you shall go to-morrow, Silas, if you have to be +carried to the boat." + +"I declare," said Penelope, "the Colonel don't pet worth +a cent." + +The six o'clock boat brought Corey. The girls were +sitting on the piazza, and Irene saw him first. + +"O Pen!" she whispered, with her heart in her face; +and Penelope had no time for mockery before he was at +the steps. + +"I hope Colonel Lapham isn't ill," he said, and they +could hear their mother engaged in a moral contest +with their father indoors. + +"Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It don't matter +HOW he sees you at the office, shirt-sleeves or not. +You're in a gentleman's house now--or you ought to be--and +you shan't see company in your dressing-gown." + +Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother's anger. + +"Oh, he's very much better, thank you!" said Irene, +speaking up loudly to drown the noise of the controversy. + +"I'm glad of that," said Corey, and when she led +him indoors the vanquished Colonel met his visitor +in a double-breasted frock-coat, which he was still +buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at once +that Corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, +and when he was clear that he had come out of civility, +surprise mingled with his gratification that he +should be the object of solicitude to the young man. +In Lapham's circle of acquaintance they complained +when they were sick, but they made no womanish inquiries +after one another's health, and certainly paid no visits +of sympathy till matters were serious. He would have +enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he +had been allowed to do so; and after tea, which Corey took +with them, he would have remained to entertain him if his +wife had not sent him to bed. She followed him to see +that he took some medicine she had prescribed for him, +but she went first to Penelope's room, where she found +the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading. + +"You better go down," said the mother. "I've got to go +to your father, and Irene is all alone with Mr. Corey; +and I know she'll be on pins and needles without you're +there to help make it go off." + +"She'd better try to get along without me, mother," +said Penelope soberly. "I can't always be with them." + +"Well," replied Mrs. Lapham, "then I must. There'll be +a perfect Quaker meeting down there." + +"Oh, I guess 'Rene will find something to say if you +leave her to herself. Or if she don't, HE must. +It'll be all right for you to go down when you get ready; +but I shan't go till toward the last. If he's coming +here to see Irene--and I don't believe he's come on +father's account--he wants to see her and not me. +If she can't interest him alone, perhaps he'd as well find +it out now as any time. At any rate, I guess you'd better +make the experiment. You'll know whether it's a success +if he comes again." + +"Well," said the mother, "may be you're right. I'll go +down directly. It does seem as if he did mean something, +after all." + +Mrs. Lapham did not hasten to return to her guest. +In her own girlhood it was supposed that if a young man +seemed to be coming to see a girl, it was only common- +sense to suppose that he wished to see her alone; and her +life in town had left Mrs. Lapham's simple traditions +in this respect unchanged. She did with her daughter +as her mother would have done with her. + +Where Penelope sat with her book, she heard the continuous +murmur of voices below, and after a long interval she +heard her mother descend. She did not read the open +book that lay in her lap, though she kept her eyes fast +on the print. Once she rose and almost shut the door, +so that she could scarcely hear; then she opened it +wide again with a self-disdainful air, and resolutely +went back to her book, which again she did not read. +But she remained in her room till it was nearly time for +Corey to return to his boat. + +When they were alone again, Irene made a feint of scolding +her for leaving her to entertain Mr. Corey. + +"Why! didn't you have a pleasant call?" asked Penelope. + +Irene threw her arms round her. "Oh, it was a SPLENDID +call! I didn't suppose I could make it go off so well. +We talked nearly the whole time about you!" + +"I don't think THAT was a very interesting subject." + +"He kept asking about you. He asked everything. +You don't know how much he thinks of you, Pen. O Pen! +what do you think made him come? Do you think he really +did come to see how papa was?" Irene buried her face +in her sister's neck. + +Penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting. +"Well," she said, "I don't think he did, altogether." + +Irene, all glowing, released her. "Don't you--don't you +REALLY? O Pen! don't you think he IS nice? Don't you +think he's handsome? Don't you think I behaved horridly +when we first met him this evening, not thanking him for +coming? I know he thinks I've no manners. But it seemed +as if it would be thanking him for coming to see me. +Ought I to have asked him to come again, when he said +good-night? I didn't; I couldn't. Do you believe he'll +think I don't want him to? You don't believe he would +keep coming if he didn't--want to----" + +"He hasn't kept coming a great deal, yet," suggested Penelope. + +"No; I know he hasn't. But if he--if he should?" + +"Then I should think he wanted to." + +"Oh, would you--WOULD you? Oh, how good you always are, +Pen! And you always say what you think. I wish there +was some one coming to see you too. That's all that I +don't like about it. Perhaps----He was telling about +his friend there in Texas----" + +"Well," said Penelope, "his friend couldn't call often +from Texas. You needn't ask Mr. Corey to trouble +about me, 'Rene. I think I can manage to worry along, +if you're satisfied." + +"Oh, I AM, Pen. When do you suppose he'll come again?" +Irene pushed some of Penelope's things aside on the +dressing-case, to rest her elbow and talk at ease. +Penelope came up and put them back. + +"Well, not to-night," she said; "and if that's what you're +sitting up for----" + +Irene caught her round the neck again, and ran out +of the room. + +The Colonel was packed off on the eight o'clock boat +the next morning; but his recovery did not prevent Corey +from repeating his visit in a week. This time Irene came +radiantly up to Penelope's room, where she had again +withdrawn herself. "You must come down, Pen," she said. +"He's asked if you're not well, and mamma says you've got +to come." + +After that Penelope helped Irene through with her calls, +and talked them over with her far into the night after Corey +was gone. But when the impatient curiosity of her mother +pressed her for some opinion of the affair, she said, +"You know as much as I do, mother." + +"Don't he ever say anything to you about her--praise +her up, any?" + +"He's never mentioned Irene to me." + +"He hasn't to me, either," said Mrs. Lapham, with a sigh +of trouble. "Then what makes him keep coming?" + +"I can't tell you. One thing, he says there isn't a house +open in Boston where he's acquainted. Wait till some +of his friends get back, and then if he keeps coming, +it'll be time to inquire." + +"Well!" said the mother; but as the weeks passed she +was less and less able to attribute Corey's visits to his +loneliness in town, and turned to her husband for comfort. + +"Silas, I don't know as we ought to let young Corey keep +coming so. I don't quite like it, with all his family away." + +"He's of age," said the Colonel. "He can go where he pleases. +It don't matter whether his family's here or not." + +"Yes, but if they don't want he should come? Should you +feel just right about letting him?" + +"How're you going to stop him? I swear, Persis, I don't know +what's got over you! What is it? You didn't use to be so. +But to hear you talk, you'd think those Coreys were too +good for this world, and we wa'n't fit for 'em to walk on." + +"I'm not going to have 'em say we took an advantage +of their being away and tolled him on." + +"I should like to HEAR 'em say it!" cried Lapham. +"Or anybody!" + +"Well," said his wife, relinquishing this point of anxiety, +"I can't make out whether he cares anything for her or not. +And Pen can't tell either; or else she won't." + +"Oh, I guess he cares for her, fast enough," said the Colonel. + +"I can't make out that he's said or done the first thing +to show it." + +"Well, I was better than a year getting my courage up." + +"Oh, that was different," said Mrs. Lapham, in contemptuous +dismissal of the comparison, and yet with a certain fondness. +"I guess, if he cared for her, a fellow in his position +wouldn't be long getting up his courage to speak to Irene." + +Lapham brought his fist down on the table between them. + +"Look here, Persis! Once for all, now, don't you ever +let me hear you say anything like that again! I'm worth +nigh on to a million, and I've made it every cent myself; +and my girls are the equals of anybody, I don't care +who it is. He ain't the fellow to take on any airs; +but if he ever tries it with me, I'll send him to the right +about mighty quick. I'll have a talk with him, if----" + +"No, no; don't do that!" implored his wife. "I didn't +mean anything. I don't know as I meant ANYthing. +He's just as unassuming as he can be, and I think Irene's +a match for anybody. You just let things go on. It'll be +all right. You never can tell how it is with young people. +Perhaps SHE'S offish. Now you ain't--you ain't going +to say anything?" + +Lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the more easily, +no doubt, because after his explosion he must have perceived +that his pride itself stood in the way of what his pride +had threatened. He contented himself with his wife's +promise that she would never again present that offensive +view of the case, and she did not remain without a certain +support in his sturdy self-assertion. + + + +XII. + + +MRS. COREY returned with her daughters in the early +days of October, having passed three or four weeks at +Intervale after leaving Bar Harbour. They were somewhat +browner than they were when they left town in June, +but they were not otherwise changed. Lily, the elder +of the girls, had brought back a number of studies of kelp +and toadstools, with accessory rocks and rotten logs, +which she would never finish up and never show any one, +knowing the slightness of their merit. Nanny, the younger, +had read a great many novels with a keen sense of their +inaccuracy as representations of life, and had seen +a great deal of life with a sad regret for its difference +from fiction. They were both nice girls, accomplished, +well-dressed of course, and well enough looking; +but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains +whom their taste would allow to influence their fate, +and they had come home to the occupations they had left, +with no hopes and no fears to distract them. + +In the absence of these they were fitted to take +the more vivid interest in their brother's affairs, +which they could see weighed upon their mother's mind +after the first hours of greeting. + +"Oh, it seems to have been going on, and your father has +never written a word about it," she said, shaking her head. + +"What good would it have done?" asked Nanny, who was +little and fair, with rings of light hair that filled +a bonnet-front very prettily; she looked best in a bonnet. +"It would only have worried you. He could not have +stopped Tom; you couldn't, when you came home to do it." + +"I dare say papa didn't know much about it," suggested Lily. +She was a tall, lean, dark girl, who looked as if she +were not quite warm enough, and whom you always associated +with wraps of different aesthetic effect after you had +once seen her. + +It is a serious matter always to the women of his family +when a young man gives them cause to suspect that he +is interested in some other woman. A son-in-law or +brother-in-law does not enter the family; he need not be +caressed or made anything of; but the son's or brother's +wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they +cannot deny. Some convention of their sex obliges them +to show her affection, to like or to seem to like her, +to take her to their intimacy, however odious she may +be to them. With the Coreys it was something more than +an affair of sentiment. They were by no means poor, +and they were not dependent money-wise upon Tom Corey; +but the mother had come, without knowing it, to rely upon +his sense, his advice in everything, and the sisters, +seeing him hitherto so indifferent to girls, had insensibly +grown to regard him as altogether their own till he +should be released, not by his marriage, but by theirs, +an event which had not approached with the lapse of time. +Some kinds of girls--they believed that they could readily +have chosen a kind--might have taken him without taking +him from them; but this generosity could not be hoped +for in such a girl as Miss Lapham. + +"Perhaps," urged their mother, "it would not be so bad. +She seemed an affectionate little thing with her mother, +without a great deal of character though she was so capable +about some things." + +"Oh, she'll be an affectionate little thing with Tom too, +you may be sure," said Nanny. "And that characterless +capability becomes the most in tense narrow-mindedness. +She'll think we were against her from the beginning." + +"She has no cause for that," Lily interposed, "and we +shall not give her any." + +"Yes, we shall," retorted Nanny. "We can't help it; +and if we can't, her own ignorance would be cause enough." + +"I can't feel that she's altogether ignorant," +said Mrs. Corey justly. + +"Of course she can read and write," admitted Nanny. + +"I can't imagine what he finds to talk about with her," +said Lily. + +"Oh, THAT'S very simple," returned her sister. + +"They talk about themselves, with occasional references +to each other. I have heard people 'going on' on the +hotel piazzas. She's embroidering, or knitting, or tatting, +or something of that kind; and he says she seems quite +devoted to needlework, and she says, yes, she has a perfect +passion for it, and everybody laughs at her for it; +but she can't help it, she always was so from a child, +and supposes she always shall be,--with remote and +minute particulars. And she ends by saying that perhaps +he does not like people to tat, or knit, or embroider, +or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could +make her think such a thing? but for his part he likes +boating rather better, or if you're in the woods camping. +Then she lets him take up one corner of her work, +and perhaps touch her fingers; and that encourages +him to say that he supposes nothing could induce her +to drop her work long enough to go down on the rocks, +or out among the huckleberry bushes; and she puts her +head on one side, and says she doesn't know really. +And then they go, and he lies at her feet on the rocks, +or picks huckleberries and drops them in her lap, and they +go on talking about themselves, and comparing notes to see +how they differ from each other. And----" + +"That will do, Nanny," said her mother. + +Lily smiled autumnally. "Oh, disgusting!" + +"Disgusting? Not at all!" protested her sister. +"It's very amusing when you see it, and when you do it----" + +"It's always a mystery what people see in each other," +observed Mrs. Corey severely. + +"Yes," Nanny admitted, "but I don't know that there is much +comfort for us in the application." "No, there isn't," +said her mother. + +"The most that we can do is to hope for the best till +we know the worst. Of course we shall make the best +of the worst when it comes." + +"Yes, and perhaps it would not be so very bad. +I was saying to your father when I was here in July +that those things can always be managed. You must face +them as if they were nothing out of the way, and try +not to give any cause for bitterness among ourselves." + +"That's true. But I don't believe in too much +resignation beforehand. It amounts to concession," said Nanny. + +"Of course we should oppose it in all proper ways," +returned her mother. + +Lily had ceased to discuss the matter. In virtue of her +artistic temperament, she was expected not to be very practical. +It was her mother and her sister who managed, submitting +to the advice and consent of Corey what they intended to do. + +"Your father wrote me that he had called on Colonel Lapham +at his place of business," said Mrs. Corey, seizing her +first chance of approaching the subject with her son. + +"Yes," said Corey. "A dinner was father's idea, but he +came down to a call, at my suggestion." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey, in a tone of relief, as if the +statement threw a new light on the fact that Corey +had suggested the visit. "He said so little about +it in his letter that I didn't know just how it came about." + +"I thought it was right they should meet," explained the son, +"and so did father. I was glad that I suggested it, +afterward; it was extremely gratifying to Colonel Lapham." + +"Oh, it was quite right in every way. I suppose you +have seen something of the family during the summer." + +"Yes, a good deal. I've been down at Nantasket rather often." + +Mrs. Corey let her eyes droop. Then she asked: "Are +they well?" + +"Yes, except Lapham himself, now and then. I went down once +or twice to see him. He hasn't given himself any vacation +this summer; he has such a passion for his business that I +fancy he finds it hard being away from it at any time, +and he's made his new house an excuse for staying" +"Oh yes, his house! Is it to be something fine?" + +"Yes; it's a beautiful house. Seymour is doing it." + +"Then, of course, it will be very handsome. I suppose +the young ladies are very much taken up with it; +and Mrs. Lapham." + +"Mrs. Lapham, yes. I don't think the young ladies care +so much about it." + +"It must be for them. Aren't they ambitious?" +asked Mrs. Corey, delicately feeling her way. + +Her son thought a while. Then he answered with a smile-- + +"No, I don't really think they are. They are unambitious, +I should say." Mrs. Corey permitted herself a long breath. +But her son added, "It's the parents who are ambitious +for them," and her respiration became shorter again. + +"Yes," she said. + +"They're very simple, nice girls," pursued Corey. +"I think you'll like the elder, when you come to know her." + +When you come to know her. The words implied an expectation +that the two families were to be better acquainted. + +"Then she is more intellectual than her sister?" +Mrs. Corey ventured. + +"Intellectual?" repeated her son. "No; that isn't +the word, quite. Though she certainly has more mind." + +"The younger seemed very sensible." + +"Oh, sensible, yes. And as practical as she's pretty. +She can do all sorts of things, and likes to be doing them. +Don't you think she's an extraordinary beauty?" + +"Yes--yes, she is," said Mrs. Corey, at some cost. + +"She's good, too," said Corey, "and perfectly innocent +and transparent. I think you will like her the better +the more you know her." + +"I thought her very nice from the beginning," said the +mother heroically; and then nature asserted itself in her. +"But I should be afraid that she might perhaps be a +little bit tiresome at last; her range of ideas seemed +so extremely limited." + +"Yes, that's what I was afraid of. But, as a matter of fact, +she isn't. She interests you by her very limitations. +You can see the working of her mind, like that of a child. +She isn't at all conscious even of her beauty." + +"I don't believe young men can tell whether girls +are conscious or not," said Mrs. Corey. "But I am not +saying the Miss Laphams are not----" Her son sat musing, +with an inattentive smile on his face. "What is it?" + +"Oh! nothing. I was thinking of Miss Lapham and something +she was saying. She's very droll, you know." + +"The elder sister? Yes, you told me that. Can you see +the workings of her mind too?" + +"No; she's everything that's unexpected." Corey fell into +another reverie, and smiled again; but he did not offer +to explain what amused him, and his mother would not ask. + +"I don't know what to make of his admiring the girl +so frankly," she said afterward to her husband. +"That couldn't come naturally till after he had spoken +to her, and I feel sure that he hasn't yet." + +"You women haven't risen yet--it's an evidence of +the backwardness of your sex--to a conception of the +Bismarck idea in diplomacy. If a man praises one woman, +you still think he's in love with another. Do you mean +that because Tom didn't praise the elder sister so much, +he HAS spoken to HER?" + +Mrs. Corey refused the consequence, saying that it did +not follow. "Besides, he did praise her." + +"You ought to be glad that matters are in such +good shape, then. At any rate, you can do absolutely nothing." + +"Oh! I know it," sighed Mrs. Corey. "I wish Tom would +be a little opener with me." + +"He's as open as it's in the nature of an American-born +son to be with his parents. I dare say if you'd asked +him plumply what he meant in regard to the young lady, +he would have told you--if he knew." + +"Why, don't you think he does know, Bromfield?" + +"I'm not at all sure he does. You women think that +because a young man dangles after a girl, or girls, +he's attached to them. It doesn't at all follow. +He dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to +do with his time, and because they seem to like it. +I dare say that Tom has dangled a good deal in this +instance because there was nobody else in town." + +"Do you really think so?" + +"I throw out the suggestion. And it strikes me that a +young lady couldn't do better than stay in or near Boston +during the summer. Most of the young men are here, +kept by business through the week, with evenings available +only on the spot, or a few miles off. What was the +proportion of the sexes at the seashore and the mountains?" + +"Oh, twenty girls at least for even an excuse of a man. +It's shameful." + +"You see, I am right in one part of my theory. +Why shouldn't I be right in the rest?" + +"I wish you were. And yet I can't say that I do. +Those things are very serious with girls. I shouldn't +like Tom to have been going to see those people if he +meant nothing by it." + +"And you wouldn't like it if he did. You are difficult, +my dear." Her husband pulled an open newspaper toward him +from the table. + +"I feel that it wouldn't be at all like him to do so," +said Mrs. Corey, going on to entangle herself in her words, +as women often do when their ideas are perfectly clear. +"Don't go to reading, please, Bromfield! I am really +worried about this matter I must know how much it means. +I can't let it go on so. I don't see how you can rest easy +without knowing." + +"I don't in the least know what's going to become of me +when I die; and yet I sleep well," replied Bromfield Corey, +putting his newspaper aside. + +"Ah! but this is a very different thing." + +"So much more serious? Well, what can you do? We had this +out when you were here in the summer, and you agreed +with me then that we could do nothing. The situation +hasn't changed at all." + +"Yes, it has; it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, +again expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. +"I think I must ask Tom outright." + +"You know you can't do that, my dear." + +"Then why doesn't he tell us?" + +"Ah, that's what HE can't do, if he's making love to Miss +Irene--that's her name, I believe--on the American plan. +He will tell us after he has told HER. That was the way I did. +Don't ignore our own youth, Anna. It was a long while ago, +I'll admit." + +"It was very different," said Mrs. Corey, a little shaken. + +"I don't see how. I dare say Mamma Lapham knows whether +Tom is in love with her daughter or not; and no doubt +Papa Lapham knows it at second hand. But we shall not +know it until the girl herself does. Depend upon that. +Your mother knew, and she told your father; but my poor +father knew nothing about it till we were engaged; and I +had been hanging about--dangling, as you call it----" + +"No, no; YOU called it that." + +"Was it I?--for a year or more." + +The wife could not refuse to be a little consoled by the +image of her young love which the words conjured up, +however little she liked its relation to her son's interest +in Irene Lapham. She smiled pensively. "Then you think +it hasn't come to an understanding with them yet?" + +"An understanding? Oh, probably." + +"An explanation, then?" + +"The only logical inference from what we've been saying +is that it hasn't. But I don't ask you to accept it +on that account. May I read now, my dear?" + +"Yes, you may read now," said Mrs. Corey, with one +of those sighs which perhaps express a feminine sense +of the unsatisfactoriness of husbands in general, +rather than a personal discontent with her own. + +"Thank you, my dear; then I think I'll smoke too," +said Bromfield Corey, lighting a cigar. + +She left him in peace, and she made no further attempt +upon her son's confidence. But she was not inactive for +that reason. She did not, of course, admit to herself, +and far less to others, the motive with which she went +to pay an early visit to the Laphams, who had now come +up from Nantasket to Nankeen Square. She said to her +daughters that she had always been a little ashamed of using +her acquaintance with them to get money for her charity, +and then seeming to drop it. Besides, it seemed to her +that she ought somehow to recognise the business relation +that Tom had formed with the father; they must not +think that his family disapproved of what he had done. +"Yes, business is business," said Nanny, with a laugh. +"Do you wish us to go with you again?" + +"No; I will go alone this time," replied the mother +with dignity. + +Her coupe now found its way to Nankeen Square without +difficulty, and she sent up a card, which Mrs. Lapham +received in the presence of her daughter Penelope. + +"I presume I've got to see her," she gasped. + +"Well, don't look so guilty, mother," joked the girl; +"you haven't been doing anything so VERY wrong." + +"It seems as if I HAD. I don't know what's come over me. +I wasn't afraid of the woman before, but now I don't seem +to feel as if I could look her in the face. He's been coming +here of his own accord, and I fought against his coming +long enough, goodness knows. I didn't want him to come. +And as far forth as that goes, we're as respectable +as they are; and your father's got twice their money, +any day. We've no need to go begging for their favour. +I guess they were glad enough to get him in with +your father." + +"Yes, those are all good points, mother," said the girl; +"and if you keep saying them over, and count a hundred every +time before you speak, I guess you'll worry through." + +Mrs. Lapham had been fussing distractedly with her hair +and ribbons, in preparation for her encounter with Mrs. Corey. +She now drew in a long quivering breath, stared at her +daughter without seeing her, and hurried downstairs. +It was true that when she met Mrs. Corey before she had +not been awed by her; but since then she had learned at +least her own ignorance of the world, and she had talked +over the things she had misconceived and the things she +had shrewdly guessed so much that she could not meet her +on the former footing of equality. In spite of as brave +a spirit and as good a conscience as woman need have, +Mrs. Lapham cringed inwardly, and tremulously wondered +what her visitor had come for. She turned from pale +to red, and was hardly coherent in her greetings; +she did not know how they got to where Mrs. Corey was +saying exactly the right things about her son's interest +and satisfaction in his new business, and keeping her eyes +fixed on Mrs. Lapham's, reading her uneasiness there, +and making her feel, in spite of her indignant innocence, +that she had taken a base advantage of her in her absence +to get her son away from her and marry him to Irene. +Then, presently, while this was painfully revolving itself +in Mrs. Lapham's mind, she was aware of Mrs. Corey's asking +if she was not to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Irene. + +"No; she's out, just now," said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't +know just when she'll be in. She went to get a book." +And here she turned red again, knowing that Irene had +gone to get the book because it was one that Corey had +spoken of. + +"Oh! I'm sorry," said Mrs. Corey. "I had hoped to see her. +And your other daughter, whom I never met?" + +"Penelope?" asked Mrs. Lapham, eased a little. "She is +at home. I will go and call her." The Laphams had not yet +thought of spending their superfluity on servants who +could be rung for; they kept two girls and a man to look +after the furnace, as they had for the last ten years. +If Mrs. Lapham had rung in the parlour, her second girl +would have gone to the street door to see who was there. +She went upstairs for Penelope herself, and the girl, +after some rebellious derision, returned with her. + +Mrs. Corey took account of her, as Penelope withdrew +to the other side of the room after their introduction, +and sat down, indolently submissive on the surface +to the tests to be applied, and following Mrs. Corey's +lead of the conversation in her odd drawl. + +"You young ladies will be glad to be getting into your +new house," she said politely. + +"I don't know," said Penelope. "We're so used to this one." + +Mrs. Corey looked a little baffled, but she said sympathetically, +"Of course, you will be sorry to leave your old home." + +Mrs. Lapham could not help putting in on behalf of her +daughters: "I guess if it was left to the girls to say, +we shouldn't leave it at all." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey; "are they so much attached? +But I can quite understand it. My children would be +heart-broken too if we were to leave the old place." +She turned to Penelope. "But you must think of the lovely +new house, and the beautiful position." + +"Yes, I suppose we shall get used to them too," +said Penelope, in response to this didactic consolation. + +"Oh, I could even imagine your getting very fond of them," +pursued Mrs. Corey patronisingly. "My son has told me +of the lovely outlook you're to have over the water. +He thinks you have such a beautiful house. I believe he +had the pleasure of meeting you all there when he first +came home." + +"Yes, I think he was our first visitor." + +"He is a great admirer of your house," said Mrs. Corey, +keeping her eyes very sharply, however politely, +on Penelope's face, as if to surprise there the secret +of any other great admiration of her son's that might +helplessly show itself. + +"Yes," said the girl, "he's been there several times +with father; and he wouldn't be allowed to overlook +any of its good points." + +Her mother took a little more courage from her daughter's tranquillity. + +"The girls make such fun of their father's excitement +about his building, and the way he talks it into everybody." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey, with civil misunderstanding +and inquiry. + +Penelope flushed, and her mother went on: "I tell him +he's more of a child about it than any of them." + +"Young people are very philosophical nowadays," +remarked Mrs. Corey. + +"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Lapham. "I tell them they've always +had everything, so that nothing's a surprise to them. +It was different with us in our young days." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, without assenting. + +"I mean the Colonel and myself," explained Mrs. Lapham. + +"Oh yes--yes!" said Mrs. Corey. + +"I'm sure," the former went on, rather helplessly, +"we had to work hard enough for everything we got. +And so we appreciated it." + +"So many things were not done for young people then," +said Mrs. Corey, not recognising the early-hardships +standpoint of Mrs. Lapham. "But I don't know that they +are always the better for it now," she added vaguely, +but with the satisfaction we all feel in uttering a +just commonplace. + +"It's rather hard living up to blessings that you've +always had," said Penelope. + +"Yes," replied Mrs. Corey distractedly, and coming back +to her slowly from the virtuous distance to which she had +absented herself. She looked at the girl searchingly again, +as if to determine whether this were a touch of the +drolling her son had spoken of. But she only added: +"You will enjoy the sunsets on the Back Bay so much." +"Well, not unless they're new ones," said Penelope. +"I don't believe I could promise to enjoy any sunsets +that I was used to, a great deal." + +Mrs. Corey looked at her with misgiving, hardening +into dislike. "No," she breathed vaguely. "My son +spoke of the fine effect of the lights about the hotel +from your cottage at Nantasket," she said to Mrs. Lapham. + +"Yes, they're splendid!" exclaimed that lady. "I guess +the girls went down every night with him to see them +from the rocks." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, a little dryly; and she permitted +herself to add: "He spoke of those rocks. I suppose both +you young ladies spend a great deal of your time on them +when you're there. At Nahant my children were constantly on them." + +"Irene likes the rocks," said Penelope. "I don't care +much about them,--especially at night." + +"Oh, indeed! I suppose you find it quite as well looking +at the lights comfortably from the veranda." + +"No; you can't see them from the house." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Corey. After a perceptible pause, +she turned to Mrs. Lapham. "I don't know what my son +would have done for a breath of sea air this summer, +if you had not allowed him to come to Nantasket. +He wasn't willing to leave his business long enough to go +anywhere else." + +"Yes, he's a born business man," responded Mrs. Lapham +enthusiastically. "If it's born in you, it's bound to come out. +That's what the Colonel is always saying about Mr. Corey. +He says it's born in him to be a business man, and he +can't help it." She recurred to Corey gladly because she +felt that she had not said enough of him when his mother +first spoke of his connection with the business. +"I don't believe," she went on excitedly, "that Colonel +Lapham has ever had anybody with him that he thought more of." + +"You have all been very kind to my son," said Mrs. Corey +in acknowledgment, and stiffly bowing a little, "and we +feel greatly indebted to you. Very much so." At these +grateful expressions Mrs. Lapham reddened once more, +and murmured that it had been very pleasant to them, +she was sure. She glanced at her daughter for support, +but Penelope was looking at Mrs. Corey, who doubtless saw +her from the corner of her eyes, though she went on speaking +to her mother. + +"I was sorry to hear from him that Mr.--Colonel?--Lapham +had not been quite well this summer. I hope he's better now?" + +"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Lapham; "he's all right now. +He's hardly ever been sick, and he don't know how to take +care of himself. That's all. We don't any of us; +we're all so well." + +"Health is a great blessing," sighed Mrs. Corey. + +"Yes, so it is. How is your oldest daughter?" +inquired Mrs. Lapham. "Is she as delicate as ever?" + +"She seems to be rather better since we returned." And now +Mrs. Corey, as if forced to the point, said bunglingly +that the young ladies had wished to come with her, +but had been detained. She based her statement upon +Nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple +a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. +"But we shall hope for some--some other occasion," +she said vaguely, and she put on a parting smile, +and shook hands with Mrs. Lapham and Penelope, and then, +after some lingering commonplaces, got herself out of +the house. + +Penelope and her mother were still looking at each other, +and trying to grapple with the effect or purport of the visit, +when Irene burst in upon them from the outside. + +"O mamma! wasn't that Mrs. Corey's carriage just drove away?" + +Penelope answered with her laugh. "Yes! You've just missed +the most delightful call, 'Rene. So easy and pleasant +every way. Not a bit stiff! Mrs. Corey was so friendly! +She didn't make one feel at all as if she'd bought me, +and thought she'd given too much; and mother held up +her head as if she were all wool and a yard wide, +and she would just like to have anybody deny it." + +In a few touches of mimicry she dashed off a sketch +of the scene: her mother's trepidation, and Mrs. Corey's +well-bred repose and polite scrutiny of them both. +She ended by showing how she herself had sat huddled up +in a dark corner, mute with fear. + +"If she came to make us say and do the wrong thing, +she must have gone away happy; and it's a pity you weren't +here to help, Irene. I don't know that I aimed to make +a bad impression, but I guess I succeeded--even beyond +my deserts." She laughed; then suddenly she flashed out +in fierce earnest. "If I missed doing anything that could +make me as hateful to her as she made herself to me----" +She checked herself, and began to laugh. Her laugh broke, +and the tears started into her eyes; she ran out of the room, +and up the stairs. + +"What--what does it mean?" asked Irene in a daze. + +Mrs. Lapham was still in the chilly torpor to which +Mrs. Corey's call had reduced her. Penelope's vehemence +did not rouse her. She only shook her head absently, +and said, "I don't know." + +"Why should Pen care what impression she made? I didn't +suppose it would make any difference to her whether +Mrs. Corey liked her or not." + +"I didn't, either. But I could see that she was just +as nervous as she could be, every minute of the time. +I guess she didn't like Mrs. Corey any too well from +the start, and she couldn't seem to act like herself." + +"Tell me about it, mamma," said Irene, dropping into +a chair. + + +Mrs. Corey described the interview to her husband on +her return home. "Well, and what are your inferences?" +he asked. + +"They were extremely embarrassed and excited--that is, +the mother. I don't wish to do her injustice, but she +certainly behaved consciously." + +"You made her feel so, I dare say, Anna. I can imagine +how terrible you must have been in the character +of an accusing spirit, too lady-like to say anything. +What did you hint?" + +"I hinted nothing," said Mrs. Corey, descending to +the weakness of defending herself. "But I saw quite +enough to convince me that the girl is in love with Tom, +and the mother knows it." + +"That was very unsatisfactory. I supposed you went +to find out whether Tom was in love with the girl. +Was she as pretty as ever?" + +"I didn't see her; she was not at home; I saw her sister." + +"I don't know that I follow you quite, Anna. But no matter. +What was the sister like?" + +"A thoroughly disagreeable young woman." + +"What did she do?" + +"Nothing. She's far too sly for that. But that was +the impression." + +"Then you didn't find her so amusing as Tom does?" + +"I found her pert. There's no other word for it. +She says things to puzzle you and put you out." + +"Ah, that was worse than pert, Anna; that was criminal. +Well, let us thank heaven the younger one is so pretty." + +Mrs. Corey did not reply directly. "Bromfield," she said, +after a moment of troubled silence, "I have been thinking +over your plan, and I don't see why it isn't the right thing." + +"What is my plan?" inquired Bromfield Corey. + +"A dinner." + +Her husband began to laugh. "Ah, you overdid the +accusing-spirit business, and this is reparation." +But Mrs. Corey hurried on, with combined dignity and anxiety-- + +"We can't ignore Tom's intimacy with them--it amounts +to that; it will probably continue even if it's merely +a fancy, and we must seem to know it; whatever comes +of it, we can't disown it. They are very simple, +unfashionable people, and unworldly; but I can't say +that they are offensive, unless--unless," she added, +in propitiation of her husband's smile, "unless the +father--how did you find the father?" she implored. + +"He will be very entertaining," said Corey, "if you start +him on his paint. What was the disagreeable daughter +like? Shall you have her?" + +"She's little and dark. We must have them all," +Mrs. Corey sighed. "Then you don't think a dinner would do?" + +"Oh yes, I do. As you say, we can't disown Tom's +relation to them, whatever it is. We had much better +recognise it, and make the best of the inevitable. +I think a Lapham dinner would be delightful." He looked +at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, +and she fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he +laughed outright. "Perhaps," he suggested, "it would be +the best way of curing Tom of his fancy, if he has one. +He has been seeing her with the dangerous advantages which a +mother knows how to give her daughter in the family circle, +and with no means of comparing her with other girls. +You must invite several other very pretty girls." + +"Do you really think so, Bromfield?" asked Mrs. Corey, +taking courage a little. "That might do," But her spirits +visibly sank again. "I don't know any other girl half +so pretty." + +"Well, then, better bred." + +"She is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing." + +"Well, more cultivated." + +"Tom doesn't get on with such people." + +"Oh, you wish him to marry her, I see." + +"No, no" + +"Then you'd better give the dinner to bring them together, +to promote the affair." + +"You know I don't want to do that, Bromfield. But I +feel that we must do something. If we don't, it has +a clandestine appearance. It isn't just to them. +A dinner won't leave us in any worse position, and may +leave us in a better. Yes," said Mrs. Corey, after another +thoughtful interval, "we must have them--have them all. +It could be very simple." + +"Ah, you can't give a dinner under a bushel, if I take +your meaning, my dear. If we do this at all, we mustn't +do it as if we were ashamed of it. We must ask people +to meet them." + +"Yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "There are not many people +in town yet," she added, with relief that caused her +husband another smile. "There really seems a sort +of fatality about it," she concluded religiously. + +"Then you had better not struggle against it. +Go and reconcile Lily and Nanny to it as soon as possible." + +Mrs. Corey blanched a little. "But don't you think it +will be the best thing, Bromfield?" + +"I do indeed, my dear. The only thing that shakes my faith +in the scheme is the fact that I first suggested it. +But if you have adopted it, it must be all right, Anna. +I can't say that I expected it." + +"No," said his wife, "it wouldn't do." + + + +XIII. + + +HAVING distinctly given up the project of asking the Laphams +to dinner, Mrs. Corey was able to carry it out with the +courage of sinners who have sacrificed to virtue by frankly +acknowledging its superiority to their intended transgression. +She did not question but the Laphams would come; and she +only doubted as to the people whom she should invite +to meet them. She opened the matter with some trepidation +to her daughters, but neither of them opposed her; +they rather looked at the scheme from her own point of view, +and agreed with her that nothing had really yet been done +to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams helplessly +contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that +ill-advised application to Mrs. Lapham for charity. +Not only the principal of their debt of gratitude remained, +but the accruing interest. They said, What harm could +giving the dinner possibly do them? They might ask +any or all of their acquaintance without disadvantage +to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give +the dinner just the character they chose, and still +flatter the ignorance of the Laphams. The trouble would +be with Tom, if he were really interested in the girl; +but he could not say anything if they made it a family dinner; +he could not feel anything. They had each turned in her +own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, +to one of the most comprehensive of those cousinships +which form the admiration and terror of the adventurer +in Boston society. He finds himself hemmed in and left +out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all +hope of safe personality in his comments on people; he is +never less secure than when he hears some given Bostonian +denouncing or ridiculing another. If he will be advised, +he will guard himself from concurring in these criticisms, +however just they appear, for the probability is that their +object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the censor. +When the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling +one another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, +by the familiar abbreviations of their Christian names, +he must feel keenly the exile to which he was born; +but he is then, at least, in comparatively little danger; +while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls +at every step around him, in a society where Middlesexes +have married Essexes and produced Suffolks for two hundred +and fifty years. + +These conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, +are a source of strength and security to those native +to them. An uncertain acquaintance may be so effectually +involved in the meshes of such a cousinship, as never +to be heard of outside of it and tremendous stories are +told of people who have spent a whole winter in Boston, +in a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of +the Suffolks, discover upon reflection that they have met +no one but Essexes and Middlesexes. + +Mrs. Corey's brother James came first into her mind, +and she thought with uncommon toleration of the +easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of his wife. +James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout, +and might be said to have actively promoted his connection +with Lapham. She thought next of the widow of her cousin, +Henry Bellingham, who had let her daughter marry that +Western steamboat man, and was fond of her son-in-law; +she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king +and his family. The daughters insisted so strongly upon +Mrs. Bellingham's son Charles, that Mrs. Corey put him +down--if he were in town; he might be in Central America; +he got on with all sorts of people. It seemed to her +that she might stop at this: four Laphams, five Coreys, +and four Bellinghams were enough. + +"That makes thirteen," said Nanny. "You can have +Mr. and Mrs. Sewell." + +"Yes, that is a good idea," assented Mrs. Corey. +"He is our minister, and it is very proper." + +"I don't see why you don't have Robert Chase. +It is a pity he shouldn't see her--for the colour." + +"I don't quite like the idea of that," said Mrs. Corey; +"but we can have him too, if it won't make too many." +The painter had married into a poorer branch of the Coreys, +and his wife was dead. "Is there any one else?" + +"There is Miss Kingsbury." + +"We have had her so much. She will begin to think we +are using her." + +"She won't mind; she's so good-natured." + +"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four Laphams, +five Coreys, four Bellinghams, one Chase, and one +Kingsbury--fifteen. Oh! and two Sewells. Seventeen. Ten ladies +and seven gentlemen. It doesn't balance very well, +and it's too large." + +"Perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested Lily. + +"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny. + +Their mother reflected. "Well, I will ask them. +The ladies will refuse in time to let us pick up some +gentlemen somewhere; some more artists. Why! we must +have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he's a bachelor, +and he's building their house, Tom says." + +Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, +and she told him of her plan, when he came home +in the evening, with evident misgiving. + +"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at +her with his honest eyes. + +She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I won't do +it at all, my dear," she said, "if you don't approve. +But I thought--You know we have never made any proper +acknowledgment of their kindness to us at Baie St. Paul. +Then in the winter, I'm ashamed to say, I got money +from her for a charity I was interested in; and I hate +the idea of merely USING people in that way. And now +your having been at their house this summer--we can't +seem to disapprove of that; and your business relations +to him----" + +"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it amounts +to a dinner?" + +"Why, I don't know," returned his mother. "We shall +have hardly any one out of our family connection." + +"Well," Corey assented, "it might do. I suppose what you +wish is to give them a pleasure." + +"Why, certainly. Don't you think they'd like to come?" + +"Oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure +after they were here is another thing. I should have +said that if you wanted to have them, they would enjoy +better being simply asked to meet our own immediate family." + +"That's what I thought of in the first place, but your +father seemed to think it implied a social distrust +of them; and we couldn't afford to have that appearance, +even to ourselves." + +"Perhaps he was right." + +"And besides, it might seem a little significant." + +Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "Whom did +you think of asking?" His mother repeated the names. +"Yes, that would do," he said, with a vague dissatisfaction. + +"I won't have it at all, if you don't wish, Tom." + +"Oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. Yes, I dare say +it's right. What did you mean by a family dinner +seeming significant?" + +His mother hesitated. When it came to that, she did not +like to recognise in his presence the anxieties that had +troubled her. But "I don't know," she said, since she must. +"I shouldn't want to give that young girl, or her mother, +the idea that we wished to make more of the acquaintance +than--than you did, Tom." + +He looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did not +take her meaning. But he said, "Oh yes, of course," +and Mrs. Corey, in the uncertainty in which she seemed +destined to remain concerning this affair, went off and +wrote her invitation to Mrs. Lapham. Later in the evening, +when they again found themselves alone, her son said, +"I don't think I understood you, mother, in regard to +the Laphams. I think I do now. I certainly don't wish +you to make more of the acquaintance than I have done. +It wouldn't be right; it might be very unfortunate. +Don't give the dinner!" + +"It's too late now, my son," said Mrs. Corey. "I sent +my note to Mrs. Lapham an hour ago." Her courage rose +at the trouble which showed in Corey's face. "But don't +be annoyed by it, Tom. It isn't a family dinner, you know, +and everything can be managed without embarrassment. +If we take up the affair at this point, you will seem +to have been merely acting for us; and they can't possibly +understand anything more." + +"Well, well! Let it go! I dare say it's all right At +any rate, it can't be helped now." + +"I don't wish to help it, Tom," said Mrs. Corey, +with a cheerfullness which the thought of the Laphams +had never brought her before. "I am sure it is quite +fit and proper, and we can make them have a very +pleasant time. They are good, inoffensive people, +and we owe it to ourselves not to be afraid to show +that we have felt their kindness to us, and his appreciation of you." + +"Well," consented Corey. The trouble that his mother had +suddenly cast off was in his tone; but she was not sorry. +It was quite time that he should think seriously of his +attitude toward these people if he had not thought +of it before, but, according to his father's theory, +had been merely dangling. + +It was a view of her son's character that could hardly +have pleased her in different circumstances, yet it was now +unquestionably a consolation if not wholly a pleasure. +If she considered the Laphams at all, it was with the +resignation which we feel at the evils of others, +even when they have not brought them on themselves. + +Mrs. Lapham, for her part, had spent the hours between +Mrs. Corey's visit and her husband's coming home from +business in reaching the same conclusion with regard +to Corey; and her spirits were at the lowest when they +sat down to supper. Irene was downcast with her; +Penelope was purposely gay; and the Colonel was beginning, +after his first plate of the boiled ham,--which, bristling +with cloves, rounded its bulk on a wide platter before +him,--to take note of the surrounding mood, when the +door-bell jingled peremptorily, and the girl left waiting +on the table to go and answer it. She returned at once +with a note for Mrs. Lapham, which she read, and then, +after a helpless survey of her family, read again. + +"Why, what IS it, mamma?" asked Irene, while the Colonel, +who had taken up his carving-knife for another attack on +the ham, held it drawn half across it. + +"Why, I don't know what it does mean," answered Mrs. Lapham +tremulously, and she let the girl take the note from her. + +Irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at the end +with a joyful cry and a flush that burned to the top +of her forehead. Then she began to read it once more. + +The Colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently, +and Mrs. Lapham said, "You read it out loud, if you know +what to make of it, Irene." But Irene, with a nervous +scream of protest, handed it to her father, who performed +the office. + +"DEAR MRS. LAPHAM: + +"Will you and General Lapham----" + +"I didn't know I was a general," grumbled Lapham. +"I guess I shall have to be looking up my back pay. +Who is it writes this, anyway?" he asked, turning the letter +over for the signature. + +"Oh, never mind. Read it through!" cried his wife, +with a kindling glance of triumph at Penelope, and he +resumed-- + +"--and your daughters give us the pleasure of your company +at dinner on Thursday, the 28th, at half-past six. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"ANNA B. COREY." + +The brief invitation had been spread over two pages, +and the Colonel had difficulties with the signature +which he did not instantly surmount. When he had made +out the name and pronounced it, he looked across at his +wife for an explanation. + +"I don't know what it all means," she said, +shaking her head and speaking with a pleased flutter. +"She was here this afternoon, and I should have said +she had come to see how bad she could make us feel. +I declare I never felt so put down in my life by anybody." + +"Why, what did she do? What did she say?" Lapham was ready, +in his dense pride, to resent any affront to his blood, +but doubtful, with the evidence of this invitation to +the contrary, if any affront had been offered. Mrs. Lapham +tried to tell him, but there was really nothing tangible; +and when she came to put it into words, she could not make +out a case. Her husband listened to her excited attempt, +and then he said, with judicial superiority, "I guess +nobody's been trying to make you feel bad, Persis. +What would she go right home and invite you to dinner for, +if she'd acted the way you say?" + +In this view it did seem improbable, and Mrs. Lapham +was shaken. She could only say, "Penelope felt just +the way I did about it." + +Lapham looked at the girl, who said, "Oh, I can't prove +it! I begin to think it never happened. I guess it didn't." + +"Humph!" said her father, and he sat frowning thoughtfully +a while--ignoring her mocking irony, or choosing to take +her seriously. "You can't really put your finger +on anything," he said to his wife, "and it ain't likely there +is anything. Anyway, she's done the proper thing by you now." + +Mrs. Lapham faltered between her lingering resentment +and the appeals of her flattered vanity. She looked from +Penelope's impassive face to the eager eyes of Irene. +"Well--just as you say, Silas. I don't know as she WAS +so very bad. I guess may be she was embarrassed some----" + +"That's what I told you, mamma, from the start," +interrupted Irene. "Didn't I tell you she didn't mean +anything by it? It's just the way she acted at Baie St. Paul, +when she got well enough to realise what you'd done for her!" + +Penelope broke into a laugh. "Is that her way of showing +her gratitude? I'm sorry I didn't understand that before." + +Irene made no effort to reply. She merely looked +from her mother to her father with a grieved face for +their protection, and Lapham said, "When we've done supper, +you answer her, Persis. Say we'll come." + +"With one exception," said Penelope. + +"What do you mean?" demanded her father, with a mouth +full of ham. "Oh, nothing of importance. Merely that +I'm not going." + +Lapham gave himself time to swallow his morsel, and his +rising wrath went down with it. "I guess you'll change +your mind when the time comes," he said. "Anyway, Persis, +you say we'll all come, and then, if Penelope don't +want to go, you can excuse her after we get there. +That's the best way." + +None of them, apparently, saw any reason why the affair +should not be left in this way, or had a sense of the +awful and binding nature of a dinner engagement. +If she believed that Penelope would not finally change +her mind and go, no doubt Mrs. Lapham thought that +Mrs. Corey would easily excuse her absence. She did +not find it so simple a matter to accept the invitation. +Mrs. Corey had said "Dear Mrs. Lapham," but Mrs. Lapham +had her doubts whether it would not be a servile imitation +to say "Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was tormented +as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise +temperature which she should impart to her politeness. +She wrote an unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, +the same in which she used to set the children's copies +at school, and she subscribed herself, after some hesitation +between her husband's given name and her own, "Yours truly, +Mrs. S. Lapham." + +Penelope had gone to her room, without waiting to be +asked to advise or criticise; but Irene had decided +upon the paper, and on the whole, Mrs. Lapham's note +made a very decent appearance on the page. + +When the furnace-man came, the Colonel sent him out +to post it in the box at the corner of the square. +He had determined not to say anything more about the +matter before the girls, not choosing to let them see +that he was elated; he tried to give the effect of its +being an everyday sort of thing, abruptly closing +the discussion with his order to Mrs. Lapham to accept; +but he had remained swelling behind his newspaper during +her prolonged struggle with her note, and he could no longer +hide his elation when Irene followed her sister upstairs. + +"Well, Pers," he demanded, "what do you say now?" + +Mrs. Lapham had been sobered into something of her +former misgiving by her difficulties with her note. +"Well, I don't know what TO say. I declare, I'm all mixed +up about it, and I don't know as we've begun as we can +carry out in promising to go. I presume," she sighed, +"that we can all send some excuse at the last moment, +if we don't want to go." + +"I guess we can carry out, and I guess we shan't want +to send any excuse," bragged the Colonel. "If we're +ever going to be anybody at all, we've got to go and see +how it's done. I presume we've got to give some sort +of party when we get into the new house, and this gives +the chance to ask 'em back again. You can't complain +now but what they've made the advances, Persis?" + +"No," said Mrs. Lapham lifelessly; "I wonder why they +wanted to do it. Oh, I suppose it's all right," she added +in deprecation of the anger with her humility which she saw +rising in her husband's face; "but if it's all going to be +as much trouble as that letter, I'd rather be whipped. +I don't know what I'm going to wear; or the girls either. +I do wonder--I've heard that people go to dinner in +low-necks. Do you suppose it's the custom?" + +"How should I know?" demanded the Colonel. "I guess you've +got clothes enough. Any rate, you needn't fret about it. +You just go round to White's or Jordan & Marsh's, +and ask for a dinner dress. I guess that'll settle it; +they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I see +'em in the window every time I pass; lots of 'em" + +"Oh, it ain't the dress!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't +suppose but what we could get along with that; and I want +to do the best we can for the children; but I don't know +what we're going to talk about to those people when we +get there. We haven't got anything in common with them. +Oh, I don't say they're any better," she again made haste +to say in arrest of her husband's resentment. "I don't +believe they are; and I don't see why they should be. +And there ain't anybody has got a better right to hold up +their head than you have, Silas. You've got plenty of money, +and you've made every cent of it." + +"I guess I shouldn't amounted to much without you, Persis," +interposed Lapham, moved to this justice by her praise. + +"Oh, don't talk about ME!" protested the wife. +"Now that you've made it all right about Rogers, +there ain't a thing in this world against you. But still, +for all that, I can see--and I can feel it when I +can't see it--that we're different from those people. +They're well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it, +I presume, but we're too old to learn to be like them." + +"The children ain't," said Lapham shrewdly. + +"No, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and that's +the only thing that reconciles me to it." + +"You see how pleased Irene looked when I read it?" + +"Yes, she was pleased." + +"And I guess Penelope'll think better of it before +the time comes." + +"Oh yes, we do it for them. But whether we're doing +the best thing for 'em, goodness knows. I'm not saying +anything against HIM. Irene'll be a lucky girl to get him, +if she wants him. But there! I'd ten times rather she +was going to marry such a fellow as you were, Si, that had +to make every inch of his own way, and she had to help him. +It's in her!" + +Lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's fondness; +but neither of them wished that he should respond directly +to it. "I guess, if it wa'n't for me, he wouldn't have a much +easier time. But don't you fret! It's all coming out right. +That dinner ain't a thing for you to be uneasy about. +It'll pass off perfectly easy and natural." + +Lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite to the end +of the week that followed. It was his theory not to let Corey +see that he was set up about the invitation, and when the +young man said politely that his mother was glad they were +able to come, Lapham was very short with him. He said yes, +he believed that Mrs. Lapham and the girls were going. +Afterward he was afraid Corey might not understand that +he was coming too; but he did not know how to approach +the subject again, and Corey did not, so he let it pass. +It worried him to see all the preparation that his wife +and Irene were making, and he tried to laugh at them for it; +and it worried him to find that Penelope was making no +preparation at all for herself, but only helping the others. +He asked her what should she do if she changed her mind +at the last moment and concluded to go, and she said she +guessed she should not change her mind, but if she did, +she would go to White's with him and get him to choose +her an imported dress, he seemed to like them so much. +He was too proud to mention the subject again to her. + +Finally, all that dress-making in the house began to scare +him with vague apprehensions in regard to his own dress. +As soon as he had determined to go, an ideal of the figure +in which he should go presented itself to his mind. +He should not wear any dress-coat, because, for one thing, +he considered that a man looked like a fool in a dress-coat, and, +for another thing, he had none--had none on principle. +He would go in a frock-coat and black pantaloons, +and perhaps a white waistcoat, but a black cravat anyway. +But as soon as he developed this ideal to his family, +which he did in pompous disdain of their anxieties +about their own dress, they said he should not go so. +Irene reminded him that he was the only person without +a dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner which he had taken +her to some years before, and she remembered feeling awfully +about it at the time. Mrs. Lapham, who would perhaps +have agreed of herself, shook her head with misgiving. +"I don't see but what you'll have to get you one, Si," +she said. "I don't believe they ever go without 'em to +a private house." + +He held out openly, but on his way home the next day, +in a sudden panic, he cast anchor before his tailor's +door and got measured for a dress-coat. After that he +began to be afflicted about his waist-coat, concerning +which he had hitherto been airily indifferent. +He tried to get opinion out of his family, but they were +not so clear about it as they were about the frock. +It ended in their buying a book of etiquette, +which settled the question adversely to a white waistcoat. +The author, however, after being very explicit in telling +them not to eat with their knives, and above all not +to pick their teeth with their forks,--a thing which he +said no lady or gentleman ever did,--was still far from +decided as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought +to wear: shaken on other points, Lapham had begun to waver +also concerning the black cravat. As to the question +of gloves for the Colonel, which suddenly flashed upon +him one evening, it appeared never to have entered the +thoughts of the etiquette man, as Lapham called him. +Other authors on the same subject were equally silent, +and Irene could only remember having heard, in some vague +sort of way, that gentlemen did not wear gloves so much +any more. + +Drops of perspiration gathered on Lapham's forehead +in the anxiety of the debate; he groaned, and he swore +a little in the compromise profanity which he used. + +"I declare," said Penelope, where she sat purblindly +sewing on a bit of dress for Irene, "the Colonel's +clothes are as much trouble as anybody's. Why don't you +go to Jordan & Marsh's and order one of the imported +dresses for yourself, father?" That gave them all the +relief of a laugh over it, the Colonel joining in piteously. + +He had an awful longing to find out from Corey how he +ought to go. He formulated and repeated over to himself +an apparently careless question, such as, "Oh, by +the way, Corey, where do you get your gloves?" This would +naturally lead to some talk on the subject, which would, +if properly managed, clear up the whole trouble. But Lapham +found that he would rather die than ask this question, +or any question that would bring up the dinner again. +Corey did not recur to it, and Lapham avoided the matter +with positive fierceness. He shunned talking with Corey +at all, and suffered in grim silence. + +One night, before they fell asleep, his wife said to him, +"I was reading in one of those books to-day, and I don't +believe but what we've made a mistake if Pen holds out +that she won't go." + +"Why?" demanded Lapham, in the dismay which beset him +at every fresh recurrence to the subject. + +"The book says that it's very impolite not to answer +a dinner invitation promptly. Well, we've done that all +right,--at first I didn't know but what we had been a little +too quick, may be,--but then it says if you're not going, +that it's the height of rudeness not to let them know +at once, so that they can fill your place at the table." + +The Colonel was silent for a while. "Well, I'm dumned," +he said finally, "if there seems to be any end to this thing. +If it was to do over again, I'd say no for all of us." + +"I've wished a hundred times they hadn't asked us; +but it's too late to think about that now. The question is, +what are we going to do about Penelope?" + +"Oh, I guess she'll go, at the last moment." + +"She says she won't. She took a prejudice against +Mrs. Corey that day, and she can't seem to get over it." + +"Well, then, hadn't you better write in the morning, +as soon as you're up, that she ain't coming?" + +Mrs. Lapham sighed helplessly. "I shouldn't know how to get +it in. It's so late now; I don't see how I could have the face." + +"Well, then, she's got to go, that's all." + +"She's set she won't." + +"And I'm set she shall," said Lapham with the loud +obstinacy of a man whose women always have their way. + +Mrs. Lapham was not supported by the sturdiness +of his proclamation. + +But she did not know how to do what she knew she ought +to do about Penelope, and she let matters drift. +After all, the child had a right to stay at home if she +did not wish to go. That was what Mrs. Lapham felt, +and what she said to her husband next morning, bidding him +let Penelope alone, unless she chose herself to go. +She said it was too late now to do anything, and she must +make the best excuse she could when she saw Mrs. Corey. +She began to wish that Irene and her father would go and +excuse her too. She could not help saying this, and then +she and Lapham had some unpleasant words. + +"Look here!" he cried. "Who wanted to go in for these +people in the first place? Didn't you come home full +of 'em last year, and want me to sell out here and move +somewheres else because it didn't seem to suit 'em? And +now you want to put it all on me! I ain't going to stand it." + +"Hush!" said his wife. "Do you want to raise the house? I +didn't put it on you, as you say. You took it on yourself. +Ever since that fellow happened to come into the new house +that day, you've been perfectly crazy to get in with them. +And now you're so afraid you shall do something wrong before +'em, you don't hardly dare to say your life's your own. +I declare, if you pester me any more about those gloves, +Silas Lapham, I won't go." + +"Do you suppose I want to go on my own account?" +he demanded furiously. + +"No," she admitted. "Of course I don't. I know +very well that you're doing it for Irene; but, for +goodness gracious' sake, don't worry our lives out, +and make yourself a perfect laughing-stock before the children." + +With this modified concession from her, the quarrel +closed in sullen silence on Lapham's part. The night +before the dinner came, and the question of his gloves +was still unsettled, and in a fair way to remain so. +He had bought a pair, so as to be on the safe side, +perspiring in company with the young lady who sold them, +and who helped him try them on at the shop; his nails +were still full of the powder which she had plentifully +peppered into them in order to overcome the resistance +of his blunt fingers. But he was uncertain whether he +should wear them. They had found a book at last that said +the ladies removed their gloves on sitting down at table, +but it said nothing about gentlemen's gloves. He left his +wife where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass in her +new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. +Before he shut his door he caught a glimpse of Irene trailing +up and down before the long mirror in HER new dress, +followed by the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her +mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made Irene +stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; +Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. +It made Lapham sick, and he despised himself and all his +brood for the trouble they were taking. But another glance +gave him a sight of the young girl's face in the mirror, +beautiful and radiant with happiness, and his heart +melted again with paternal tenderness and pride. +It was going to be a great pleasure to Irene, and Lapham +felt that she was bound to cut out anything there. +He was vexed with Penelope that she was not going too; +he would have liked to have those people hear her talk. +He held his door a little open, and listened to the +things she was "getting off" there to Irene. He showed +that he felt really hurt and disappointed about Penelope, +and the girl's mother made her console him the next evening +before they all drove away without her. "You try to look +on the bright side of it, father. I guess you'll see that +it's best I didn't go when you get there. Irene needn't +open her lips, and they can all see how pretty she is; +but they wouldn't know how smart I was unless I talked, +and maybe then they wouldn't." + +This thrust at her father's simple vanity in her made +him laugh; and then they drove away, and Penelope shut +the door, and went upstairs with her lips firmly shutting +in a sob. + + + +XIV. + + +THE Coreys were one of the few old families who lingered +in Bellingham Place, the handsome, quiet old street which +the sympathetic observer must grieve to see abandoned +to boarding-houses. The dwellings are stately and tall, +and the whole place wears an air of aristocratic seclusion, +which Mrs. Corey's father might well have thought assured +when he left her his house there at his death. It is one +of two evidently designed by the same architect who built +some houses in a characteristic taste on Beacon Street +opposite the Common. It has a wooden portico, with slender +fluted columns, which have always been painted white, +and which, with the delicate mouldings of the cornice, +form the sole and sufficient decoration of the street front; +nothing could be simpler, and nothing could be better. +Within, the architect has again indulged his preference +for the classic; the roof of the vestibule, wide and low, +rests on marble columns, slim and fluted like the wooden +columns without, and an ample staircase climbs in +a graceful, easy curve from the tesselated pavement. +Some carved Venetian scrigni stretched along the wall; +a rug lay at the foot of the stairs; but otherwise the simple +adequacy of the architectural intention had been respected, +and the place looked bare to the eyes of the Laphams +when they entered. The Coreys had once kept a man, +but when young Corey began his retrenchments the man +had yielded to the neat maid who showed the Colonel +into the reception-room and asked the ladies to walk up +two flights. + +He had his charges from Irene not to enter the drawing- +room without her mother, and he spent five minutes in +getting on his gloves, for he had desperately resolved +to wear them at last. When he had them on, and let +his large fists hang down on either side, they looked, +in the saffron tint which the shop-girl said his gloves +should be of, like canvased hams. He perspired with doubt +as he climbed the stairs, and while he waited on the +landing for Mrs. Lapham and Irene to come down from above +before going into the drawing-room, he stood staring at +his hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard. +He heard quiet talking beyond the portiere within, +and presently Tom Corey came out. + +"Ah, Colonel Lapham! Very glad to see you." + +Lapham shook hands with him and gasped, "Waiting +for Mis' Lapham," to account for his presence. +He had not been able to button his right glove, and he +now began, with as much indifference as he could assume, +to pull them both off, for he saw that Corey wore none. +By the time he had stuffed them into the pocket +of his coat-skirt his wife and daughter descended. + +Corey welcomed them very cordially too, but looked a +little mystified. Mrs. Lapham knew that he was silently +inquiring for Penelope, and she did not know whether she +ought to excuse her to him first or not. She said nothing, +and after a glance toward the regions where Penelope might +conjecturably be lingering, he held aside the portiere +for the Laphams to pass, and entered the room with them. + +Mrs. Lapham had decided against low-necks on her own responsibility, +and had entrenched herself in the safety of a black silk, +in which she looked very handsome. Irene wore a dress +of one of those shades which only a woman or an artist can +decide to be green or blue, and which to other eyes looks +both or neither, according to their degrees of ignorance. +If it was more like a ball dress than a dinner dress, +that might be excused to the exquisite effect. She trailed, +a delicate splendour, across the carpet in her mother's +sombre wake, and the consciousness of success brought +a vivid smile to her face. Lapham, pallid with anxiety +lest he should somehow disgrace himself, giving thanks +to God that he should have been spared the shame of +wearing gloves where no one else did, but at the same +time despairing that Corey should have seen him in them, +had an unwonted aspect of almost pathetic refinement. + +Mrs. Corey exchanged a quick glance of surprise and relief +with her husband as she started across the room to meet +her guests, and in her gratitude to them for being +so irreproachable, she threw into her manner a warmth +that people did not always find there. "General Lapham?" +she said, shaking hands in quick succession with Mrs. Lapham +and Irene, and now addressing herself to him. + +"No, ma'am, only Colonel," said the honest man, but the +lady did not hear him. She was introducing her husband +to Lapham's wife and daughter, and Bromfield Corey was +already shaking his hand and saying he was very glad +to see him again, while he kept his artistic eye on Irene, +and apparently could not take it off. Lily Corey gave +the Lapham ladies a greeting which was physically rather +than socially cold, and Nanny stood holding Irene's +hand in both of hers a moment, and taking in her beauty +and her style with a generous admiration which she +could afford, for she was herself faultlessly dressed +in the quiet taste of her city, and looking very pretty. +The interval was long enough to let every man present +confide his sense of Irene's beauty to every other; +and then, as the party was small, Mrs. Corey made +everybody acquainted. When Lapham had not quite understood, +he held the person's hand, and, leaning urbanely forward, +inquired, "What name?" He did that because a great man +to whom he had been presented on the platform at a public +meeting had done so to him, and he knew it must be right. + +A little lull ensued upon the introductions, and Mrs. Corey +said quietly to Mrs. Lapham, "Can I send any one to be of use +to Miss Lapham?" as if Penelope must be in the dressing-room. + +Mrs. Lapham turned fire-red, and the graceful forms in which +she had been intending to excuse her daughter's absence +went out of her head. "She isn't upstairs," she said, +at her bluntest, as country people are when embarrassed. +"She didn't feel just like coming to-night. I don't know +as she's feeling very well." + +Mrs. Corey emitted a very small "O!"--very small, +very cold,--which began to grow larger and hotter and to +burn into Mrs. Lapham's soul before Mrs. Corey could add, +"I'm very sorry. It's nothing serious, I hope?" + +Robert Chase, the painter, had not come, and Mrs. James +Bellingham was not there, so that the table really balanced +better without Penelope; but Mrs. Lapham could not know this, +and did not deserve to know it. Mrs. Corey glanced +round the room, as if to take account of her guests, +and said to her husband, "I think we are all here, then," +and he came forward and gave his arm to Mrs. Lapham. +She perceived then that in their determination not to +be the first to come they had been the last, and must +have kept the others waiting for them. + +Lapham had never seen people go down to dinner arm-in- +arm before, but he knew that his wife was distinguished +in being taken out by the host, and he waited in jealous +impatience to see if Tom Corey would offer his arm to Irene. +He gave it to that big girl they called Miss Kingsbury, +and the handsome old fellow whom Mrs. Corey had introduced +as her cousin took Irene out. Lapham was startled from +the misgiving in which this left him by Mrs. Corey's +passing her hand through his arm, and he made a sudden +movement forward, but felt himself gently restrained. +They went out the last of all; he did not know why, +but he submitted, and when they sat down he saw that Irene, +although she had come in with that Mr. Bellingham, was seated +beside young Corey, after all. + +He fetched a long sigh of relief when he sank into +his chair and felt himself safe from error if he kept +a sharp lookout and did only what the others did. +Bellingham had certain habits which he permitted himself, +and one of these was tucking the corner of his napkin +into his collar; he confessed himself an uncertain shot +with a spoon, and defended his practice on the ground +of neatness and common-sense. Lapham put his napkin into +his collar too, and then, seeing that no one but Bellingham +did it, became alarmed and took it out again slyly. +He never had wine on his table at home, and on principle +he was a prohibitionist; but now he did not know just +what to do about the glasses at the right of his plate. +He had a notion to turn them all down, as he had read +of a well-known politician's doing at a public dinner, +to show that he did not take wine; but, after twiddling +with one of them a moment, he let them be, for it seemed +to him that would be a little too conspicuous, and he +felt that every one was looking. He let the servant fill +them all, and he drank out of each, not to appear odd. +Later, he observed that the young ladies were not taking wine, +and he was glad to see that Irene had refused it, +and that Mrs. Lapham was letting it stand untasted. +He did not know but he ought to decline some of the dishes, +or at least leave most of some on his plate, but he was not +able to decide; he took everything and ate everything. + +He noticed that Mrs. Corey seemed to take no more trouble +about the dinner than anybody, and Mr. Corey rather less; +he was talking busily to Mrs. Lapham, and Lapham caught +a word here and there that convinced him she was holding +her own. He was getting on famously himself with +Mrs. Corey, who had begun with him about his new house; +he was telling her all about it, and giving her his ideas. +Their conversation naturally included his architect across +the table; Lapham had been delighted and secretly surprised +to find the fellow there; and at something Seymour said +the talk spread suddenly, and the pretty house he was +building for Colonel Lapham became the general theme. +Young Corey testified to its loveliness, and the architect +said laughingly that if he had been able to make a nice +thing of it, he owed it to the practical sympathy of +his client. + +"Practical sympathy is good," said Bromfield Corey; +and, slanting his head confidentially to Mrs. Lapham, +he added, "Does he bleed your husband, Mrs. Lapham? He's +a terrible fellow for appropriations!" + +Mrs. Lapham laughed, reddening consciously, and said she +guessed the Colonel knew how to take care of himself. +This struck Lapham, then draining his glass of sauterne, +as wonderfully discreet in his wife. Bromfield Corey +leaned back in his chair a moment. "Well, after all, +you can't say, with all your modern fuss about it, +that you do much better now than the old fellows who built +such houses as this." + +"Ah," said the architect, "nobody can do better than well. +Your house is in perfect taste; you know I've always +admired it; and I don't think it 's at all the worse +for being old-fashioned. What we've done is largely to go +back of the hideous style that raged after they forgot +how to make this sort of house. But I think we may claim +a better feeling for structure. We use better material, +and more wisely; and by and by we shall work out something +more characteristic and original." + +"With your chocolates and olives, and your clutter +of bric-a-brac?" + +"All that's bad, of course, but I don't mean that. I don't +wish to make you envious of Colonel Lapham, and modesty +prevents my saying, that his house is prettier,--though +I may have my convictions,--but it's better built. +All the new houses are better built. Now, your house----" + +"Mrs. Corey's house," interrupted the host, with a burlesque +haste in disclaiming responsibility for it that made +them all laugh. "My ancestral halls are in Salem, +and I'm told you couldn't drive a nail into their timbers; +in fact, I don't know that you would want to do it." + +"I should consider it a species of sacrilege," +answered Seymour, "and I shall be far from pressing +the point I was going to make against a house of Mrs. Corey's." + +This won Seymour the easy laugh, and Lapham silently +wondered that the fellow never got off any of those things +to him. + +"Well," said Corey, "you architects and the musicians +are the true and only artistic creators. All the rest +of us, sculptors, painters, novelists, and tailors, +deal with forms that we have before us; we try to imitate, +we try to represent. But you two sorts of artists +create form. If you represent, you fail. Somehow or other +you do evolve the camel out of your inner consciousness" + +"I will not deny the soft impeachment," said the architect, +with a modest air. + +"I dare say. And you'll own that it's very handsome +of me to say this, after your unjustifiable attack +on Mrs. Corey's property." + +Bromfield Corey addressed himself again to Mrs. Lapham, +and the talk subdivided itself as before. It lapsed so +entirely away from the subject just in hand, that Lapham +was left with rather a good idea, as he thought it, +to perish in his mind, for want of a chance to express it. +The only thing like a recurrence to what they had been +saying was Bromfield Corey's warning Mrs. Lapham, in some +connection that Lapham lost, against Miss Kingsbury. +"She's worse," he was saying, "when it comes to appropriations +than Seymour himself. Depend upon it, Mrs. Lapham, +she will give you no peace of your mind, now she's +met you, from this out. Her tender mercies are cruel; +and I leave you to supply the content from your own +scriptural knowledge. Beware of her, and all her works. +She calls them works of charity; but heaven knows +whether they are. It don't stand to reason that she +gives the poor ALL the money she gets out of people. +I have my own belief"--he gave it in a whisper for the +whole table to hear--"that she spends it for champagne +and cigars." + +Lapham did not know about that kind of talking; but Miss +Kingsbury seemed to enjoy the fun as much as anybody, +and he laughed with the rest. + +"You shall be asked to the very next debauch of +the committee, Mr. Corey; then you won't dare expose us," +said Miss Kingsbury. + +"I wonder you haven't been down upon Corey to go to the +Chardon Street home and talk with your indigent Italians +in their native tongue," said Charles Bellingham. +"I saw in the Transcript the other night that you wanted +some one for the work." + +"We did think of Mr. Corey," replied Miss Kingsbury; +"but we reflected that he probably wouldn't talk with them +at all; he would make them keep still to be sketched, +and forget all about their wants." + +Upon the theory that this was a fair return +for Corey's pleasantry, the others laughed again. + +"There is one charity," said Corey, pretending superiority +to Miss Kingsbury's point, "that is so difficult, I wonder +it hasn't occurred to a lady of your courageous invention." + +"Yes?" said Miss Kingsbury. "What is that?" + +"The occupation, by deserving poor of neat habits, +of all the beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand +empty the whole summer long, while their owners are away +in their lowly cots beside the sea." + +"Yes, that is terrible," replied Miss Kingsbury, +with quick earnestness, while her eyes grew moist. +"I have often thought of our great, cool houses standing +useless here, and the thousands of poor creatures stifling +in their holes and dens, and the little children dying +for wholesome shelter. How cruelly selfish we are!" + +"That is a very comfortable sentiment, Miss Kingsbury," +said Corey, "and must make you feel almost as if you +had thrown open No. 31 to the whole North End. +But I am serious about this matter. I spend my summers +in town, and I occupy my own house, so that I can speak +impartially and intelligently; and I tell you that in +some of my walks on the Hill and down on the Back Bay, +nothing but the surveillance of the local policeman +prevents my offering personal violence to those long rows +of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensible houses. +If I were a poor man, with a sick child pining in some garret +or cellar at the North End, I should break into one of them, +and camp out on the grand piano." + +"Surely, Bromfield," said his wife, "you don't consider +what havoc such people would make with the furniture +of a nice house!" + +"That is true," answered Corey, with meek conviction. +"I never thought of that." + +"And if you were a poor man with a sick child, I doubt +if you'd have so much heart for burglary as you have now," +said James Bellingham. + +"It's wonderful how patient they are," said the minister. +"The spectacle of the hopeless comfort the hard-working +poor man sees must be hard to bear." + +Lapham wanted to speak up and say that he had been +there himself, and knew how such a man felt. He wanted +to tell them that generally a poor man was satisfied +if he could make both ends meet; that he didn't envy +any one his good luck, if he had earned it, so long as he +wasn't running under himself. But before he could get +the courage to address the whole table, Sewell added, +"I suppose he don't always think of it." + +"But some day he WILL think about it," said Corey. +"In fact, we rather invite him to think about it, +in this country." + +"My brother-in-law," said Charles Bellingham, with the pride +a man feels in a mentionably remarkable brother-in-law, +"has no end of fellows at work under him out there at Omaha, +and he says it's the fellows from countries where they've +been kept from thinking about it that are discontented. +The Americans never make any trouble. They seem to +understand that so long as we give unlimited opportunity, +nobody has a right to complain." + +"What do you hear from Leslie?" asked Mrs. Corey, +turning from these profitless abstractions to Mrs. Bellingham. + +"You know," said that lady in a lower tone, "that there +is another baby?" + +"No! I hadn't heard of it!" + +"Yes; a boy. They have named him after his uncle." + +"Yes," said Charles Bellingham, joining in. "He is said +to be a noble boy, and to resemble me." + +"All boys of that tender age are noble," said Corey, +"and look like anybody you wish them to resemble. +Is Leslie still home-sick for the bean-pots of her +native Boston?" + +"She is getting over it, I fancy," replied Mrs. Bellingham. +"She's very much taken up with Mr. Blake's enterprises, +and leads a very exciting life. She says she's like people +who have been home from Europe three years; she's past +the most poignant stage of regret, and hasn't reached +the second, when they feel that they must go again." + +Lapham leaned a little toward Mrs. Corey, and said +of a picture which he saw on the wall opposite, +"Picture of your daughter, I presume?" + +"No; my daughter's grandmother. It's a Stewart Newton; +he painted a great many Salem beauties. She was a Miss +Polly Burroughs. My daughter IS like her, don't you think?" +They both looked at Nanny Corey and then at the portrait. +"Those pretty old-fashioned dresses are coming in again. +I'm not surprised you took it for her. The others"--she +referred to the other portraits more or less darkling on the +walls--"are my people; mostly Copleys." + +These names, unknown to Lapham, went to his head like the wine +he was drinking; they seemed to carry light for the moment, +but a film of deeper darkness followed. He heard Charles +Bellingham telling funny stories to Irene and trying to +amuse the girl; she was laughing, and seemed very happy. +From time to time Bellingham took part in the general talk +between the host and James Bellingham and Miss Kingsbury +and that minister, Mr. Sewell. They talked of people mostly; +it astonished Lapham to hear with what freedom they talked. +They discussed these persons unsparingly; James Bellingham +spoke of a man known to Lapham for his business success +and great wealth as not a gentleman; his cousin Charles +said he was surprised that the fellow had kept from being +governor so long. + +When the latter turned from Irene to make one of these +excursions into the general talk, young Corey talked to her; +and Lapham caught some words from which it seemed that they +were speaking of Penelope. It vexed him to think she had +not come; she could have talked as well as any of them; +she was just as bright; and Lapham was aware that Irene +was not as bright, though when he looked at her face, +triumphant in its young beauty and fondness, he said to +himself that it did not make any difference. He felt that he +was not holding up his end of the line, however. When some +one spoke to him he could only summon a few words of reply, +that seemed to lead to nothing; things often came into +his mind appropriate to what they were saying, but before +he could get them out they were off on something else; +they jumped about so, he could not keep up; but he felt, +all the same, that he was not doing himself justice. + +At one time the talk ran off upon a subject that Lapham +had never heard talked of before; but again he was vexed +that Penelope was not there, to have her say; he believed +that her say would have been worth hearing. + +Miss Kingsbury leaned forward and asked Charles Bellingham +if he had read Tears, Idle Tears, the novel that was +making such a sensation; and when he said no, she said +she wondered at him. "It's perfectly heart-breaking, +as you'll imagine from the name; but there's such a dear +old-fashioned hero and heroine in it, who keep dying for +each other all the way through, and making the most wildly +satisfactory and unnecessary sacrifices for each other. +You feel as if you'd done them yourself." + +"Ah, that's the secret of its success," said Bromfield Corey. +"It flatters the reader by painting the characters colossal, +but with his limp and stoop, so that he feels himself +of their supernatural proportions. You've read it, Nanny?" + +"Yes," said his daughter. "It ought to have been +called Slop, Silly Slop." + +"Oh, not quite SLOP, Nanny," pleaded Miss Kingsbury. + +"It's astonishing," said Charles Bellingham, "how we +do like the books that go for our heart-strings. And I +really suppose that you can't put a more popular thing +than self-sacrifice into a novel. We do like to see +people suffering sublimely." + +"There was talk some years ago," said James Bellingham, +"about novels going out." "They're just coming in!" +cried Miss Kingsbury. + +"Yes," said Mr. Sewell, the minister. "And I don't +think there ever was a time when they formed the whole +intellectual experience of more people. They do greater +mischief than ever." + +"Don't be envious, parson," said the host. + +"No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. +But those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines +in them--excuse me, Miss Kingsbury--are ruinous!" + +"Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss Kingsbury?" +asked the host. + +But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest +possible help to us if they painted life as it is, +and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, +but for the most part they have been and are altogether noxious." + +This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: +"But what if life as it is isn't amusing? Aren't we +to be amused?" + +"Not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. +"And the self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----" + +"Slop, Silly Slop?" suggested the proud father of the +inventor of the phrase. + +"Yes--is nothing but psychical suicide, and is as wholly +immoral as the spectacle of a man falling upon his sword." + +"Well, I don't know but you're right, parson," said the host; +and the minister, who had apparently got upon a battle-horse +of his, careered onward in spite of some tacit attempts +of his wife to seize the bridle. + +"Right? To be sure I am right. The whole business of love, +and love-making and marrying, is painted by the novelists +in a monstrous disproportion to the other relations of life. +Love is very sweet, very pretty----" + +"Oh, THANK you, Mr. Sewell," said Nanny Corey, in a way +that set them all laughing. + +"But it's the affair, commonly, of very young people, +who have not yet character and experience enough to make +them interesting. In novels it's treated, not only +as if it were the chief interest of life, but the sole +interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons; +and it is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow +of a true passion lasts for ever; and that it is sacrilege +to think or act otherwise." "Well, but isn't that true, +Mr. Sewell?" pleaded Miss Kingsbury. + +"I have known some most estimable people who had +married a second time," said the minister, and then +he had the applause with him. Lapham wanted to make +some open recognition of his good sense, but could not. + +"I suppose the passion itself has been a good deal changed," +said Bromfield Corey, "since the poets began to idealise +it in the days of chivalry." + +"Yes; and it ought to be changed again," said Mr. Sewell. + +"What! Back?" + +"I don't say that. But it ought to be recognised +as something natural and mortal, and divine honours, +which belong to righteousness alone, ought not to be paid it." + +"Oh, you ask too much, parson," laughed his host, +and the talk wandered away to something else. + +It was not an elaborate dinner; but Lapham was used +to having everything on the table at once, and this +succession of dishes bewildered him; he was afraid +perhaps he was eating too much. He now no longer made +any pretence of not drinking his wine, for he was thirsty, +and there was no more water, and he hated to ask +for any. The ice-cream came, and then the fruit. +Suddenly Mrs. Corey rose, and said across the table to +her husband, "I suppose you will want your coffee here." +And he replied, "Yes; we'll join you at tea." + +The ladies all rose, and the gentlemen got up with them. +Lapham started to follow Mrs. Corey, but the other men +merely stood in their places, except young Corey, who ran +and opened the door for his mother. Lapham thought +with shame that it was he who ought to have done that; +but no one seemed to notice, and he sat down again gladly, +after kicking out one of his legs which had gone +to sleep. + +They brought in cigars with coffee, and Bromfield Corey +advised Lapham to take one that he chose for him. +Lapham confessed that he liked a good cigar about +as well as anybody, and Corey said: "These are new. +I had an Englishman here the other day who was smoking old +cigars in the superstition that tobacco improved with age, +like wine." + +"Ah," said Lapham, "anybody who had ever lived off +a tobacco country could tell him better than that." +With the fuming cigar between his lips he felt more at home +than he had before. He turned sidewise in his chair and, +resting one arm on the back, intertwined the fingers +of both hands, and smoked at large ease. James Bellingham +came and sat down by him. "Colonel Lapham, weren't you +with the 96th Vermont when they charged across the river +in front of Pickensburg, and the rebel battery opened +fire on them in the water?" + +Lapham slowly shut his eyes and slowly dropped his head +for assent, letting out a white volume of smoke from +the corner of his mouth. + +"I thought so," said Bellingham. "I was with the +85th Massachusetts, and I sha'n't forget that slaughter. +We were all new to it still. Perhaps that's why it made +such an impression." + +"I don't know," suggested Charles Bellingham. "Was there +anything much more impressive afterward? I read of it +out in Missouri, where I was stationed at the time, +and I recollect the talk of some old army men about it. +They said that death-rate couldn't be beaten. I don't know +that it ever was." + +"About one in five of us got out safe," said Lapham, +breaking his cigar-ash off on the edge of a plate. +James Bellingham reached him a bottle of Apollinaris. +He drank a glass, and then went on smoking. + +They all waited, as if expecting him to speak, and then +Corey said: "How incredible those things seem already! +You gentlemen KNOW that they happened; but are you still +able to believe it?" + +"Ah, nobody FEELS that anything happened," said Charles +Bellingham. "The past of one's experience doesn't +differ a great deal from the past of one's knowledge. +It isn't much more probable; it's really a great deal +less vivid than some scenes in a novel that one read when a boy." + +"I'm not sure of that," said James Bellingham. + +"Well, James, neither am I," consented his cousin, +helping himself from Lapham's Apollinaris bottle. +"There would be very little talking at dinner if one only +said the things that one was sure of." + +The others laughed, and Bromfield Corey remarked thoughtfully, +"What astonishes the craven civilian in all these things +is the abundance--the superabundance--of heroism. +The cowards were the exception; the men that were ready +to die, the rule." + +"The woods were full of them," said Lapham, without taking +his cigar from his mouth. + +"That's a nice little touch in School," interposed Charles +Bellingham, "where the girl says to the fellow who was +at Inkerman, 'I should think you would be so proud of it,' +and he reflects a while, and says, 'Well, the fact is, +you know, there were so many of us.'" + +"Yes, I remember that," said James Bellingham, +smiling for pleasure in it. "But I don't see why you +claim the credit of being a craven civilian, Bromfield," +he added, with a friendly glance at his brother-in-law, +and with the willingness Boston men often show to turn +one another's good points to the light in company; +bred so intimately together at school and college +and in society, they all know these points. "A man +who was out with Garibaldi in '48," continued James Bellingham. + +"Oh, a little amateur red-shirting," Corey interrupted +in deprecation. "But even if you choose to dispute +my claim, what has become of all the heroism? Tom, +how many club men do you know who would think it sweet +and fitting to die for their country?" + +"I can't think of a great many at the moment, sir," +replied the son, with the modesty of his generation. + +"And I couldn't in '61," said his uncle. "Nevertheless they +were there." + +"Then your theory is that it's the occasion that is wanting," +said Bromfield Corey. "But why shouldn't civil service reform, +and the resumption of specie payment, and a tariff +for revenue only, inspire heroes? They are all good causes." + +"It's the occasion that's wanting," said James Bellingham, +ignoring the persiflage. "And I'm very glad of it." + +"So am I," said Lapham, with a depth of feeling that +expressed itself in spite of the haze in which his brain +seemed to float. There was a great deal of the talk +that he could not follow; it was too quick for him; +but here was something he was clear of. "I don't want +to see any more men killed in my time." Something serious, +something sombre must lurk behind these words, and they +waited for Lapham to say more; but the haze closed round +him again, and he remained silent, drinking Apollinaris. + +"We non-combatants were notoriously reluctant to give +up fighting," said Mr. Sewell, the minister; "but I incline +to think Colonel Lapham and Mr. Bellingham may be right. +I dare say we shall have the heroism again if we have +the occasion. Till it comes, we must content ourselves +with the every-day generosities and sacrifices. They make +up in quantity what they lack in quality, perhaps." +"They're not so picturesque," said Bromfield Corey. +"You can paint a man dying for his country, but you +can't express on canvas a man fulfilling the duties +of a good citizen." + +"Perhaps the novelists will get at him by and by," +suggested Charles Bellingham. "If I were one of these fellows, +I shouldn't propose to myself anything short of that." + +"What? the commonplace?" asked his cousin. + +"Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light, +impalpable, aerial essence which they've never got into +their confounded books yet. The novelist who could +interpret the common feelings of commonplace people would +have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth' on his tongue." + +"Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," said the host; +and Lapham looked from one to the other, trying to make +out what they were at. He had never been so up a tree before. + +"I suppose it isn't well for us to see human nature +at white heat habitually," continued Bromfield Corey, +after a while. "It would make us vain of our species. +Many a poor fellow in that war and in many another has +gone into battle simply and purely for his country's sake, +not knowing whether, if he laid down his life, he should +ever find it again, or whether, if he took it up hereafter, +he should take it up in heaven or hell. Come, parson!" +he said, turning to the minister, "what has ever been +conceived of omnipotence, of omniscience, so sublime, +so divine as that?" + +"Nothing," answered the minister quietly. "God has never +been imagined at all. But if you suppose such a man as that +was Authorised, I think it will help you to imagine what God must be." + +"There's sense in that," said Lapham. He took his cigar +out of his mouth, and pulled his chair a little toward +the table, on which he placed his ponderous fore-arms. +"I want to tell you about a fellow I had in my own +company when we first went out. We were all privates +to begin with; after a while they elected me captain--I'd +had the tavern stand, and most of 'em knew me. But Jim +Millon never got to be anything more than corporal; +corporal when he was killed." The others arrested themselves +in various attitudes of attention, and remained listening +to Lapham with an interest that profoundly flattered him. +Now, at last, he felt that he was holding up his end +of the rope. "I can't say he went into the thing from +the highest motives, altogether; our motives are always +pretty badly mixed, and when there's such a hurrah-boys +as there was then, you can't tell which is which. +I suppose Jim Millon's wife was enough to account for +his going, herself. She was a pretty bad assortment," +said Lapham, lowering his voice and glancing round at the +door to make sure that it was shut, "and she used to lead +Jim ONE kind of life. Well, sir," continued Lapham, +synthetising his auditors in that form of address, +"that fellow used to save every cent of his pay and send +it to that woman. Used to get me to do it for him. +I tried to stop him. 'Why, Jim,' said I, 'you know +what she'll do with it.' 'That's so, Cap,' says he, +'but I don't know what she'll do without it.' And it +did keep her straight--straight as a string--as long +as Jim lasted. Seemed as if there was something mysterious +about it. They had a little girl,--about as old as my +oldest girl,--and Jim used to talk to me about her. +Guess he done it as much for her as for the mother; +and he said to me before the last action we went into, +'I should like to turn tail and run, Cap. I ain't comin' +out o' this one. But I don't suppose it would do.' +'Well, not for you, Jim,' said I. 'I want to live,' +he says; and he bust out crying right there in my tent. +'I want to live for poor Molly and Zerrilla'--that's what they +called the little one; I dunno where they got the name. +'I ain't ever had half a chance; and now she's doing better, +and I believe we should get along after this.' He set +there cryin' like a baby. But he wa'n't no baby when he +went into action. I hated to look at him after it was over, +not so much because he'd got a ball that was meant for me +by a sharpshooter--he saw the devil takin' aim, and he +jumped to warn me--as because he didn't look like Jim; +he looked like--fun; all desperate and savage. I guess he +died hard." + +The story made its impression, and Lapham saw it. +"Now I say," he resumed, as if he felt that he was going +to do himself justice, and say something to heighten +the effect his story had produced. At the same time +he was aware of a certain want of clearness. He had +the idea, but it floated vague, elusive, in his brain. +He looked about as if for something to precipitate it +in tangible shape. + +"Apollinaris?" asked Charles Bellingham, handing the bottle +from the other side. He had drawn his chair closer than +the rest to Lapham's, and was listening with great interest. +When Mrs. Corey asked him to meet Lapham, he accepted gladly. +"You know I go in for that sort of thing, Anna. +Since Leslie's affair we're rather bound to do it. +And I think we meet these practical fellows too little. +There's always something original about them." He might +naturally have believed that the reward of his faith +was coming. + +"Thanks, I will take some of this wine," said Lapham, +pouring himself a glass of Madeira from a black and dusty +bottle caressed by a label bearing the date of the vintage. +He tossed off the wine, unconscious of its preciousness, +and waited for the result. That cloudiness in his brain +disappeared before it, but a mere blank remained. +He not only could not remember what he was going to say, +but he could not recall what they had been talking about. +They waited, looking at him, and he stared at them in return. +After a while he heard the host saying, "Shall we join +the ladies?" + +Lapham went, trying to think what had happened. +It seemed to him a long time since he had drunk that wine. + +Miss Corey gave him a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from +his wife, who was talking with Miss Kingsbury and Mrs. Sewell; +Irene was with Miss Nanny Corey. He could not hear +what they were talking about; but if Penelope had come, +he knew that she would have done them all credit. He meant +to let her know how he felt about her behaviour when he +got home. It was a shame for her to miss such a chance. +Irene was looking beautiful, as pretty as all the rest +of them put together, but she was not talking, and Lapham +perceived that at a dinner-party you ought to talk. +He was himself conscious of having, talked very well. +He now wore an air of great dignity, and, in conversing +with the other gentlemen, he used a grave and +weighty deliberation. Some of them wanted him to go +into the library. There he gave his ideas of books. +He said he had not much time for anything but the papers; +but he was going to have a complete library in his new place. +He made an elaborate acknowledgment to Bromfield Corey +of his son's kindness in suggesting books for his library; +he said that he had ordered them all, and that he meant +to have pictures. He asked Mr. Corey who was about the +best American painter going now. "I don't set up to be +a judge of pictures, but I know what I like," he said. +He lost the reserve which he had maintained earlier, +and began to boast. He himself introduced the subject +of his paint, in a natural transition from pictures; +he said Mr. Corey must take a run up to Lapham with him +some day, and see the Works; they would interest him, +and he would drive him round the country; he kept most +of his horses up there, and he could show Mr. Corey +some of the finest Jersey grades in the country. +He told about his brother William, the judge at Dubuque; +and a farm he had out there that paid for itself every +year in wheat. As he cast off all fear, his voice rose, +and he hammered his arm-chair with the thick of his +hand for emphasis. Mr. Corey seemed impressed; he sat +perfectly quiet, listening, and Lapham saw the other +gentlemen stop in their talk every now and then to listen. +After this proof of his ability to interest them, +he would have liked to have Mrs. Lapham suggest again +that he was unequal to their society, or to the society +of anybody else. He surprised himself by his ease +among men whose names had hitherto overawed him. +He got to calling Bromfield Corey by his surname alone. +He did not understand why young Corey seemed so preoccupied, +and he took occasion to tell the company how he had said +to his wife the first time he saw that fellow that he +could make a man of him if he had him in the business; +and he guessed he was not mistaken. He began to tell stories +of the different young men he had had in his employ. At last +he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, +and he talked unceasingly. It was a great time; it was +a triumph. + +He was in this successful mood when word came to him that +Mrs. Lapham was going; Tom Corey seemed to have brought it, +but he was not sure. Anyway, he was not going to hurry. +He made cordial invitations to each of the gentlemen +to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be +satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each. +He told Charles Bellingham that he liked him, and assured +James Bellingham that it had always been his ambition +to know him, and that if any one had said when he +first came to Boston that in less than ten years he +should be hobnobbing with Jim Bellingham, he should have +told that person he lied. He would have told anybody +he lied that had told him ten years ago that a son +of Bromfield Corey would have come and asked him to take +him into the business. Ten years ago he, Silas Lapham, +had come to Boston a little worse off than nothing at all, +for he was in debt for half the money that he had bought +out his partner with, and here he was now worth a million, +and meeting you gentlemen like one of you. And every cent +of that was honest money,--no speculation,--every copper +of it for value received. And here, only the other day, +his old partner, who had been going to the dogs ever +since he went out of the business, came and borrowed twenty +thousand dollars of him! Lapham lent it because his wife +wanted him to: she had always felt bad about the fellow's +having to go out of the business. + +He took leave of Mr. Sewell with patronising affection, +and bade him come to him if he ever got into a tight place +with his parish work; he would let him have all the money +he wanted; he had more money than he knew what to do with. +"Why, when your wife sent to mine last fall," he said, +turning to Mr. Corey, "I drew my cheque for five hundred +dollars, but my wife wouldn't take more than one hundred; +said she wasn't going to show off before Mrs. Corey. +I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs. Corey. I must +tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of a cool four +hundred dollars." + +He started toward the door of the drawing-room to take +leave of the ladies; but Tom Corey was at his elbow, +saying, "I think Mrs. Lapham is waiting for you below, +sir," and in obeying the direction Corey gave him +toward another door he forgot all about his purpose, +and came away without saying good-night to his hostess. + +Mrs. Lapham had not known how soon she ought to go, +and had no idea that in her quality of chief guest she +was keeping the others. She stayed till eleven o'clock, +and was a little frightened when she found what time it was; +but Mrs. Corey, without pressing her to stay longer, +had said it was not at all late. She and Irene had +had a perfect time. Everybody had been very polite, +on the way home they celebrated the amiability of both +the Miss Coreys and of Miss Kingsbury. Mrs. Lapham thought +that Mrs. Bellingham was about the pleasantest person she +ever saw; she had told her all about her married daughter +who had married an inventor and gone to live in Omaha--a +Mrs. Blake. + +"If it's that car-wheel Blake," said Lapham proudly, +"I know all about him. I've sold him tons of the paint." + +"Pooh, papa! How you do smell of smoking!" cried Irene. + +"Pretty strong, eh?" laughed Lapham, letting down +a window of the carriage. His heart was throbbing +wildly in the close air, and he was glad of the rush +of cold that came in, though it stopped his tongue, +and he listened more and more drowsily to the rejoicings +that his wife and daughter exchanged. He meant to have +them wake Penelope up and tell her what she had lost; +but when he reached home he was too sleepy to suggest it. +He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, +full of supreme triumph. + +But in the morning his skull was sore with the unconscious, +night-long ache; and he rose cross and taciturn. +They had a silent breakfast. In the cold grey light of the +morning the glories of the night before showed poorer. +Here and there a painful doubt obtruded itself and marred +them with its awkward shadow. Penelope sent down word +that she was not well, and was not coming to breakfast, +and Lapham was glad to go to his office without seeing her. + +He was severe and silent all day with his clerks, +and peremptory with customers. Of Corey he was slyly observant, +and as the day wore away he grew more restively conscious. +He sent out word by his office-boy that he would +like to see Mr. Corey for a few minutes after closing. +The type-writer girl had lingered too, as if she wished +to speak with him, and Corey stood in abeyance as she +went toward Lapham's door. + +"Can't see you to-night, Zerrilla," he said bluffly, +but not unkindly. "Perhaps I'll call at the house, +if it's important." + +"It is," said the girl, with a spoiled air of insistence. + +"Well," said Lapham, and, nodding to Corey to enter, +he closed the door upon her. Then he turned to the young, +man and demanded: "Was I drunk last night?" + + + +XV. + + +LAPHAM'S strenuous face was broken up with the +emotions that had forced him to this question: shame, +fear of the things that must have been thought of him, +mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, +which died out at the shocked and pitying look in Corey's eyes. + +"Was I drunk?" he repeated. "I ask you, because I was never +touched by drink in my life before, and I don't know." +He stood with his huge hands trembling on the back of +his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he stared at Corey. + +"That is what every one understood, Colonel Lapham," +said the young man. "Every one saw how it was. +Don't----" + +"Did they talk it over after I left?" asked Lapham vulgarly. + +"Excuse me," said Corey, blushing, "my father doesn't +talk his guests over with one another." He added, +with youthful superfluity, "You were among gentlemen." + +"I was the only one that wasn't a gentleman there!" +lamented Lapham. "I disgraced you! I disgraced my family! I +mortified your father before his friends!" His head dropped. +"I showed that I wasn't fit to go with you. I'm not fit +for any decent place. What did I say? What did I do?" +he asked, suddenly lifting his head and confronting Corey. +"Out with it! If you could bear to see it and hear it, +I had ought to bear to know it!" + +"There was nothing--really nothing," said Corey. +"Beyond the fact that you were not quite yourself, +there was nothing whatever. My father DID speak of it +to me," he confessed, "when we were alone. He said +that he was afraid we had not been thoughtful of you, +if you were in the habit of taking only water; I told +him I had not seen wine at your table. The others said +nothing about you." + +"Ah, but what did they think?" + +"Probably what we did: that it was purely a misfortune-- +an accident." + +"I wasn't fit to be there," persisted Lapham. "Do you +want to leave?" he asked, with savage abruptness. + +"Leave?" faltered the young man. + +"Yes; quit the business? Cut the whole connection?" + +"I haven't the remotest idea of it!" cried Corey in amazement. +"Why in the world should I?" "Because you're a gentleman, +and I'm not, and it ain't right I should be over you. +If you want to go, I know some parties that would be +glad to get you. I will give you up if you want to go +before anything worse happens, and I shan't blame you. +I can help you to something better than I can offer you here, +and I will." + +"There's no question of my going, unless you wish it," +said Corey. "If you do----" + +"Will you tell your father," interrupted Lapham, +"that I had a notion all the time that I was acting +the drunken blackguard, and that I've suffered for it +all day? Will you tell him I don't want him to notice me +if we ever meet, and that I know I'm not fit to associate +with gentlemen in anything but a business way, if I am that?" + +"Certainly I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Corey. +"I can't listen to you any longer. What you say is shocking +to me--shocking in a way you can't think." + +"Why, man!" exclaimed Lapham, with astonishment; "if I +can stand it, YOU can!" + +"No," said Corey, with a sick look, "that doesn't follow. +You may denounce yourself, if you will; but I have my reasons +for refusing to hear you--my reasons why I CAN'T hear you. +If you say another word I must go away." + +"I don't understand you," faltered Lapham, in bewilderment, +which absorbed even his shame. + +"You exaggerate the effect of what has happened," +said the young man. "It's enough, more than enough, +for you to have mentioned the matter to me, and I think +it's unbecoming in me to hear you." + +He made a movement toward the door, but Lapham stopped +him with the tragic humility of his appeal. "Don't go +yet! I can't let you. I've disgusted you,--I see that; +but I didn't mean to. I--I take it back." + +"Oh, there's nothing to take back," said Corey, with a +repressed shudder for the abasement which he had seen. +"But let us say no more about it--think no more. +There wasn't one of the gentlemen present last night +who didn't understand the matter precisely as my father +and I did, and that fact must end it between us two." + +He went out into the larger office beyond, leaving Lapham +helpless to prevent his going. It had become a vital +necessity with him to think the best of Lapham, but his mind +was in a whirl of whatever thoughts were most injurious. +He thought of him the night before in the company of +those ladies and gentlemen, and he quivered in resentment +of his vulgar, braggart, uncouth nature. He recognised +his own allegiance to the exclusiveness to which he was +born and bred, as a man perceives his duty to his country +when her rights are invaded. His eye fell on the porter +going about in his shirt-sleeves to make the place fast +for the night, and he said to himself that Dennis was not +more plebeian than his master; that the gross appetites, +the blunt sense, the purblind ambition, the stupid arrogance +were the same in both, and the difference was in a brute will +that probably left the porter the gentler man of the two. +The very innocence of Lapham's life in the direction in +which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's +mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience. +Amidst the stings and flashes of his wounded pride, +all the social traditions, all the habits of feeling, +which he had silenced more and more by force of will +during the past months, asserted their natural sway, +and he rioted in his contempt of the offensive boor, who was +even more offensive in his shame than in his trespass. +He said to himself that he was a Corey, as if that +were somewhat; yet he knew that at the bottom of his heart +all the time was that which must control him at last, +and which seemed sweetly to be suffering his rebellion, +secure of his submission in the end. It was almost +with the girl's voice that it seemed to plead with him, +to undo in him, effect by effect, the work of his +indignant resentment, to set all things in another and +fairer light, to give him hopes, to suggest palliations, +to protest against injustices. It WAS in Lapham's favour +that he was so guiltless in the past, and now Corey asked +himself if it were the first time he could have wished +a guest at his father's table to have taken less wine; +whether Lapham was not rather to be honoured for not knowing +how to contain his folly where a veteran transgressor +might have held his tongue. He asked himself, with a +thrill of sudden remorse, whether, when Lapham humbled +himself in the dust so shockingly, he had shown him +the sympathy to which such ABANDON had the right; and he +had to own that he had met him on the gentlemanly ground, +sparing himself and asserting the superiority of his sort, +and not recognising that Lapham's humiliation came from +the sense of wrong, which he had helped to accumulate upon +him by superfinely standing aloof and refusing to touch him. + +He shut his desk and hurried out into the early night, +not to go anywhere, but to walk up and down, to try +to find his way out of the chaos, which now seemed ruin, +and now the materials out of which fine actions and a +happy life might be shaped. Three hours later he stood +at Lapham's door. + +At times what he now wished to do had seemed for ever impossible, +and again it had seemed as if he could not wait a moment longer. +He had not been careless, but very mindful of what he +knew must be the feelings of his own family in regard +to the Laphams, and he had not concealed from himself +that his family had great reason and justice on their side +in not wishing him to alienate himself from their common +life and associations. The most that he could urge to +himself was that they had not all the reason and justice; +but he had hesitated and delayed because they had so much. +Often he could not make it appear right that he should +merely please himself in what chiefly concerned himself. +He perceived how far apart in all their experiences and +ideals the Lapham girls and his sisters were; how different +Mrs. Lapham was from his mother; how grotesquely unlike +were his father and Lapham; and the disparity had not +always amused him. + +He had often taken it very seriously, and sometimes he said +that he must forego the hope on which his heart was set. +There had been many times in the past months when he had said +that he must go no further, and as often as he had taken +this stand he had yielded it, upon this or that excuse, +which he was aware of trumping up. It was part of the +complication that he should be unconscious of the injury he +might be doing to some one besides his family and himself; +this was the defect of his diffidence; and it had come +to him in a pang for the first time when his mother said +that she would not have the Laphams think she wished +to make more of the acquaintance than he did; and then +it had come too late. Since that he had suffered quite +as much from the fear that it might not be as that it +might be so; and now, in the mood, romantic and exalted, +in which he found himself concerning Lapham, he was as far +as might be from vain confidence. He ended the question +in his own mind by affirming to himself that he was there, +first of all, to see Lapham and give him an ultimate +proof of his own perfect faith and unabated respect, +and to offer him what reparation this involved for that want +of sympathy--of humanity--which he had shown. + + + +XVI. + + +THE Nova Scotia second-girl who answered Corey's ring +said that Lapham had not come home yet. + +"Oh," said the young man, hesitating on the outer step. + +"I guess you better come in," said the girl, "I'll go +and see when they're expecting him." + +Corey was in the mood to be swayed by any chance. +He obeyed the suggestion of the second-girl's patronising +friendliness, and let her shut him into the drawing-room, +while she went upstairs to announce him to Penelope. +"Did you tell him father wasn't at home?" + +"Yes. He seemed so kind of disappointed, I told him to +come in, and I'd see when he WOULD be in," said the girl, +with the human interest which sometimes replaces in the +American domestic the servile deference of other countries. + +A gleam of amusement passed over Penelope's face, +as she glanced at herself in the glass. "Well," she +cried finally, dropping from her shoulders the light shawl +in which she had been huddled over a book when Corey rang, +"I will go down." + +"All right," said the girl, and Penelope began hastily +to amend the disarray of her hair, which she tumbled into +a mass on the top of her little head, setting off the pale +dark of her complexion with a flash of crimson ribbon +at her throat. She moved across the carpet once or twice +with the quaint grace that belonged to her small figure, +made a dissatisfied grimace at it in the glass, caught a +handkerchief out of a drawer and slid it into her pocket, +and then descended to Corey. + +The Lapham drawing-room in Nankeen Square was in the +parti-coloured paint which the Colonel had hoped to repeat +in his new house: the trim of the doors and windows +was in light green and the panels in salmon; the walls +were a plain tint of French grey paper, divided by gilt +mouldings into broad panels with a wide stripe of red +velvet paper running up the corners; the chandelier +was of massive imitation bronze; the mirror over the +mantel rested on a fringed mantel-cover of green reps, +and heavy curtains of that stuff hung from gilt lambrequin +frames at the window; the carpet was of a small pattern +in crude green, which, at the time Mrs. Lapham bought it, +covered half the new floors in Boston. In the panelled +spaces on the walls were some stone-coloured landscapes, +representing the mountains and canyons of the West, +which the Colonel and his wife had visited on one of +the early official railroad excursions. In front of +the long windows looking into the Square were statues, +kneeling figures which turned their backs upon the company +within-doors, and represented allegories of Faith and Prayer +to people without. A white marble group of several figures, +expressing an Italian conception of Lincoln Freeing +the Slaves,--a Latin negro and his wife,--with our Eagle +flapping his wings in approval, at Lincoln's feet, +occupied one corner, and balanced the what-not of an +earlier period in another. These phantasms added +their chill to that imparted by the tone of the walls, +the landscapes, and the carpets, and contributed to the +violence of the contrast when the chandelier was lighted +up full glare, and the heat of the whole furnace welled +up from the registers into the quivering atmosphere +on one of the rare occasions when the Laphams invited company. + +Corey had not been in this room before; the family had +always received him in what they called the sitting-room. +Penelope looked into this first, and then she looked +into the parlour, with a smile that broke into a laugh +as she discovered him standing under the single burner +which the second-girl had lighted for him in the chandelier. + +"I don't understand how you came to be put in there," +she said, as she led the way to the cozier place, +"unless it was because Alice thought you were only here +on probation, anyway. Father hasn't got home yet, +but I'm expecting him every moment; I don't know what's +keeping him. Did the girl tell you that mother and Irene +were out?" + +"No, she didn't say. It's very good of you to see me." +She had not seen the exaltation which he had been feeling, +he perceived with half a sigh; it must all be upon this +lower level; perhaps it was best so. "There was something +I wished to say to your father----I hope," he broke off, +"you're better to-night." + +"Oh yes, thank you," said Penelope, remembering that she +had not been well enough to go to dinner the night before. + +"We all missed you very much." + +"Oh, thank you! I'm afraid you wouldn't have missed me +if I had been there." + +"Oh yes, we should," said Corey, "I assure you." + +They looked at each other. + +"I really think I believed I was saying something," +said the girl. + +"And so did I," replied the young man. They laughed +rather wildly, and then they both became rather grave. + +He took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, +where she sat on the other side of the hearth, in a chair +lower than his, with her hands dropped in her lap, and the +back of her head on her shoulders as she looked up at him. +The soft-coal fire in the grate purred and flickered; +the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face. +She let her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant +glance at the clock on the mantel. + +"Mother and Irene have gone to the Spanish Students' concert." + +"Oh, have they?" asked Corey; and he put his hat, +which he had been holding in his hand, on the floor +beside his chair. + +She looked down at it for no reason, and then looked +up at his face for no other, and turned a little red. +Corey turned a little red himself. She who had always been +so easy with him now became a little constrained. + +"Do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?" he asked. + +"No, is it warm? I haven't been out all day." + +"It's like a summer night." + +She turned her face towards the fire, and then +started abruptly. "Perhaps it's too warm for you here?" + +"Oh no, it's very comfortable." + +"I suppose it's the cold of the last few days that's still +in the house. I was reading with a shawl on when you came." + +"I interrupted you." + +"Oh no. I had finished the book. I was just looking +over it again." + +"Do you like to read books over?" + +"Yes; books that I like at all." + +"That was it?" asked Corey. + +The girl hesitated. "It has rather a sentimental name. +Did you ever read it?--Tears, Idle Tears." + +"Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous +book with ladies. They break their hearts over it. +Did it make you cry?" + +"Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said Penelope, +laughing; "and that one is very natural till you come +to the main point. Then the naturalness of all the rest +makes that seem natural too; but I guess it's rather forced." + +"Her giving him up to the other one?" + +"Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other +one had cared for him first. Why should she have done +it? What right had she?" + +"I don't know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice----" + +"But it WASN'T self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone. +She was sacrificing him too; and for some one who +couldn't appreciate him half as much as she could. +I'm provoked with myself when I think how I cried over +that book--for I did cry. It's silly--it's wicked +for any one to do what that girl did. Why can't they +let people have a chance to behave reasonably in stories?" + +"Perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," +suggested Corey, with a smile. + +"It would be novel, at any rate," said the girl. +"But so it would in real life, I suppose," she added. + +"I don't know. Why shouldn't people in love behave sensibly?" + +"That's a very serious question," said Penelope gravely. +"I couldn't answer it," and she left him the embarrassment +of supporting an inquiry which she had certainly instigated +herself. She seemed to have finally recovered her own ease +in doing this. "Do you admire our autumnal display, Mr. Corey?" + +"Your display?" + +"The trees in the Square. WE think it's quite equal +to an opening at Jordan & Marsh's." + +"Ah, I'm afraid you wouldn't let me be serious even +about your maples." + +"Oh yes, I should--if you like to be serious." + +"Don't you?" + +"Well not about serious matters. That's the reason +that book made me cry." + +"You make fun of everything. Miss Irene was telling me +last night about you." + +"Then it's no use for me to deny it so soon. I must give +Irene a talking to." + +"I hope you won't forbid her to talk about you!" + +She had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, +now between her face and the fire, and now between +her face and him. Her little visage, with that arch, +lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky hair, +and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, +had a Japanese effect in the subdued light, and it +had the charm which comes to any woman with happiness. +It would be hard to say how much of this she perceived +that he felt. They talked about other things a while, +and then she came back to what he had said. She glanced +at him obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it. +"Does Irene talk about me?" she asked. "I think so--yes. +Perhaps it's only I who talk about you. You must blame me +if it's wrong," he returned. + +"Oh, I didn't say it was wrong," she replied. "But I +hope if you said anything very bad of me you'll let me +know what it was, so that I can reform----" + +"No, don't change, please!" cried the young man. + +Penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely,-- +"or rebuke you for speaking evil of dignities." +She looked down at the fan, now flat in her lap, +and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she +remained looking down. Again they let the talk stray, +and then it was he who brought it back to themselves, +as if it had not left them. + +"I have to talk OF you," said Corey, "because I get +to talk TO you so seldom." + +"You mean that I do all the talking when we're--together?" +She glanced sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking +the last word. + +"We're so seldom together," he pursued. + +"I don't know what you mean----" + +"Sometimes I've thought--I've been afraid that you +avoided me." + +"Avoided you?" + +"Yes! Tried not to be alone with me." + +She might have told him that there was no reason why she +should be alone with him, and that it was very strange +he should make this complaint of her. But she did not. +She kept looking down at the fan, and then she lifted +her burning face and looked at the clock again. +"Mother and Irene will be sorry to miss you," she gasped. + +He instantly rose and came towards her. She rose too, +and mechanically put out her hand. He took it as if +to say good-night. "I didn't mean to send you away," +she besought him. + +"Oh, I'm not going," he answered simply. "I wanted +to say--to say that it's I who make her talk about you. +To say I----There is something I want to say to you; +I've said it so often to myself that I feel as if you must +know it." She stood quite still, letting him keep her hand, +and questioning his face with a bewildered gaze. "You MUST +know--she must have told you--she must have guessed----" +Penelope turned white, but outwardly quelled the panic +that sent the blood to her heart. "I--I didn't expect--I +hoped to have seen your father--but I must speak now, +whatever----I love you!" + +She freed her hand from both of those he had closed upon it, +and went back from him across the room with a sinuous spring. +"ME!" Whatever potential complicity had lurked in her heart, +his words brought her only immeasurable dismay. + +He came towards her again. "Yes, you. Who else?" + +She fended him off with an imploring gesture. +"I thought--I--it was----" + +She shut her lips tight, and stood looking at him +where he remained in silent amaze. Then her words +came again, shudderingly. "Oh, what have you done?" + +"Upon my soul," he said, with a vague smile, "I don't know. +I hope no harm?" + +"Oh, don't laugh!" she cried, laughing hysterically herself. +"Unless you want me to think you the greatest wretch +in the world!" + +"I?" he responded. "For heaven's sake tell me what you mean!" + +"You know I can't tell you. Can you say--can you put +your hand on your heart and say that--you--say you +never meant--that you meant me--all along?" + +"Yes!--yes! Who else? I came here to see your father, +and to tell him that I wished to tell you this--to ask +him----But what does it matter? You must have known +it--you must have seen--and it's for you to answer me. +I've been abrupt, I know, and I've startled you; but if you +love me, you can forgive that to my loving you so long +before I spoke." + +She gazed at him with parted lips. + +"Oh, mercy! What shall I do? If it's true--what you say--you +must go!" she said. "And you must never come any more. +Do you promise that?" + +"Certainly not," said the young man. "Why should I +promise such a thing--so abominably wrong? I could obey +if you didn't love me----" + +"Oh, I don't! Indeed I don't! Now will you obey." + +"No. I don't believe you." "Oh!" + +He possessed himself of her hand again. + +"My love--my dearest! What is this trouble, that you +can't tell it? It can't be anything about yourself. +If it is anything about any one else, it wouldn't make +the least difference in the world, no matter what it was. +I would be only too glad to show by any act or deed I could +that nothing could change me towards you." + +"Oh, you don't understand!" + +"No, I don't. You must tell me." + +"I will never do that." + +"Then I will stay here till your mother comes, and ask +her what it is." + +"Ask HER?" + +"Yes! Do you think I will give you up till I know why +I must?" + +"You force me to it! Will you go if I tell you, and never +let any human creature know what you have said to me?" + +"Not unless you give me leave." + +"That will be never. Well, then----" She stopped, +and made two or three ineffectual efforts to begin again. +"No, no! I can't. You must go!" + +"I will not go!" + +"You said you--loved me. If you do, you will go." + +He dropped the hands he had stretched towards her, +and she hid her face in her own. + +"There!" she said, turning it suddenly upon him. +"Sit down there. And will you promise me--on your honour-- +not to speak--not to try to persuade me--not to--touch +me? You won't touch me?" + +"I will obey you, Penelope." + +"As if you were never to see me again? As if I were dying?" + +"I will do what you say. But I shall see you again; +and don't talk of dying. This is the beginning of life----" + +"No. It's the end," said the girl, resuming at last something +of the hoarse drawl which the tumult of her feeling had +broken into those half-articulate appeals. She sat down too, +and lifted her face towards him. "It's the end of life +for me, because I know now that I must have been playing +false from the beginning. You don't know what I mean, +and I can never tell you. It isn't my secret--it's +some one else's. You--you must never come here again. +I can't tell you why, and you must never try to know. +Do you promise?" + +"You can forbid me. I must do what you say." + +"I do forbid you, then. And you shall not think I am +cruel----" + +"How could I think that?" + +"Oh, how hard you make it!" + +Corey laughed for very despair. "Can I make it easier +by disobeying you?" + +"I know I am talking crazily. But I 'm not crazy." + +"No, no," he said, with some wild notion of comforting her; +"but try to tell me this trouble! There is nothing under +heaven--no calamity, no sorrow--that I wouldn't gladly +share with you, or take all upon myself if I could!" + +"I know! But this you can't. Oh, my----" + +"Dearest! Wait! Think! Let me ask your mother--your father----" + +She gave a cry. + +"No! If you do that, you will make me hate you! Will you----" + +The rattling of a latch-key was heard in the outer door. + +"Promise!" cried Penelope. + +"Oh, I promise!" + +"Good-bye!" She suddenly flung her arms round his neck, +and, pressing her cheek tight against his, flashed out +of the room by one door as her father entered it by another. + +Corey turned to him in a daze. "I--I called to speak +with you--about a matter----But it's so late now. +I'll--I'll see you to-morrow." + +"No time like the present," said Lapham, with a fierceness +that did not seem referable to Corey. He had his hat +still on, and he glared at the young man out of his blue +eyes with a fire that something else must have kindled there. + +"I really can't now," said Corey weakly. "It will do +quite as well to-morrow. Good night, sir." + +"Good night," answered Lapham abruptly, following him to +the door, and shutting it after him. "I think the devil must +have got into pretty much everybody to-night," he muttered, +coming back to the room, where he put down his hat. +Then he went to the kitchen-stairs and called down, +"Hello, Alice! I want something to eat!" + + + +XVII. + + +"WHAT's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast +any more?" asked Lapham, when he met his wife at the table +in the morning. He had been up an hour and a half, +and he spoke with the severity of a hungry man. +"It seems to me they don't amount to ANYthing. Here I am, +at my time of life, up the first one in the house. I ring +the bell for the cook at quarter-past six every morning, +and the breakfast is on the table at half-past seven +right along, like clockwork, but I never see anybody +but you till I go to the office." + +"Oh yes, you do, Si," said his wife soothingly. +"The girls are nearly always down. But they're young, +and it tires them more than it does us to get up early." + +"They can rest afterwards. They don't do anything after +they ARE up," grumbled Lapham. + +"Well, that's your fault, ain't it? You oughtn't to have +made so much money, and then they'd have had to work." +She laughed at Lapham's Spartan mood, and went on to excuse +the young people. "Irene's been up two nights hand running, +and Penelope says she ain't well. What makes you so cross +about the girls? Been doing something you're ashamed of?" + +"I'll tell you when I've been doing anything to be +ashamed of," growled Lapham. + +"Oh no, you won't!" said his wife jollily. "You'll only +be hard on the rest of us. Come now, Si; what is it?" + +Lapham frowned into his coffee with sulky dignity, +and said, without looking up, "I wonder what that fellow +wanted here last night?" "What fellow?" + +"Corey. I found him here when I came home, and he said +he wanted to see me; but he wouldn't stop." + +"Where was he?" + +"In the sitting-room." + +"Was Pen there?" + +"I didn't see her." + +Mrs. Lapham paused, with her hand on the cream-jug. "Why, +what in the land did he want? Did he say he wanted you?" + +"That's what he said." + +"And then he wouldn't stay?" + +"Well, then, I'll tell you just what it is, Silas Lapham. +He came here"--she looked about the room and lowered +her voice--"to see you about Irene, and then he hadn't +the courage." + +"I guess he's got courage enough to do pretty much +what he wants to," said Lapham glumly. "All I know is, +he was here. You better ask Pen about it, if she ever +gets down." + +"I guess I shan't wait for her," said Mrs. Lapham; +and, as her husband closed the front door after him, +she opened that of her daughter's room and entered abruptly. + +The girl sat at the window, fully dressed, and as if she +had been sitting there a long time. Without rising, +she turned her face towards her mother. It merely showed +black against the light, and revealed nothing till her +mother came close to her with successive questions. +"Why, how long have you been up, Pen? Why don't you come +to your breakfast? Did you see Mr. Corey when he called +last night? Why, what's the matter with you? What have you +been crying about?" + +"Have I been crying?" + +"Yes! Your cheeks are all wet!" + +"I thought they were on fire. Well, I'll tell you +what's happened." She rose, and then fell back in her chair. +"Lock the door!" she ordered, and her mother mechanically +obeyed. "I don't want Irene in here. There's nothing +the matter. Only, Mr. Corey offered himself to me last night." + +Her mother remained looking at her, helpless, not so much +with amaze, perhaps, as dismay. "Oh, I'm not a ghost! I +wish I was! You had better sit down, mother. You have +got to know all about it." + +Mrs. Lapham dropped nervelessly into the chair at the +other window, and while the girl went slowly but briefly on, +touching only the vital points of the story, and breaking +at times into a bitter drollery, she sat as if without +the power to speak or stir. + +"Well, that's all, mother. I should say I had dreamt, it, +if I had slept any last night; but I guess it really happened." + +The mother glanced round at the bed, and said, glad to +occupy herself delayingly with the minor care: "Why, you +have been sitting up all night! You will kill yourself." + +"I don't know about killing myself, but I've been sitting +up all night," answered the girl. Then, seeing that her +mother remained blankly silent again, she demanded, +"Why don't you blame me, mother? Why don't you say +that I led him on, and tried to get him away from her? +Don't you believe I did?" + +Her mother made her no answer, as if these ravings of +self-accusal needed none. "Do you think," she asked simply, +"that he got the idea you cared for him?" + +"He knew it! How could I keep it from him? I said I +didn't--at first!" + +"It was no use," sighed the mother. "You might as well +said you did. It couldn't help Irene any, if you didn't." + +"I always tried to help her with him, even when I----" + +"Yes, I know. But she never was equal to him. I saw +that from the start; but I tried to blind myself to it. +And when he kept coming----" + +"You never thought of me!" cried the girl, with a bitterness +that reached her mother's heart. "I was nobody! I couldn't +feel! No one could care for me!" The turmoil of despair, +of triumph, of remorse and resentment, which filled +her soul, tried to express itself in the words. + +"No," said the mother humbly. "I didn't think of you. +Or I didn't think of you enough. It did come across me +sometimes that may be----But it didn't seem as if----And +your going on so for Irene----" + +"You let me go on. You made me always go and talk +with him for her, and you didn't think I would talk +to him for myself. Well, I didn't!" + +"I'm punished for it. When did you--begin to care for him!" + +"How do I know? What difference does it make? It's all +over now, no matter when it began. He won't come here +any more, unless I let him." She could not help betraying +her pride in this authority of hers, but she went on +anxiously enough, "What will you say to Irene? She's safe +as far as I'm concerned; but if he don't care for her, +what will you do?" + +"I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Lapham. She sat in an +apathy from which she apparently could not rouse herself. +"I don't see as anything can be done." + +Penelope laughed in a pitying derision. + +"Well, let things go on then. But they won't go on." + +"No, they won't go on," echoed her mother. "She's pretty enough, +and she's capable; and your father's got the money--I +don't know what I'm saying! She ain't equal to him, +and she never was. I kept feeling it all the time, +and yet I kept blinding myself." + +"If he had ever cared for her," said Penelope, "it wouldn't +have mattered whether she was equal to him or not. +I'M not equal to him either." + +Her mother went on: "I might have thought it was you; +but I had got set----Well! I can see it all clear enough, +now it's too late. I don't know what to do." + +"And what do you expect me to do?" demanded the girl. +"Do you want ME to go to Irene and tell her that I've got +him away from her?" + +"O good Lord!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "What shall I do? What +do you want I should do, Pen?" + +"Nothing for me," said Penelope. "I've had it out +with myself. Now do the best you can for Irene." + +"I couldn't say you had done wrong, if you was to marry +him to-day." + +"Mother!" + +"No, I couldn't. I couldn't say but what you had been good +and faithfull all through, and you had a perfect right +to do it. There ain't any one to blame. He's behaved +like a gentleman, and I can see now that he never thought +of her, and that it was you all the while. Well, marry him, +then! He's got the right, and so have you." + +"What about Irene? I don't want you to talk about me. +I can take care of myself" + +"She's nothing but a child. It's only a fancy with her. +She'll get over it. She hain't really got her heart set +on him." + +"She's got her heart set on him, mother. She's got +her whole life set on him. You know that." + +"Yes, that's so," said the mother, as promptly as if she +had been arguing to that rather than the contrary effect. + +"If I could give him to her, I would. But he isn't mine +to give." She added in a burst of despair, "He isn't mine +to keep!" + +"Well," said Mrs. Lapham, "she has got to bear it. +I don't know what's to come of it all. But she's got +to bear her share of it." She rose and went toward +the door. + +Penelope ran after her in a sort of terror. "You're not +going to tell Irene?" she gasped, seizing her mother +by either shoulder. + +"Yes, I am," said Mrs. Lapham. "If she's a woman grown, +she can bear a woman's burden." + +"I can't let you tell Irene," said the girl, letting fall +her face on her mother's neck. "Not Irene," she moaned. +"I'm afraid to let you. How can I ever look at her again?" + +"Why, you haven't done anything, Pen," said her mother soothingly. + +"I wanted to! Yes, I must have done something. +How could I help it? I did care for him from the first, +and I must have tried to make him like me. Do you +think I did? No, no! You mustn't tell Irene! Not-- +not--yet! Mother! Yes! I did try to get him from her!" +she cried, lifting her head, and suddenly looking her +mother in the face with those large dim eyes of hers. +"What do you think? Even last night! It was the first time +I ever had him all to myself, for myself, and I know +now that I tried to make him think that I was pretty +and--funny. And I didn't try to make him think of her. +I knew that I pleased him, and I tried to please him more. +Perhaps I could have kept him from saying that he cared for me; +but when I saw he did--I must have seen it--I couldn't. +I had never had him to myself, and for myself before. +I needn't have seen him at all, but I wanted to see him; +and when I was sitting there alone with him, how do I know +what I did to let him feel that I cared for him? Now, +will you tell Irene? I never thought he did care for me, +and never expected him to. But I liked him. Yes--I did like +him! Tell her that! Or else I will." + +"If it was to tell her he was dead," began Mrs. Lapham absently. + +"How easy it would be!" cried the girl in self-mockery. +"But he's worse than dead to her; and so am I. I've turned +it over a million ways, mother; I've looked at it in every +light you can put it in, and I can't make anything but misery +out of it. You can see the misery at the first glance, +and you can't see more or less if you spend your life +looking at it." She laughed again, as if the hopelessness +of the thing amused her. Then she flew to the extreme +of self-assertion. "Well, I HAVE a right to him, and he +has a right to me. If he's never done anything to make +her think he cared for her,--and I know he hasn't; +it's all been our doing, then he's free and I'm free. +We can't make her happy whatever we do; and why shouldn't +I----No, that won't do! I reached that point before!" +She broke again into her desperate laugh. "You may +try now, mother!" + +"I'd best speak to your father first----" + +Penelope smiled a little more forlornly than she had laughed. + +"Well, yes; the Colonel will have to know. It isn't +a trouble that I can keep to myself exactly. It seems +to belong to too many other people." + +Her mother took a crazy encouragement from her return +to her old way of saying things. "Perhaps he can think +of something." + +"Oh, I don't doubt but the Colonel will know just what +to do!" + +"You mustn't be too down-hearted about it. It--it'll all +come right----" + +"You tell Irene that, mother." + +Mrs. Lapham had put her hand on the door-key; she dropped it, +and looked at the girl with a sort of beseeching +appeal for the comfort she could not imagine herself. +"Don't look at me, mother," said Penelope, shaking her head. +"You know that if Irene were to die without knowing it, +it wouldn't come right for me." + +"Pen!" + +"I've read of cases where a girl gives up the man +that loves her so as to make some other girl happy +that the man doesn't love. That might be done." + +"Your father would think you were a fool," said Mrs. Lapham, +finding a sort of refuge in her strong disgust for the +pseudo heroism. "No! If there's to be any giving up, +let it be by the one that shan't make anybody but +herself suffer. There's trouble and sorrow enough +in the world, without MAKING it on purpose!" + +She unlocked the door, but Penelope slipped round and set +herself against it. "Irene shall not give up!" + +"I will see your father about it," said the mother. +"Let me out now----" + +"Don't let Irene come here!" + +"No. I will tell her that you haven't slept. Go to bed now, +and try to get some rest. She isn't up herself yet. +You must have some breakfast." + +"No; let me sleep if I can. I can get something when I +wake up. I'll come down if I can't sleep. Life has got +to go on. It does when there's a death in the house, +and this is only a little worse." + +"Don't you talk nonsense!" cried Mrs. Lapham, +with angry authority. + +"Well, a little better, then," said Penelope, +with meek concession. + +Mrs. Lapham attempted to say something, and could not. +She went out and opened Irene's door. The girl lifted +her head drowsily from her pillow "Don't disturb your +sister when you get up, Irene. She hasn't slept well----" + +"PLEASE don't talk! I'm almost DEAD with sleep!" +returned Irene. "Do go, mamma! I shan't disturb her." +She turned her face down in the pillow, and pulled the +covering up over her ears. + +The mother slowly closed the door and went downstairs, +feeling bewildered and baffled almost beyond the power +to move. The time had been when she would have tried +to find out why this judgment had been sent upon her. +But now she could not feel that the innocent +suffering of others was inflicted for her fault; +she shrank instinctively from that cruel and egotistic +misinterpretation of the mystery of pain and loss. +She saw her two children, equally if differently dear +to her, destined to trouble that nothing could avert, +and she could not blame either of them; she could not +blame the means of this misery to them; he was as innocent +as they, and though her heart was sore against him in this +first moment, she could still be just to him in it. +She was a woman who had been used to seek the light +by striving; she had hitherto literally worked to it. +But it is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away +from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit. +In this house, where everything had come to be done +for her, she had no tasks to interpose between her +and her despair. She sat down in her own room and let +her hands fall in her lap,--the hands that had once been +so helpful and busy,--and tried to think it all out. +She had never heard of the fate that was once supposed +to appoint the sorrows of men irrespective of their +blamelessness or blame, before the time when it came +to be believed that sorrows were penalties; but in her +simple way she recognised something like that mythic +power when she rose from her struggle with the problem, +and said aloud to herself, "Well, the witch is in it." +Turn which way she would, she saw no escape from the misery +to come--the misery which had come already to Penelope +and herself, and that must come to Irene and her father. +She started when she definitely thought of her husband, +and thought with what violence it would work in every fibre +of his rude strength. She feared that, and she feared +something worse--the effect which his pride and ambition +might seek to give it; and it was with terror of this, +as well as the natural trust with which a woman must turn +to her husband in any anxiety at last, that she felt she +could not wait for evening to take counsel with him. +When she considered how wrongly he might take it all, +it seemed as if it were already known to him, and she was +impatient to prevent his error. + +She sent out for a messenger, whom she despatched with a note +to his place of business: "Silas, I should like to ride +with you this afternoon. Can't you come home early? Persis." +And she was at dinner with Irene, evading her questions +about Penelope, when answer came that he would be at the +house with the buggy at half-past two. It is easy to put +off a girl who has but one thing in her head; but though +Mrs. Lapham could escape without telling anything of Penelope, +she could not escape seeing how wholly Irene was engrossed +with hopes now turned so vain and impossible. She was +still talking of that dinner, of nothing but that dinner, +and begging for flattery of herself and praise of him, +which her mother had till now been so ready to give. + +"Seems to me you don't take very much interest, mamma!" +she said, laughing and blushing at one point. + +"Yes,--yes, I do," protested Mrs. Lapham, and then +the girl prattled on. + +"I guess I shall get one of those pins that Nanny Corey +had in her hair. I think it would become me, don't you?" +"Yes; but Irene--I don't like to have you go on so, +till--unless he's said something to show--You oughtn't +to give yourself up to thinking----" But at this the +girl turned so white, and looked such reproach at her, +that she added frantically: "Yes, get the pin. It is +just the thing for you! But don't disturb Penelope. +Let her alone till I get back. I'm going out to ride +with your father. He'll be here in half an hour. +Are you through? Ring, then. Get yourself that fan you saw +the other day. Your father won't say anything; he likes +to have you look well. I could see his eyes on you half +the time the other night." + +"I should have liked to have Pen go with me," said Irene, +restored to her normal state of innocent selfishness +by these flatteries. "Don't you suppose she'll be up +in time? What's the matter with her that she didn't sleep?" + +"I don't know. Better let her alone." + +"Well," submitted Irene. + + + +XVIII. + + +MRS. LAPHAM went away to put on her bonnet and cloak, +and she was waiting at the window when her husband drove up. +She opened the door and ran down the steps. "Don't get out; +I can help myself in," and she clambered to his side, +while he kept the fidgeting mare still with voice +and touch. + +"Where do you want I should go?" he asked, turning the buggy. + +"Oh, I don't care. Out Brookline way, I guess. +I wish you hadn't brought this fool of a horse," she gave +way petulantly. "I wanted to have a talk." + +"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll sell +out altogether," said Lapham. "She'll be quiet enough +when she's had her spin." + +"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their +way across the city to the Milldam she answered certain +questions he asked about some points in the new house. + +"I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; +but she answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it +up and turned his horse's head westward when they struck +Beacon Street. + +He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he +left the Brighton road and struck off under the low boughs +that met above one of the quiet streets of Brookline, +where the stone cottages, with here and there a patch of +determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they could +to look English amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. +The smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was +scattered with flakes of the red and yellow gold that made +the air luminous around them, and the perspective was gay +with innumerable tints and tones. + +"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sign, +letting the reins lie loose in his vigilant hand, to which he +seemed to relegate the whole charge of the mare. "I want +to talk with you about Rogers, Persis. He's been getting +in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he pestered +me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. +I ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very +much confidence in Rogers. And I told him so last night." + +"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife broke in. +"There's something a good deal more important than Rogers +in the world, and more important than your business. +It seems as if you couldn't think of anything else--that +and the new house. Did you suppose I wanted to ride +so as to talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to +the necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay +for her suffering, even if he has not inflicted it. +"I declare----" + +"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham. "What DO you want +to talk about? I'm listening." + +His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas Lapham!" +and then she broke off to say, "Well, you may wait, +now--starting me wrong, when it's hard enough anyway." + +Lapham silently turned his whip over and over in his hand +and waited. + +"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young +Corey had been coming to see Irene?" + +"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham sullenly. +"You always said so." He looked sharply at her under his +lowering brows. + +"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she replied +to the frown that blackened on her husband's face. +"And I can tell you what, if you take it in that way I +shan't speak another word." + +"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham savagely. +"What are you drivin' at?" + +"I want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly." + +"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. I haven't +said a word yet." + +"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, +and looking like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start. +I've had to bear it, and you've got to bear it too." + +"Well, let me have a chance at it, then." + +"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can see, +and the only question is, what's the best thing to do +about it. There's only one thing we can do; for if he +don't care for the child, nobody wants to make him. +If he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's +all there is to it." + +"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham. + +"There!" protested his wife. + +"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what HAS he been +coming for?" + +"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife. "NOW +are you satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought +it all upon them; but at the sight of the swift passions +working in his face to a perfect comprehension of the +whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her broken voice +lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. +"O Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid +it'll kill Irene." + +Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right +hand with the fingers of his left, in which the reins lay. +He passed it over his forehead, and then flicked from it +the moisture it had gathered there. He caught his breath +once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle with +superior force and then remains passive in its grasp. + +His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt +the need of afflicting him. "I don't say but what it can +be made to come out all right in the end. All I say is, +I don't see my way clear yet." + +"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked quietly. + +"He told her so last night, and she told me this morning. +Was he at the office to-day?" + +"Yes, he was there. I haven't been there much myself. +He didn't say anything to me. Does Irene know?" + +"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping. +She wants to get a pin like the one Nanny Corey had on." +"O my Lord!" groaned Lapham. + +"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost from +the start. I don't say but what he was attracted some +by Irene at the very first; but I guess it's been Pen +ever since he saw her; and we've taken up with a notion, +and blinded ourselves with it. Time and again I've had +my doubts whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare +to goodness, when he kept coming, I never hardly thought +of Pen, and I couldn't help believing at last he DID care +for Irene. Did it ever strike you he might be after Pen?" + +"No. I took what you said. I supposed you knew." + +"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly. + +"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want +anything but the children's good. What's it all of it for, +if it ain't for that? That's what we've both slaved +for all our lives." + +"Yes, I know. Plenty of people LOSE their children," +she suggested. + +"Yes, but that don't comfort me any. I never was one +to feel good because another man felt bad. How would you +have liked it if some one had taken comfort because his boy +lived when ours died? No, I can't do it. And this is worse +than death, someways. That comes and it goes; but this looks +as if it was one of those things that had come to stay. +The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody. +Suppose we don't want Pen to have him; will that help +Irene any, if he don't want her? Suppose we don't want +to let him have either; does that help either!" + +"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our say was +going to settle it. Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham +is a girl to take up with a fellow that her sister is +in love with, and that she always thought was in love +with her sister, and go off and be happy with him? +Don't you believe but what it would come back to her, +as long as she breathed the breath of life, how she'd +teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease Irene, +and helped to make her think he was in love with her, +by showing that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!" + +Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument. +His huge head hung forward over his breast; the reins lay +loose in his moveless hand; the mare took her own way. +At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy jaws. + +"Well?" quavered his wife. + +"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, +I don't see what that's got to do with it." He looked +straight forward, and not at his wife. + +She laid her hands on the reins. "Now, you stop right here, +Silas Lapham! If I thought that--if I really believed +you could be willing to break that poor child's heart, +and let Pen disgrace herself by marrying a man that had +as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted +Bromfield Corey's son for a son-in-law----" + +Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look. +"You had better NOT believe that, Persis! Get up!" +he called to the mare, without glancing at her, and she +sprang forward. "I see you've got past being any use +to yourself on this subject." + +"Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him. "Where the +devil you goin' to?" + +"Do you want to KILL somebody!" shrieked his wife. + +There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, +and separated their wheels from those of the open buggy +in front which Lapham had driven into. He made his excuses +to the occupant; and the accident relieved the tension +of their feelings, and left them far from the point +of mutual injury which they had reached in their common +trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good. + +It was Lapham who resumed the talk. "I'm afraid we +can't either of us see this thing in the right light. +We're too near to it. I wish to the Lord there was somebody +to talk to about it." + +"Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody." + +"Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a moment; +"why not talk to the minister of your church? May be he +could see some way out of it." + +Mrs. Lapham shook her head hopelessly. "It wouldn't do. +I've never taken up my connection with the church, and I +don't feel as if I'd got any claim on him." + +"If he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, +you HAVE got a claim on him," urged Lapham; and he spoiled +his argument by adding, "I've contributed enough MONEY +to his church." + +"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs. Lapham. "I ain't well +enough acquainted with Dr. Langworthy, or else I'm +TOO well. No; if I was to ask any one, I should want +to ask a total stranger. But what's the use, Si? Nobody +could make us see it any different from what it is, +and I don't know as I should want they should." + +It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed +down their hearts ever more heavily within them. +They ceased to talk of it a hundred times, and still came +back to it. They drove on and on. It began to be late. +"I guess we better go back, Si," said his wife; +and as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil +down and began to cry softly behind it, with low little +broken sobs. + +Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward. +At last his wife stopped crying and began trying to find +her pocket. "Here, take mine, Persis," he said kindly, +offering her his handkerchief, and she took it and dried +her eyes with it. "There was one of those fellows there +the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned +back against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that I +liked the looks of about as well as any man I ever saw. +I guess he was a pretty good man. It was that Mr. Sewell." + +He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything. +"Persis," he resumed, "I can't bear to go back with nothing +settled in our minds. I can't bear to let you." + +"We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude. +Lapham groaned. "Where does he live?" she asked. + +"On Bolingbroke Street. He gave me his number." + +"Well, it wouldn't do any good. What could he say to us?" + +"Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said Lapham +hopelessly; and neither of them said anything more till +they crossed the Milldam and found themselves between +the rows of city houses. + +"Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his wife. +"I couldn't bear to see it. Drive--drive up Bolingbroke Street. +We might as well see where he DOES live." + +"Well," said Lapham. He drove along slowly. +"That's the place," he said finally, stopping the mare +and pointing with his whip. + +"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone +which he understood as well as he understood her words. +He turned the mare up to the curbstone. + +"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing them +to his wife. + +He got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened; +then he came back and lifted his wife out. "He's in," +he said. + +He got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat +and made it fast to the mare's bit. + +"Do you think she'll stand with that?" asked Mrs. Lapham. + +"I guess so. If she don't, no matter." + +"Ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted, +trying to make delay. + +"Let her!" said Lapham. He took his wife's trembling +hand under his arm, and drew her to the door. + +"He'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her broken pride. + +"Well, we ARE," said Lapham. "Tell him we'd like to see him +alone a while," he said to the girl who was holding the door +ajar for him, and she showed him into the reception-room, +which had been the Protestant confessional for many +burdened souls before their time, coming, as they did, +with the belief that they were bowed down with the only +misery like theirs in the universe; for each one of us +must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he +is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has +been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world. + +They were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister +came in as if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did +so at last, and, with a simple dignity which he had wanted +in his bungling and apologetic approaches, he laid the affair +clearly before the minister's compassionate and reverent eye. +He spared Corey's name, but he did not pretend that it +was not himself and his wife and their daughters who were concerned. + +"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble you +with this thing," he said, in the moment while Sewell +sat pondering the case, "and I don't know as I've got +any warrant for doing it. But, as I told my wife here, +there was something about you--I don't know whether it +was anything you SAID exactly--that made me feel as if you +could help us. I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; +but that's the way I felt. And here we are. And if it +ain't all right" + +"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right. I thank you +for coming--for trusting your trouble to me. A time +comes to every one of us when we can't help ourselves, +and then we must get others to help us. If people turn +to me at such a time, I feel sure that I was put into the +world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, +my sympathy." + +The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome +in them that these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt. + +"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe +the tears again under her veil. + +Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak. +"We can be of use to one another here, because we can always +be wiser for some one else than we can for ourselves. +We can see another's sins and errors in a more merciful +light--and that is always a fairer light--than we can our own; +and we can look more sanely at others' afflictions." +He had addressed these words to Lapham; now he turned +to his wife. "If some one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, +in just this perplexity, what would you have thought?" + +"I don't know as I understand you," faltered Mrs. Lapham. + +Sewell repeated his words, and added, "I mean, what do +you think some one else ought to do in your place?" + +"Was there ever any poor creatures in such a strait before?" +she asked, with pathetic incredulity. + +"There's no new trouble under the sun," said the minister. + +"Oh, if it was any one else, I should say--I should say--Why, +of course! I should say that their duty was to let----" +She paused. + +"One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" +suggested Sewell. "That's sense, and that's justice. +It's the economy of pain which naturally suggests itself, +and which would insist upon itself, if we were not +all perverted by traditions which are the figment of +the shallowest sentimentality. Tell me, Mrs. Lapham, +didn't this come into your mind when you first learned how +matters stood?" + +"Why, yes, it flashed across me. But I didn't think it +could be right." + +"And how was it with you, Mr. Lapham?" + +"Why, that's what I thought, of course. But I didn't +see my way----" + +"No," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we are all +weakened by a false ideal of self-sacrifice. It wraps us +round with its meshes, and we can't fight our way out of it. +Mrs. Lapham, what made you feel that it might be better +for three to suffer than one?" + +"Why, she did herself. I know she would die sooner +than take him away from her." + +"I supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly. "And yet +she is a sensible girl, your daughter?" + +"She has more common-sense----" + +"Of course! But in such a case we somehow think it must +be wrong to use our common-sense. I don't know where this +false ideal comes from, unless it comes from the novels +that befool and debauch almost every intelligence in +some degree. It certainly doesn't come from Christianity, +which instantly repudiates it when confronted with it. +Your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense, +that she ought to make herself and the man who loves +her unhappy, in order to assure the life-long wretchedness +of her sister, whom he doesn't love, simply because her +sister saw him and fancied him first! And I'm sorry to +say that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred--oh, +nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand!--would +consider that noble and beautiful and heroic; whereas you +know at the bottom of your hearts that it would be +foolish and cruel and revolting. You know what marriage +is! And what it must be without love on both sides." + +The minister had grown quite heated and red in the face. + +"I lose all patience!" he went on vehemently. "This poor +child of yours has somehow been brought to believe that it +will kill her sister if her sister does not have what +does not belong to her, and what it is not in the power +of all the world, or any soul in the world, to give her. +Her sister will suffer--yes, keenly!--in heart and +in pride; but she will not die. You will suffer too, +in your tenderness for her; but you must do your duty. +You must help her to give up. You would be guilty if you +did less. Keep clearly in mind that you are doing right, +and the only possible good. And God be with you!" + + + +XIX. + + +"HE talked sense, Persis," said Lapham gently, as he +mounted to his wife's side in the buggy and drove slowly +homeward through the dusk. + +"Yes, he talked sense," she admitted. But she added bitterly, +"I guess, if he had it to DO! Oh, he's right, and it's +got to be done. There ain't any other way for it. +It's sense; and, yes, it's justice." They walked to their +door after they left the horse at the livery stable around +the corner, where Lapham kept it. "I want you should +send Irene up to our room as soon as we get in, Silas." + +"Why, ain't you going to have any supper first?" +faltered Lapham with his latch-key in the lock. + +"No. I can't lose a minute. If I do, I shan't do it +at all." + +"Look here, Persis," said her husband tenderly, "let me +do this thing." + +"Oh, YOU!" said his wife, with a woman's compassionate +scorn for a man's helplessness in such a case. "Send her +right up. And I shall feel----" She stopped to spare him. + +Then she opened the door, and ran up to her room without +waiting to speak to Irene, who had come into the hall +at the sound of her father's key in the door. + +"I guess your mother wants to see you upstairs," +said Lapham, looking away. + +Her mother turned round and faced the girl's wondering +look as Irene entered the chamber, so close upon her +that she had not yet had time to lay off her bonnet; +she stood with her wraps still on her arm. + +"Irene!" she said harshly, "there is something you +have got to bear. It's a mistake we've all made. +He don't care anything for you. He never did. He told +Pen so last night. He cares for her." + +The sentences had fallen like blows. But the girl had +taken them without flinching. She stood up immovable, +but the delicate rose-light of her complexion went out +and left her colourless. She did not offer to speak. + +"Why don't you say something?" cried her mother. +"Do you want to kill me, Irene?" + +"Why should I want to hurt you, mamma?" the girl replied +steadily, but in an alien voice. "There's nothing to say. +I want to see Pen a minute." + +She turned and left the room. As she mounted the stairs +that led to her own and her sister's rooms on the floor above, +her mother helplessly followed. Irene went first to her +own room at the front of the house, and then came out +leaving the door open and the gas flaring behind her. +The mother could see that she had tumbled many things +out of the drawers of her bureau upon the marble top. + +She passed her mother, where she stood in the entry. +"You can come too, if you want to, mamma," she said. + +She opened Penelope's door without knocking, and went in. +Penelope sat at the window, as in the morning. +Irene did not go to her; but she went and laid a gold +hair-pin on her bureau, and said, without looking at her, +"There's a pin that I got to-day, because it was like his +sister's. It won't become a dark person so well, but you +can have it." + +She stuck a scrap of paper in the side of Penelope's mirror. +"There's that account of Mr. Stanton's ranch. You'll want +to read it, I presume." + +She laid a withered boutonniere on the bureau beside the pin. +"There's his button-hole bouquet. He left it by his plate, +and I stole it." + +She had a pine-shaving fantastically tied up with a knot +of ribbon, in her hand. She held it a moment; then, +looking deliberately at Penelope, she went up to her, +and dropped it in her lap without a word. She turned, +and, advancing a few steps, tottered and seemed about to fall. + +Her mother sprang forward with an imploring cry, "O 'Rene, +'Rene, 'Rene!" + +Irene recovered herself before her mother could reach her. +"Don't touch me," she said icily. "Mamma, I'm going +to put on my things. I want papa to walk with me. +I'm choking here." + +"I--I can't let you go out, Irene, child," began her mother. + +"You've got to," replied the girl. "Tell papa ta hurry +his supper." + +"O poor soul! He doesn't want any supper. HE knows it too." + +"I don't want to talk about that. Tell him to get ready." + +She left them once more. + +Mrs. Lapham turned a hapless glance upon Penelope. + +"Go and tell him, mother," said the girl. "I would, +if I could. If she can walk, let her. It's the only +thing for her." She sat still; she did not even brush +to the floor the fantastic thing that lay in her lap, +and that sent up faintly the odour of the sachet powder +with which Irene liked to perfume her boxes. + +Lapham went out with the unhappy child, and began to talk +with her, crazily, incoherently, enough. + +She mercifully stopped him. "Don't talk, papa. I don't +want any one should talk with me." + +He obeyed, and they walked silently on and on. In their +aimless course they reached the new house on the water +side of Beacon, and she made him stop, and stood looking +up at it. The scaffolding which had so long defaced the +front was gone, and in the light of the gas-lamp before it +all the architectural beauty of the facade was suggested, +and much of the finely felt detail was revealed. Seymour had +pretty nearly satisfied himself in that rich facade; +certainly Lapham had not stinted him of the means. + +"Well," said the girl, "I shall never live in it," +and she began to walk on. + +Lapham's sore heart went down, as he lumbered heavily +after her. "Oh yes, you will, Irene. You'll have lots +of good times there yet." + +"No," she answered, and said nothing more about it. +They had not talked of their trouble at all, and they did +not speak of it now. Lapham understood that she was trying +to walk herself weary, and he was glad to hold his peace +and let her have her way. She halted him once more before +the red and yellow lights of an apothecary's window. + +"Isn't there something they give you to make you sleep?" +she asked vaguely. "I've got to sleep to-night!" + +Lapham trembled. "I guess you don't want anything, Irene." + +"Yes, I do! Get me something!" she retorted wilfully. +"If you don't, I shall die. I MUST sleep." + +They went in, and Lapham asked for something to make a +nervous person sleep. Irene stood poring over the show-case +full of brushes and trinkets, while the apothecary put up +the bromide, which he guessed would be about the best thing. +She did not show any emotion; her face was like a stone, +while her father's expressed the anguish of his sympathy. +He looked as if he had not slept for a week; his fat +eyelids drooped over his glassy eyes, and his cheeks +and throat hung flaccid. He started as the apothecary's +cat stole smoothly up and rubbed itself against his leg; +and it was to him that the man said, "You want to take +a table-spoonful of that, as long as you're awake. +I guess it won't take a great many to fetch you." +"All right," said Lapham, and paid and went out. +"I don't know but I SHALL want some of it," he said, with a +joyless laugh. + +Irene came closer up to him and took his arm. He laid his +heavy paw on her gloved fingers. After a while she said, +"I want you should let me go up to Lapham to-morrow." + +"To Lapham? Why, to-morrow's Sunday, Irene! You can't +go to-morrow." + +"Well, Monday, then. I can live through one day here." + +"Well," said the father passively. He made no pretence +of asking her why she wished to go, nor any attempt +to dissuade her. + +"Give me that bottle," she said, when he opened the door +at home for her, and she ran up to her own room. + +The next morning Irene came to breakfast with her mother; +the Colonel and Penelope did not appear, and Mrs. Lapham +looked sleep-broken and careworn. + +The girl glanced at her. "Don't you fret about me, +mamma," she said. "I shall get along." She seemed +herself as steady and strong as rock. + +"I don't like to see you keeping up so, Irene," +replied her mother. "It'll be all the worse for you +when you do break. Better give way a little at the start" + +"I shan't break, and I've given way all I'm going to. +I'm going to Lapham to-morrow,--I want you should go +with me, mamma,--and I guess I can keep up one day here. +All about it is, I don't want you should say anything, +or LOOK anything. And, whatever I do, I don't want you +should try to stop me. And, the first thing, I'm going +to take her breakfast up to her. Don't!" she cried, +intercepting the protest on her mother's lips. "I shall +not let it hurt Pen, if I can help it. She's never done +a thing nor thought a thing to wrong me. I had to fly out +at her last night; but that's all over now, and I know just +what I've got to bear." + +She had her way unmolested. She carried Penelope's +breakfast to her, and omitted no care or attention +that could make the sacrifice complete, with an heroic +pretence that she was performing no unusual service. +They did not speak, beyond her saying, in a clear dry note, +"Here's your breakfast, Pen," and her sister's answering, +hoarsely and tremulously, "Oh, thank you, Irene." And, +though two or three times they turned their faces toward +each other while Irene remained in the room, mechanically +putting its confusion to rights, their eyes did not meet. +Then Irene descended upon the other rooms, which she set +in order, and some of which she fiercely swept and dusted. +She made the beds; and she sent the two servants away +to church as soon as they had eaten their breakfast, +telling them that she would wash their dishes. +Throughout the morning her father and mother heard +her about the work of getting dinner, with certain +silences which represented the moments when she stopped +and stood stock-still, and then, readjusting her burden, +forced herself forward under it again. + +They sat alone in the family room, out of which their +two girls seemed to have died. Lapham could not read +his Sunday papers, and she had no heart to go to church, +as she would have done earlier in life when in trouble. +Just then she was obscurely feeling that the church was +somehow to blame for that counsel of Mr. Sewell's on which +they had acted. + +"I should like to know," she said, having brought +the matter up, "whether he would have thought it was +such a light matter if it had been his own children. +Do you suppose he'd have been so ready to act on his own +advice if it HAD been?" + +"He told us the right thing to do, Persis,--the only thing. +We couldn't let it go on," urged her husband gently. + +"Well, it makes me despise Pen! Irene's showing twice +the character that she is, this very minute." + +The mother said this so that the father might defend +her daughter to her. He did not fail. "Irene's got +the easiest part, the way I look at it. And you'll +see that Pen'll know how to behave when the time comes." + +"What do you want she should do?" + +"I haven't got so far as that yet. What are we going +to do about Irene?" + +"What do you want Pen should do," repeated Mrs. Lapham, +"when it comes to it?" + +"Well, I don't want she should take him, for ONE thing," +said Lapham. + +This seemed to satisfy Mrs. Lapham as to her husband, +and she said in defence of Corey, "Why, I don't see what +HE'S done. It's all been our doing." + +"Never mind that now. What about Irene?" + +"She says she's going to Lapham to-morrow. She feels that +she's got to get away somewhere. It's natural she should." + +"Yes, and I presume it will be about the best thing FOR her. +Shall you go with her?" + +"Yes." + +"Well." He comfortlessly took up a newspaper again, +and she rose with a sigh, and went to her room to pack +some things for the morrow's journey. + +After dinner, when Irene had cleared away the last trace +of it in kitchen and dining-room with unsparing punctilio, +she came downstairs, dressed to go out, and bade her +father come to walk with her again. It was a repetition +of the aimlessness of the last night's wanderings. +They came back, and she got tea for them, and after that +they heard her stirring about in her own room, as if she +were busy about many things; but they did not dare to +look in upon her, even after all the noises had ceased, +and they knew she had gone to bed. + +"Yes; it's a thing she's got to fight out by herself," +said Mrs Lapham. + +"I guess she'll get along," said Lapham. "But I don't want +you should misjudge Pen either. She's all right too. +She ain't to blame." + +"Yes, I know. But I can't work round to it all at once. +I shan't misjudge her, but you can't expect me to get over +it right away." + +"Mamma," said Irene, when she was hurrying their departure +the next morning, "what did she tell him when he asked her?" + +"Tell him?" echoed the mother; and after a while she added, +"She didn't tell him anything." + +"Did she say anything, about me?" + +"She said he mustn't come here any more." + +Irene turned and went into her sister's room. +"Good-bye, Pen," she said, kissing her with an effect +of not seeing or touching her. "I want you should tell him +all about it. If he's half a man, he won't give up till +he knows why you won't have him; and he has a right to know." + +"It wouldn't make any difference. I couldn't have +him after----" + +"That's for you to say. But if you don't tell him about me, +I will." + +"'Rene!" "Yes! You needn't say I cared for him. +But you can say that you all thought he--cared for--me." + +"O Irene----" + +"Don't!" Irene escaped from the arms that tried to cast +themselves about her. "You are all right, Pen. You haven't +done anything. You've helped me all you could. +But I can't--yet." + +She went out of the room and summoned Mrs. Lapham with a +sharp "Now, mamma!" and went on putting the last things +into her trunks. + +The Colonel went to the station with them, and put +them on the train. He got them a little compartment +to themselves in the Pullman car; and as he stood leaning +with his lifted hands against the sides of the doorway, +he tried to say something consoling and hopeful: "I guess +you'll have an easy ride, Irene. I don't believe it'll +be dusty, any, after the rain last night." + +"Don't you stay till the train starts, papa," returned the girl, +in rigid rejection of his futilities. "Get off, now." + +"Well, if you want I should," he said, glad to be able +to please her in anything. He remained on the platform +till the cars started. He saw Irene bustling about +in the compartment, making her mother comfortable for +the journey; but Mrs. Lapham did not lift her head. +The train moved off, and he went heavily back to his business. + +From time to time during the day, when he caught a glimpse +of him, Corey tried to make out from his face whether +he knew what had taken place between him and Penelope. +When Rogers came in about time of closing, and shut +himself up with Lapham in his room, the young man +remained till the two came out together and parted +in their salutationless fashion. + +Lapham showed no surprise at seeing Corey still there, +and merely answered, "Well!" when the young man said +that he wished to speak with him, and led the way back +to his room. + +Corey shut the door behind them. "I only wish to +speak to you in case you know of the matter already; +for otherwise I'm bound by a promise." + +"I guess I know what you mean. It's about Penelope." + +"Yes, it's about Miss Lapham. I am greatly attached +to her--you'll excuse my saying it; I couldn't excuse +myself if I were not." + +"Perfectly excusable," said Lapham. "It's all right." + +"Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that!" cried the young +fellow joyfully. "I want you to believe that this isn't +a new thing or an unconsidered thing with me--though +it seemed so unexpected to her." + +Lapham fetched a deep sigh. "It's all right as far as I'm +concerned--or her mother. We've both liked you first-rate." + +"Yes?" + +"But there seems to be something in Penelope's mind--I +don't know--" The Colonel consciously dropped his eyes. + +"She referred to something--I couldn't make out what--but I +hoped--I hoped--that with your leave I might overcome it--the +barrier--whatever it was. Miss Lapham--Penelope--gave +me the hope--that I was--wasn't--indifferent to her----" + +"Yes, I guess that's so," said Lapham. He suddenly +lifted his head, and confronted the young fellow's honest +face with his own face, so different in its honesty. +"Sure you never made up to any one else at the same time?" + +"NEVER! Who could imagine such a thing? If that's all, +I can easily" + +"I don't say that's all, nor that that's it. I don't +want you should go upon that idea. I just thought, +may be--you hadn't thought of it." + +"No, I certainly hadn't thought of it! Such a thing would +have been so impossible to me that I couldn't have thought +of it; and it's so shocking to me now that I don't know +what to say to it." + +"Well, don't take it too much to heart," said Lapham, +alarmed at the feeling he had excited; "I don't say she +thought so. I was trying to guess--trying to----" + +"If there is anything I can say or do to convince you----" + +"Oh, it ain't necessary to say anything. I'm all right." + +"But Miss Lapham! I may see her again? I may try +to convince her that----" + +He stopped in distress, and Lapham afterwards told +his wife that he kept seeing the face of Irene as it +looked when he parted with her in the car; and whenever +he was going to say yes, he could not open his lips. +At the same time he could not help feeling that Penelope +had a right to what was her own, and Sewell's words came +back to him. Besides, they had already put Irene to the +worst suffering. Lapham compromised, as he imagined. +"You can come round to-night and see ME, if you want to," +he said; and he bore grimly the gratitude that the young man +poured out upon him. + +Penelope came down to supper and took her mother's place +at the head of the table. + +Lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could +bear it. Then he asked, "How do you feel to-night, Pen?" + +"Oh, like a thief," said the girl. "A thief that hasn't +been arrested yet." + +Lapham waited a while before he said, "Well, now, +your mother and I want you should hold up on that a while." + +"It isn't for you to say. It's something I can't hold +up on." + +"Yes, I guess you can. If I know what's happened, +then what's happened is a thing that nobody is to blame for. +And we want you should make the best of it and not the worst. +Heigh? It ain't going to help Irene any for you to hurt +yourself--or anybody else; and I don't want you should take +up with any such crazy notion. As far as heard from, +you haven't stolen anything, and whatever you've got +belongs to you." + +"Has he been speaking to you, father?" + +"Your mother's been speaking to me." + +"Has HE been speaking to you?" + +"That's neither here nor there." + +"Then he's broken his word, and I will never speak +to him again!" + +"If he was any such fool as to promise that he wouldn't +talk to me on a subject"--Lapham drew a deep breath, +and then made the plunge--"that I brought up----" + +"Did you bring it up?" + +"The same as brought up--the quicker he broke his word +the better; and I want you should act upon that idea. +Recollect that it's my business, and your mother's business, +as well as yours, and we're going to have our say. +He hain't done anything wrong, Pen, nor anything +that he's going to be punished for. Understand that. +He's got to have a reason, if you're not going to have him. +I don't say you've got to have him; I want you should feel +perfectly free about that; but I DO say you've got to give him +a reason." + +"Is he coming here?" + +"I don't know as you'd call it COMING----" + +"Yes, you do, father!" said the girl, in forlorn amusement +at his shuffling. + +"He's coming here to see ME----" + +"When's he coming?" + +"I don't know but he's coming to-night." + +"And you want I should see him?" + +"I don't know but you'd better." + +"All right. I'll see him." + +Lapham drew a long deep breath of suspicion inspired +by this acquiescence. "What you going to do?" +he asked presently. + +"I don't know yet," answered the girl sadly. "It depends +a good deal upon what he does." + +"Well," said Lapham, with the hungriness of unsatisfied +anxiety in his tone. When Corey's card was brought +into the family-room where he and Penelope were sitting, +he went into the parlour to find him. "I guess Penelope +wants to see you," he said; and, indicating the family-room, +he added, "She's in there," and did not go back himself. + +Corey made his way to the girl's presence with open trepidation, +which was not allayed by her silence and languor. +She sat in the chair where she had sat the other night, +but she was not playing with a fan now. + +He came toward her, and then stood faltering. +A faint smile quivered over her face at the spectacle +of his subjection. "Sit down, Mr. Corey," she said. +"There's no reason why we shouldn't talk it over quietly; +for I know you will think I'm right." + +"I'm sure of that," he answered hopefully. "When I saw +that your father knew of it to-day, I asked him to let +me see you again. I'm afraid that I broke my promise +to you--technically----" + +"It had to be broken." He took more courage at her words. +"But I've only come to do whatever you say, and not to be +an--annoyance to you----" + +"Yes, you have to know; but I couldn't tell you before. +Now they all think I should." + +A tremor of anxiety passed over the young man's face, +on which she kept her eyes steadily fixed. + +"We supposed it--it was--Irene----" + +He remained blank a moment, and then he said with a smile +of relief, of deprecation, of protest, of amazement, +of compassion-- + +"OH! Never! Never for an instant! How could you think +such a thing? It was impossible! I never thought of her. +But I see--I see! I can explain--no, there's nothing +to explain! I have never knowingly done or said +a thing from first to last to make you think that. +I see how terrible it is!" he said; but he still smiled, +as if he could not take it seriously. "I admired +her beauty--who could help doing that?--and I thought +her very good and sensible. Why, last winter in Texas, +I told Stanton about our meeting in Canada, and we agreed--I +only tell you to show you how far I always was from what +you thought--that he must come North and try to see her, +and--and--of course, it all sounds very silly!--and he +sent her a newspaper with an account of his ranch in it----" + +"She thought it came from you." + +"Oh, good heavens! He didn't tell me till after he'd done it. +But he did it for a part of our foolish joke. And when I +met your sister again, I only admired her as before. +I can see, now, how I must have seemed to be seeking her out; +but it was to talk of you with her--I never talked of +anything else if I could help it, except when I changed +the subject because I was ashamed to be always talking +of you. I see how distressing it is for all of you. +But tell me that you believe me!" + +"Yes, I must. It's all been our mistake----" + +"It has indeed! But there's no mistake about my loving +you, Penelope," he said; and the old-fashioned name, +at which she had often mocked, was sweet to her from his lips. + +"That only makes it worse!" she answered. + +"Oh no!" he gently protested. "It makes it better. +It makes it right. How is it worse? How is it wrong?" + +"Can't you see? You must understand all now! Don't +you see that if she believed so too, and if she----" +She could not go on. + +"Did she--did your sister--think that too?" gasped Corey. + +"She used to talk with me about you; and when you say +you care for me now, it makes me feel like the vilest +hypocrite in the world. That day you gave her the list +of books, and she came down to Nantasket, and went +on about you, I helped her to flatter herself--oh! I +don't see how she can forgive me. But she knows I can +never forgive myself! That's the reason she can do it. +I can see now," she went on, "how I must have been trying +to get you from her. I can't endure it! The only way +is for me never to see you or speak to you again!" +She laughed forlornly. "That would be pretty hard on you, +if you cared." + +"I do care--all the world!" + +"Well, then, it would if you were going to keep on caring. +You won't long, if you stop coming now." + +"Is this all, then? Is it the end?" + +"It's--whatever it is. I can't get over the thought of her. +Once I thought I could, but now I see that I can't. It +seems to grow worse. Sometimes I feel as if it would +drive me crazy." + +He sat looking at her with lacklustre eyes. The light +suddenly came back into them. "Do you think I could love +you if you had been false to her? I know you have been +true to her, and truer still to yourself. I never tried +to see her, except with the hope of seeing you too. +I supposed she must know that I was in love with you. +From the first time I saw you there that afternoon, you filled +my fancy. Do you think I was flirting with the child, +or--no, you don't think that! We have not done wrong. +We have not harmed any one knowingly. We have a right to +each other----" + +"No! no! you must never speak to me of this again. +If you do, I shall know that you despise me." + +"But how will that help her? I don't love HER." + +"Don't say that to me! I have said that to myself too much." + +"If you forbid me to love you, it won't make me love her," +he persisted. + +She was about to speak, but she caught her breath without +doing so, and merely stared at him. "I must do what you say," +he continued. "But what good will it do her? You can't +make her happy by making yourself unhappy." + +"Do you ask me to profit by a wrong?" + +"Not for the world. But there is no wrong!" + +"There is something--I don't know what. There's a wall +between us. I shall dash myself against it as long +as I live; but that won't break it." + +"Oh!" he groaned. "We have done no wrong. Why should we +suffer from another's mistake as if it were our sin?" + +"I don't know. But we must suffer." + +"Well, then, I WILL not, for my part, and I will not let you. +If you care for me----" + +"You had no right to know it." + +"You make it my privilege to keep you from doing wrong for +the right's sake. I'm sorry, with all my heart and soul, +for this error; but I can't blame myself, and I won't deny +myself the happiness I haven't done anything to forfeit. +I will never give you up. I will wait as long as you please +for the time when you shall feel free from this mistake; +but you shall be mine at last. Remember that. I might go +away for months--a year, even; but that seems a cowardly +and guilty thing, and I'm not afraid, and I'm not guilty, +and I'm going to stay here and try to see you." + +She shook her head. "It won't change anything? Don't +you see that there's no hope for us?" + +"When is she coming back?" he asked. + +"I don't know. Mother wants father to come and take +her out West for a while." + +"She's up there in the country with your mother yet?" + +"Yes." + +He was silent; then he said desperately-- + +"Penelope, she is very young; and perhaps--perhaps she +might meet----" + +"It would make no difference. It wouldn't change it +for me." + +"You are cruel--cruel to yourself, if you love me, +and cruel to me. Don't you remember that night--before +I spoke--you were talking of that book; and you said it +was foolish and wicked to do as that girl did. Why is +it different with you, except that you give me nothing, +and can never give me anything when you take yourself away? +If it were anybody else, I am sure you would say----" + +"But it isn't anybody else, and that makes it impossible. +Sometimes I think it might be if I would only say +so to myself, and then all that I said to her about you +comes up----" + +"I will wait. It can't always come up. I won't urge +you any longer now. But you will see it differently-- +more clearly. Good-bye--no! Good night! I shall come again +to-morrow. It will surely come right, and, whatever happens, +you have done no wrong. Try to keep that in mind. +I am so happy, in spite of all!" + +He tried to take her hand, but she put it behind her. +"No, no! I can't let you--yet!" + + + +XX. + + +AFTER a week Mrs. Lapham returned, leaving Irene alone at +the old homestead in Vermont. "She's comfortable there--as +comfortable as she can be anywheres, I guess," she said +to her husband as they drove together from the station, +where he had met her in obedience to her telegraphic summons. +"She keeps herself busy helping about the house; +and she goes round amongst the hands in their houses. +There's sickness, and you know how helpful she is where +there's sickness. She don't complain any. I don't know +as I've heard a word out of her mouth since we left home; +but I'm afraid it'll wear on her, Silas." + +"You don't look over and above well yourself, Persis," +said her husband kindly. + +"Oh, don't talk about me. What I want to know is whether +you can't get the time to run off with her somewhere. +I wrote to you about Dubuque. She'll work herself down, +I'm afraid; and THEN I don't know as she'll be over it. +But if she could go off, and be amused--see new people----" + +"I could MAKE the time," said Lapham, "if I had to. +But, as it happens, I've got to go out West on business,--I'll +tell you about it,--and I'll take Irene along." + +"Good!" said his wife. "That's about the best thing I've +heard yet. Where you going?" + +"Out Dubuque way." + +"Anything the matter with Bill's folks?" + +"No. It's business." + +"How's Pen?" + +"I guess she ain't much better than Irene." + +"He been about any?" + +"Yes. But I can't see as it helps matters much." + +"Tchk!" Mrs. Lapham fell back against the carriage cushions. +"I declare, to see her willing to take the man that we +all thought wanted her sister! I can't make it seem right." + +"It's right," said Lapham stoutly; "but I guess she +ain't willing; I wish she was. But there don't seem to be +any way out of the thing, anywhere. It's a perfect snarl. +But I don't want you should be anyways ha'sh with Pen." + +Mrs. Lapham answered nothing; but when she met Penelope +she gave the girl's wan face a sharp look, and began +to whimper on her neck. + +Penelope's tears were all spent. "Well, mother," she said, +"you come back almost as cheerful as you went away. +I needn't ask if 'Rene's in good spirits. We all seem +to be overflowing with them. I suppose this is one way +of congratulating me. Mrs. Corey hasn't been round to do +it yet." + +"Are you--are you engaged to him, Pen?" gasped her mother. + +"Judging by my feelings, I should say not. I feel as +if it was a last will and testament. But you'd better +ask him when he comes." + +"I can't bear to look at him." + +"I guess he's used to that. He don't seem to expect +to be looked at. Well! we're all just where we started. +I wonder how long it will keep up." + +Mrs. Lapham reported to her husband when he came home +at night--he had left his business to go and meet her, +and then, after a desolate dinner at the house, +had returned to the office again--that Penelope was fully +as bad as Irene. "And she don't know how to work it off. +Irene keeps doing; but Pen just sits in her room and mopes. +She don't even read. I went up this afternoon to scold +her about the state the house was in--you can see +that Irene's away by the perfect mess; but when I saw +her through the crack of the door I hadn't the heart. +She sat there with her hands in her lap, just staring. +And, my goodness! she JUMPED so when she saw me; +and then she fell back, and began to laugh, and said she, +'I thought it was my ghost, mother!' I felt as if I should +give way." + +Lapham listened jadedly, and answered far from the point. +"I guess I've got to start out there pretty soon, Persis." + +"How soon?" + +"Well, to-morrow morning." + +Mrs. Lapham sat silent. Then, "All right," she said. +"I'll get you ready." + +"I shall run up to Lapham for Irene, and then I'll push +on through Canada. I can get there about as quick." + +"Is it anything you can tell me about, Silas?" + +"Yes," said Lapham. "But it's a long story, and I +guess you've got your hands pretty full as it is. +I've been throwing good money after bad,--the usual way,-- +and now I've got to see if I can save the pieces." + +After a moment Mrs. Lapham asked, "Is it--Rogers?" + +"It's Rogers." + +"I didn't want you should get in any deeper with him." + +"No. You didn't want I should press him either; and I +had to do one or the other. And so I got in deeper." + +"Silas," said his wife, "I'm afraid I made you!" + +"It's all right, Persis, as far forth as that goes. +I was glad to make it up with him--I jumped at the chance. +I guess Rogers saw that he had a soft thing in me, and he's +worked it for all it was worth. But it'll all come out +right in the end." + +Lapham said this as if he did not care to talk +any more about it. He added casually, "Pretty near +everybody but the fellows that owe ME seem to expect +me to do a cash business, all of a sudden." + +"Do you mean that you've got payments to make, and that +people are not paying YOU?" + +Lapham winced a little. "Something like that," he said, +and he lighted a cigar. "But when I tell you it's all right, +I mean it, Persis. I ain't going to let the grass grow +under my feet, though,--especially while Rogers digs +the ground away from the roots." + +"What are you going to do?" + +"If it has to come to that, I'm going to squeeze him." +Lapham's countenance lighted up with greater joy than had yet +visited it since the day they had driven out to Brookline. +"Milton K. Rogers is a rascal, if you want to know; +or else all the signs fail. But I guess he'll find he's got +his come-uppance." Lapham shut his lips so that the short, +reddish-grey beard stuck straight out on them. + +"What's he done?" + +"What's he done? Well, now, I'll tell you what he's done, +Persis, since you think Rogers is such a saint, and that I +used him so badly in getting him out of the business. +He's been dabbling in every sort of fool thing you can lay your +tongue to,--wild-cat stocks, patent-rights, land speculations, +oil claims,--till he's run through about everything. +But he did have a big milling property out on the line of +the P. Y. & X.,--saw-mills and grist-mills and lands,--and +for the last eight years he's been doing a land-office +business with 'em--business that would have made anybody +else rich. But you can't make Milton K. Rogers rich, +any more than you can fat a hide-bound colt. It ain't +in him. He'd run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, +and Tom Scott rolled into one in less than six months, +give him a chance, and come out and want to borrow money +of you. Well, he won't borrow any more money of ME; +and if he thinks I don't know as much about that milling +property as he does he's mistaken. I've taken his mills, +but I guess I've got the inside track; Bill's kept me posted; +and now I'm going out there to see how I can unload; +and I shan't mind a great deal if Rogers is under the load +when it's off once." + +"I don't understand you, Silas." + +"Why, it's just this. The Great Lacustrine & Polar +Railroad has leased the P. Y. & X. for ninety-nine +years,--bought it, practically,--and it's going to build +car-works right by those mills, and it may want them. +And Milton K. Rogers knew it when he turned 'em in on me." + +"Well, if the road wants them, don't that make the mills +valuable? You can get what you ask for them!" + +"Can I? The P. Y. & X. is the only road that runs within +fifty miles of the mills, and you can't get a foot +of lumber nor a pound of flour to market any other way. +As long as he had a little local road like the P. Y. & +X. to deal with, Rogers could manage; but when it come +to a big through line like the G. L. & P., he couldn't +stand any chance at all. If such a road as that took +a fancy to his mills, do you think it would pay what he +asked? No, sir! He would take what the road offered, +or else the road would tell him to carry his flour and +lumber to market himself." + +"And do you suppose he knew the G. L. & P. wanted the mills +when he turned them in on you?" asked Mrs. Lapham aghast, +and falling helplessly into his alphabetical parlance. + +The Colonel laughed scoffingly. "Well, when Milton +K. Rogers don't know which side his bread's buttered on! I +don't understand," he added thoughtfully, "how he's always +letting it fall on the buttered side. But such a man +as that is sure to have a screw loose in him somewhere." +Mrs. Lapham sat discomfited. All that she could say was, +"Well, I want you should ask yourself whether Rogers would +ever have gone wrong, or got into these ways of his, +if it hadn't been for your forcing him out of the business +when you did. I want you should think whether you're not +responsible for everything he's done since." + +"You go and get that bag of mine ready," said Lapham sullenly. +"I guess I can take care of myself. And Milton K. Rogers too," +he added. + + +That evening Corey spent the time after dinner in his own room, +with restless excursions to the library, where his mother +sat with his father and sisters, and showed no signs +of leaving them. At last, in coming down, he encountered +her on the stairs, going up. They both stopped consciously. + +"I would like to speak with you, mother. I have been +waiting to see you alone." + +"Come to my room," she said. + +"I have a feeling that you know what I want to say," +he began there. + +She looked up at him where he stood by the chimney-piece, +and tried to put a cheerful note into her questioning +"Yes?" + +"Yes; and I have a feeling that you won't like it--that +you won't approve of it. I wish you did--I wish you could!" + +"I'm used to liking and approving everything you do, Tom. +If I don't like this at once, I shall try to like it--you +know that--for your sake, whatever it is." + +"I'd better be short," he said, with a quick sigh. +"It's about Miss Lapham." He hastened to add, "I hope +it isn't surprising to you. I'd have told you before, +if I could." + +"No, it isn't surprising. I was afraid--I suspected +something of the kind." + +They were both silent in a painful silence. + +"Well, mother?" he asked at last. + +"If it's something you've quite made up mind to----" + +"It is!" + +"And if you've already spoken to her----" + +"I had to do that first, of course." + +"There would be no use of my saying anything, even if I +disliked it." + +"You do dislike it!" + +"No--no! I can't say that. Of course I should have +preferred it if you had chosen some nice girl among +those that you had been brought up with--some friend +or associate of your sisters, whose people we had known----" + +"Yes, I understand that, and I can assure you that I +haven't been indifferent to your feelings. I have tried +to consider them from the first, and it kept me hesitating +in a way that I'm ashamed to think of; for it wasn't quite +right towards--others. But your feelings and my sisters' +have been in my mind, and if I couldn't yield to what I +supposed they must be, entirely----" + +Even so good a son and brother as this, when it came +to his love affair, appeared to think that he had yielded +much in considering the feelings of his family at all. + +His mother hastened to comfort him. "I know--I know. +I've seen for some time that this might happen, Tom, and I +have prepared myself for it. I have talked it over +with your father, and we both agreed from the beginning +that you were not to be hampered by our feeling. +Still--it is a surprise. It must be." + +"I know it. I can understand your feeling. But I'm sure +that it's one that will last only while you don't know +her well." + +"Oh, I'm sure of that, Tom. I'm sure that we shall +all be fond of her,--for your sake at first, even--and I +hope she'll like us." + +"I am quite certain of that," said Corey, with that confidence +which experience does not always confirm in such cases. +"And your taking it as you do lifts a tremendous load +off me." + +But he sighed so heavily, and looked so troubled, +that his mother said, "Well, now, you mustn't think +of that any more. We wish what is for your happiness, +my son, and we will gladly reconcile ourselves to anything +that might have been disagreeable. I suppose we needn't +speak of the family. We must both think alike about them. +They have their--drawbacks, but they are thoroughly good people, +and I satisfied myself the other night that they were not +to be dreaded." She rose, and put her arm round his neck. +"And I wish you joy, Tom! If she's half as good as you are, +you will both be very happy." She was going to kiss him, +but something in his looks stopped her--an absence, +a trouble, which broke out in his words. + +"I must tell you, mother! There's been a complication-- +a mistake--that's a blight on me yet, and that it sometimes +seems as if we couldn't escape from. I wonder if you +can help us! They all thought I meant--the other sister." + +"O Tom! But how COULD they?" + +"I don't know. It seemed so glaringly plain--I was +ashamed of making it so outright from the beginning. +But they did. Even she did, herself!" + +"But where could they have thought your eyes were--your +taste? It wouldn't be surprising if any one were taken +with that wonderful beauty; and I'm sure she's good too. +But I'm astonished at them! To think you could prefer +that little, black, odd creature, with her joking and----" + +"MOTHER!" cried the young man, turning a ghastly face +of warning upon her. + +"What do you mean, Tom?" + +"Did you--did--did you think so too--that it was IRENE +I meant?" + +"Why, of course!" + +He stared at her hopelessly. + +"O my son!" she said, for all comment on the situation. + +"Don't reproach me, mother! I couldn't stand it." + +"No. I didn't mean to do that. But how--HOW could it happen?" + +"I don't know. When she first told me that they had +understood it so, I laughed--almost--it was so far from me. +But now when you seem to have had the same idea--Did you +all think so?" + +"Yes." + +They remained looking at each other. Then Mrs. Corey +began: "It did pass through my mind once--that day I went +to call upon them--that it might not be as we thought; +but I knew so little of--of----" + +"Penelope," Corey mechanically supplied. + +"Is that her name?--I forgot--that I only thought of you +in relation to her long enough to reject the idea; and it was +natural after our seeing something of the other one last year, +that I might suppose you had formed some--attachment----" + +"Yes; that's what they thought too. But I never thought +of her as anything but a pretty child. I was civil to her +because you wished it; and when I met her here again, +I only tried to see her so that I could talk with her +about her sister." + +"You needn't defend yourself to ME, Tom," said his mother, +proud to say it to him in his trouble. "It's a terrible +business for them, poor things," she added. "I don't +know how they could get over it. But, of course, +sensible people must see----" + +"They haven't got over it. At least she hasn't. Since +it's happened, there's been nothing that hasn't made +me prouder and fonder of her! At first I WAS charmed +with her--my fancy was taken; she delighted me--I don't +know how; but she was simply the most fascinating +person I ever saw. Now I never think of that. +I only think how good she is--how patient she is with me, +and how unsparing she is of herself. If she were concerned +alone--if I were not concerned too--it would soon end. +She's never had a thought for anything but her sister's +feeling and mine from the beginning. I go there,--I know +that I oughtn't, but I can't help it,--and she suffers it, +and tries not to let me see that she is suffering it. +There never was any one like her--so brave, so true, +so noble. I won't give her up--I can't. But it breaks my +heart when she accuses herself of what was all MY doing. +We spend our time trying to reason out of it, but we always +come back to it at last, and I have to hear her morbidly +blaming herself. Oh!" + +Doubtless Mrs. Corey imagined some reliefs to this suffering, +some qualifications of this sublimity in a girl she +had disliked so distinctly; but she saw none in her +son's behaviour, and she gave him her further sympathy. +She tried to praise Penelope, and said that it was +not to be expected that she could reconcile herself +at once to everything. "I shouldn't have liked it +in her if she had. But time will bring it all right. +And if she really cares for you----" + +"I extorted that from her." + +"Well, then, you must look at it in the best light you can. +There is no blame anywhere, and the mortification and pain +is something that must be lived down. That's all. +And don't let what I said grieve you, Tom. You know I +scarcely knew her, and I--I shall be sure to like any one +you like, after all." + +"Yes, I know," said the young man drearily. "Will you +tell father?" + +"If you wish." + +"He must know. And I couldn't stand any more of this, +just yet--any more mistake." + +"I will tell him," said Mrs. Corey; and it was +naturally the next thing for a woman who dwelt so much +on decencies to propose: "We must go to call on her-- +your sisters and I. They have never seen her even; +and she mustn't be allowed to think we're indifferent +to her, especially under the circumstances." + +"Oh no! Don't go--not yet," cried Corey, with an instinctive +perception that nothing could be worse for him. +"We must wait--we must be patient. I'm afraid it would +be painful to her now." + +He turned away without speaking further; and his mother's +eyes followed him wistfully to the door. There were +some questions that she would have liked to ask him; +but she had to content herself with trying to answer them +when her husband put them to her. + +There was this comfort for her always in Bromfield Corey, +that he never was much surprised at anything, however shocking +or painful. His standpoint in regard to most matters +was that of the sympathetic humorist who would be glad +to have the victim of circumstance laugh with him, +but was not too much vexed when the victim could not. +He laughed now when his wife, with careful preparation, +got the facts of his son's predicament fully under +his eye. + +"Really, Bromfield," she said, "I don't see how you +can laugh. Do you see any way out of it?" + +"It seems to me that the way has been found already. +Tom has told his love to the right one, and the wrong one +knows it. Time will do the rest." + +"If I had so low an opinion of them all as that, it would +make me very unhappy. It's shocking to think of it." + +"It is upon the theory of ladies and all young people," +said her husband, with a shrug, feeling his way to the +matches on the mantel, and then dropping them with a sign, +as if recollecting that he must not smoke there. +"I've no doubt Tom feels himself an awful sinner. +But apparently he's resigned to his sin; he isn't going to +give her up." + +"I'm glad to say, for the sake of human nature, that SHE +isn't resigned--little as I like her," cried Mrs. Corey. + +Her husband shrugged again. "Oh, there mustn't be any +indecent haste. She will instinctively observe the proprieties. +But come, now, Anna! you mustn't pretend to me here, +in the sanctuary of home, that practically the human +affections don't reconcile themselves to any situation +that the human sentiments condemn. Suppose the wrong +sister had died: would the right one have had any scruple +in marrying Tom, after they had both 'waited a proper time,' +as the phrase is?" + +"Bromfield, you're shocking!" + +"Not more shocking than reality. You may regard this as +a second marriage." He looked at her with twinkling eyes, +full of the triumph the spectator of his species feels +in signal exhibitions of human nature. "Depend upon it, +the right sister will be reconciled; the wrong one will +be consoled; and all will go merry as a marriage bell--a +second marriage bell. Why, it's quite like a romance!" +Here he laughed outright again. + +"Well," sighed the wife, "I could almost wish the right one, +as you call her, would reject Tom, I dislike her so much." + +"Ah, now you're talking business, Anna," said her husband, +with his hands spread behind the back he turned comfortably +to the fire. "The whole Lapham tribe is distasteful to me. +As I don't happen to have seen our daughter-in-law elect, +I have still the hope--which you're disposed to forbid +me--that she may not be quite so unacceptable as the others." + +"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" anxiously inquired +his wife. + +"Yes--I think I do;" and he sat down, and stretched +out his long legs toward the fire. + +"But it's very inconsistent of you to oppose the matter now, +when you've shown so much indifference up to this time. +You've told me, all along, that it was of no use to +oppose it." + +"So I have. I was convinced of that at the beginning, +or my reason was. You know very well that I am equal +to any trial, any sacrifice, day after to-morrow; +but when it comes to-day it's another thing. As long +as this crisis decently kept its distance, I could look +at it with an impartial eye; but now that it seems at hand, +I find that, while my reason is still acquiescent, my nerves +are disposed to--excuse the phrase--kick. I ask myself, +what have I done nothing for, all my life, and lived +as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, +in the possession of every polite taste and feeling +that adorns leisure, if I'm to come to this at last? And +I find no satisfactory answer. I say to myself that I +might as well have yielded to the pressure all round me, +and gone to work, as Tom has. " + +Mrs. Corey looked at him forlornly, divining the core +of real repugnance that existed in his self-satire. + +"I assure you, my dear," he continued, "that the recollection +of what I suffered from the Laphams at that dinner of yours +is an anguish still. It wasn't their behaviour,--they +behaved well enough--or ill enough; but their conversation +was terrible. Mrs. Lapham's range was strictly domestic; +and when the Colonel got me in the library, he poured +mineral paint all over me, till I could have been +safely warranted not to crack or scale in any climate. +I suppose we shall have to see a good deal of them. +They will probably come here every Sunday night to tea. +It's a perspective without a vanishing-point." + +"It may not be so bad, after all," said his wife; and she +suggested for his consolation that he knew very little +about the Laphams yet. + +He assented to the fact. "I know very little about them, +and about my other fellow-beings. I dare say that I +should like the Laphams better if I knew them better. +But in any case, I resign myself. And we must keep +in view the fact that this is mainly Tom's affair, +and if his affections have regulated it to his satisfaction, +we must be content." + +"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "And perhaps it won't turn +out so badly. It's a great comfort to know that you feel +just as I do about it." + +"I do," said her husband, "and more too." + +It was she and her daughters who would be chiefly +annoyed by the Lapham connection; she knew that. +But she had to begin to bear the burden by helping +her husband to bear his light share of it. To see him +so depressed dismayed her, and she might well have +reproached him more sharply than she did for showing +so much indifference, when she was so anxious, at first. +But that would not have served any good end now. +She even answered him patiently when he asked her, +"What did you say to Tom when he told you it was the other one?" + +"What could I say? I could do nothing, but try to take +back what I had said against her." + +"Yes, you had quite enough to do, I suppose. +It's an awkward business. If it had been the pretty one, +her beauty would have been our excuse. But the plain +one--what do you suppose attracted him in her?" + +Mrs. Corey sighed at the futility of the question. +"Perhaps I did her injustice. I only saw her a few moments. +Perhaps I got a false impression. I don't think +she's lacking in sense, and that's a great thing. +She'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness, +and can't, by anything we say or do, when she's Tom's wife." +She pronounced the distasteful word with courage, and went +on: "The pretty one might not have been able to see that. +She might have got it into her head that we were looking +down on her; and those insipid people are terribly stubborn. +We can come to some understanding with this one; I'm sure +of that." She ended by declaring that it was now their duty +to help Tom out of his terrible predicament. + +"Oh, even the Lapham cloud has a silver lining," said Corey. +"In fact, it seems really to have all turned out for +the best, Anna; though it's rather curious to find you +the champion of the Lapham side, at last. Confess, now, +that the right girl has secretly been your choice all along, +and that while you sympathise with the wrong one, +you rejoice in the tenacity with which the right one is +clinging to her own!" He added with final seriousness, +"It's just that she should, and, so far as I understand +the case, I respect her for it." + +"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "It's natural, and it's right." +But she added, "I suppose they're glad of him on any terms." + +"That is what I have been taught to believe," said her husband. +"When shall we see our daughter-in-law elect? I find +myself rather impatient to have that part of it over." + +Mrs. Corey hesitated. "Tom thinks we had better not call, +just yet." + +"She has told him of your terrible behaviour when you +called before?" + +"No, Bromfield! She couldn't be so vulgar as that?" + +"But anything short of it?" + + + +XXI. + + +LAPHAM was gone a fortnight. He was in a sullen humour +when he came back, and kept himself shut close within +his own den at the office the first day. He entered it +in the morning without a word to his clerks as he passed +through the outer room, and he made no sign throughout +the forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell +from time to time, and send out to Walker for some book +of accounts or a letter-file. His boy confidentially +reported to Walker that the old man seemed to have got +a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper +said to Corey, at the little table which they had taken +in a corner together, in default of seats at the counter, +"Well, sir, I guess there's a cold wave coming." + +Corey looked up innocently, and said, "I haven't read +the weather report." + +"Yes, sir," Walker continued, "it's coming. Areas of +rain along the whole coast, and increased pressure +in the region of the private office. Storm-signals up +at the old man's door now." + +Corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, +and that his meteorology was entirely personal to Lapham. +"What do you mean?" he asked, without vivid interest in +the allegory, his mind being full of his own tragi-comedy. + +"Why, just this: I guess the old man's takin' in sail. +And I guess he's got to. As I told you the first time +we talked about him, there don't any one know one- +quarter as much about the old man's business as the old +man does himself; and I ain't betraying any confidence +when I say that I guess that old partner of his has got +pretty deep into his books. I guess he's over head +and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone in after him, +and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck. +There seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, +I call it--in the paint market just now; and then +again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man don't build a +hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain, +unless there's a regular boom. And just now there ain't +any boom at all. Oh, I don't say but what the old man's +got anchors to windward; guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN' +to leave me his money, I wish he'd left it six weeks ago. +Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but you +can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, +where the old man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess." +Walker began to feed in his breaded chop with the same +nervous excitement with which he abandoned himself +to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks. +Corey had listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion +up to a certain moment, when a broad light of hope +flashed upon him. It came from Lapham's potential ruin; +and the way out of the labyrinth that had hitherto seemed +so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster would +befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the +unselfishness of his constancy. He thought of the sum +of money that was his own, and that he might offer to lend, +or practically give, if the time came; and with his crude +hopes and purposes formlessly exulting in his heart, +he kept on listening with an unchanged countenance. + +Walker could not rest till he had developed the whole situation, +so far as he knew it. "Look at the stock we've got on hand. +There's going to be an awful shrinkage on that, now! And +when everybody is shutting down, or running half-time, +the works up at Lapham are going full chip, just the same +as ever. Well, it's his pride. I don't say but what it's +a good sort of pride, but he likes to make his brags that +the fire's never been out in the works since they started, +and that no man's work or wages has ever been cut down yet +at Lapham, it don't matter WHAT the times are. Of course," +explained Walker, "I shouldn't talk so to everybody; +don't know as I should talk so to anybody but you, +Mr. Corey." + +"Of course," assented Corey. + +"Little off your feed to-day," said Walker, glancing at +Corey's plate. + +"I got up with a headache." + +"Well, sir, if you're like me you'll carry it round +all day, then. I don't know a much meaner thing +than a headache--unless it's earache, or toothache, +or some other kind of ache I'm pretty hard to suit, +when it comes to diseases. Notice how yellow the old man +looked when he came in this morning? I don't like to see +a man of his build look yellow--much." About the middle +of the afternoon the dust-coloured face of Rogers, +now familiar to Lapham's clerks, showed itself among them. +"Has Colonel Lapham returned yet?" he asked, in his dry, +wooden tones, of Lapham's boy. + +"Yes, he's in his office," said the boy; and as +Rogers advanced, he rose and added, "I don't know +as you can see him to-day. His orders are not to let anybody in." + +"Oh, indeed!" said Rogers; "I think he will see ME!" +and he pressed forward. + +"Well, I'll have to ask," returned the boy; and hastily +preceding Rogers, he put his head in at Lapham's door, +and then withdrew it. "Please to sit down," he said; +"he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with an air of some surprise, +Rogers obeyed. His sere, dull-brown whiskers and the +moustache closing over both lips were incongruously +and illogically clerical in effect, and the effect +was heightened for no reason by the parchment texture +of his skin; the baldness extending to the crown of +his head was like a baldness made up for the stage. +What his face expressed chiefly was a bland and +beneficent caution. Here, you must have said to yourself, +is a man of just, sober, and prudent views, fixed purposes, +and the good citizenship that avoids debt and hazard of every kind. + +"What do you want?" asked Lapham, wheeling round in his +swivel-chair as Rogers entered his room, and pushing +the door shut with his foot, without rising. + +Rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat +with his hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed +towards Lapham. "I want to know what you are going to do," +he answered with sufficient self-possession. + +"I'll tell you, first, what I've done," said Lapham. +"I've been to Dubuque, and I've found out all about +that milling property you turned in on me. Did you know +that the G. L. & P. had leased the P. Y. & X. ?" + +"I some suspected that it might." + +"Did you know it when you turned the property in on me? +Did you know that the G. L. & P. wanted to buy the mills?" + +"I presumed the road would give a fair price for them," +said Rogers, winking his eyes in outward expression of +inwardly blinking the point. + +"You lie," said Lapham, as quietly as if correcting him +in a slight error; and Rogers took the word with equal +sang froid. "You knew the road wouldn't give a fair price +for the mills. You knew it would give what it chose, +and that I couldn't help myself, when you let me take them. +You're a thief, Milton K. Rogers, and you stole money +I lent you." Rogers sat listening, as if respectfully +considering the statements. "You knew how I felt about +that old matter--or my wife did; and that I wanted +to make it up to you, if you felt anyway badly used. +And you took advantage of it. You've got money out of me, +in the first place, on securities that wa'n't worth +thirty-five cents on the dollar, and you've let me in for +this thing, and that thing, and you've bled me every time. +And all I've got to show for it is a milling property on +a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it wants to, +as dry as it pleases. And you want to know what I'm +going to do? I'm going to squeeze YOU. I'm going to +sell these collaterals of yours,"--he touched a bundle +of papers among others that littered his desk,--"and +I'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch. +I ain't going to fight the G. L. & P." + +Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly +back on his visitor, who sat wholly unmoved. + +"There are some parties," he began, with a dry +tranquillity ignoring Lapham's words, as if they had been +an outburst against some third person, who probably +merited them, but in whom he was so little interested +that he had been obliged to use patience in listening +to his condemnation,--"there are some English parties +who have been making inquiries in regard to those mills." + +"I guess you're lying, Rogers," said Lapham, without looking round. + +"Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not +act hastily." + +"I see you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, +facing fiercely about. "You think I'm fooling, do you?" +He struck his bell, and "William," he ordered the boy +who answered it, and who stood waiting while he dashed +off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the bundle +of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to +Gallop & Paddock's, in State Street, right away. Now go!" +he said to Rogers, when the boy had closed the door after him; +and he turned once more to his desk. + +Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat +in his hand. He was not merely dispassionate in his +attitude and expression, he was impartial. He wore +the air of a man who was ready to return to business +whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted. +"Then I understand," he said, "that you will take no action +in regard to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of." + +Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the +visage of Rogers in silence. "I wonder what you're up to," +he said at last; "I should like to know." But as Rogers made +no sign of gratifying his curiosity, and treated this last +remark of Lapham's as of the irrelevance of all the rest, +he said, frowning, "You bring me a party that will give me +enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll talk +to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. +And I'll give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself +a swindler again." + +Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking +thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, +and quietly withdrew, maintaining to the last his +unprejudiced demeanour. + +Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, +during the afternoon, except when the last mail was +taken in to him; then the sound of rending envelopes, +mixed with that of what seemed suppressed swearing, +penetrated to the outer office. Somewhat earlier than +the usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat +on and his overcoat buttoned about him. He said briefly +to his boy, "William, I shan't be back again this afternoon," +and then went to Miss Dewey and left a number of letters +on her table to be copied, and went out. Nothing had +been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself +through those who saw him go out. + +That evening as he sat down with his wife alone at tea, +he asked, "Ain't Pen coming to supper?" + +"No, she ain't," said his wife. "I don't know as I +like the way she's going on, any too well. I'm afraid, +if she keeps on, she'll be down sick. She's got deeper +feelings than Irene." + +Lapham said nothing, but having helped himself to the +abundance of his table in his usual fashion, he sat +and looked at his plate with an indifference that did +not escape the notice of his wife. "What's the matter +with YOU?" she asked. + +"Nothing. I haven't got any appetite." + +"What's the matter?" she persisted. + +"Trouble's the matter; bad luck and lots of it's the matter," +said Lapham. "I haven't ever hid anything from you, +Persis, well you asked me, and it's too late to begin now. +I'm in a fix. I'll tell you what kind of a fix, +if you think it'll do you any good; but I guess you'll +be satisfied to know that it's a fix." + +"How much of a one?" she asked with a look of grave, +steady courage in her eyes. + +"Well, I don't know as I can tell, just yet," said Lapham, +avoiding this look. "Things have been dull all the fall, +but I thought they'd brisk up come winter. They haven't. +There have been a lot of failures, and some of 'em owed me, +and some of 'em had me on their paper; and----" Lapham stopped. + +"And what?" prompted his wife. + +He hesitated before he added, "And then--Rogers." + +"I'm to blame for that," said Mrs. Lapham. "I forced +you to it." + +"No; I was as willing to go into it as what you were," +answered Lapham. "I don't want to blame anybody." + +Mrs. Lapham had a woman's passion for fixing responsibility; +she could not help saying, as soon as acquitted, "I warned +you against him, Silas. I told you not to let him get +in any deeper with you." + +"Oh yes. I had to help him to try to get my money back. +I might as well poured water into a sieve. And now--" +Lapham stopped. + +"Don't be afraid to speak out to me, Silas Lapham. +If it comes to the worst, I want to know it--I've got +to know it. What did I ever care for the money? I've. +had a happy home with you ever since we were married, +and I guess I shall have as long as you live, whether we +go on to the Back Bay, or go back to the old house +at Lapham. I know who's to blame, and I blame myself. +It was my forcing Rogers on to you." She came back to this +with her helpless longing, inbred in all Puritan souls, +to have some one specifically suffer for the evil in the world, +even if it must be herself. + +"It hasn't come to the worst yet, Persis," said her husband. +"But I shall have to hold up on the new house a little while, +till I can see where I am." + +"I shouldn't care if we had to sell it," cried his wife, +in passionate self-condemnation. "I should be GLAD if we +had to, as far as I'm concerned." + +"I shouldn't," said Lapham. + +"I know!" said his wife; and she remembered ruefully +how his heart was set on it. + +He sat musing. "Well, I guess it's going to come out all +right in the end. Or, if it ain't," he sighed, "we can't +help it. May be Pen needn't worry so much about Corey, +after all," he continued, with a bitter irony new to him. +"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. And there's +a chance," he ended, with a still bitterer laugh, +"that Rogers will come to time, after all." + +"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, with a gleam +of hope in her eyes. "What chance?" + +"One in ten million," said Lapham; and her face fell again. +"He says there are some English parties after him to buy +these mills." + +"Well?" + +"Well, I gave him twenty-four hours to prove himself +a liar." + +"You don't believe there are any such parties?" + +"Not in THIS world." + +"But if there were?" + +"Well, if there were, Persis----But pshaw!" + +"No, no!" she pleaded eagerly. "It don't seem as if he +COULD be such a villain. What would be the use of his +pretending? If he brought the parties to you" + +"Well," said Lapham scornfully, "I'd let them have +the mills at the price Rogers turned 'em in on me at. +I don't want to make anything on 'em. But guess I shall +hear from the G. L. & P. first. And when they make +their offer, I guess I'll have to accept it, whatever it is. +I don't think they'll have a great many competitors." + +Mrs. Lapham could not give up her hope. "If you could +get your price from those English parties before they +knew that the G. L. & P. wanted to buy the mills, +would it let you out with Rogers?" + +"Just about," said Lapham. + +"Then I know he'll move heaven and earth to bring it about. +I KNOW you won't be allowed to suffer for doing him +a kindness, Silas. He CAN'T be so ungrateful! Why, +why SHOULD he pretend to have any such parties in view +when he hasn't? Don't you be down-hearted, Si. You'll see +that he'll be round with them to-morrow." + +Lapham laughed, but she urged so many reasons for her belief +in Rogers that Lapham began to rekindle his own faith a little. +He ended by asking for a hot cup of tea; and Mrs. Lapham +sent the pot out and had a fresh one steeped for him. +After that he made a hearty supper in the revulsion from +his entire despair; and they fell asleep that night talking +hopefully of his affairs, which he laid before her fully, +as he used to do when he first started in business. +That brought the old times back, and he said: "If +this had happened then, I shouldn't have cared much. +I was young then, and I wasn't afraid of anything. +But I noticed that after I passed fifty I began to get +scared easier. I don't believe I could pick up, now, from a +regular knock-down." + +"Pshaw! YOU scared, Silas Lapham?" cried his wife proudly. +"I should like to see the thing that ever scared you; +or the knockdown that YOU couldn't pick up from!" + +"Is that so, Persis?" he asked, with the joy her courage +gave him. + +In the middle of the night she called to him, in a voice +which the darkness rendered still more deeply troubled: +"Are you awake, Silas?" + +"Yes; I'm awake." + +"I've been thinking about those English parties, Si----" + +"So've I." + +"And I can't make it out but what you'd be just as bad +as Rogers, every bit and grain, if you were to let them +have the mills----" + +"And not tell 'em what the chances were with the G. L. & +P.? I thought of that, and you needn't be afraid." + +She began to bewail herself, and to sob convulsively: "O +Silas! O Silas!" Heaven knows in what measure the passion +of her soul was mired with pride in her husband's honesty, +relief from an apprehended struggle, and pity for him. + +"Hush, hush, Persis!" he besought her. "You'll wake Pen +if you keep on that way. Don't cry any more! You mustn't." + +"Oh, let me cry, Silas! It'll help me. I shall be all right +in a minute. Don't you mind." She sobbed herself quiet. +"It does seem too hard," she said, when she could speak again, +"that you have to give up this chance when Providence +had fairly raised it up for you." + +"I guess it wa'n't Providence raised it up," said Lapham. +"Any rate, it's got to go. Most likely Rogers was lyin', +and there ain't any such parties; but if there were, +they couldn't have the mills from me without the whole story. +Don't you be troubled, Persis. I'm going to pull +through all right." "Oh, I ain't afraid. I don't suppose +but what there's plenty would help you, if they knew you +needed it, Si." + +"They would if they knew I DIDN'T need it," +said Lapham sardonically. + +"Did you tell Bill how you stood?" + +"No, I couldn't bear to. I've been the rich one so long, +that I couldn't bring myself to own up that I was in danger." + +"Yes." + +"Besides, it didn't look so ugly till to-day. But I guess +we shan't let ugly looks scare us." + +"No." + + + +XXII. + + +THE morning postman brought Mrs. Lapham a letter from Irene, +which was chiefly significant because it made no +reference whatever to the writer or her state of mind. +It gave the news of her uncle's family; it told of their +kindness to her; her cousin Will was going to take her +and his sisters ice-boating on the river, when it froze. + +By the time this letter came, Lapham had gone to his business, +and the mother carried it to Penelope to talk over. +"What do you make out of it?" she asked; and without +waiting to be answered she said, "I don't know as I +believe in cousins marrying, a great deal; but if Irene +and Will were to fix it up between 'em----" She looked +vaguely at Penelope. + +"It wouldn't make any difference as far as I was concerned," +replied the girl listlessly. + +Mrs. Lapham lost her patience. + +"Well, then, I'll tell you what, Penelope!" she exclaimed. +"Perhaps it'll make a difference to you if you know that +your father's in REAL trouble. He's harassed to death, +and he was awake half the night, talking about it. +That abominable Rogers has got a lot of money away from him; +and he's lost by others that he's helped,"--Mrs. Lapham put +it in this way because she had no time to be explicit,--"and +I want you should come out of your room now, and try to be +of some help and comfort to him when he comes home to-night. +I guess Irene wouldn't mope round much, if she was here," +she could not help adding. + +The girl lifted herself on her elbow. "What's that you say +about father?" she demanded eagerly. "Is he in trouble? Is +he going to lose his money? Shall we have to stay in this house?" + +"We may be very GLAD to stay in this house," said Mrs. Lapham, +half angry with herself for having given cause for the +girl's conjectures, and half with the habit of prosperity +in her child, which could conceive no better of what +adversity was. "And I want you should get up and show that +you've got some feeling for somebody in the world besides yourself." + +"Oh, I'll get UP!" said the girl promptly, almost cheerfully. + +"I don't say it's as bad now as it looked a little while ago," +said her mother, conscientiously hedging a little +from the statement which she had based rather upon her +feelings than her facts. "Your father thinks he'll pull +through all right, and I don't know but what he will. +But I want you should see if you can't do something to cheer +him up and keep him from getting so perfectly down-hearted +as he seems to get, under the load he's got to carry. +And stop thinking about yourself a while, and behave +yourself like a sensible girl." + +"Yes, yes," said the girl; "I will. You needn't +be troubled about me any more." + +Before she left her room she wrote a note, and when she +came down she was dressed to go out-of-doors and post +it herself. The note was to Corey:-- + +"Do not come to see me any more till you hear from me. +I have a reason which I cannot give you now; and you must +not ask what it is." + +All day she went about in a buoyant desperation, and she +came down to meet her father at supper. + +"Well, Persis," he said scornfully, as he sat down, +"we might as well saved our good resolutions till they +were wanted. I guess those English parties have gone +back on Rogers." + +"Do you mean he didn't come?" + +"He hadn't come up to half-past five," said Lapham. + +"Tchk!" uttered his wife. "But I guess I shall pull +through without Mr. Rogers," continued Lapham. "A firm +that I didn't think COULD weather it is still afloat, +and so far forth as the danger goes of being dragged under +with it, I'm all right." Penelope came in. "Hello, Pen!" +cried her father. "It ain't often I meet YOU nowadays." +He put up his hand as she passed his chair, and pulled her +down and kissed her. + +"No," she said; "but I thought I'd come down to-night +and cheer you up a little. I shall not talk; the sight +of me will be enough." + +Her father laughed out. "Mother been telling you? Well, +I WAS pretty blue last night; but I guess I was more scared +than hurt. How'd you like to go to the theatre to-night? +Sellers at the Park. Heigh?" + +"Well, I don't know. Don't you think they could get +along without me there?" + +"No; couldn't work it at all," cried the Colonel. +"Let's all go. Unless," he added inquiringly, +"there's somebody coming here?" + +"There's nobody coming," said Penelope. + +"Good! Then we'll go. Mother, don't you be late now." + +"Oh, I shan't keep you waiting," said Mrs. Lapham. +She had thought of telling what a cheerful letter she had +got from Irene; but upon the whole it seemed better not to +speak of Irene at all just then. After they returned from +the theatre, where the Colonel roared through the comedy, +with continual reference of his pleasure to Penelope, +to make sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, +as if the whole affair had been for the girl's distraction +rather than his, "I don't believe but what it's going +to come out all right about the children;" and then she +told him of the letter, and the hopes she had founded +upon it. + +"Well, perhaps you're right, Persis," he consented. + +"I haven't seen Pen so much like herself since it happened. +I declare, when I see the way she came out to-night, +just to please you, I don't know as I want you should get +over all your troubles right away." + +"I guess there'll be enough to keep Pen going +for a while yet," said the Colonel, winding up his watch. + +But for a time there was a relief, which Walker noted, +in the atmosphere at the office, and then came another +cold wave, slighter than the first, but distinctly +felt there, and succeeded by another relief. It was like +the winter which was wearing on to the end of the year, +with alternations of freezing weather, and mild days stretching +to weeks, in which the snow and ice wholly disappeared. +It was none the less winter, and none the less harassing +for these fluctuations, and Lapham showed in his face +and temper the effect of like fluctuations in his affairs. +He grew thin and old, and both at home and at his +office he was irascible to the point of offence. +In these days Penelope shared with her mother the burden +of their troubled home, and united with her in supporting +the silence or the petulance of the gloomy, secret man +who replaced the presence of jolly prosperity there. +Lapham had now ceased to talk of his troubles, +and savagely resented his wife's interference. "You mind +your own business, Persis," he said one day, "if you've +got any;" and after that she left him mainly to Penelope, +who did not think of asking him questions. + +"It's pretty hard on you, Pen," she said. + +"That makes it easier for me," returned the girl, +who did not otherwise refer to her own trouble. + +In her heart she had wondered a little at the absolute +obedience of Corey, who had made no sign since receiving +her note. She would have liked to ask her father if Corey +was sick; she would have liked him to ask her why Corey +did not come any more. Her mother went on-- + +"I don't believe your father knows WHERE he stands. +He works away at those papers he brings home here +at night, as if he didn't half know what he was about. +He always did have that close streak in him, and I don't +suppose but what he's been going into things he don't want +anybody else to know about, and he's kept these accounts +of his own." + +Sometimes he gave Penelope figures to work at, which he +would not submit to his wife's nimbler arithmetic. +Then she went to bed and left them sitting up till midnight, +struggling with problems in which they were both weak. +But she could see that the girl was a comfort to her father, +and that his troubles were a defence and shelter to her. +Some nights she could hear them going out together, and then +she lay awake for their return from their long walk. +When the hour or day of respite came again, the home felt +it first. Lapham wanted to know what the news from Irene was; +he joined his wife in all her cheerful speculations, +and tried to make her amends for his sullen reticence +and irritability. Irene was staying on at Dubuque. +There came a letter from her, saying that her uncle's +people wanted her to spend the winter there. +"Well, let her," said Lapham. "It'll be the best thing +for her." + +Lapham himself had letters from his brother at frequent intervals. +His brother was watching the G. L. & P., which as yet +had made no offer for the mills. Once, when one of +these letters came, he submitted to his wife whether, +in the absence of any positive information that the road +wanted the property, he might not, with a good conscience, +dispose of it to the best advantage to anybody who came along. + +She looked wistfully at him; it was on the rise from a +season of deep depression with him. "No, Si," she said; +"I don't see how you could do that." + +He did not assent and submit, as he had done at first, +but began to rail at the unpracticality of women; and then +he shut some papers he had been looking over into his desk, +and flung out of the room. + +One of the papers had slipped through the crevice of the lid, +and lay upon the floor. Mrs. Lapham kept on at her sewing, +but after a while she picked the paper up to lay it on +the desk. Then she glanced at it, and saw that it was a long +column of dates and figures, recording successive sums, +never large ones, paid regularly to "Wm. M." The dates covered +a year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds. + +Mrs. Lapham laid the paper down on the desk, and then +she took it up again and put it into her work-basket, +meaning to give it to him. When he came in she saw him +looking absent-mindedly about for something, and then +going to work upon his papers, apparently without it. +She thought she would wait till he missed it definitely, +and then give him the scrap she had picked up. It lay +in her basket, and after some days it found its way under +the work in it, and she forgot it. + + + +XXIII. + + +SINCE New Year's there had scarcely been a mild day, +and the streets were full of snow, growing foul under the +city feet and hoofs, and renewing its purity from the skies +with repeated falls, which in turn lost their whiteness, +beaten down, and beaten black and hard into a solid bed +like iron. The sleighing was incomparable, and the air +was full of the din of bells; but Lapham's turnout was not +of those that thronged the Brighton road every afternoon; +the man at the livery-stable sent him word that the mare's +legs were swelling. + +He and Corey had little to do with each other. +He did not know how Penelope had arranged it with Corey; +his wife said she knew no more than he did, and he did +not like to ask the girl herself, especially as Corey no +longer came to the house. He saw that she was cheerfuller +than she had been, and helpfuller with him and her mother. +Now and then Lapham opened his troubled soul to her a little, +letting his thought break into speech without preamble +or conclusion. Once he said-- + +"Pen, I presume you know I'm in trouble." + +"We all seem to be there," said the girl. + +"Yes, but there's a difference between being there +by your own fault and being there by somebody else's." + +"I don't call it his fault," she said. + +"I call it mine," said the Colonel. + +The girl laughed. Her thought was of her own care, and her +father's wholly of his. She must come to his ground. +"What have you been doing wrong?" + +"I don't know as you'd call it wrong. It's what people +do all the time. But I wish I'd let stocks alone. +It's what I always promised your mother I would do. +But there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or watered +stock, either." + +"I don't think there's much use crying about anything. If it +could have been cried straight, it would have been all right +from the start," said the girl, going back to her own affair; +and if Lapham had not been so deeply engrossed in his, +he might have seen how little she cared for all that money +could do or undo. He did not observe her enough to see +how variable her moods were in those days, and how often +she sank from some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; +how at times she was fiercely defiant of nothing at all, +and at others inexplicably humble and patient. +But no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by +his wife, to whom Lapham said one day, when he came home, +"Persis, what's the reason Pen don't marry Corey?" + +"You know as well as I do, Silas," said Mrs. Lapham, +with an inquiring look at him for what lay behind his words. + +"Well, I think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's going on. +There ain't any rhyme nor reason to it." He stopped, +and his wife waited. "If she said the word, I could have +some help from them." He hung his head, and would not meet +his wife's eye. + +"I guess you're in a pretty bad way, Si," she said pityingly, +"or you wouldn't have come to that." + +"I'm in a hole," said Lapham, "and I don't know where to turn. +You won't let me do anything about those mills----" + +"Yes, I'll let you," said his wife sadly. + +He gave a miserable cry. "You know I can't do anything, +if you do. O my Lord!" + +She had not seen him so low as that before. She did not +know what to say. She was frightened, and could only ask, +"Has it come to the worst?" + +"The new house has got to go," he answered evasively. + +She did not say anything. She knew that the work on the +house had been stopped since the beginning of the year. +Lapham had told the architect that he preferred to leave +it unfinished till the spring, as there was no prospect +of their being able to get into it that winter; and the +architect had agreed with him that it would not hurt +it to stand. Her heart was heavy for him, though she +could not say so. They sat together at the table, +where she had come to be with him at his belated meal. +She saw that he did not eat, and she waited for him +to speak again, without urging him to take anything. +They were past that. + +"And I've sent orders to shut down at the Works," +he added. + +"Shut down at the Works!" she echoed with dismay. +She could not take it in. The fire at the Works had +never been out before since it was first kindled. +She knew how he had prided himself upon that; how he had +bragged of it to every listener, and had always lugged +the fact in as the last expression of his sense of success. +"O Silas!" + +"What's the use?" he retorted. "I saw it was coming +a month ago. There are some fellows out in West Virginia +that have been running the paint as hard as they could. +They couldn't do much; they used to put it on the market raw. +But lately they got to baking it, and now they've struck +a vein of natural gas right by their works, and they pay +ten cents for fuel, where I pay a dollar, and they make +as good a paint. Anybody can see where it's going to end. +Besides, the market's over-stocked. It's glutted. +There wa'n't anything to do but to shut DOWN, and I've +SHUT down." + +"I don't know what's going to become of the hands in +the middle of the winter, this way," said Mrs. Lapham, +laying hold of one definite thought which she could grasp +in the turmoil of ruin that whirled before her eyes. + +"I don't care what becomes of the hands," cried Lapham. +"They've shared my luck; now let 'em share the other thing. +And if you're so very sorry for the hands, I wish you'd keep +a little of your pity for ME. Don't you know what shutting +down the Works means?" + +"Yes, indeed I do, Silas," said his wife tenderly. + +"Well, then!" He rose, leaving his supper untasted, and went +into the sitting-room, where she presently found him, +with that everlasting confusion of papers before him +on the desk. That made her think of the paper in her +work-basket, and she decided not to make the careworn, +distracted man ask her for it, after all. She brought it +to him. + +He glanced blankly at it and then caught it from her, +turning red and looking foolish. "Where'd you get that?" + +"You dropped it on the floor the other night, and I +picked it up. Who is 'Wm. M.'?" + +"'Wm. M.'!" he repeated, looking confusedly at her, +and then at the paper. "Oh,--it's nothing." He tore +the paper into small pieces, and went and dropped them +into the fire. When Mrs. Lapham came into the room +in the morning, before he was down, she found a scrap +of the paper, which must have fluttered to the hearth; +and glancing at it she saw that the words were "Mrs. M." +She wondered what dealings with a woman her husband +could have, and she remembered the confusion he had +shown about the paper, and which she had thought was +because she had surprised one of his business secrets. +She was still thinking of it when he came down to breakfast, +heavy-eyed, tremulous, with deep seams and wrinkles in +his face. + +After a silence which he did not seem inclined to break, +"Silas," she asked, "who is 'Mrs. M.'?" + +He stared at her. "I don't know what you're talking about." + +"Don't you?" she returned mockingly. "When you do, +you tell me. Do you want any more coffee?" + +"No." + +"Well, then, you can ring for Alice when you've finished. +I've got some things to attend to." She rose abruptly, +and left the room. Lapham looked after her in a dull way, +and then went on with his breakfast. While he still +sat at his coffee, she flung into the room again, +and dashed some papers down beside his plate. "Here are +some more things of yours, and I'll thank you to lock +them up in your desk and not litter my room with them, +if you please." Now he saw that she was angry, and it +must be with him. It enraged him that in such a time +of trouble she should fly out at him in that way. +He left the house without trying to speak to her. +That day Corey came just before closing, and, knocking at +Lapham's door, asked if he could speak with him a +few moments. + +"Yes," said Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair and +kicking another towards Corey. "Sit down. I want to talk +to you. I'd ought to tell you you're wasting your time here. +I spoke the other day about your placin' yourself better, +and I can help you to do it, yet. There ain't going +to be the out-come for the paint in the foreign markets +that we expected, and I guess you better give it up." + +"I don't wish to give it up," said the young fellow, +setting his lips. "I've as much faith in it as ever; and I +want to propose now what I hinted at in the first place. +I want to put some money into the business." + +"Some money!" Lapham leaned towards him, and frowned +as if he had not quite understood, while he clutched +the arms of his chair. + +"I've got about thirty thousand dollars that I could put in, +and if you don't want to consider me a partner--I remember +that you objected to a partner--you can let me regard it +as an investment. But I think I see the way to doing +something at once in Mexico, and I should like to feel that +I had something more than a drummer's interest in the venture." + +The men sat looking into each other's eyes. Then Lapham +leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his hand hard +and slowly over his face. His features were still +twisted with some strong emotion when he took it away. +"Your family know about this?" + +"My Uncle James knows." + +"He thinks it would be a good plan for you?" + +"He thought that by this time I ought to be able to trust +my own judgment." + +"Do you suppose I could see your uncle at his office?" + +"I imagine he's there." + +"Well, I want to have a talk with him, one of these days." +He sat pondering a while, and then rose, and went with Corey +to his door. "I guess I shan't change my mind about taking +you into the business in that way," he said coldly. +"If there was any reason why I shouldn't at first, +there's more now." + +"Very well, sir," answered the young man, and went to close +his desk. The outer office was empty; but while Corey +was putting his papers in order it was suddenly invaded +by two women, who pushed by the protesting porter on +the stairs and made their way towards Lapham's room. +One of them was Miss Dewey, the type-writer girl, +and the other was a woman whom she would resemble in face +and figure twenty years hence, if she led a life of hard +work varied by paroxysms of hard drinking. + +"That his room, Z'rilla?" asked this woman, pointing towards +Lapham's door with a hand that had not freed itself +from the fringe of dirty shawl under which it had hung. +She went forward without waiting for the answer, +but before she could reach it the door opened, and Lapham +stood filling its space. + +"Look here, Colonel Lapham!" began the woman, in a high +key of challenge. "I want to know if this is the way +you're goin' back on me and Z'rilla?" + +"What do you want?" asked Lapham. + +"What do I want? What do you s'pose I want? I want +the money to pay my month's rent; there ain't a bite +to eat in the house; and I want some money to market." + +Lapham bent a frown on the woman, under which she shrank +back a step. "You've taken the wrong way to get it. +Clear out!" + +"I WON'T clear out!" said the woman, beginning to whimper. + +"Corey!" said Lapham, in the peremptory voice of a master,--he +had seemed so indifferent to Corey's presence that the young man +thought he must have forgotten he was there,--"Is Dennis anywhere round?" + +"Yissor," said Dennis, answering for himself from the head +of the stairs, and appearing in the ware-room. + +Lapham spoke to the woman again. "Do you want I should +call a hack, or do you want I should call an officer?" + +The woman began to cry into an end of her shawl. +"I don't know what we're goin' to do." + +"You're going to clear out," said Lapham. "Call a hack, Dennis. +If you ever come here again, I'll have you arrested. +Mind that! Zerrilla, I shall want you early to-morrow morning." + +"Yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her mother +shrank out after the porter. + +Lapham shut his door without a word. + +At lunch the next day Walker made himself amends +for Corey's reticence by talking a great deal. +He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, more than ever +since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination +of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, +"Did you see that little circus last night?" + +"What little circus?" asked Corey in his turn. + +"Those two women and the old man. Dennis told me about it. +I told him if he liked his place he'd better keep his +mouth shut." + +"That was very good advice," said Corey. + +"Oh, all right, if you don't want to talk. Don't know +as I should in your place," returned Walker, in the easy +security he had long felt that Corey had no intention +of putting on airs with him. "But I'll tell you what: +the old man can't expect it of everybody. If he keeps +this thing up much longer, it's going to be talked about. +You can't have a woman walking into your place of business, +and trying to bulldoze you before your porter, without setting +your porter to thinking. And the last thing you want +a porter to do is to think; for when a porter thinks, +he thinks wrong." + +"I don't see why even a porter couldn't think right about +that affair," replied Corey. "I don't know who the +woman was, though I believe she was Miss Dewey's mother; +but I couldn't see that Colonel Lapham showed anything +but a natural resentment of her coming to him in that way. +I should have said she was some rather worthless person +whom he'd been befriending, and that she had presumed upon +his kindness." + +"Is that so? What do you think of his never letting Miss +Dewey's name go on the books?" + +"That it's another proof it's a sort of charity of his. +That's the only way to look at it." + +"Oh, I'M all right." Walker lighted a cigar and began +to smoke, with his eyes closed to a fine straight line. +"It won't do for a book-keeper to think wrong, any more +than a porter, I suppose. But I guess you and I don't +think very different about this thing." + +"Not if you think as I do," replied Corey steadily; "and I +know you would do that if you had seen the 'circus' yourself. +A man doesn't treat people who have a disgraceful hold +upon him as he treated them." + +"It depends upon who he is," said Walker, taking his cigar +from his mouth. "I never said the old man was afraid +of anything." + +"And character," continued Corey, disdaining to touch +the matter further, except in generalities, "must go +for something. If it's to be the prey of mere accident +and appearance, then it goes for nothing." + +"Accidents will happen in the best regulated families," +said Walker, with vulgar, good-humoured obtuseness +that filled Corey with indignation. Nothing, perhaps, +removed his matter-of-fact nature further from the +commonplace than a certain generosity of instinct, +which I should not be ready to say was always infallible. + +That evening it was Miss Dewey's turn to wait for speech +with Lapham after the others were gone. He opened his door +at her knock, and stood looking at her with a worried air. +"Well, what do you want, Zerrilla?" he asked, with a sort +of rough kindness. + +"I want to know what I'm going to do about Hen. +He's back again; and he and mother have made it up, +and they both got to drinking last night after I went home, +and carried on so that the neighbours came in." + +Lapham passed his hand over his red and heated face. +"I don't know what I'm going to do. You're twice the trouble +that my own family is, now. But I know what I'd do, +mighty quick, if it wasn't for you, Zerrilla," he went +on relentingly. "I'd shut your mother up somewheres, +and if I could get that fellow off for a three years' +voyage----" + +"I declare," said Miss Dewey, beginning to whimper, +"it seems as if he came back just so often to spite me. +He's never gone more than a year at the furthest, and you +can't make it out habitual drunkenness, either, when it's +just sprees. I'm at my wit's end." + +"Oh, well, you mustn't cry around here," said Lapham soothingly. + +"I know it," said Miss Dewey. "If I could get rid +of Hen, I could manage well enough with mother. +Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could get the divorce. +He's said so over and over again." + +"I don't know as I like that very well," said Lapham, frowning. +"I don't know as I want you should get married in any hurry again. +I don't know as I like your going with anybody else just yet." + +"Oh, you needn't be afraid but what it'll be all right. +It'll be the best thing all round, if I can marry him." + +"Well!" said Lapham impatiently; "I can't think about it now. +I suppose they've cleaned everything out again?" + +"Yes, they have," said Zerrilla; "there isn't a cent left." + +"You're a pretty expensive lot," said Lapham. "Well, here!" +He took out his pocket-book and gave her a note. +"I'll be round to-night and see what can be done." + +He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla dried +her tears, put the note into her bosom, and went her way. + +Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. It was +then six o'clock, the hour at which the Laphams usually +had tea; but all custom had been broken up with him +during the past months, and he did not go home now. +He determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man +finds relief in combating one care with another, to keep +his promise to Miss Dewey, and at the moment when he might +otherwise have been sitting down at his own table he was +climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned +dwelling which had been portioned off into flats. +It was in a region of depots, and of the cheap hotels, +and "ladies' and gents'" dining-rooms, and restaurants +with bars, which abound near depots; and Lapham followed +to Miss Dewey's door a waiter from one of these, who bore +on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin. +Zerrilla had admitted them, and at her greeting +a young fellow in the shabby shore-suit of a sailor, +buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue flannel +of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, +on one side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, +in token of receiving the visitor. The woman who sat +on the other side did not rise, but began a shrill, +defiant apology. + +"Well, I don't suppose but what you'll think we're livin' +on the fat o' the land, right straight along, all the while. +But it's just like this. When that child came in from +her work, she didn't seem to have the spirit to go +to cookin' anything, and I had such a bad night last night +I was feelin' all broke up, and s'd I, what's the use, +anyway? By the time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' +bone, and made you pay for the suet he cuts away, it comes +to the same thing, and why not GIT it from the rest'rant +first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd I." + +"What have you got there under your apron? A bottle?" +demanded Lapham, who stood with his hat on and his hands +in his pockets, indifferent alike to the ineffective +reception of the sailor and the chair Zerrilla had set him. + +"Well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with an +assumption of virtuous frankness. "It's whisky; +I got to have something to rub my rheumatism with." + +"Humph!" grumbled Lapham. "You've been rubbing HIS +rheumatism too, I see." + +He twisted his head in the direction of the sailor, +now softly and rhythmically waving to and fro on his feet. + +"He hain't had a drop to-day in THIS house!" cried the woman. + +"What are you doing around here?" said Lapham, turning +fiercely upon him. "You've got no business ashore. +Where's your ship? Do you think I'm going to let you +come here and eat your wife out of house and home, +and then give money to keep the concern going?" + +"Just the very words I said when he first showed his +face here, yist'day. Didn't I, Z'rilla?" said the woman, +eagerly joining in the rebuke of her late boon companion. +"You got no business here, Hen, s'd I. You can't come +here to live on me and Z'rilla, s'd I. You want to go back +to your ship, s'd I. That's what I said." + +The sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability +for Lapham, something about the crew being discharged. + +"Yes," the woman broke in, "that's always the way with +these coasters. Why don't you go off on some them long +v'y'ges? s'd I. It's pretty hard when Mr. Wemmel stands +ready to marry Z'rilla and provide a comfortable home +for us both--I hain't got a great many years more to live, +and I SHOULD like to get some satisfaction out of 'em, +and not be beholden and dependent all my days,--to have Hen, +here, blockin' the way. I tell him there'd be more money +for him in the end; but he can't seem to make up his mind to it." + +"Well, now, look here," said Lapham. "I don't care anything +about all that. It's your own business, and I'm not going +to meddle with it. But it's my business who lives off me; +and so I tell you all three, I'm willing to take care +of Zerrilla, and I'm willing to take care of her mother----" + +"I guess if it hadn't been for that child's father," +the mother interpolated, "you wouldn't been here to tell +the tale, Colonel Lapham." + +"I know all about that," said Lapham. "But I'll tell +you what, Mr. Dewey, I'm not going to support YOU." + +"I don't see what Hen's done," said the old woman impartially. + +"He hasn't done anything, and I'm going to stop it. +He's got to get a ship, and he's got to get out of this. +And Zerrilla needn't come back to work till he does. +I'm done with you all." + +"Well, I vow," said the mother, "if I ever heard anything +like it! Didn't that child's father lay down his life +for you? Hain't you said it yourself a hundred times? +And don't she work for her money, and slave for it +mornin', noon, and night? You talk as if we was beholden +to you for the very bread in our mouths. I guess if it +hadn't been for Jim, you wouldn't been here crowin' +over us." + +"You mind what I say. I mean business this time," +said Lapham, turning to the door. + +The woman rose and followed him, with her bottle in her hand. +"Say, Colonel! what should you advise Z'rilla to do about +Mr. Wemmel? I tell her there ain't any use goin' to the +trouble to git a divorce without she's sure about him. +Don't you think we'd ought to git him to sign a paper, +or something, that he'll marry her if she gits it? I don't +like to have things going at loose ends the way they are. +It ain't sense. It ain't right." + +Lapham made no answer to the mother anxious for her child's +future, and concerned for the moral questions involved. +He went out and down the stairs, and on the pavement at +the lower door he almost struck against Rogers, who had +a bag in his hand, and seemed to be hurrying towards +one of the depots. He halted a little, as if to speak +to Lapham; but Lapham turned his back abruptly upon him, +and took the other direction. + +The days were going by in a monotony of adversity to him, +from which he could no longer escape, even at home. +He attempted once or twice to talk of his troubles +to his wife, but she repulsed him sharply; she seemed +to despise and hate him; but he set himself doggedly +to make a confession to her, and he stopped her one night, +as she came into the room where he sat--hastily upon some +errand that was to take her directly away again. + +"Persis, there's something I've got to tell you." + +She stood still, as if fixed against her will, to listen. + +"I guess you know something about it already, and I guess +it set you against me." + +"Oh, I guess not, Colonel Lapham. You go your way, +and I go mine. That's all." + +She waited for him to speak, listening with a cold, +hard smile on her face. + +"I don't say it to make favour with you, because I don't +want you to spare me, and I don't ask you; but I got +into it through Milton K. Rogers." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Lapham contemptuously. + +"I always felt the way I said about it--that it wa'n't any +better than gambling, and I say so now. It's like betting +on the turn of a card; and I give you my word of honour, +Persis, that I never was in it at all till that scoundrel +began to load me up with those wild-cat securities of his. +Then it seemed to me as if I ought to try to do something +to get somewhere even. I know it's no excuse; but watching +the market to see what the infernal things were worth from +day to day, and seeing it go up, and seeing it go down, +was too much for me; and, to make a long story short, +I began to buy and sell on a margin--just what I told +you I never would do. I seemed to make something--I +did make something; and I'd have stopped, I do believe, +if I could have reached the figure I'd set in my own +mind to start with; but I couldn't fetch it. I began +to lose, and then I began to throw good money after bad, +just as I always did with everything that Rogers ever came +within a mile of. Well, what's the use? I lost the money +that would have carried me out of this, and I shouldn't +have had to shut down the Works, or sell the house, +or----" + +Lapham stopped. His wife, who at first had listened +with mystification, and then dawning incredulity, +changing into a look of relief that was almost triumph, +lapsed again into severity. "Silas Lapham, if you was to +die the next minute, is this what you started to tell me?" + +"Why, of course it is. What did you suppose I started +to tell you?" + +"And--look me in the eyes!--you haven't got anything else +on your mind now?" + +"No! There's trouble enough, the Lord knows; +but there's nothing else to tell you. I suppose Pen +gave you a hint about it. I dropped something to her. +I've been feeling bad about it, Persis, a good while, +but I hain't had the heart to speak of it. I can't expect +you to say you like it. I've been a fool, I'll allow, +and I've been something worse, if you choose to say so; +but that's all. I haven't hurt anybody but myself--and you +and the children." + +Mrs. Lapham rose and said, with her face from him, +as she turned towards the door, "It's all right, Silas. +I shan't ever bring it up against you." + +She fled out of the room, but all that evening she was +very sweet with him, and seemed to wish in all tacit +ways to atone for her past unkindness. + +She made him talk of his business, and he told her +of Corey's offer, and what he had done about it. +She did not seem to care for his part in it, however; +at which Lapham was silently disappointed a little, +for he would have liked her to praise him. + +"He did it on account of Pen!" + +"Well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said Lapham, +who must have obscurely expected that Corey would +recognise his own magnanimity by repeating his offer. +If the doubt that follows a self-devoted action--the question +whether it was not after all a needless folly--is mixed, +as it was in Lapham's case, with the vague belief that we +might have done ourselves a good turn without great risk +of hurting any one else by being a little less unselfish, +it becomes a regret that is hard to bear. Since Corey +spoke to him, some things had happened that gave Lapham +hope again. + +"I'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and she +showed herself impatient to make up for the time she +had lost. "Why didn't you tell me before, Silas?" + +"I didn't know we were on speaking terms before," +said Lapham sadly. + +"Yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious flush. +"I hope he won't think Pen's known about it all this while." + + + +XXIV. + + +THAT evening James Bellingham came to see Corey after dinner, +and went to find him in his own room. + +"I've come at the instance of Colonel Lapham," said the uncle. +"He was at my office to-day, and I had a long talk with him. +Did you know that he was in difficulties?" + +"I fancied that he was in some sort of trouble. +And I had the book-keeper's conjectures--he doesn't +really know much about it." + +"Well, he thinks it time--on all accounts--that you should +know how he stands, and why he declined that proposition +of yours. I must say he has behaved very well--like +a gentleman." + +"I'm not surprised." + +"I am. It's hard to behave like a gentleman where your +interest is vitally concerned. And Lapham doesn't strike +me as a man who's in the habit of acting from the best +in him always." + +"Do any of us?" asked Corey. + +"Not all of us, at any rate," said Bellingham. "It must +have cost him something to say no to you, for he's just +in that state when he believes that this or that chance, +however small, would save him." + +Corey was silent. "Is he really in such a bad way?" + +"It's hard to tell just where he stands. I suspect +that a hopeful temperament and fondness for round +numbers have always caused him to set his figures beyond +his actual worth. I don't say that he's been dishonest +about it, but he's had a loose way of estimating +his assets; he's reckoned his wealth on the basis +of his capital, and some of his capital is borrowed. +He's lost heavily by some of the recent failures, +and there's been a terrible shrinkage in his values. +I don't mean merely in the stock of paint on hand, but in +a kind of competition which has become very threatening. +You know about that West Virginian paint?" + +Corey nodded. + +"Well, he tells me that they've struck a vein of natural gas +out there which will enable them to make as good a paint +as his own at a cost of manufacturing so low that they can +undersell him everywhere. If this proves to be the case, +it will not only drive his paint out of the market, +but will reduce the value of his Works--the whole plant--at +Lapham to a merely nominal figure." + +"I see," said Corey dejectedly. "I've understood that he +had put a great deal of money into his Works." + +"Yes, and he estimated his mine there at a high figure. +Of course it will be worth little or nothing if the West +Virginia paint drives his out. Then, besides, Lapham has +been into several things outside of his own business, +and, like a good many other men who try outside things, +he's kept account of them himself; and he's all mixed +up about them. He's asked me to look into his affairs +with him, and I've promised to do so. Whether he can +be tided over his difficulties remains to be seen. +I'm afraid it will take a good deal of money to do it--a +great deal more than he thinks, at least. He believes +comparatively little would do it. I think differently. +I think that anything less than a great deal would +be thrown away on him. If it were merely a question +of a certain sum--even a large sum--to keep him going, +it might be managed; but it's much more complicated. +And, as I say, it must have been a trial to him to refuse +your offer." + +This did not seem to be the way in which Bellingham +had meant to conclude. But he said no more; and Corey +made him no response. + +He remained pondering the case, now hopefully, +now doubtfully, and wondering, whatever his mood was, +whether Penelope knew anything of the fact with which +her mother went nearly at the same moment to acquaint her. + +"Of course, he's done it on your account," Mrs. Lapham +could not help saying. + +"Then he was very silly. Does he think I would let +him give father money? And if father lost it for him, +does he suppose it would make it any easier for me? I +think father acted twice as well. It was very silly." + +In repeating the censure, her look was not so severe +as her tone; she even smiled a little, and her mother +reported to her father that she acted more like herself +than she had yet since Corey's offer. + +"I think, if he was to repeat his offer, she would have +him now," said Mrs. Lapham. + +"Well, I'll let her know if he does," said the Colonel. + +"I guess he won't do it to you!" she cried. + +"Who else will he do it to?" he demanded. + +They perceived that they had each been talking +of a different offer. + +After Lapham went to his business in the morning the +postman brought another letter from Irene, which was full +of pleasant things that were happening to her; there was +a great deal about her cousin Will, as she called him. +At the end she had written, "Tell Pen I don't want she +should be foolish." "There!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I guess +it's going to come out right, all round;" and it seemed +as if even the Colonel's difficulties were past. "When your +father gets through this, Pen," she asked impulsively, +"what shall you do?" + +"What have you been telling Irene about me?" + +"Nothing much. What should you do?" + +"It would be a good deal easier to say what I should +do if father didn't," said the girl. + +"I know you think it was nice in him to make your father +that offer," urged the mother. + +"It was nice, yes; but it was silly," said the girl. +"Most nice things are silly, I suppose," she added. + +She went to her room and wrote a letter. It was very long, +and very carefully written; and when she read it over, +she tore it into small pieces. She wrote another one, +short and hurried, and tore that up too. Then she +went back to her mother, in the family room, and asked +to see Irene's letter, and read it over to herself. +"Yes, she seems to be having a good time," she sighed. +"Mother, do you think I ought to let Mr. Corey know that I know +about it?" + +"Well, I should think it would be a pleasure to him," +said Mrs. Lapham judicially. + +"I'm not so sure of that the way I should have to tell him. +I should begin by giving him a scolding. Of course, +he meant well by it, but can't you see that it wasn't +very flattering! How did he expect it would change me?" + +"I don't believe he ever thought of that." + +"Don't you? Why?" + +"Because you can see that he isn't one of that kind. +He might want to please you without wanting to change you +by what he did." + +"Yes. He must have known that nothing would change +me,--at least, nothing that he could do. I thought of that. +I shouldn't like him to feel that I couldn't appreciate it, +even if I did think it was silly. Should you write to him?" + +"I don't see why not." + +"It would be too pointed. No, I shall just let it go. +I wish he hadn't done it." + +"Well, he has done it." "And I've tried to write to him +about it--two letters: one so humble and grateful +that it couldn't stand up on its edge, and the other +so pert and flippant. Mother, I wish you could have +seen those two letters! I wish I had kept them to look +at if I ever got to thinking I had any sense again. +They would take the conceit out of me." + +"What's the reason he don't come here any more?" + +"Doesn't he come?" asked Penelope in turn, as if it +were something she had not noticed particularly. + +"You'd ought to know." + +"Yes." She sat silent a while. "If he doesn't come, +I suppose it's because he's offended at something I did." + +"What did you do?" + +"Nothing. I--wrote to him--a little while ago. I suppose +it was very blunt, but I didn't believe he would be angry +at it. But this--this that he's done shows he was angry, +and that he wasn't just seizing the first chance to get +out of it." + +"What have you done, Pen?" demanded her mother sharply. + +"Oh, I don't know. All the mischief in the world, I suppose. +I'll tell you. When you first told me that father was +in trouble with his business, I wrote to him not to come +any more till I let him. I said I couldn't tell him why, +and he hasn't been here since. I'm sure I don't know +what it means." + +Her mother looked at her with angry severity. +"Well, Penelope Lapham! For a sensible child, you ARE +the greatest goose I ever saw. Did you think he would +come here and SEE if you wouldn't let him come?" + +"He might have written," urged the girl. + +Her mother made that despairing "Tchk!" with her tongue, +and fell back in her chair. "I should have DESPISED +him if he had written. He's acted just exactly right, +and you--you've acted--I don't know HOW you've acted. +I'm ashamed of you. A girl that could be so sensible +for her sister, and always say and do just the right thing, +and then when it comes to herself to be such a DISGUSTING +simpleton!" + +"I thought I ought to break with him at once, and not +let him suppose that there was any hope for him or me +if father was poor. It was my one chance, in this +whole business, to do anything heroic, and I jumped at it. +You mustn't think, because I can laugh at it now, that I +wasn't in earnest, mother! I WAS--dead! But the Colonel has +gone to ruin so gradually, that he's spoilt everything. +I expected that he would be bankrupt the next day, +and that then HE would understand what I meant. +But to have it drag along for a fortnight seems to take +all the heroism out of it, and leave it as flat!" She looked +at her mother with a smile that shone through her tears, +and a pathos that quivered round her jesting lips. +"It's easy enough to be sensible for other people. +But when it comes to myself, there I am! Especially, +when I want to do what I oughtn't so much that it seems +as if doing what I didn't want to do MUST be doing what I +ought! But it's been a great success one way, mother. +It's helped me to keep up before the Colonel. If it +hadn't been for Mr. Corey's staying away, and my feeling +so indignant with him for having been badly treated by me, +I shouldn't have been worth anything at all." + +The tears started down her cheeks, but her mother said, +"Well, now, go along, and write to him. It don't matter +what you say, much; and don't be so very particular." + +Her third attempt at a letter pleased her scarcely better +than the rest, but she sent it, though it seemed so blunt +and awkward. She wrote:-- + + +DEAR FRIEND,--I expected when I sent you that note, +that you would understand, almost the next day, why I +could not see you any more. You must know now, and you +must not think that if anything happened to my father, +I should wish you to help him. But that is no reason why +I should not thank you, and I do thank you, for offering. +It was like you, I will say that. + +Yours sincerely, PENELOPE LAPHAM. + + +She posted her letter, and he sent his reply in the evening, +by hand:-- + + +DEAREST,--What I did was nothing, till you praised it. +Everything I have and am is yours. Won't you send +a line by the bearer, to say that I may come to see +you? I know how you feel; but I am sure that I can make +you think differently. You must consider that I loved +you without a thought of your father's circumstances, +and always shall. + +T. C. + + +The generous words were blurred to her eyes by the tears +that sprang into them. But she could only write in answer:-- + + +"Please do not come; I have made up my mind. As long +as this trouble is hanging over us, I cannot see you. +And if father is unfortunate, all is over between us." + + +She brought his letter to her mother, and told her what +she had written in reply. Her mother was thoughtful +a while before she said, with a sigh, "Well, I hope +you've begun as you can carry out, Pen." + +"Oh, I shall not have to carry out at all. I shall +not have to do anything. That's one comfort--the +only comfort." She went away to her own room, and when +Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the affair, he was silent +at first, as she had been. Then he said, "I don't +know as I should have wanted her to done differently; +I don't know as she could. If I ever come right again, +she won't have anything to feel meeching about; and if I +don't, I don't want she should be beholden to anybody. +And I guess that's the way she feels." + +The Coreys in their turn sat in judgment on the fact +which their son felt bound to bring to their knowledge. + +"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Corey, to whom +her son had spoken. + +"My dear," said her husband, with his laugh, "she has +behaved TOO well. If she had studied the whole +situation with the most artful eye to its mastery, +she could not possibly have behaved better." + +The process of Lapham's financial disintegration was +like the course of some chronic disorder, which has +fastened itself upon the constitution, but advances +with continual reliefs, with apparent amelioration, +and at times seems not to advance at all, when it +gives hope of final recovery not only to the sufferer, +but to the eye of science itself. There were moments when +James Bellingham, seeing Lapham pass this crisis and that, +began to fancy that he might pull through altogether; +and at these moments, when his adviser could not oppose +anything but experience and probability to the evidence +of the fact, Lapham was buoyant with courage, and imparted +his hopefulness to his household. Our theory of disaster, +of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets +and novelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage +in our own lives and in the lives of others, so far as we +have witnessed them, teaches us that this is false. +The house of mourning is decorously darkened to the world, +but within itself it is also the house of laughing. +Bursts of gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve the gloom, +and the stricken survivors have their jests together, +in which the thought of the dead is tenderly involved, +and a fond sense, not crazier than many others, of sympathy +and enjoyment beyond the silence, justifies the sunnier +mood before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing, +and making it all up again with the conventional fitness +of things. Lapham's adversity had this quality in common +with bereavement. It was not always like the adversity +we figure in allegory; it had its moments of being +like prosperity, and if upon the whole it was continual, +it was not incessant. Sometimes there was a week +of repeated reverses, when he had to keep his teeth set +and to hold on hard to all his hopefulness; and then +days came of negative result or slight success, when he +was full of his jokes at the tea-table, and wanted to go +to the theatre, or to do something to cheer Penelope up. +In some miraculous way, by some enormous stroke of success +which should eclipse the brightest of his past prosperity, +he expected to do what would reconcile all difficulties, +not only in his own affairs, but in hers too. "You'll see," +he said to his wife; "it's going to come out all right. +Irene'll fix it up with Bill's boy, and then she'll be off +Pen's mind; and if things go on as they've been going +for the last two days, I'm going to be in a position to do +the favours myself, and Pen can feel that SHE'S makin' +a sacrifice, and then I guess may be she'll do it. +If things turn out as I expect now, and times ever do get +any better generally, I can show Corey that I appreciate +his offer. I can offer him the partnership myself +then." + +Even in the other moods, which came when everything had +been going wrong, and there seemed no way out of the net, +there were points of consolation to Lapham and his wife. +They rejoiced that Irene was safe beyond the range of +their anxieties, and they had a proud satisfaction that +there had been no engagement between Corey and Penelope, +and that it was she who had forbidden it. In the closeness +of interest and sympathy in which their troubles had +reunited them, they confessed to each other that nothing +would have been more galling to their pride than the idea +that Lapham should not have been able to do everything +for his daughter that the Coreys might have expected. +Whatever happened now, the Coreys could not have it to say +that the Laphams had tried to bring any such thing about. + +Bellingham had lately suggested an assignment to Lapham, +as the best way out of his difficulties. It was evident +that he had not the money to meet his liabilities at present, +and that he could not raise it without ruinous sacrifices, +that might still end in ruin after all. If he made +the assignment, Bellingham argued, he could gain time +and make terms; the state of things generally would +probably improve, since it could not be worse, and the market, +which he had glutted with his paint, might recover and he +could start again. Lapham had not agreed with him. +When his reverses first began it had seemed easy for him +to give up everything, to let the people he owed take all, +so only they would let him go out with clean hands; and he +had dramatised this feeling in his talk with his wife, +when they spoke together of the mills on the G. L. & +P. But ever since then it had been growing harder, +and he could not consent even to seem to do it now in +the proposed assignment. He had not found other men +so very liberal or faithful with him; a good many of them +appeared to have combined to hunt him down; a sense of +enmity towards all his creditors asserted itself in him; +he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too. +Above all, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment. +It was open confession that he had been a fool in some way; +he could not bear to have his family--his brother +the judge, especially, to whom he had always appeared the +soul of business wisdom--think him imprudent or stupid. +He would make any sacrifice before it came to that. +He determined in parting with Bellingham to make +the sacrifice which he had oftenest in his mind, +because it was the hardest, and to sell his new house. +That would cause the least comment. Most people +would simply think that he had got a splendid offer, +and with his usual luck had made a very good thing of it; +others who knew a little more about him would say that he +was hauling in his horns, but they could not blame him; +a great many other men were doing the same in those hard +times--the shrewdest and safest men: it might even have +a good effect. He went straight from Bellingham's +office to the real-estate broker in whose hands he +meant to put his house, for he was not the sort of man +to shilly-shally when he had once made up his mind. +But he found it hard to get his voice up out of his throat, +when he said he guessed he would get the broker to sell +that new house of his on the water side of Beacon. +The broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed Colonel +Lapham knew it was a pretty dull time in real estate? +and Lapham said yes, he knew that, but he should not sell +at a sacrifice, and he did not care to have the broker +name him or describe the house definitely unless parties +meant business. Again the broker said yes; and he added, +as a joke Lapham would appreciate, that he had half a dozen +houses on the water side of Beacon, on the same terms; +that nobody wanted to be named or to have his property +described. + +It did, in fact, comfort Lapham a little to find himself +in the same boat with so many others; he smiled grimly, +and said in his turn, yes, he guessed that was about the size +of it with a good many people. But he had not the heart +to tell his wife what he had done, and he sat taciturn +that whole evening, without even going over his accounts, +and went early to bed, where he lay tossing half the +night before he fell asleep. He slept at last only upon +the promise he made himself that he would withdraw +the house from the broker's hands; but he went heavily +to his own business in the morning without doing so. +There was no such rush, anyhow, he reflected bitterly; +there would be time to do that a month later, probably. + +It struck him with a sort of dismay when a boy came +with a note from a broker, saying that a party who had +been over the house in the fall had come to him to know +whether it could be bought, and was willing to pay +the cost of the house up to the time he had seen it. +Lapham took refuge in trying to think who the party could be; +he concluded that it must have been somebody who had gone +over it with the architect, and he did not like that; +but he was aware that this was not an answer to the broker, +and he wrote that he would give him an answer in the morning. + +Now that it had come to the point, it did not seem to him +that he could part with the house. So much of his hope +for himself and his children had gone into it that the +thought of selling it made him tremulous and sick. +He could not keep about his work steadily, and with his +nerves shaken by want of sleep, and the shock of this +sudden and unexpected question, he left his office early, +and went over to look at the house and try to bring +himself to some conclusion here. The long procession +of lamps on the beautiful street was flaring in the clear +red of the sunset towards which it marched, and Lapham, +with a lump in his throat, stopped in front of his house +and looked at their multitude. They were not merely a part +of the landscape; they were a part of his pride and glory, +his success, his triumphant life's work which was fading +into failure in his helpless hands. He ground his teeth +to keep down that lump, but the moisture in his eyes +blurred the lamps, and the keen pale crimson against +which it made them flicker. He turned and looked up, +as he had so often done, at the window-spaces, neatly +glazed for the winter with white linen, and recalled +the night when he had stopped with Irene before the house, +and she had said that she should never live there, +and he had tried to coax her into courage about it. +There was no such facade as that on the whole street, +to his thinking. Through his long talks with the architect, +he had come to feel almost as intimately and fondly +as the architect himself the satisfying simplicity +of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail. +It appealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals +to the unlearned ear, and he recognised the difference +between this fine work and the obstreperous pretentiousness +of the many overloaded house-fronts which Seymour +had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere +on the Back Bay. Now, in the depths of his gloom, +he tried to think what Italian city it was where Seymour +said he had first got the notion of treating brick-work +in that way. + +He unlocked the temporary door with the key he always carried, +so that he could let himself in and out whenever +he liked, and entered the house, dim and very cold with +the accumulated frigidity of the whole winter in it, +and looking as if the arrest of work upon it had taken +place a thousand years before. It smelt of the unpainted +woods and the clean, hard surfaces of the plaster, +where the experiments in decoration had left it untouched; +and mingled with these odours was that of some rank +pigments and metallic compositions which Seymour had +used in trying to realise a certain daring novelty +of finish, which had not proved successful. Above all, +Lapham detected the peculiar odour of his own paint, +with which the architect had been greatly interested one day, +when Lapham showed it to him at the office. He had asked +Lapham to let him try the Persis Brand in realising a +little idea he had for the finish of Mrs. Lapham's room. +If it succeeded they could tell her what it was, for a surprise. + +Lapham glanced at the bay-window in the reception-room, +where he sat with his girls on the trestles when Corey first +came by; and then he explored the whole house to the attic, +in the light faintly admitted through the linen sashes. +The floors were strewn with shavings and chips which the +carpenters had left, and in the music-room these had been +blown into long irregular windrows by the draughts through +a wide rent in the linen sash. Lapham tried to pin it up, +but failed, and stood looking out of it over the water. +The ice had left the river, and the low tide lay smooth +and red in the light of the sunset. The Cambridge flats +showed the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bare +after a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked trees, +the spires and roofs had a black outline, as if they were +objects in a landscape of the French school. + +The whim seized Lapham to test the chimney in the music-room; +it had been tried in the dining-room below, and in his girls' +fireplaces above, but here the hearth was still clean. +He gathered some shavings and blocks together, +and kindled them, and as the flame mounted gaily from them, +he pulled up a nail-keg which he found there and sat +down to watch it. Nothing could have been better; +the chimney was a perfect success; and as Lapham glanced out +of the torn linen sash he said to himself that that party, +whoever he was, who had offered to buy his house might +go to the devil; he would never sell it as long as he +had a dollar. He said that he should pull through yet; +and it suddenly came into his mind that, if he could +raise the money to buy out those West Virginia fellows, +he should be all right, and would have the whole game +in his own hand. He slapped himself on the thigh, +and wondered that he had never thought of that before; +and then, lighting a cigar with a splinter from the fire, +he sat down again to work the scheme out in his own mind. +He did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the stairs, +and coming towards the room where he sat; and the policeman +to whom the feet belonged had to call out to him, smoking at +his chimney-corner, with his back turned to the door, +"Hello! what are you doing here?" + +"What's that to you?" retorted Lapham, wheeling half +round on his nail-keg. + +"I'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon him, +and then stopping short as he recognised him. "Why, Colonel +Lapham! I thought it was some tramp got in here!" + +"Have a cigar?" said Lapham hospitably. "Sorry there +ain't another nail-keg." + +The officer took the cigar. "I'll smoke it outside. +I've just come on, and I can't stop. Tryin' your chimney?" + +"Yes, I thought I'd see how it would draw, in here. +It seems to go first-rate." + +The policeman looked about him with an eye of inspection. +"You want to get that linen window, there, mended up." + +"Yes, I'll speak to the builder about that. It can go +for one night." + +The policeman went to the window and failed to pin the linen +together where Lapham had failed before. "I can't fix it." +He looked round once more, and saying, "Well, good night," +went out and down the stairs. + +Lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked his cigar; +then he rose and stamped upon the embers that still burned +with his heavy boots, and went home. He was very cheerful +at supper. He told his wife that he guessed he had a sure +thing of it now, and in another twenty-four hours he +should tell her just how. He made Penelope go to the +theatre with him, and when they came out, after the play, +the night was so fine that he said they must walk round +by the new house and take a look at it in the starlight. +He said he had been there before he came home, and tried +Seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like +a charm. + +As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware +of unwonted stir and tumult, and presently the still +air transmitted a turmoil of sound, through which a +powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt. +The sky had reddened above them, and turning the corner +at the Public Garden, they saw a black mass of people +obstructing the perspective of the brightly-lighted street, +and out of this mass a half-dozen engines, whose strong +heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes +of fire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels. +Ladders were planted against the facade of a building, +from the roof of which a mass of flame burnt smoothly upward, +except where here and there it seemed to pull contemptuously +away from the heavy streams of water which the firemen, +clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in +upon it. + +Lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing +and gossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter, +before the burning house, to make sure that it was his. + +"I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said. + +Among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed +to have run out from dinner in some neighbouring house; +the ladies were fantastically wrapped up, as if they +had flung on the first things they could seize. + +"Isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl. +"I wouldn't have missed it on any account. Thank you so much, +Mr. Symington, for bringing us out!" + +"Ah, I thought you'd like it," said this Mr. Symington, +who must have been the host; "and you can enjoy it without +the least compunction, Miss Delano, for I happen to know +that the house belongs to a man who could afford to burn +one up for you once a year." + +"Oh, do you think he would, if I came again?" + +"I haven't the least doubt of it. We don't do things +by halves in Boston." + +"He ought to have had a coat of his noncombustible paint +on it," said another gentleman of the party. + +Penelope pulled her father away toward the first carriage +she could reach of a number that had driven up. +"Here, father! get into this." + +"No, no; I couldn't ride," he answered heavily, and he walked +home in silence. He greeted his wife with, "Well, Persis, +our house is gone! And I guess I set it on fire myself;" +and while he rummaged among the papers in his desk, +still with his coat and hat on, his wife got the facts +as she could from Penelope. She did not reproach him. +Here was a case in which his self-reproach must be sufficiently +sharp without any edge from her. Besides, her mind was +full of a terrible thought. + +"O Silas," she faltered, "they'll think you set it +on fire to get the insurance!" + +Lapham was staring at a paper which he held in his hand. +"I had a builder's risk on it, but it expired last week. +It's a dead loss." + +"Oh, thank the merciful Lord!" cried his wife. + +"Merciful!" said Lapham. "Well, it's a queer way +of showing it." + +He went to bed, and fell into the deep sleep which +sometimes follows a great moral shock. It was perhaps +rather a torpor than a sleep. + + + +XXV. + + +LAPHAM awoke confused, and in a kind of remoteness from the +loss of the night before, through which it loomed mistily. +But before he lifted his head from the pillow, it gathered +substance and weight against which it needed all his will +to bear up and live. In that moment he wished that he +had not wakened, that he might never have wakened; +but he rose, and faced the day and its cares. + +The morning papers brought the report of the fire, +and the conjectured loss. The reporters somehow had found +out the fact that the loss fell entirely upon Lapham; +they lighted up the hackneyed character of their statements +with the picturesque interest OF the coincidence that the +policy had expired only the week before; heaven knows +how they knew it. They said that nothing remained +of the building but the walls; and Lapham, on his way +to business, walked up past the smoke-stained shell. +The windows looked like the eye-sockets of a skull +down upon the blackened and trampled snow of the street; +the pavement was a sheet of ice, and the water from the +engines had frozen, like streams of tears, down the face +of the house, and hung in icy tags from the window-sills +and copings. + +He gathered himself up as well as he could, and went on +to his office. The chance of retrieval that had flashed +upon him, as he sat smoking by that ruined hearth the +evening before, stood him in such stead now as a sole +hope may; and he said to himself that, having resolved +not to sell his house, he was no more crippled by its +loss than he would have been by letting his money lie +idle in it; what he might have raised by mortgage on it +could be made up in some other way; and if they would +sell he could still buy out the whole business of that +West Virginia company, mines, plant, stock on hand, +good-will, and everything, and unite it with his own. +He went early in the afternoon to see Bellingham, +whose expressions of condolence for his loss he cut short +with as much politeness as he knew how to throw into +his impatience. Bellingham seemed at first a little dazzled +with the splendid courage of his scheme; it was certainly +fine in its way; but then he began to have his misgivings. + +"I happen to know that they haven't got much money +behind them," urged Lapham. "They'll jump at an offer." + +Bellingham shook his head. "If they can show profit +on the old manufacture, and prove they can make their +paint still cheaper and better hereafter, they can have +all the money they want. And it will be very difficult +for you to raise it if you're threatened by them. +With that competition, you know what your plant at Lapham +would be worth, and what the shrinkage on your manufactured +stock would be. Better sell out to them," he concluded, +"if they will buy." + +"There ain't money enough in this country to buy out my paint," +said Lapham, buttoning up his coat in a quiver of resentment. +"Good afternoon, sir." Men are but grown-up boys after all. +Bellingham watched this perversely proud and obstinate +child fling petulantly out of his door, and felt a sympathy +for him which was as truly kind as it was helpless. + +But Lapham was beginning to see through Bellingham, +as he believed. Bellingham was, in his way, part of that +conspiracy by which Lapham's creditors were trying to drive +him to the wall. More than ever now he was glad that he had +nothing to do with that cold-hearted, self-conceited race, +and that the favours so far were all from his side. +He was more than ever determined to show them, every one +of them, high and low, that he and his children could get +along without them, and prosper and triumph without them. +He said to himself that if Penelope were engaged to Corey +that very minute, he would make her break with him. + +He knew what he should do now, and he was going to do it +without loss of time. He was going on to New York to see +those West Virginia people; they had their principal +office there, and he intended to get at their ideas, +and then he intended to make them an offer. He managed +this business better than could possibly have been +expected of a man in his impassioned mood. But when it +came really to business, his practical instincts, +alert and wary, came to his aid against the passions that +lay in wait to betray after they ceased to dominate him. +He found the West Virginians full of zeal and hope, +but in ten minutes he knew that they had not yet tested +their strength in the money market, and had not ascertained +how much or how little capital they could command. +Lapham himself, if he had had so much, would not have +hesitated to put a million dollars into their business. +He saw, as they did not see, that they had the game in +their own hands, and that if they could raise the money +to extend their business, they could ruin him. It was +only a question of time, and he was on the ground first. +He frankly proposed a union of their interests. +He admitted that they had a good thing, and that he +should have to fight them hard; but he meant to fight +them to the death unless they could come to some sort +of terms. Now, the question was whether they had better +go on and make a heavy loss for both sides by competition, +or whether they had better form a partnership to run +both paints and command the whole market. Lapham made +them three propositions, each of which was fair and open: +to sell out to them altogether; to buy them out altogether; +to join facilities and forces with them, and go on in +an invulnerable alliance. Let them name a figure at +which they would buy, a figure at which they would sell, +a figure at which they would combine,--or, in other words, +the amount of capital they needed. + +They talked all day, going out to lunch together at +the Astor House, and sitting with their knees against +the counter on a row of stools before it for fifteen +minutes of reflection and deglutition, with their +hats on, and then returning to the basement from which +they emerged. The West Virginia company's name was +lettered in gilt on the wide low window, and its paint, +in the form of ore, burnt, and mixed, formed a display +on the window shelf Lapham examined it and praised it; +from time to time they all recurred to it together; +they sent out for some of Lapham's paint and compared it, +the West Virginians admitting its former superiority. +They were young fellows, and country persons, like Lapham, +by origin, and they looked out with the same amused, +undaunted provincial eyes at the myriad metropolitan legs +passing on the pavement above the level of their window. +He got on well with them. At last, they said what they would do. +They said it was nonsense to talk of buying Lapham out, +for they had not the money; and as for selling out, +they would not do it, for they knew they had a big thing. +But they would as soon use his capital to develop it +as anybody else's, and if he could put in a certain +sum for this purpose, they would go in with him. +He should run the works at Lapham and manage the business +in Boston, and they would run the works at Kanawha Falls +and manage the business in New York. The two brothers +with whom Lapham talked named their figure, subject to +the approval of another brother at Kanawha Falls, to whom +they would write, and who would telegraph his answer, +so that Lapham could have it inside of three days. +But they felt perfectly sure that he would approve; +and Lapham started back on the eleven o'clock train with +an elation that gradually left him as he drew near Boston, +where the difficulties of raising this sum were to be +over come. It seemed to him, then, that those fellows +had put it up on him pretty steep, but he owned to himself +that they had a sure thing, and that they were right +in believing they could raise the same sum elsewhere; +it would take all OF it, he admitted, to make their +paint pay on the scale they had the right to expect. +At their age, he would not have done differently; +but when he emerged, old, sore, and sleep-broken, +from the sleeping-car in the Albany depot at Boston, +he wished with a pathetic self-pity that they knew how a man +felt at his age. A year ago, six months ago, he would +have laughed at the notion that it would be hard to raise +the money. But he thought ruefully of that immense stock +of paint on hand, which was now a drug in the market, +of his losses by Rogers and by the failures of other men, +of the fire that had licked up so many thousands +in a few hours; he thought with bitterness of the tens +of thousands that he had gambled away in stocks, +and of the commissions that the brokers had pocketed +whether he won or lost; and he could not think of any +securities on which he could borrow, except his house +in Nankeen Square, or the mine and works at Lapham. +He set his teeth in helpless rage when he thought of that +property out on the G. L. & P., that ought to be worth +so much, and was worth so little if the Road chose to +say so. + +He did not go home, but spent most of the day shining round, +as he would have expressed it, and trying to see if he +could raise the money. But he found that people of whom +he hoped to get it were in the conspiracy which had been +formed to drive him to the wall. Somehow, there seemed +a sense of his embarrassments abroad. Nobody wanted +to lend money on the plant at Lapham without taking time +to look into the state of the business; but Lapham had no +time to give, and he knew that the state of the business +would not bear looking into. He could raise fifteen +thousand on his Nankeen Square house, and another fifteen +on his Beacon Street lot, and this was all that a man +who was worth a million by rights could do! He said +a million, and he said it in defiance of Bellingham, +who had subjected his figures to an analysis which +wounded Lapham more than he chose to show at the time, +for it proved that he was not so rich and not so wise +as he had seemed. His hurt vanity forbade him to go +to Bellingham now for help or advice; and if he could +have brought himself to ask his brothers for money, +it would have been useless; they were simply well-to-do +Western people, but not capitalists on the scale he required. + +Lapham stood in the isolation to which adversity so +often seems to bring men. When its test was applied, +practically or theoretically, to all those who had seemed +his friends, there was none who bore it; and he thought +with bitter self-contempt of the people whom he had +befriended in their time of need. He said to himself +that he had been a fool for that; and he scorned himself +for certain acts of scrupulosity by which he had lost +money in the past. Seeing the moral forces all arrayed +against him, Lapham said that he would like to have +the chance offered him to get even with them again; +he thought he should know how to look out for himself. +As he understood it, he had several days to turn about in, +and he did not let one day's failure dishearten him. +The morning after his return he had, in fact, a gleam of luck +that gave him the greatest encouragement for the moment. +A man came in to inquire about one of Rogers's wild-cat +patents, as Lapham called them, and ended by buying it. +He got it, of course, for less than Lapham took it for, +but Lapham was glad to be rid of it for something, when he +had thought it worth nothing; and when the transaction +was closed, he asked the purchaser rather eagerly if he +knew where Rogers was; it was Lapham's secret belief +that Rogers had found there was money in the thing, +and had sent the man to buy it. But it appeared that +this was a mistake; the man had not come from Rogers, +but had heard of the patent in another way; and Lapham was +astonished in the afternoon, when his boy came to tell him +that Rogers was in the outer office, and wished to speak +with him. + +"All right," said Lapham, and he could not command at once +the severity for the reception of Rogers which he would +have liked to use. He found himself, in fact, so much +relaxed towards him by the morning's touch of prosperity +that he asked him to sit down, gruffly, of course, +but distinctly; and when Rogers said in his lifeless way, +and with the effect of keeping his appointment of a +month before, "Those English parties are in town, +and would like to talk with you in reference to the mills," +Lapham did not turn him out-of-doors. + +He sat looking at him, and trying to make out what Rogers +was after; for he did not believe that the English parties, +if they existed, had any notion of buying his mills. + +"What if they are not for sale?" he asked. "You know +that I've been expecting an offer from the G. L. & P." + +"I've kept watch of that. They haven't made you any offer," +said Rogers quietly. + +"And did you think," demanded Lapham, firing up, "that I +would turn them in on somebody else as you turned them +in on me, when the chances are that they won't be worth +ten cents on the dollar six months from now?" + +"I didn't know what you would do," said Rogers non-committally. +"I've come here to tell you that these parties stand ready +to take the mills off your hands at a fair valuation--at +the value I put upon them when I turned them in." + +"I don't believe you!" cried Lapham brutally, but a wild +predatory hope made his heart leap so that it seemed +to turn over in his breast. "I don't believe there are +any such parties to begin with; and in the next place, +I don't believe they would buy at any such figure; +unless--unless you've lied to them, as you've lied to me. +Did you tell them about the G. L. & P.?" + +Rogers looked compassionately at him, but he answered, +with unvaried dryness, "I did not think that necessary." + +Lapham had expected this answer, and he had expected +or intended to break out in furious denunciation of +Rogers when he got it; but he only found himself saying, +in a sort of baffled gasp, "I wonder what your game is!" + +Rogers did not reply categorically, but he answered, +with his impartial calm, and as if Lapham had said +nothing to indicate that he differed at all with +him as to disposing of the property in the way he +had suggested: "If we should succeed in selling, +I should be able to repay you your loans, and should +have a little capital for a scheme that I think of going into." + +"And do you think that I am going to steal these men's +money to help you plunder somebody in a new scheme?" +answered Lapham. The sneer was on behalf of virtue, +but it was still a sneer. + +"I suppose the money would be useful to you too, just now." + +"Why?" + +"Because I know that you have been trying to borrow." + +At this proof of wicked omniscience in Rogers, the question +whether he had better not regard the affair as a fatality, +and yield to his destiny, flashed upon Lapham; but he answered, +"I shall want money a great deal worse than I've ever wanted +it yet, before I go into such rascally business with you. +Don't you know that we might as well knock these parties +down on the street, and take the money out of their pockets?" + +"They have come on," answered Rogers, "from Portland +to see you. I expected them some weeks ago, but they +disappointed me. They arrived on the Circassian last night; +they expected to have got in five days ago, but the passage +was very stormy." + +"Where are they?" asked Lapham, with helpless irrelevance, +and feeling himself somehow drifted from his moorings +by Rogers's shipping intelligence. + +"They are at Young's. I told them we would call upon them +after dinner this evening; they dine late." + +"Oh, you did, did you?" asked Lapham, trying to drop another +anchor for a fresh clutch on his underlying principles. +"Well, now, you go and tell them that I said I wouldn't come." + +"Their stay is limited," remarked Rogers. "I mentioned +this evening because they were not certain they could +remain over another night. But if to-morrow would suit +you better----" + +"Tell 'em I shan't come at all," roared Lapham, as much +in terror as defiance, for he felt his anchor dragging. +"Tell 'em I shan't come at all! Do you understand that?" + +"I don't see why you should stickle as to the matter +of going to them," said Rogers; "but if you think it +will be better to have them approach you, I suppose +I can bring them to you." + +"No, you can't! I shan't let you! I shan't see them! I +shan't have anything to do with them. NOW do you understand?" + +"I inferred from our last interview," persisted Rogers, +unmoved by all this violent demonstration of Lapham's, "that +you wished to meet these parties. You told me that you +would give me time to produce them; and I have promised +them that you would meet them; I have committed myself." + +It was true that Lapham had defied Rogers to bring on his men, +and had implied his willingness to negotiate with them. +That was before he had talked the matter over with his wife, +and perceived his moral responsibility in it; even she +had not seen this at once. He could not enter into this +explanation with Rogers; he could only say, "I said I'd +give you twenty-four hours to prove yourself a liar, +and you did it. I didn't say twenty-four days." + +"I don't see the difference," returned Rogers. "The parties +are here now, and that proves that I was acting in good +faith at the time. There has been no change in the posture +of affairs. You don't know now any more than you knew +then that the G. L. & P. is going to want the property. +If there's any difference, it's in favour of the Road's +having changed its mind." + +There was some sense in this, and Lapham felt it--felt +it only too eagerly, as he recognised the next instant. + +Rogers went on quietly: "You're not obliged to sell +to these parties when you meet them; but you've allowed +me to commit myself to them by the promise that you +would talk with them." + +"'Twan't a promise," said Lapham. + +"It was the same thing; they have come out from England +on my guaranty that there was such and such an opening +for their capital; and now what am I to say to them? +It places me in a ridiculous position." Rogers urged +his grievance calmly, almost impersonally, making his +appeal to Lapham's sense of justice. "I CAN'T go back +to those parties and tell them you won't see them. +It's no answer to make. They've got a right to know why +you won't see them." + +"Very well, then!" cried Lapham; "I'll come and TELL +them why. Who shall I ask for? When shall I be there?" + +"At eight o'clock, please," said Rogers, rising, without +apparent alarm at his threat, if it was a threat. +"And ask for me; I've taken a room at the hotel for the present." + +"I won't keep you five minutes when I get there," +said Lapham; but he did not come away till ten o'clock. + +It appeared to him as if the very devil was in it. +The Englishmen treated his downright refusal to sell as +a piece of bluff, and talked on as though it were merely +the opening of the negotiation. When he became plain with +them in his anger, and told them why he would not sell, +they seemed to have been prepared for this as a stroke +of business, and were ready to meet it. + +"Has this fellow," he demanded, twisting his head +in the direction of Rogers, but disdaining to notice +him otherwise, "been telling you that it's part of my +game to say this? Well, sir, I can tell you, on my side, +that there isn't a slipperier rascal unhung in America +than Milton K. Rogers!" + +The Englishmen treated this as a piece of genuine American +humour, and returned to the charge with unabated courage. +They owned now, that a person interested with them had +been out to look at the property, and that they were +satisfied with the appearance of things. They developed +further the fact that they were not acting solely, +or even principally, in their own behalf, but were the agents +of people in England who had projected the colonisation +of a sort of community on the spot, somewhat after the plan +of other English dreamers, and that they were satisfied, +from a careful inspection, that the resources and facilities +were those best calculated to develop the energy and +enterprise of the proposed community. They were prepared +to meet Mr. Lapham--Colonel, they begged his pardon, +at the instance of Rogers--at any reasonable figure, +and were quite willing to assume the risks he had +pointed out. Something in the eyes of these men, +something that lurked at an infinite depth below their speech, +and was not really in their eyes when Lapham looked again, +had flashed through him a sense of treachery in them. +He had thought them the dupes of Rogers; but in that brief +instant he had seen them--or thought he had seen them--his +accomplices, ready to betray the interests of which they +went on to speak with a certain comfortable jocosity, +and a certain incredulous slight of his show of integrity. +It was a deeper game than Lapham was used to, and he sat +looking with a sort of admiration from one Englishman to +the other, and then to Rogers, who maintained an exterior +of modest neutrality, and whose air said, "I have brought +you gentlemen together as the friend of all parties, and I +now leave you to settle it among yourselves. I ask nothing, +and expect nothing, except the small sum which shall +accrue to me after the discharge of my obligations to Colonel Lapham." + +While Rogers's presence expressed this, one of the Englishmen +was saying, "And if you have any scruple in allowin' +us to assume this risk, Colonel Lapham, perhaps you can +console yourself with the fact that the loss, if there +is to be any, will fall upon people who are able to bear +it--upon an association of rich and charitable people. +But we're quite satisfied there will be no loss," +he added savingly. "All you have to do is to name your price, +and we will do our best to meet it." + +There was nothing in the Englishman's sophistry very +shocking to Lapham. It addressed itself in him to that +easy-going, not evilly intentioned, potential immorality +which regards common property as common prey, and gives +us the most corrupt municipal governments under the +sun--which makes the poorest voter, when he has tricked +into place, as unscrupulous in regard to others' money as +an hereditary prince. Lapham met the Englishman's eye, +and with difficulty kept himself from winking. +Then he looked away, and tried to find out where he stood, +or what he wanted to do. He could hardly tell. +He had expected to come into that room and unmask Rogers, +and have it over. But he had unmasked Rogers without +any effect whatever, and the play had only begun. +He had a whimsical and sarcastic sense of its being +very different from the plays at the theatre. He could +not get up and go away in silent contempt; he could +not tell the Englishmen that he believed them a pair +of scoundrels and should have nothing to do with them; +he could no longer treat them as innocent dupes. +He remained baffled and perplexed, and the one who had +not spoken hitherto remarked-- + +"Of course we shan't 'aggle about a few pound, more or less. +If Colonel Lapham's figure should be a little larger +than ours, I've no doubt 'e'll not be too 'ard upon us +in the end." + +Lapham appreciated all the intent of this subtle suggestion, +and understood as plainly as if it had been said in so +many words, that if they paid him a larger price, it was +to be expected that a certain portion of the purchase-money +was to return to their own hands. Still he could not move; +and it seemed to him that he could not speak. + +"Ring that bell, Mr. Rogers," said the Englishman +who had last spoken, glancing at the annunciator button +in the wall near Rogers's head, "and 'ave up something +'of, can't you? I should like TO wet me w'istle, as you +say 'ere, and Colonel Lapham seems to find it rather dry work." + +Lapham jumped to his feet, and buttoned his overcoat +about him. He remembered with terror the dinner at Corey's +where he had disgraced and betrayed himself, and if he +went into this thing at all, he was going into it sober. +"I can't stop," he said, "I must be going." + +"But you haven't given us an answer yet, Mr. Lapham," +said the first Englishman with a successful show of +dignified surprise. + +"The only answer I can give you now is, NO," said Lapham. +"If you want another, you must let me have time to think +it over." + +"But 'ow much time?" said the other Englishman. +"We're pressed for time ourselves, and we hoped for an +answer--'oped for a hanswer," he corrected himself, +"at once. That was our understandin' with Mr. Rogers." + +"I can't let you know till morning, anyway," said Lapham, +and he went out, as his custom often was, without any +parting salutation. He thought Rogers might try to +detain him; but Rogers had remained seated when the others +got to their feet, and paid no attention to his departure. + +He walked out into the night air, every pulse throbbing +with the strong temptation. He knew very well those +men would wait, and gladly wait, till the morning, +and that the whole affair was in his hands. It made him +groan in spirit to think that it was. If he had hoped +that some chance might take the decision from him, +there was no such chance, in the present or future, +that he could see. It was for him alone to commit this +rascality--if it was a rascality--or not. + +He walked all the way home, letting one car after another +pass him on the street, now so empty of other passing, +and it was almost eleven o'clock when he reached home. +A carriage stood before his house, and when he let himself +in with his key, he heard talking in the family-room. It +came into his head that Irene had got back unexpectedly, +and that the sight of her was somehow going to make +it harder for him; then he thought it might be Corey, +come upon some desperate pretext to see Penelope; +but when he opened the door he saw, with a certain +absence of surprise, that it was Rogers. He was standing +with his back to the fireplace, talking to Mrs. Lapham, +and he had been shedding tears; dry tears they seemed, +and they had left a sort of sandy, glistening trace +on his cheeks. Apparently he was not ashamed of them, +for the expression with which he met Lapham was that +of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, +which was identical with that of humanity, if not that +of justice. + +"I some expected," began Rogers, "to find you here----" + +"No, you didn't," interrupted Lapham; "you wanted to come +here and make a poor mouth to Mrs. Lapham before I got home." + +"I knew that Mrs. Lapham would know what was going on," +said Rogers more candidly, but not more virtuously, +for that he could not, "and I wished her to understand +a point that I hadn't put to you at the hotel, +and that I want you should consider. And I want you +should consider me a little in this business too; +you're not the only one that's concerned, I tell you, +and I've been telling Mrs. Lapham that it's my one chance; +that if you don't meet me on it, my wife and children will +be reduced to beggary." + +"So will mine," said Lapham, "or the next thing to it." + +"Well, then, I want you to give me this chance to get +on my feet again. You've no right to deprive me of it; +it's unchristian. In our dealings with each other we should +be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying to Mrs. Lapham +before you came in. I told her that if I knew myself, I should +in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, +who had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obligations +to me, and had patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. +I should consider that man's family, I told Mrs. Lapham." + +"Did you tell her that if I went in with you and those fellows, +I should be robbing the people who trusted them?" + +"I don't see what you've got to do with the people +that sent them here. They are rich people, and could +bear it if it came to the worst. But there's +no likelihood, now, that it will come to the worst; +you can see yourself that the Road has changed its mind +about buying. And here am I without a cent in the world; +and my wife is an invalid. She needs comforts, she needs +little luxuries, and she hasn't even the necessaries; +and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! You don't know +in the first place that the Road will ever want to buy; +and if it does, the probability is that with a colony +like that planted on its line, it would make very different +terms from what it would with you or me. These agents +are not afraid, and their principals are rich people; +and if there was any loss, it would be divided up amongst +them so that they wouldn't any of them feel it." + +Lapham stole a troubled glance at his wife, and saw +that there was no help in her. Whether she was daunted +and confused in her own conscience by the outcome, +so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to Rogers +which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her +perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals +which Rogers had now used, it would be difficult to say. +Probably there was a mixture of both causes in the effect +which her husband felt in her, and from which he turned, +girding himself anew, to Rogers. + +"I have no wish to recur to the past," continued Rogers, +with growing superiority. "You have shown a proper spirit +in regard to that, and you have done what you could to wipe +it out." + +"I should think I had," said Lapham. "I've used up +about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars trying." + +"Some of my enterprises," Rogers admitted, "have been +unfortunate, seemingly; but I have hopes that they will +yet turn out well--in time. I can't understand why you +should be so mindful of others now, when you showed +so little regard for me then. I had come to your aid at +a time when you needed help, and when you got on your feet +you kicked me out of the business. I don't complain, +but that is the fact; and I had to begin again, after I +had supposed myself settled in life, and establish myself elsewhere." + +Lapham glanced again at his wife; her head had fallen; +he could see that she was so rooted in her old remorse +for that questionable act of his, amply and more than +fully atoned for since, that she was helpless, now in the +crucial moment, when he had the utmost need of her insight. +He had counted upon her; he perceived now that when he had +thought it was for him alone to decide, he had counted upon +her just spirit to stay his own in its struggle to be just. +He had not forgotten how she held out against him only +a little while ago, when he asked her whether he might +not rightfully sell in some such contingency as this; +and it was not now that she said or even looked anything +in favour of Rogers, but that she was silent against him, +which dismayed Lapham. He swallowed the lump that rose +in his throat, the self-pity, the pity for her, the despair, +and said gently, "I guess you better go to bed, Persis. +It's pretty late." + +She turned towards the door, when Rogers said, with the +obvious intention of detaining her through her curiosity-- + +"But I let that pass. And I don't ask now that you +should sell to these men." + +Mrs. Lapham paused, irresolute. + +"What are you making this bother for, then?" demanded Lapham. +"What DO you want?" + +"What I've been telling your wife here. I want you should sell +to me. I don't say what I'm going to do with the property, +and you will not have an iota of responsibility, whatever happens." + +Lapham was staggered, and he saw his wife's face light +up with eager question. + +"I want that property," continued Rogers, "and I've got +the money to buy it. What will you take for it? If it's +the price you're standing out for----" + +"Persis," said Lapham, "go to bed," and he gave her a look +that meant obedience for her. She went out of the door, +and left him with his tempter. + +"If you think I'm going to help you whip the devil round +the stump, you're mistaken in your man, Milton Rogers," +said Lapham, lighting a cigar. "As soon as I sold to you, +you would sell to that other pair of rascals. I smelt 'em +out in half a minute." + +"They are Christian gentlemen," said Rogers. "But I +don't purpose defending them; and I don't purpose telling +you what I shall or shall not do with the property +when it is in my hands again. The question is, +Will you sell, and, if so, what is your figure? You +have got nothing whatever to do with it after you've sold." + +It was perfectly true. Any lawyer would have told him the same. +He could not help admiring Rogers for his ingenuity, +and every selfish interest of his nature joined with many +obvious duties to urge him to consent. He did not see +why he should refuse. There was no longer a reason. +He was standing out alone for nothing, any one else +would say. He smoked on as if Rogers were not there, +and Rogers remained before the fire as patient as the +clock ticking behind his head on the mantel, and showing +the gleam of its pendulum beyond his face on either side. +But at last he said, "Well?" + +"Well," answered Lapham, "you can't expect me to give +you an answer to-night, any more than before. You know +that what you've said now hasn't changed the thing a bit. +I wish it had. The Lord knows, I want to be rid of the +property fast enough." "Then why don't you sell to me? +Can't you see that you will not be responsible for what +happens after you have sold?" + +"No, I can't see that; but if I can by morning, I'll sell." + +"Why do you expect to know any better by morning? +You're wasting time for nothing!" cried Rogers, +in his disappointment. "Why are you so particular? When +you drove me out of the business you were not so very particular." + +Lapham winced. It was certainly ridiculous for man +who had once so selfishly consulted his own interests +to be stickling now about the rights of others. + +"I guess nothing's going to happen overnight," he answered +sullenly. "Anyway, I shan't say what I shall do till morning." + +"What time can I see you in the morning?" + +"Half-past nine." + +Rogers buttoned his coat, and went out of the room +without another word. Lapham followed him to close +the street-door after him. + +His wife called down to him from above as he approached +the room again, "Well?" + +"I've told him I'd let him know in the morning." + +"Want I should come down and talk with you?" + +"No," answered Lapham, in the proud bitterness which his +isolation brought, "you couldn't do any good." He went +in and shut the door, and by and by his wife heard him +begin walking up and down; and then the rest of the night +she lay awake and listened to him walking up and down. +But when the first light whitened the window, the words +of the Scripture came into her mind: "And there wrestled +a man with him until the breaking of the day.... And +he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, +I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." + +She could not ask him anything when they met, but he +raised his dull eyes after the first silence, and said, +"I don't know what I'm going to say to Rogers." + +She could not speak; she did not know what to say, +and she saw her husband when she followed him with her eyes +from the window, drag heavily down toward the corner, +where he was to take, the horse-car. + +He arrived rather later than usual at his office, and he +found his letters already on his table. There was one, +long and official-looking, with a printed letter-heading +on the outside, and Lapham had no need to open it in order +to know that it was the offer of the Great Lacustrine & +Polar Railroad for his mills. But he went mechanically +through the verification of his prophetic fear, which was +also his sole hope, and then sat looking blankly at it. + +Rogers came promptly at the appointed time, and Lapham handed +him the letter. He must have taken it all in at a glance, +and seen the impossibility of negotiating any further now, +even with victims so pliant and willing as those Englishmen. + +"You've ruined me!" Rogers broke out. "I haven't a cent +left in the world! God help my poor wife!" + +He went out, and Lapham remained staring at the door +which closed upon him. This was his reward for standing +firm for right and justice to his own destruction: +to feel like a thief and a murderer. + + + +XXVI. + + +LATER in the forenoon came the despatch from the West Virginians +in New York, saying their brother assented to their agreement; +and it now remained for Lapham to fulfil his part of it. +He was ludicrously far from able to do this; and unless +he could get some extension of time from them, he must +lose this chance, his only chance, to retrieve himself. +He spent the time in a desperate endeavour to raise the money, +but he had not raised the half of it when the banks closed. +With shame in his heart he went to Bellingham, from whom +he had parted so haughtily, and laid his plan before him. +He could not bring himself to ask Bellingham's help, +but he told him what he proposed to do. Bellingham pointed +out that the whole thing was an experiment, and that the +price asked was enormous, unless a great success were +morally certain. He advised delay, he advised prudence; +he insisted that Lapham ought at least to go out to +Kanawha Falls, and see the mines and works before he put +any such sum into the development of the enterprise. + +"That's all well enough," cried Lapham; "but if I don't clinch +this offer within twenty-four hours, they'll withdraw it, +and go into the market; and then where am I?" + +"Go on and see them again," said Bellingham. "They can't +be so peremptory as that with you. They must give you +time to look at what they want to sell. If it turns +out what you hope, then--I'll see what can be done. +But look into it thoroughly." + +"Well!" cried Lapham, helplessly submitting. He took +out his watch, and saw that he had forty minutes to catch +the four o'clock train. He hurried back to his office, +and put together some papers preparatory to going, +and despatched a note by his boy to Mrs. Lapham saying +that he was starting for New York, and did not know just +when he should get back. + +The early spring day was raw and cold. As he went out +through the office he saw the clerks at work with their +street-coats and hats on; Miss Dewey had her jacket dragged +up on her shoulders, and looked particularly comfortless +as she operated her machine with her red fingers. +"What's up?" asked Lapham, stopping a moment. + +"Seems to be something the matter with the steam," +she answered, with the air of unmerited wrong habitual +with so many pretty women who have to work for a living. + +"Well, take your writer into my room. There's a fire +in the stove there," said Lapham, passing out. + +Half an hour later his wife came into the outer office. +She had passed the day in a passion of self-reproach, +gradually mounting from the mental numbness in which he +had left her, and now she could wait no longer to tell him +that she saw how she had forsaken him in his hour of trial +and left him to bear it alone. She wondered at herself +in shame and dismay; she wondered that she could have +been so confused as to the real point by that old wretch +of a Rogers, that she could have let him hoodwink her so, +even for a moment. It astounded her that such a thing +should have happened, for if there was any virtue upon +which this good woman prided herself, in which she +thought herself superior to her husband, it was her +instant and steadfast perception of right and wrong, +and the ability to choose the right to her own hurt. +But she had now to confess, as each of us has had likewise +to confess in his own case, that the very virtue on which she +had prided herself was the thing that had played her false; +that she had kept her mind so long upon that old wrong +which she believed her husband had done this man that she +could not detach it, but clung to the thought of reparation +for it when she ought to have seen that he was proposing +a piece of roguery as the means. The suffering which Lapham +must inflict on him if he decided against him had been +more to her apprehension than the harm he might do if he +decided for him. But now she owned her limitations +to herself, and above everything in the world she wished +the man whom her conscience had roused and driven on +whither her intelligence had not followed, to do right, +to do what he felt to be right, and nothing else. +She admired and revered him for going beyond her, +and she wished to tell him that she did not know what he +had determined to do about Rogers, but that she knew it +was right, and would gladly abide the consequences with him, +whatever they were. + +She had not been near his place of business for nearly +a year, and her heart smote her tenderly as she looked +about her there, and thought of the early days when she +knew as much about the paint as he did; she wished that +those days were back again. She saw Corey at his desk, +and she could not bear to speak to him; she dropped +her veil that she need not recognise him, and pushed on +to Lapham's room, and opening the door without knocking, +shut it behind her. + +Then she became aware with intolerable disappointment +that her husband was not there. Instead, a very +pretty girl sat at his desk, operating a typewriter. +She seemed quite at home, and she paid Mrs. Lapham +the scant attention which such young women often bestow +upon people not personally interesting to them. +It vexed the wife that any one else should seem to be +helping her husband about business that she had once +been so intimate with; and she did not at all like the +girl's indifference to her presence. Her hat and sack +hung on a nail in one corner, and Lapham's office coat, +looking intensely like him to his wife's familiar eye, +hung on a nail in the other corner; and Mrs. Lapham liked +even less than the girl's good looks this domestication +of her garments in her husband's office. She began to ask +herself excitedly why he should be away from his office +when she happened to come; and she had not the strength +at the moment to reason herself out of her unreasonableness. + +"When will Colonel Lapham be in, do you suppose?" +she sharply asked of the girl. + +"I couldn't say exactly," replied the girl, without looking round. + +"Has he been out long?" + +"I don't know as I noticed," said the girl, looking up +at the clock, without looking at Mrs. Lapham. She went +on working her machine. + +"Well, I can't wait any longer," said the wife abruptly. +"When Colonel Lapham comes in, you please tell him +Mrs. Lapham wants to see him." + +The girl started to her feet and turned toward Mrs. Lapham +with a red and startled face, which she did not lift +to confront her. "Yes--yes--I will," she faltered. + +The wife went home with a sense of defeat mixed with an +irritation about this girl which she could not quell +or account for. She found her husband's message, +and it seemed intolerable that he should have gone +to New York without seeing her; she asked herself +in vain what the mysterious business could be that took +him away so suddenly. She said to herself that he was +neglecting her; he was leaving her out a little too much; +and in demanding of herself why he had never mentioned +that girl there in his office, she forgot how much she +had left herself out of his business life. That was +another curse of their prosperity. Well, she was glad +the prosperity was going; it had never been happiness. +After this she was going to know everything as she used. + +She tried to dismiss the whole matter till Lapham returned; +and if there had been anything for her to do in that +miserable house, as she called it in her thought, +she might have succeeded. But again the curse was on her; +there was nothing to do; and the looks of that girl +kept coming back to her vacancy, her disoccupation. +She tried to make herself something to do, but that beauty, +which she had not liked, followed her amid the work +of overhauling the summer clothing, which Irene had +seen to putting away in the fall. Who was the thing, +anyway? It was very strange, her being there; why did she +jump up in that frightened way when Mrs. Lapham had named +herself? + +After dark, that evening, when the question had worn away its +poignancy from mere iteration, a note for Mrs. Lapham was left +at the door by a messenger who said there was no answer. +"A note for me?" she said, staring at the unknown, and somehow +artificial-looking, handwriting of the superscription. +Then she opened it and read: "Ask your husband about +his lady copying-clerk. A Friend and Well-wisher," +who signed the note, gave no other name. + +Mrs. Lapham sat helpless with it in her hand. +Her brain reeled; she tried to fight the madness off; +but before Lapham came back the second morning, it had +become, with lessening intervals of sanity and release, +a demoniacal possession. She passed the night without sleep, +without rest, in the frenzy of the cruellest of the passions, +which covers with shame the unhappy soul it possesses, +and murderously lusts for the misery of its object. +If she had known where to find her husband in New York, +she would have followed him; she waited his return in +an ecstasy of impatience. In the morning he came back, +looking spent and haggard. She saw him drive up to the door, +and she ran to let him in herself. + +"Who is that girl you've got in your office, Silas Lapham?" +she demanded, when her husband entered. + +"Girl in my office?" + +"Yes! Who is she? What is she doing there?" + +"Why, what have you heard about her?" + +"Never you mind what I've heard. Who is she? IS IT MRS. +M. THAT YOU GAVE THAT MONEY TO? I want to know who she +is! I want to know what a respectable man, with grown-up +girls of his own, is doing with such a looking thing +as that in his office? I want to know how long she's been +there? I want to know what she's there at all for?" + +He had mechanically pushed her before him into the long, +darkened parlour, and he shut himself in there with her now, +to keep the household from hearing her lifted voice. +For a while he stood bewildered, and could not have answered +if he would, and then he would not. He merely asked, +"Have I ever accused you of anything wrong, Persis?" + +"You no need to!" she answered furiously, placing herself +against the closed door. + +"Did you ever know me to do anything out of the way?" + +"That isn't what I asked you." + +"Well, I guess you may find out about that girl yourself. +Get away from the door." + +"I won't get away from the door." + +She felt herself set lightly aside, and her husband opened +the door and went out. "I WILL find out about her," +she screamed after him. "I'll find out, and I'll +disgrace you. I'll teach you how to treat me----" + +The air blackened round her: she reeled to the sofa +and then she found herself waking from a faint. +She did not know how long she had lain there, she did +not care. In a moment her madness came whirling back +upon her. She rushed up to his room; it was empty; +the closet-doors stood ajar and the drawers were open; +he must have packed a bag hastily and fled. She went out +and wandered crazily up and down till she found a hack. +She gave the driver her husband's business address, +and told him to drive there as fast as he could; +and three times she lowered the window to put her head +out and ask him if he could not hurry. A thousand things +thronged into her mind to support her in her evil will. +She remembered how glad and proud that man had been +to marry her, and how everybody said she was marrying +beneath her when she took him. She remembered how good +she had always been to him, how perfectly devoted, +slaving early and late to advance him, and looking out for his +interests in all things, and sparing herself in nothing. +If it had not been for her, he might have been driving +stage yet; and since their troubles had begun, the troubles +which his own folly and imprudence had brought on them, +her conduct had been that of a true and faithful wife. +Was HE the sort of man to be allowed to play her false +with impunity? She set her teeth and drew her breath sharply +through them when she thought how willingly she had let him +befool her, and delude her about that memorandum of payments +to Mrs. M., because she loved him so much, and pitied him +for his cares and anxieties. She recalled his confusion, +his guilty looks. + +She plunged out of the carriage so hastily when she reached +the office that she did not think of paying the driver; +and he had to call after her when she had got half-way +up the stairs. Then she went straight to Lapham's room, +with outrage in her heart. There was again no one there +but that type-writer girl; she jumped to her feet in a fright, +as Mrs. Lapham dashed the door to behind her and flung up +her veil. + +The two women confronted each other. + +"Why, the good land!" cried Mrs. Lapham, "ain't you +Zerrilla Millon?" + +"I--I'm married," faltered the girl "My name's Dewey, now." + +"You're Jim Millon's daughter, anyway. How long have you +been here?" + +"I haven't been here regularly; I've been here off +and on ever since last May." + +"Where's your mother?" + +"She's here--in Boston." + +Mrs. Lapham kept her eyes on the girl, but she dropped, +trembling, into her husband's chair, and a sort of amaze +and curiosity were in her voice instead of the fury +she had meant to put there. + +"The Colonel," continued Zerrilla, "he's been helping us, +and he's got me a type-writer, so that I can help myself +a little. Mother's doing pretty well now; and when Hen +isn't around we can get along." + +"That your husband?" + +"I never wanted to marry him; but he promised to try to +get something to do on shore; and mother was all for it, +because he had a little property then, and I thought +may be I'd better. But it's turned out just as I said +and if he don't stay away long enough this time to let me +get the divorce,--he's agreed to it, time and again,--I +don't know what we're going to do." Zerrilla's voice fell, +and the trouble which she could keep out of her face usually, +when she was comfortably warmed and fed and prettily dressed, +clouded it in the presence of a sympathetic listener. +"I saw it was you, when you came in the other day," +she went on; "but you didn't seem to know me. I suppose +the Colonel's told you that there's a gentleman going +to marry me--Mr. Wemmel's his name--as soon as I get +the divorce; but sometimes I'm completely discouraged; +it don't seem as if I ever could get it." + +Mrs. Lapham would not let her know that she was +ignorant of the fact attributed to her knowledge. +She remained listening to Zerrilla, and piecing out +the whole history of her presence there from the facts +of the past, and the traits of her husband's character. +One of the things she had always had to fight him about +was that idea of his that he was bound to take care of Jim +Millon's worthless wife and her child because Millon had +got the bullet that was meant for him. It was a perfect +superstition of his; she could not beat it out of him; +but she had made him promise the last time he had done +anything for that woman that it should BE the last time. +He had then got her a little house in one of the fishing ports, +where she could take the sailors to board and wash for, +and earn an honest living if she would keep straight. +That was five or six years ago, and Mrs. Lapham had heard +nothing of Mrs. Millon since; she had heard quite enough +of her before; and had known her idle and baddish ever +since she was the worst little girl at school in Lumberville, +and all through her shameful girlhood, and the married days +which she had made so miserable to the poor fellow who had +given her his decent name and a chance to behave herself. +Mrs. Lapham had no mercy on Moll Millon, and she had +quarrelled often enough with her husband for befriending her. +As for the child, if the mother would put Zerrilla out +with some respectable family, that would be ONE thing; +but as long as she kept Zerrilla with her, she was against +letting her husband do anything for either of them. +He had done ten times as much for them now as he had any +need to, and she had made him give her his solemn word +that he would do no more. She saw now that she was wrong +to make him give it, and that he must have broken it +again and again for the reason that he had given when she +once scolded him for throwing away his money on that +hussy-- + +"When I think of Jim Millon, I've got to; that 's all." + +She recalled now that whenever she had brought up the subject +of Mrs. Millon and her daughter, he had seemed shy of it, +and had dropped it with some guess that they were getting +along now. She wondered that she had not thought at once +of Mrs. Millon when she saw that memorandum about Mrs. M.; +but the woman had passed so entirely out of her life, +that she had never dreamt of her in connection with it. +Her husband had deceived her, yet her heart was no +longer hot against him, but rather tenderly grateful +that his deceit was in this sort, and not in that other. +All cruel and shameful doubt of him went out of it. +She looked at this beautiful girl, who had blossomed +out of her knowledge since she saw her last, and she +knew that she was only a blossomed weed, of the same +worthless root as her mother, and saved, if saved, +from the same evil destiny, by the good of her father in her; +but so far as the girl and her mother were concerned, +Mrs. Lapham knew that her husband was to blame for nothing +but his wilful, wrong-headed, kind-heartedness, which her own +exactions had turned into deceit. She remained a while, +questioning the girl quietly about herself and her mother, +and then, with a better mind towards Zerrilla, at least, +than she had ever had before, she rose up and went out. +There must have been some outer hint of the exhaustion in +which the subsidence of her excitement had left her within, +for before she had reached the head of the stairs, Corey came +towards her. + +"Can I be of any use to you, Mrs. Lapham? The Colonel +was here just before you came in, on his way to the train." + +"Yes,--yes. I didn't know--I thought perhaps I could catch +him here. But it don't matter. I wish you would let +some one go with me to get a carriage," she begged feebly. + +"I'll go with you myself," said the young fellow, +ignoring the strangeness in her manner. He offered her +his arm in the twilight of the staircase, and she was glad +to put her trembling hand through it, and keep it there +till he helped her into a hack which he found for her. +He gave the driver her direction, and stood looking +a little anxiously at her. + +"I thank you; I am all right now," she said, and he bade +the man drive on. + +When she reached home she went to bed, spent with the tumult +of her emotions and sick with shame and self-reproach. +She understood now, as clearly as if he had told +her in as many words, that if he had befriended those +worthless jades--the Millons characterised themselves so, +even to Mrs. Lapham's remorse--secretly and in defiance +of her, it was because he dreaded her blame, which was +so sharp and bitter, for what he could not help doing. +It consoled her that he had defied her, deceived her; +when he came back she should tell him that; and then it +flashed upon her that she did not know where he was gone, +or whether he would ever come again. If he never came, +it would be no more than she deserved; but she sent +for Penelope, and tried to give herself hopes of escape from +this just penalty. + +Lapham had not told his daughter where he was going; +she had heard him packing his bag, and had offered to help him; +but he had said he could do it best, and had gone off, +as he usually did, without taking leave of any one. + +"What were you talking about so loud, down in the parlour," +she asked her mother, "just before he came up. Is there +any new trouble?" + +"No; it was nothing." + +"I couldn't tell. Once I thought you were laughing." +She went about, closing the curtains on account of her +mother's headache, and doing awkwardly and imperfectly +the things that Irene would have done so skilfully for +her comfort. + +The day wore away to nightfall, and then Mrs. Lapham said +she MUST know. Penelope said there was no one to ask; +the clerks would all be gone home, and her mother said yes, +there was Mr. Corey; they could send and ask him; +he would know. + +The girl hesitated. "Very well," she said, then, scarcely +above a whisper, and she presently laughed huskily. +"Mr. Corey seems fated to come in, somewhere. I guess +it's a Providence, mother." + +She sent off a note, inquiring whether he could tell +her just where her father had expected to be that night; +and the answer came quickly back that Corey did not know, +but would look up the book-keeper and inquire. +This office brought him in person, an hour later, to tell +Penelope that the Colonel was to be at Lapham that night +and next day. + +"He came in from New York, in a great hurry, and rushed +off as soon as he could pack his bag," Penelope explained, +"and we hadn't a chance to ask him where he was to be +to-night. And mother wasn't very well, and----" + +"I thought she wasn't looking well when she was at the office +to-day. And so I thought I would come rather than send," +Corey explained in his turn. + +"Oh, thank you!" + +"If there is anything I can do--telegraph Colonel Lapham, +or anything?" + +"Oh no, thank you; mother's better now. She merely +wanted to be sure where he was." + +He did not offer to go, upon this conclusion of his business, +but hoped he was not keeping her from her mother. +She thanked him once again, and said no, that her mother +was much better since she had had a cup of tea; and then +they looked at each other, and without any apparent exchange +of intelligence he remained, and at eleven o'clock he +was still there. He was honest in saying he did not know +it was so late; but he made no pretence of being sorry, +and she took the blame to herself. + +"I oughtn't to have let you stay," she said. "But with +father gone, and all that trouble hanging over us----" + +She was allowing him to hold her hand a moment at the door, +to which she had followed him. + +"I'm so glad you could let me!" he said, "and I want to ask +you now when I may come again. But if you need me, you'll----" + +A sharp pull at the door-bell outside made them start asunder, +and at a sign from Penelope, who knew that the maids +were abed by this time, he opened it. + +"Why, Irene!" shrieked the girl. + +Irene entered with the hackman, who had driven her unheard +to the door, following with her small bags, and kissed +her sister with resolute composure. "That's all," she said +to the hackman. "I gave my checks to the expressman," +she explained to Penelope. + +Corey stood helpless. Irene turned upon him, and gave +him her hand. "How do you do, Mr. Corey?" she said, +with a courage that sent a thrill of admiring gratitude +through him. "Where's mamma, Pen? Papa gone to bed?" + +Penelope faltered out some reply embodying the facts, +and Irene ran up the stairs to her mother's room. +Mrs. Lapham started up in bed at her apparition. + +"Irene Lapham" + +"Uncle William thought he ought to tell me the trouble +papa was in; and did you think I was going to stay off +there junketing, while you were going through all this +at home, and Pen acting so silly, too? You ought to have +been ashamed to let me stay so long! I started just as soon +as I could pack. Did you get my despatch? I telegraphed +from Springfield. But it don't matter, now. Here I am. +And I don't think I need have hurried on Pen's account," +she added, with an accent prophetic of the sort of old maid +she would become, if she happened not to marry. + +"Did you see him?" asked her mother. "It's the first +time he's been here since she told him he mustn't come." + +"I guess it isn't the last time, by the looks," said Irene, +and before she took off her bonnet she began to undo +some of Penelope's mistaken arrangements of the room. + +At breakfast, where Corey and his mother met the next morning +before his father and sisters came down, he told her, +with embarrassment which told much more, that he wished +now that she would go and call upon the Laphams. + +Mrs. Corey turned a little pale, but shut her lips tight +and mourned in silence whatever hopes she had lately +permitted herself. She answered with Roman fortitude: +"Of course, if there's anything between you and Miss Lapham, +your family ought to recognise it." + +"Yes," said Corey. + +"You were reluctant to have me call at first, but now +if the affair is going on----" + +"It is! I hope--yes, it is!" + +"Then I ought to go and see her, with your sisters; +and she ought to come here and--we ought all to see her +and make the matter public. We can't do so too soon. +It will seem as if we were ashamed if we don't." + +"Yes, you are quite right, mother," said the young +man gratefully, "and I feel how kind and good you are. +I have tried to consider you in this matter, though I +don't seem to have done so; I know what your rights are, +and I wish with all my heart that I were meeting even your +tastes perfectly. But I know you will like her when you come +to know her. It's been very hard for her every way--about +her sister,--and she's made a great sacrifice for me. +She's acted nobly." + +Mrs. Corey, whose thoughts cannot always be reported, +said she was sure of it, and that all she desired was her +son's happiness. + +"She's been very unwilling to consider it an engagement on +that account, and on account of Colonel Lapham's difficulties. +I should like to have you go, now, for that very reason. +I don't know just how serious the trouble is; but it isn't +a time when we can seem indifferent." + +The logic of this was not perhaps so apparent to +the glasses of fifty as to the eyes of twenty-six; +but Mrs. Corey, however she viewed it, could not allow +herself to blench before the son whom she had taught +that to want magnanimity was to be less than gentlemanly. +She answered, with what composure she could, "I will take +your sisters," and then she made some natural inquiries about +Lapham's affairs. "Oh, I hope it will come out all right," +Corey said, with a lover's vague smile, and left her. +When his father came down, rubbing his long hands together, +and looking aloof from all the cares of the practical world, +in an artistic withdrawal, from which his eye ranged over +the breakfast-table before he sat down, Mrs. Corey told +him what she and their son had been saying. + +He laughed, with a delicate impersonal appreciation +of the predicament. "Well, Anna, you can't say but if +you ever were guilty of supposing yourself porcelain, +this is a just punishment of your arrogance. Here you +are bound by the very quality on which you've prided +yourself to behave well to a bit of earthenware who is +apparently in danger of losing the gilding that rendered +her tolerable." + +"We never cared for the money," said Mrs. Corey. +"You know that." + +"No; and now we can't seem to care for the loss of it. +That would be still worse. Either horn of the dilemma +gores us. Well, we still have the comfort we had in +the beginning; we can't help ourselves; and we should only +make bad worse by trying. Unless we can look to Tom's +inamorata herself for help." + +Mrs. Corey shook her head so gloomily that her husband +broke off with another laugh. But at the continued trouble +of her face, he said, sympathetically: "My dear, I know +it's a very disagreeable affair; and I don't think either +of us has failed to see that it was so from the beginning. +I have had my way of expressing my sense of it, and you yours, +but we have always been of the same mind about it. +We would both have preferred to have Tom marry in his +own set; the Laphams are about the last set we could have +wished him to marry into. They ARE uncultivated people, +and so far as I have seen them, I'm not able to believe +that poverty will improve them. Still, it may. +Let us hope for the best, and let us behave as well as we +know how. I'm sure YOU will behave well, and I shall try. +I'm going with you to call on Miss Lapham. This is a thing +that can't be done by halves!" + +He cut his orange in the Neapolitan manner, and ate it +in quarters. + + + +XXVII. + + +IRENE did not leave her mother in any illusion concerning +her cousin Will and herself. She said they had all been +as nice to her as they could be, and when Mrs. Lapham +hinted at what had been in her thoughts,--or her hopes, +rather,--Irene severely snubbed the notion. She said that he +was as good as engaged to a girl out there, and that he had +never dreamt of her. Her mother wondered at her severity; +in these few months the girl had toughened and hardened; +she had lost all her babyish dependence and pliability; +she was like iron; and here and there she was sharpened +to a cutting edge. It had been a life and death struggle +with her; she had conquered, but she had also necessarily +lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth keeping; +but at any rate she had lost it. + +She required from her mother a strict and accurate account +of her father's affairs, so far as Mrs Lapham knew them; +and she showed a business-like quickness in comprehending +them that Penelope had never pretended to. With her sister +she ignored the past as completely as it was possible to do; +and she treated both Corey and Penelope with the justice +which their innocence of voluntary offence deserved. +It was a difficult part, and she kept away from them +as much as she could. She had been easily excused, +on a plea of fatigue from her journey, when Mr. and +Mrs. Corey had called the day after her arrival, +and Mrs. Lapham being still unwell, Penelope received +them alone. + +The girl had instinctively judged best that they should know +the worst at once, and she let them have the full brunt +of the drawing-room, while she was screwing her courage +up to come down and see them. She was afterwards--months +afterwards--able to report to Corey that when she entered +the room his father was sitting with his hat on his knees, +a little tilted away from the Emancipation group, as if he +expected the Lincoln to hit him, with that lifted hand +of benediction; and that Mrs. Corey looked as if she +were not sure but the Eagle pecked. But for the time +being Penelope was as nearly crazed as might be by the +complications of her position, and received her visitors +with a piteous distraction which could not fail of +touching Bromfield Corey's Italianised sympatheticism. +He was very polite and tender with her at first, and ended +by making a joke with her, to which Penelope responded, +in her sort. He said he hoped they parted friends, +if not quite acquaintances; and she said she hoped they +would be able to recognise each other if they ever met again. + +"That is what I meant by her pertness," said Mrs Corey, +when they were driving away. + +"Was it very pert?" he queried. "The child had to answer something." + +"I would much rather she had answered nothing, +under the circumstances," said Mrs. Corey. "However!" she +added hopelessly. "Oh, she's a merry little grig, you can +see that, and there's no harm in her. I can understand +a little why a formal fellow like Tom should be taken +with her. She hasn't the least reverence, I suppose, +and joked with the young man from the beginning. +You must remember, Anna, that there was a time when you +liked my joking." + +"It was a very different thing!" + +"But that drawing-room," pursued Corey; "really, I don't +see how Tom stands that. Anna, a terrible thought occurs +to me! Fancy Tom being married in front of that group, +with a floral horse-shoe in tuberoses coming down on either +side of it!" + +"Bromfield!" cried his wife, "you are unmerciful." + +"No, no, my dear," he argued; "merely imaginative. +And I can even imagine that little thing finding Tom +just the least bit slow, at times, if it were not for +his goodness. Tom is so kind that I'm convinced he +sometimes feels your joke in his heart when his head +isn't quite clear about it. Well, we will not despond, +my dear." + +"Your father seemed actually to like her," Mrs. Corey +reported to her daughters, very much shaken in her own +prejudices by the fact. If the girl were not so offensive +to his fastidiousness, there might be some hope that +she was not so offensive as Mrs. Corey had thought. +"I wonder how she will strike YOU," she concluded, +looking from one daughter to another, as if trying +to decide which of them would like Penelope least. + +Irene's return and the visit of the Coreys formed +a distraction for the Laphams in which their impending +troubles seemed to hang further aloof; but it was only +one of those reliefs which mark the course of adversity, +and it was not one of the cheerful reliefs. At any +other time, either incident would have been an anxiety +and care for Mrs. Lapham which she would have found hard +to bear; but now she almost welcomed them. At the end +of three days Lapham returned, and his wife met him as if +nothing unusual had marked their parting; she reserved +her atonement for a fitter time; he would know now from +the way she acted that she felt all right towards him. +He took very little note of her manner, but met his family +with an austere quiet that puzzled her, and a sort of +pensive dignity that refined his rudeness to an effect +that sometimes comes to such natures after long sickness, +when the animal strength has been taxed and lowered. +He sat silent with her at the table after their girls +had left them alone, and seeing that he did not mean +to speak, she began to explain why Irene had come home, +and to praise her. + +"Yes, she done right," said Lapham. "It was time +for her to come," he added gently. + +Then he was silent again, and his wife told him of Corey's +having been there, and of his father's and mother's calling. +"I guess Pen's concluded to make it up," she said. + +"Well, we'll see about that," said Lapham; and now she +could no longer forbear to ask him about his affairs. + +"I don't know as I've got any right to know anything +about it," she said humbly, with remote allusion to her +treatment of him. "But I can't help wanting to know. +How ARE things going, Si?" + +"Bad," he said, pushing his plate from him, and tilting +himself back in his chair. "Or they ain't going at all. +They've stopped." + +"What do you mean, Si?" she persisted, tenderly. + +"I've got to the end of my string. To-morrow I shall call +a meeting of my creditors, and put myself in their hands. +If there's enough left to satisfy them, I'm satisfied." +His voice dropped in his throat; he swallowed once or twice, +and then did not speak. + +"Do you mean that it's all over with you?" she asked fearfully. + +He bowed his big head, wrinkled and grizzled; and after +awhile he said, "It's hard to realise it; but I guess +there ain't any doubt about it." He drew a long breath, +and then he explained to her about the West Virginia people, +and how he had got an extension of the first time they had +given him, and had got a man to go up to Lapham with him +and look at the works,--a man that had turned up in New York, +and wanted to put money in the business. His money would +have enabled Lapham to close with the West Virginians. +"The devil was in it, right straight along," said Lapham. +"All I had to do was to keep quiet about that other company. +It was Rogers and his property right over again. He liked +the look of things, and he wanted to go into the business, +and he had the money--plenty; it would have saved me with those +West Virginia folks. But I had to tell him how I stood. +I had to tell him all about it, and what I wanted to do. +He began to back water in a minute, and the next morning I +saw that it was up with him. He's gone back to New York. +I've lost my last chance. Now all I've got to do is to save +the pieces." + +"Will--will--everything go?" she asked. + +"I can't tell, yet. But they shall have a chance at +everything--every dollar, every cent. I'm sorry for you, +Persis--and the girls." + +"Oh, don't talk of US!" She was trying to realise that +the simple, rude soul to which her heart clove in her youth, +but which she had put to such cruel proof, with her unsparing +conscience and her unsparing tongue, had been equal to +its ordeals, and had come out unscathed and unstained. +He was able in his talk to make so little of them; he hardly +seemed to see what they were; he was apparently not proud +of them, and certainly not glad; if they were victories +of any sort, he bore them with the patience of defeat. +His wife wished to praise him, but she did not know how; +so she offered him a little reproach, in which alone +she touched the cause of her behaviour at parting. +"Silas," she asked, after a long gaze at him, "why didn't +you tell me you had Jim Millon's girl there?" + +"I didn't suppose you'd like it, Persis," he answered. +"I did intend to tell you at first, but then I put--I put +it off. I thought you'd come round some day, and find it +out for yourself." + +"I'm punished," said his wife, "for not taking enough +interest in your business to even come near it. +If we're brought back to the day of small things, +I guess it's a lesson for me, Silas." + +"Oh, I don't know about the lesson," he said wearily. + +That night she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had +kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly +over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, +giving it back to her, "and I guess you do too, Persis." + +"But how--how could he----" + +"Mebbe he believed it," said Lapham, with patience +that cut her more keenly than any reproach. "YOU did." + +Perhaps because the process of his ruin had been so gradual, +perhaps because the excitement of preceding events had +exhausted their capacity for emotion, the actual consummation +of his bankruptcy brought a relief, a repose to Lapham +and his family, rather than a fresh sensation of calamity. +In the shadow of his disaster they returned to something +like their old, united life; they were at least all +together again; and it will be intelligible to those whom +life has blessed with vicissitude, that Lapham should +come home the evening after he had given up everything, +to his creditors, and should sit down to his supper +so cheerful that Penelope could joke him in the old way, +and tell him that she thought from his looks they had concluded +to pay him a hundred cents on every dollar he owed them. + +As James Bellingham had taken so much interest in his +troubles from the first, Lapham thought he ought to tell him, +before taking the final step, just how things stood with him, +and what ho meant to do. Bellingham made some futile +inquiries about his negotiations with the West Virginians, +and Lapham told him they had come to nothing. He spoke +of the New York man, and the chance that he might have +sold out half his business to him. "But, of course, +I had to let him know how it was about those fellows." + +"Of course," said Bellingham, not seeing till afterwards +the full significance of Lapham's action. + +Lapham said nothing about Rogers and the Englishmen. +He believed that he had acted right in that matter, and he +was satisfied; but he did not care to have Bellingham, +or anybody, perhaps, think he had been a fool. + +All those who were concerned in his affairs said he behaved well, +and even more than well, when it came to the worst. +The prudence, the good sense, which he had shown in the first +years of his success, and of which his great prosperity +seemed to have bereft him, came back, and these qualities, +used in his own behalf, commended him as much to his creditors +as the anxiety he showed that no one should suffer by him; +this even made some of them doubtful of his sincerity. +They gave him time, and there would have been no trouble +in his resuming on the old basis, if the ground had not +been cut from under him by the competition of the West +Virginia company. He saw himself that it was useless +to try to go on in the old way, and he preferred to go +back and begin the world anew where he had first begun it, +in the hills at Lapham. He put the house at Nankeen Square, +with everything else he had, into the payment of his debts, +and Mrs. Lapham found it easier to leave it for the old +farmstead in Vermont than it would have been to go from +that home of many years to the new house on the water +side of Beacon. This thing and that is embittered to us, +so that we may be willing to relinquish it; the world, +life itself, is embittered to most of us, so that we +are glad to have done with them at last; and this home +was haunted with such memories to each of those who +abandoned it that to go was less exile than escape. +Mrs. Lapham could not look into Irene's room without seeing +the girl there before her glass, tearing the poor little +keep-sakes of her hapless fancy from their hiding-places +to take them and fling them in passionate renunciation +upon her sister; she could not come into the sitting-room, +where her little ones had grown up, without starting at +the thought of her husband sitting so many weary nights +at his desk there, trying to fight his way back to hope +out of the ruin into which he was slipping. When she +remembered that night when Rogers came, she hated the place. +Irene accepted her release from the house eagerly, and was +glad to go before and prepare for the family at Lapham. +Penelope was always ashamed of her engagement there; it must +seem better somewhere else and she was glad to go too. +No one but Lapham in fact, felt the pang of parting +in all its keenness. Whatever regret the others had +was softened to them by the likeness of their flitting +to many of those removals for the summer which they +made in the late spring when they left Nankeen Square; +they were going directly into the country instead of to +the seaside first; but Lapham, who usually remained in +town long after they had gone, knew all the difference. +For his nerves there was no mechanical sense of coming back; +this was as much the end of his proud, prosperous life +as death itself could have been. He was returning to +begin life anew, but he knew as well as he knew that he +should not find his vanished youth in his native hills, +that it could never again be the triumph that it had been. +That was impossible, not only in his stiffened and +weakened forces, but in the very nature of things. +He was going back, by grace of the man whom he owed money, +to make what he could out of the one chance which his +successful rivals had left him. + +In one phase his paint had held its own against bad +times and ruinous competition, and it was with the hope +of doing still more with the Persis Brand that he now set +himself to work. The West Virginia people confessed +that they could not produce those fine grades, and they +willingly left the field to him. A strange, not ignoble +friendliness existed between Lapham and the three brothers; +they had used him fairly; it was their facilities that had +conquered him, not their ill-will; and he recognised in them +without enmity the necessity to which he had yielded. +If he succeeded in his efforts to develop his paint +in this direction, it must be for a long time on a small +scale compared with his former business, which it could +never equal, and he brought to them the flagging energies +of an elderly man. He was more broken than he knew +by his failure; it did not kill, as it often does, but it +weakened the spring once so strong and elastic. He lapsed +more and more into acquiescence with his changed condition, +and that bragging note of his was rarely sounded. +He worked faithfully enough in his enterprise, but sometimes +he failed to seize occasions that in his younger days +he would have turned to golden account. His wife saw +in him a daunted look that made her heart ache for him. + +One result of his friendly relations with the West +Virginia people was that Corey went in with them, +and the fact that he did so solely upon Lapham's advice, +and by means of his recommendation, was perhaps the Colonel's +proudest consolation. Corey knew the business thoroughly, +and after half a year at Kanawha Falls and in the office +at New York, he went out to Mexico and Central America, +to see what could be done for them upon the ground which he +had theoretically studied with Lapham. + +Before he went he came up to Vermont, and urged Penelope +to go with him. He was to be first in the city +of Mexico, and if his mission was successful he was +to be kept there and in South America several years, +watching the new railroad enterprises and the development +of mechanical agriculture and whatever other undertakings +offered an opening for the introduction of the paint. +They were all young men together, and Corey, who had put +his money into the company, had a proprietary interest +in the success which they were eager to achieve. + +"There's no more reason now and no less than ever there was," +mused Penelope, in counsel with her mother, "why I should +say Yes, or why I should say No. Everything else changes, +but this is just where it was a year ago. It don't +go backward, and it don't go forward. Mother, I believe +I shall take the bit in my teeth--if anybody will put +it there!" + +"It isn't the same as it was," suggested her mother. +"You can see that Irene's all over it." + +"That's no credit to me," said Penelope. "I ought to be +just as much ashamed as ever." + +"You no need ever to be ashamed." + +"That's true, too," said the girl. "And I can sneak +off to Mexico with a good conscience if I could make +up my mind to it." She laughed. "Well, if I could be +SENTENCED to be married, or somebody would up and forbid +the banns! I don't know what to do about it." + +Her mother left her to carry her hesitation back to Corey, +and she said now, they had better go all over it and try +to reason it out. "And I hope that whatever I do, +it won't be for my own sake, but for--others!" + +Corey said he was sure of that, and looked at her with +eyes of patient tenderness. + +"I don't say it is wrong," she proceeded, rather aimlessly, +"but I can't make it seem right. I don't know whether +I can make you understand, but the idea of being happy, +when everybody else is so miserable, is more than I +can endure. It makes me wretched." + +"Then perhaps that's your share of the common suffering," +suggested Corey, smiling. + +"Oh, you know it isn't! You know it's nothing. +Oh! One of the reasons is what I told you once before, +that as long as father is in trouble I can't let you +think of me. Now that he's lost everything--?" She bent +her eyes inquiringly upon him, as if for the effect +of this argument. + +"I don't think that's a very good reason," he answered seriously, +but smiling still. "Do you believe me when I tell you that I love you?" + +"Why, I suppose I must," she said, dropping her eyes. + +"Then why shouldn't I think all the more of you on account +of your father's loss? You didn't suppose I cared for you +because he was prosperous?" + +There was a shade of reproach, ever so delicate and gentle, +in his smiling question, which she felt. + +"No, I couldn't think such a thing of you. I--I don't +know what I meant. I meant that----" She could not go +on and say that she had felt herself more worthy of him +because of her father's money; it would not have been true; +yet there was no other explanation. She stopped, and cast +a helpless glance at him. + +He came to her aid. "I understand why you shouldn't wish +me to suffer by your father's misfortunes." + +"Yes, that was it; and there is too great a difference +every way. We ought to look at that again. You mustn't +pretend that you don't know it, for that wouldn't be true. +Your mother will never like me, and perhaps--perhaps I +shall not like her." + +"Well," said Corey, a little daunted, "you won't have +to marry my family." + +"Ah, that isn't the point!" + +"I know it," he admitted. "I won't pretend that I don't +see what you mean; but I'm sure that all the differences +would disappear when you came to know my family better. +I'm not afraid but you and my mother will like each +other--she can't help it!" he exclaimed, less judicially +than he had hitherto spoken, and he went on to urge +some points of doubtful tenability. "We have our ways, +and you have yours; and while I don't say but what you +and my mother and sisters would be a little strange +together at first, it would soon wear off, on both sides. +There can't be anything hopelessly different in you all, +and if there were it wouldn't be any difference to me." + +"Do you think it would be pleasant to have you on my side +against your mother?" + +"There won't be any sides. Tell me just what it is you're +afraid of." + +"Afraid?" + +"Thinking of, then." + +"I don't know. It isn't anything they say or do," +she explained, with her eyes intent on his. "It's what +they are. I couldn't be natural with them, and if I +can't be natural with people, I'm disagreeable." + +"Can you be natural with me?" + +"Oh, I'm not afraid of you. I never was. That was +the trouble, from the beginning." + +"Well, then, that's all that's necessary. And it never +was the least trouble to me!" + +"It made me untrue to Irene." + +"You mustn't say that! You were always true to her." + +"She cared for you first." + +"Well, but I never cared for her at all!" he besought her. + +"She thought you did." + +"That was nobody's fault, and I can't let you make it yours. +My dear----" + +"Wait. We must understand each other," said Penelope, +rising from her seat to prevent an advance he was making +from his; "I want you to realise the whole affair. +Should you want a girl who hadn't a cent in the world, +and felt different in your mother's company, and had cheated +and betrayed her own sister?" + +"I want you!" + +"Very well, then, you can't have me. I should always +despise myself. I ought to give you up for all +these reasons. Yes, I must." She looked at him intently, +and there was a tentative quality in her affirmations. + +"Is this your answer?" he said. "I must submit. +If I asked too much of you, I was wrong. And--good-bye." + +He held out his hand, and she put hers in it. +"You think I'm capricious and fickle!" she said. +"I can't help it--I don't know myself. I can't keep to one +thing for half a day at a time. But it's right for us +to part--yes, it must be. It must be," she repeated; +"and I shall try to remember that. Good-bye! I will try +to keep that in my mind, and you will too--you won't care, +very soon! I didn't mean THAT--no; I know how true you are; +but you will soon look at me differently; and see that +even IF there hadn't been this about Irene, I was not the +one for you. You do think so, don't you?" she pleaded, +clinging to his hand. "I am not at all what they would +like--your family; I felt that. I am little, and black, +and homely, and they don't understand my way of talking, +and now that we've lost everything--No, I'm not fit. +Good-bye. You're quite right, not to have patience with +me any longer. I've tried you enough. I ought to be +willing to marry you against their wishes if you want +me to, but I can't make the sacrifice--I'm too selfish +for that----" All at once she flung herself on his breast. +"I can't even give you up! I shall never dare look any +one in the face again. Go, go! But take me with you! I +tried to do without you! I gave it a fair trial, and it +was a dead failure. O poor Irene! How could she give +you up?" + +Corey went back to Boston immediately, and left Penelope, +as he must, to tell her sister that they were to be married. +She was spared from the first advance toward this by an +accident or a misunderstanding. Irene came straight to +her after Corey was gone, and demanded, "Penelope Lapham, +have you been such a ninny as to send that man away on +my account?" + +Penelope recoiled from this terrible courage; she did +not answer directly, and Irene went on, "Because if +you did, I'll thank you to bring him back again. +I'm not going to have him thinking that I'm dying +for a man that never cared for me. It's insulting, +and I'm not going to stand it. Now, you just send for him!" + +"Oh, I will, 'Rene," gasped Penelope. And then she added, +shamed out of her prevarication by Irene's haughty magnanimity, +"I have. That is--he's coming back----" + +Irene looked at her a moment, and then, whatever thought +was in her mind, said fiercely, "Well!" and left her to +her dismay--her dismay and her relief, for they both knew +that this was the last time they should ever speak of that again. + +The marriage came after so much sorrow and trouble, +and the fact was received with so much misgiving for the past +and future, that it brought Lapham none of the triumph +in which he had once exulted at the thought of an alliance +with the Coreys. Adversity had so far been his friend +that it had taken from him all hope of the social success +for which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, +through failure and doubt and heartache, the manhood +which his prosperity had so nearly stolen from him. +Neither he nor his wife thought now that their daughter +was marrying a Corey; they thought only that she was giving +herself to the man who loved her, and their acquiescence +was sobered still further by the presence of Irene. +Their hearts were far more with her. + +Again and again Mrs. Lapham said she did not see how she +could go through it. "I can't make it seem right," +she said. + +"It IS right," steadily answered the Colonel. + +"Yes, I know. But it don't SEEM so." + + +It would be easy to point out traits in Penelope's character +which finally reconciled all her husband's family and endeared +her to them. These things continually happen in novels; +and the Coreys, as they had always promised themselves +to do, made the best, and not the worst of Tom's marriage. + +They were people who could value Lapham's behaviour +as Tom reported it to them. They were proud of him, +and Bromfield Corey, who found a delicate, aesthetic pleasure +in the heroism with which Lapham had withstood Rogers +and his temptations--something finely dramatic and +unconsciously effective,--wrote him a letter which would +once have flattered the rough soul almost to ecstasy, +though now he affected to slight it in showing it. +"It's all right if it makes it more comfortable for Pen," +he said to his wife. + +But the differences remained uneffaced, if not uneffaceable, +between the Coreys and Tom Corey's wife. "If he had only +married the Colonel!" subtly suggested Nanny Corey. + +There was a brief season of civility and forbearance +on both sides, when he brought her home before starting +for Mexico, and her father-in-law made a sympathetic feint +of liking Penelope's way of talking, but it is questionable +if even he found it so delightful as her husband did. +Lily Corey made a little, ineffectual sketch of her, +which she put by with other studies to finish up, +sometime, and found her rather picturesque in some ways. +Nanny got on with her better than the rest, and saw +possibilities for her in the country to which she was going. +"As she's quite unformed, socially," she explained to +her mother, "there is a chance that she will form herself +on the Spanish manner, if she stays there long enough, +and that when she comes back she will have the charm of, +not olives, perhaps, but tortillas, whatever they are: +something strange and foreign, even if it's borrowed. +I'm glad she's going to Mexico. At that distance +we can--correspond." + +Her mother sighed, and said bravely that she was sure +they all got on very pleasantly as it was, and that she +was perfectly satisfied if Tom was. + +There was, in fact, much truth in what she said of their +harmony with Penelope. Having resolved, from the beginning, +to make the best of the worst, it might almost be said +that they were supported and consoled in their good +intentions by a higher power. This marriage had not, +thanks to an over-ruling Providence, brought the succession +of Lapham teas upon Bromfield Corey which he had dreaded; +the Laphams were far off in their native fastnesses, +and neither Lily nor Nanny Corey was obliged to sacrifice +herself to the conversation of Irene; they were not even +called upon to make a social demonstration for Penelope +at a time when, most people being still out of town, +it would have been so easy; she and Tom had both begged +that there might be nothing of that kind; and though none +of the Coreys learned to know her very well in the week +she spent with them, they did not find it hard to get +on with her. There were even moments when Nanny Corey, +like her father, had glimpses of what Tom had called +her humour, but it was perhaps too unlike their own to be +easily recognisable. + +Whether Penelope, on her side, found it more difficult +to harmonise, I cannot say. She had much more of the +harmonising to do, since they were four to one; but then +she had gone through so much greater trials before. +When the door of their carriage closed and it drove off +with her and her husband to the station, she fetched +a long sigh. + +"What is it?" asked Corey, who ought to have known better. + +"Oh, nothing. I don't think I shall feel strange amongst +the Mexicans now." + +He looked at her with a puzzled smile, which grew a +little graver, and then he put his arm round her and drew +her closer to him. This made her cry on his shoulder. +"I only meant that I should have you all to myself." +There is no proof that she meant more, but it is certain +that our manners and customs go for more in life than +our qualities. The price that we pay for civilisation +is the fine yet impassable differentiation of these. +Perhaps we pay too much; but it will not be possible +to persuade those who have the difference in their favour +that this is so. They may be right; and at any rate, +the blank misgiving, the recurring sense of disappointment +to which the young people's departure left the Coreys +is to be considered. That was the end of their son and +brother for them; they felt that; and they were not mean +or unamiable people. + +He remained three years away. Some changes took place +in that time. One of these was the purchase by the +Kanawha Falls Company of the mines and works at Lapham. +The transfer relieved Lapham of the load of debt which he +was still labouring under, and gave him an interest +in the vaster enterprise of the younger men, which he had +once vainly hoped to grasp all in his own hand. He began +to tell of this coincidence as something very striking; +and pushing on more actively the special branch of the +business left to him, he bragged, quite in his old way, +of its enormous extension. His son-in-law, he said, +was pushing it in Mexico and Central America: an idea that +they had originally had in common. Well, young blood was +what was wanted in a thing of that kind. Now, those fellows +out in West Virginia: all young, and a perfect team! + +For himself, he owned that he had made mistakes; he could see +just where the mistakes were--put his finger right on them. +But one thing he could say: he had been no man's enemy but +his own; every dollar, every cent had gone to pay his debts; +he had come out with clean hands. He said all this, +and much more, to Mr. Sewell the summer after he sold out, +when the minister and his wife stopped at Lapham on their +way across from the White Mountains to Lake Champlain; +Lapham had found them on the cars, and pressed them to +stop off. + +There were times when Mrs. Lapham had as great pride in +the clean-handedness with which Lapham had come out as he +had himself, but her satisfaction was not so constant. +At those times, knowing the temptations he had resisted, +she thought him the noblest and grandest of men; but no woman +could endure to live in the same house with a perfect hero, +and there were other times when she reminded him that if he +had kept his word to her about speculating in stocks, +and had looked after the insurance of his property half +as carefully as he had looked after a couple of worthless +women who had no earthly claim on him, they would not +be where they were now. He humbly admitted it all, +and left her to think of Rogers herself. She did not fail +to do so, and the thought did not fail to restore him +to her tenderness again. + + +I do not know how it is that clergymen and physicians keep +from telling their wives the secrets confided to them; +perhaps they can trust their wives to find them out +for themselves whenever they wish. Sewell had laid +before his wife the case of the Laphams after they came +to consult with him about Corey's proposal to Penelope, +for he wished to be confirmed in his belief that he had +advised them soundly; but he had not given her their names, +and he had not known Corey's himself. Now he had no +compunctions in talking the affair over with her without +the veil of ignorance which she had hitherto assumed, +for she declared that as soon as she heard of Corey's +engagement to Penelope, the whole thing had flashed upon her. +"And that night at dinner I could have told the child +that he was in love with her sister by the way he talked +about her; I heard him; and if she had not been so blindly +in love with him herself, she would have known it too. +I must say, I can't help feeling a sort of contempt for +her sister." + +"Oh, but you must not!" cried Sewell. "That is wrong, +cruelly wrong. I'm sure that's out of your novel-reading, +my dear, and not out of your heart. Come! It grieves me +to hear you say such a thing as that." + +"Oh, I dare say this pretty thing has got over it--how +much character she has got!--and I suppose she'll see +somebody else." + +Sewell had to content himself with this partial concession. +As a matter of fact, unless it was the young West Virginian +who had come on to arrange the purchase of the Works, +Irene had not yet seen any one, and whether there was +ever anything between them is a fact that would need +a separate inquiry. It is certain that at the end of five +years after the disappointment which she met so bravely, +she was still unmarried. But she was even then still +very young, and her life at Lapham had been varied by visits +to the West. It had also been varied by an invitation, +made with the politest resolution by Mrs. Corey, to visit +in Boston, which the girl was equal to refusing in the +same spirit. + +Sewell was intensely interested in the moral spectacle +which Lapham presented under his changed conditions. +The Colonel, who was more the Colonel in those hills +than he could ever have been on the Back Bay, kept him +and Mrs. Sewell over night at his house; and he showed +the minister minutely round the Works and drove him all +over his farm. For this expedition he employed a lively +colt which had not yet come of age, and an open buggy long +past its prime, and was no more ashamed of his turnout +than of the finest he had ever driven on the Milldam. +He was rather shabby and slovenly in dress, and he had +fallen unkempt, after the country fashion, as to his +hair and beard and boots. The house was plain, and was +furnished with the simpler moveables out of the house in +Nankeen Square. There were certainly all the necessaries, +but no luxuries unless the statues of Prayer and Faith +might be so considered. The Laphams now burned kerosene, +of course, and they had no furnace in the winter; +these were the only hardships the Colonel complained of; +but he said that as soon as the company got to paying +dividends again,--he was evidently proud of the outlays +that for the present prevented this,--he should put in steam +heat and naphtha-gas. He spoke freely of his failure, +and with a confidence that seemed inspired by his former trust +in Sewell, whom, indeed, he treated like an intimate friend, +rather than an acquaintance of two or three meetings. +He went back to his first connection with Rogers, and he put +before Sewell hypothetically his own conclusions in regard +to the matter. + +"Sometimes," he said, "I get to thinking it all over, +and it seems to me I done wrong about Rogers in the +first place; that the whole trouble came from that. +It was just like starting a row of bricks. I tried to +catch up and stop 'em from going, but they all tumbled, +one after another. It wa'n't in the nature of things +that they could be stopped till the last brick went. +I don't talk much with my wife, any more about it; but I +should like to know how it strikes you." + +"We can trace the operation of evil in the physical world," +replied the minister, "but I'm more and more puzzled +about it in the moral world. There its course is often +so very obscure; and often it seems to involve, so far +as we can see, no penalty whatever. And in your own case, +as I understand, you don't admit--you don't feel sure--that +you ever actually did wrong this man----" + +"Well, no; I don't. That is to say----" + +He did not continue, and after a while Sewell said, +with that subtle kindness of his, "I should be inclined +to think--nothing can be thrown quite away; and it can't +be that our sins only weaken us--that your fear of having +possibly behaved selfishly toward this man kept you on +your guard, and strengthened you when you were brought face +to face with a greater"--he was going to say temptation, +but he saved Lapham's pride, and said--"emergency." + +"Do you think so?" + +"I think that there may be truth in what I suggest." + +"Well, I don't know what it was," said Lapham; "all I +know is that when it came to the point, although I could +see that I'd got to go under unless I did it--that I +couldn't sell out to those Englishmen, and I couldn't +let that man put his money into my business without +I told him just how things stood." + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Rise of Silas Lapham + + + + diff --git a/old/silap10.zip b/old/silap10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..db5443a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/silap10.zip |