 | IV. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
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
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
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
"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
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
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
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.
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, I
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,
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
an'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
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 womankind
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
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 coupé 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
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
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
sack-coat 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."
| IV. The rise of Silas Lapham | |