 | V. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
"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
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
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."
| V. The rise of Silas Lapham | |