University of Virginia Library

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.