 | IX. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
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
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
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
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 Milldam.
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
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 upstairs
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
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
young man, beaming with the triumph a woman feels
in any bit of successful manœuvring, 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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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,
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.
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 no
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 yester,
day?"
"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:
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.
| IX. The rise of Silas Lapham | |