 | XI. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
XI.
Corey put off his set smile with the help of a
frown, of which he first became aware after reaching
home, when his father asked—
"Anything gone wrong with your department of
the fine arts to-day, Tom?"
"Oh no—no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving
his brows from the strain upon them, and
beaming again. "But I was thinking whether you
were not perhaps right in your impression that it
might be well for you to make Colonel Lapham's
acquaintance before a great while."
"Has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked
Bromfield Corey, laying aside his book and taking
his lean knee between his clasped hands.
"Oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to
reply. "I was merely thinking whether it might
not begin to seem intentional, your not doing it."
"Well, Tom, you know I have been leaving it
altogether to you—"
"Oh, I understand, of course, and I didn't mean
to urge anything of the kind—"
"You are so very much more of a Bostonian than
in entire confidence that you would know just what
to do, and when to do it. If I had been left quite
to my own lawless impulses, I think I should have
called upon your padrone at once. It seems to me
that my father would have found some way of showing
that he expected as much as that from people
placed in the relation to him that we hold to Colonel
Lapham."
"Do you think so?" asked the young man.
"Yes. But you know I don't pretend to be an
authority in such matters. As far as they go, I
am always in the hands of your mother and you
children."
"I'm very sorry, sir. I had no idea I was overruling
your judgment. I only wanted to spare you a
formality that didn't seem quite a necessity yet. I'm
very sorry," he said again, and this time with more
comprehensive regret. "I shouldn't like to have
seemed remiss with a man who has been so considerate
of me. They are all very good-natured."
"I dare say," said Bromfield Corey, with the
satisfaction which no elder can help feeling in disabling
the judgment of a younger man, "that it
won't be too late if I go down to your office with
you to-morrow."
"No, no. I didn't imagine your doing it at once,
sir."
"Ah, but nothing can prevent me from doing a
thing when once I take the bit in my teeth," said
the father, with the pleasure which men of weak will
"How does their new house get on?"
"I believe they expect to be in it before New
Year."
"Will they be a great addition to society?" asked
Bromfield Corey, with unimpeachable seriousness.
"I don't quite know what you mean," returned
the son, a little uneasily.
"Ah, I see that you do, Tom."
"No one can help feeling that they are all people
of good sense and—right ideas."
"Oh, that won't do. If society took in all the
people of right ideas and good sense, it would expand
beyond the calling capacity of its most active
members. Even your mother's social conscientiousness
could not compass it. Society is a very different
sort of thing from good sense and right ideas. It is
based upon them, of course, but the airy, graceful,
winning superstructure which we all know demands
different qualities. Have your friends got these
qualities,—which may be felt, but not defined?"
The son laughed. "To tell you the truth, sir, I
don't think they have the most elemental ideas of
society, as we understand it. I don't believe Mrs.
Lapham ever gave a dinner."
"And with all that money!" sighed the father.
"I don't believe they have the habit of wine at
table. I suspect that when they don't drink tea and
coffee with their dinner, they drink ice-water."
"Horrible!" said Bromfield Corey.
"It appears to me that this defines them."
"Oh yes. There are people who give dinners,
and who are not cognoscible. But people who have
never yet given a dinner, how is society to assimilate
them?"
"It digests a great many people," suggested the
young man.
"Yes; but they have always brought some sort
of sauce piquante with them. Now, as I understand
you, these friends of yours have no such
sauce."
"Oh, I don't know about that!" cried the son.
"Oh, rude, native flavours, I dare say. But that
isn't what I mean. Well, then, they must spend.
There is no other way for them to win their way to
general regard. We must have the Colonel elected
to the Ten O'clock Club, and he must put himself
down in the list of those willing to entertain. Any
one can manage a large supper. Yes, I see a gleam
of hope for him in that direction."
In the morning Bromfield Corey asked his son
whether he should find Lapham at his place as early
as eleven.
"I think you might find him even earlier. I've
never been there before him. I doubt if the porter
is there much sooner."
"Well, suppose I go with you, then?"
"Why, if you like, sir," said the son, with some
deprecation.
"Oh, the question is, will he like?"
"I think he will, sir;" and the father could see
that his son was very much pleased.
Lapham was rending an impatient course through
the morning's news when they appeared at the door
of his inner room. He looked up from the newspaper
spread on the desk before him, and then he
stood up, making an indifferent feint of not knowing
that he knew Bromfield Corey by sight.
"Good morning, Colonel Lapham," said the son,
and Lapham waited for him to say further, "I wish
to introduce my father."
Then he answered, "Good morning," and added
rather sternly for the elder Corey, "How do you do,
sir? Will you take a chair?" and he pushed him one.
They shook hands and sat down, and Lapham
said to his subordinate, "Have a seat;" but young
Corey remained standing, watching them in their
observance of each other with an amusement which
was a little uneasy. Lapham made his visitor speak
first by waiting for him to do so.
"I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Colonel
Lapham, and I ought to have come sooner to do so.
My father in your place would have expected it of
a man in my place at once, I believe. But I can't
feel myself altogether a stranger as it is. I hope
Mrs. Lapham is well? And your daughter?"
"Thank you," said Lapham, "they're quite well."
"They were very kind to my wife—"
`Oh, that was nothing!" cried Lapham. "There's
nothing Mrs. Lapham likes better than a chance of
that sort. Mrs. Corey and the young ladies well?"
"Very well, when I heard from them. They're
out of town."
"Yes, so I understood," said Lapham, with a nod
toward the son. "I believe Mr. Corey, here, told
Mrs. Lapham." He leaned back in his chair, stiffly
resolute to show that he was not incommoded by
the exchange of these civilities.
"Yes," said Bromfield Corey. "Tom has had
the pleasure which I hope for of seeing you all. I
hope you're able to make him useful to you here?"
Corey looked round Lapham's room vaguely, and
then out at the clerks in their railed enclosure,
where his eye finally rested on an extremely pretty
girl, who was operating a type-writer.
"Well, sir," replied Lapham, softening for the
first time with this approach to business, "I guess
it will be our own fault if we don't. By the way,
Corey," he added, to the younger man, as he
gathered up some letters from his desk, "here's
something in your line. Spanish or French, I
guess."
"I'll run them over," said Corey, taking them to
his desk.
His father made an offer to rise.
"Don't go," said Lapham, gesturing him down
again. "I just wanted to get him away a minute.
I don't care to say it to his face,—I don't like the
principle,—but since you ask me about it, I'd just
as lief say that I've never had any young man take
hold here equal to your son. I don't know as you
care—"
"You make me very happy," said Bromfield
Corey. "Very happy indeed. I've always had
could only find the way to work it out. And he
seems to have gone into your business for the love
of it."
"He went to work in the right way, sir! He
told me about it. He looked into it. And that
paint is a thing that will bear looking into."
"Oh yes. You might think he had invented
it, if you heard him celebrating it."
"Is that so?" demanded Lapham, pleased through
and through. "Well, there ain't any other way.
You've got to believe in a thing before you can put
any heart in it. Why, I had a partner in this thing
once, along back just after the war, and he used to
be always wanting to tinker with something else.
`Why,' says I, `you've got the best thing in God's
universe now. Why ain't you satisfied?' I had to
get rid of him at last. I stuck to my paint, and
that fellow's drifted round pretty much all over the
whole country, whittling his capital down all the
while, till here the other day I had to lend him
some money to start him new. No, sir, you've got
to believe in a thing. And I believe in your son.
And I don't mind telling you that, so far as he's
gone, he's a success."
"That's very kind of you."
"No kindness about it. As I was saying the
other day to a friend of mine, I've had many a
fellow right out of the street that had to work hard
all his life, and didn't begin to take hold like this
son of yours."
Lapham expanded with profound self-satisfaction.
As he probably conceived it, he had succeeded in
praising, in a perfectly casual way, the supreme
excellence of his paint, and his own sagacity and
benevolence; and here he was sitting face to face
with Bromfield Corey, praising his son to him, and
receiving his grateful acknowledgments as if he were
the father of some office-boy whom Lapham had
given a place half out of charity.
"Yes, sir, when your son proposed to take hold
here, I didn't have much faith in his ideas, that's
the truth. But I had faith in him, and I saw that
he meant business from the start. I could see it
was born in him. Any one could."
"I'm afraid he didn't inherit it directly from me,"
said Bromfield Corey; "but it's in the blood, on
both sides."
"Well, sir, we can't help those things," said
Lapham compassionately. "Some of us have got
it, and some of us haven't. The idea is to make the
most of what we have got."
"Oh yes; that is the idea. By all means."
"And you can't ever tell what's in you till you
try. Why, when I started this thing, I didn't more
than half understand my own strength. I wouldn't
have said, looking back, that I could have stood the
wear and tear of what I've been through. But I
developed as I went along. It's just like exercising
your muscles in a gymnasium. You can lift twice
or three times as much after you've been in training
a month as you could before. And I can see that
through college won't hurt him,—he'll soon slough
all that off,—and his bringing up won't; don't be
anxious about it. I noticed in the army that some of
the fellows that had the most go-ahead were fellows
that hadn't ever had much more to do than girls
before the war broke out. Your son will get along."
"Thank you," said Bromfield Corey, and smiled—
whether because his spirit was safe in the humility
he sometimes boasted, or because it was triply armed
in pride against anything the Colonel's kindness
could do.
"He'll get along. He's a good business man,
and he's a fine fellow. Must you go?" asked Lapham,
as Bromfield Corey now rose more resolutely.
"Well, glad to see you. It was natural you should
want to come and see what he was about, and I'm
glad you did. I should have felt just so about it.
Here is some of our stuff," he said, pointing out the
various packages in his office, including the Persis
Brand.
"Ah, that's very nice, very nice indeed," said his
visitor. "That colour through the jar—very rich—
delicious. Is Persis Brand a name?"
Lapham blushed.
"Well, Persis is. I don't know as you saw an
interview that fellow published in the Events
a while back?"
"What is the Events?"
"Well, it's that new paper Witherby's started."
"No," said Bromfield Corey, "I haven't seen it.
The Daily Advertiser, the only daily there is in the
old-fashioned Bostonian sense.
"He put a lot of stuff in my mouth that I never
said," resumed Lapham; "but that's neither here
nor there, so long as you haven't seen it. Here's
the department your son's in," and he showed him
the foreign labels. Then he took him out into the
warehouse to see the large packages. At the head
of the stairs, where his guest stopped to nod to his
son and say "Good-bye, Tom," Lapham insisted
upon going down to the lower door with him.
"Well, call again," he said in hospitable dismissal.
"I shall always be glad to see you. There ain't a
great deal doing at this season." Bromfield Corey
thanked him, and let his hand remain perforce in
Lapham's lingering grasp. "If you ever like to ride
after a good horse—" the Colonel began.
"Oh, no, no, no; thank you! The better the
horse, the more I should be scared. Tom has told
me of your driving!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Colonel. "Well!
every one to his taste. Well, good morning, sir!"
and he suffered him to go.
"Who is the old man blowing to this morning?"
asked Walker, the book-keeper, making an errand
to Corey's desk.
"My father."
"Oh! That your father? I thought he must be
one of your Italian correspondents that you'd been
showing round, or Spanish."
In fact, as Bromfield Corey found his way at his
leisurely pace up through the streets on which the
prosperity of his native city was founded, hardly
any figure could have looked more alien to its life.
He glanced up and down the façdes and through
the crooked vistas like a stranger, and the swarthy
fruiterer of whom he bought an apple, apparently
for the pleasure of holding it in his hand, was not
surprised that the purchase should be transacted in
his own tongue.
Lapham walked back through the outer office to his
own room without looking at Corey, and during the
day he spoke to him only of business matters. That
must have been his way of letting Corey see that
he was not overcome by the honour of his father's
visit. But he presented himself at Nantasket with
the event so perceptibly on his mind that his wife
asked: "Well, Silas, has Rogers been borrowing
any more money of you? I don't want you should
let that thing go too far. You've done enough."
"You needn't be afraid. I've seen the last of
Rogers for one while." He hesitated, to give the
fact an effect of no importance. "Corey's father
called this morning."
"Did he?" said Mrs. Lapham, willing to humour
his feint of indifference. "Did he want to borrow
some money too?"
"Not as I understood." Lapham was smoking at
great ease, and his wife had some crocheting on the
other side of the lamp from him.
The girls were on the piazza looking at the moon
Penelope said, and Irene laughed forlornly.
"What did he want, then?" asked Mrs. Lapham.
"Oh, I don't know. Seemed to be just a friendly
call. Said he ought to have come before."
Mrs. Lapham was silent a while. Then she said:
"Well, I hope you're satisfied now."
Lapham rejected the sympathy too openly offered.
"I don't know about being satisfied. I wan't in
any hurry to see him."
His wife permitted him this pretence also.
"What sort of a person is he, anyway?"
"Well, not much like his son. There's no sort
of business about him. I don't know just how you'd
describe him. He's tall; and he's got white hair
and a moustache; and his fingers are very long and
limber. I couldn't help noticing them as he sat there
with his hands on the top of his cane. Didn't seem
to be dressed very much, and acted just like anybody.
Didn't talk much. Guess I did most of the talking.
Said he was glad I seemed to be getting along so well
with his son. He asked after you and Irene; and he
said he couldn't feel just like a stranger. Said you
had been very kind to his wife. Of course I turned it
off. Yes," said Lapham thoughtfully, with his hands
resting on his knees, and his cigar between the
fingers of his left hand, "I guess he meant to do
the right thing, every way. Don't know as I ever
saw a much pleasanter man. Dunno but what he's
about the pleasantest man I ever did see." He was
not letting his wife see in his averted face the struggle
achievement not to feel flattered at the notice of sterile
elegance, not to be sneakingly glad of its amiability,
but to stand up and look at it with eyes on the same
level. God, who made us so much like himself, but
out of the dust, alone knows when that struggle will
end. The time had been when Lapham could not
have imagined any worldly splendour which his
dollars could not buy if he chose to spend them for
it; but his wife's half discoveries, taking form again
in his ignorance of the world, filled him with helpless
misgiving. A cloudy vision of something unpurchasable,
where he had supposed there was
nothing, had cowed him in spite of the burly resistance
of his pride.
"I don't see why he shouldn't be pleasant," said
Mrs. Lapham. "He's never done anything else."
Lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy
laugh. "Pshaw, Persis! you never forget anything?"
"Oh, I've got more than that to remember. I
suppose you asked him to ride after the mare?"
"Well," said Lapham, reddening guiltily, "he
said he was afraid of a good horse."
"Then, of course, you hadn't asked him." Mrs.
Lapham crocheted in silence, and her husband leaned
back in his chair and smoked.
At last he said, "I'm going to push that house
forward. They're loafing on it. There's no reason
why we shouldn't be in it by Thanksgiving. I don't
believe in moving in the dead of winter."
"We can wait till spring. We're very comfortable
in the old place," answered his wife. Then she
broke out on him: "What are you in such a hurry
to get into that house for? Do you want to invite
the Coreys to a house-warming?"
Lapham looked at her without speaking.
"Don't you suppose I can see through you? I
declare, Silas Lapham, if I didn't know different, I
should say you were about the biggest fool! Don't you
know anything? Don't you know that it wouldn't
do to ask those people to our house before they've
asked us to theirs? They'd laugh in our faces!"
"I don't believe they'd laugh in our faces.
What's the difference between our asking them and
their asking us?" demanded the Colonel sulkily.
"Oh, well! If you don't see!"
"Well, I don't see. But I don't want to ask them
to the house. I suppose, if I want to, I can invite
him down to a fish dinner at Taft's."
Mrs. Lapham fell back in her chair, and let her
work drop in her lap with that "Tckk!" in which
her sex knows how to express utter contempt and
despair.
"What's the matter?"
"Well, if you do such a thing, Silas, I'll never
speak to you again! It's no use! It's no use! I
did think, after you'd behaved so well about Rogers,
I might trust you a little. But I see I can't. I
presume as long as you live you'll have to be nosed
about like a perfect—I don't know what!"
"What are you making such a fuss about?" demanded
pluck up a spirit. "I haven't done anything yet.
I can't ask your advice about anything any more
without having you fly out. Confound it! I shall
do as I please after this."
But as if he could not endure that contemptuous
atmosphere, he got up, and his wife heard him in
the dining-room pouring himself out a glass of ice-water,
and then heard him mount the stairs to their
room, and slam its door after him.
"Do you know what your father's wanting to do
now?" Mrs. Lapham asked her eldest daughter,
who lounged into the parlour a moment with her
wrap stringing from her arm, while the younger
went straight to bed. "He wants to invite Mr.
Corey's father to a fish dinner at Taft's!"
Penelope was yawning with her hand on her
mouth; she stopped, and, with a laugh of amused
expectance, sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged
forward.
"Why! what in the world has put the Colonel
up to that?"
"Put him up to it! There's that fellow, who
ought have come to see him long ago, drops into his
office this morning, and talks five minutes with him,
and your father is flattered out of his five senses.
He's crazy to get in with those people, and I shall
have a perfect battle to keep him within bounds."
"Well, Persis, ma'am, you can't say but what you
began it," said Penelope.
"Oh yes, I began it," confessed Mrs. Lapham.
means by it?"
"Who? Mr. Corey's father? What does the
Colonel think?"
"Oh, the Colonel!" cried Mrs. Lapham. She
added tremulously: "Perhaps he is right. He did
seem to take a fancy to her last summer, and now if
he's called in that way—" She left her daughter
to distribute the pronouns aright, and resumed: "Of
course, I should have said once that there wasn't any
question about it. I should have said so last year;
and I don't know what it is keeps me from saying so
now. I suppose I know a little more about things
than I did; and your father's being so bent on it
sets me all in a twitter. He thinks his money can
do everything. Well, I don't say but what it can,
a good many. And 'Rene is as good a child as ever
there was; and I don't see but what she's pretty-appearing
enough to suit any one. She's pretty-behaved,
too; and she is the most capable girl. I
presume young men don't care very much for such
things nowadays; but there ain't a great many girls
can go right into the kitchen, and make such a
custard as she did yesterday. And look at the way
she does, through the whole house! She can't seem
to go into a room without the things fly right into
their places. And if she had to do it to-morrow, she
could make all her own dresses a great deal better
than them we pay to do it. I don't say but what
he's about as nice a fellow as ever stepped. But
there! I'm ashamed of going on so."
"Well, mother," said the girl after a pause, in
which she looked as if a little weary of the subject,
"why do you worry about it? If it's to be it'll be,
and if it isn't"—
"Yes, that's what I tell your father. But when
it comes to myself, I see how hard it is for him to
rest quiet. I'm afraid we shall all do something
we'll repent of afterwards."
"Well, ma'am," said Penelope, "I don't intend
to do anything wrong; but if I do, I promise not to
be sorry for it. I'll go that far. And I think I
wouldn't be sorry for it beforehand, if I were in your
place, mother. Let the Colonel go on! He likes to
manœuvre, and he isn't going to hurt any one. The
Corey family can take care of themselves, I guess."
She laughed in her throat, drawing down the
corners of her mouth, and enjoying the resolution
with which her mother tried to fling off the burden
of her anxieties. "Pen! I believe you're right.
You always do see things in such a light! There!
I don't care if he brings him down every day."
"Well, ma'am," said Pen, "I don't believe 'Rene
would, either. She's just so indifferent!"
The Colonel slept badly that night, and in the
morning Mrs. Lapham came to breakfast without
him.
"Your father ain't well," she reported. "He's
had one of his turns."
"I should have thought he had two or three of
them," said Penelope, "by the stamping round I
heard. Isn't he coming to breakfast?"
"Not just yet," said her mother. "He's asleep,
and he'll be all right if he gets his nap out. I don't
want you girls should make any great noise."
"Oh, we'll be quiet enough," returned Penelope.
"Well, I'm glad the Colonel isn't sojering. At first
I thought he might be sojering." She broke into
a laugh, and, struggling indolently with it, looked at
her sister. "You don't think it'll be necessary for
anybody to come down from the office and take
orders from him while he's laid up, do you,
mother?" she inquired.
"Pen!" cried Irene.
"He'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock
boat," said the mother sharply.
"I think papa works too hard all through the
summer. Why don't you make him take a rest,
mamma?" asked Irene.
"Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every
year. It used to be so that he'd take a little time
off now and then; but I declare, he hardly ever
seems to breathe now away from his office. And
this year he says he doesn't intend to go down to
Lapham, except to see after the works for a few
days. I don't know what to do with the man any
more! Seems as if the more money he got, the more
he wanted to get. It scares me to think what would
happen to him if he lost it. I know one thing," concluded
Mrs. Lapham. "He shall not go back to the
office to-day."
"Then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat,"
Pen reminded her.
"No, he won't. You can just drive over to the
hotel as soon as you're through, girls, and telegraph
that he's not well, and won't be at the office till tomorrow.
I'm not going to have them send anybody
down here to bother him."
"That's a blow," said Pen. "I didn't know but
they might send—" she looked demurely at her
sister—"Dennis!"
"Mamma!" cried Irene.
"Well, I declare, there's no living with this
family any more," said Penelope.
"There, Pen, be done!" commanded her mother.
But perhaps she did not intend to forbid her teasing.
It gave a pleasant sort of reality to the affair that
was in her mind, and made what she wished appear
not only possible but probable.
Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and
rebelling as each boat departed without him, through
the day; before night he became very cross, in spite
of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and
grumbled that he had been kept from going up to
town. "I might as well have gone as not," he repeated,
till his wife lost her patience.
"Well, you shall go to-morrow, Silas, if you have
to be carried to the boat."
"I declare," said Penelope, "the Colonel don't
pet worth a cent."
The six o'clock boat brought Corey. The girls
were sitting on the piazza, and Irene saw him
first.
"O Pen!" she whispered, with her heart in
before he was at the steps.
"I hope Colonel Lapham isn't ill," he said, and
they could hear their mother engaged in a moral contest
with their father indoors.
"Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It
don't matter how he sees you at the office, shirt-sleeves
or not. You're in a gentleman's house now
—or you ought to be—and you shan't see company
in your dressing-gown."
Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother's anger.
"Oh, he's very much better, thank you!" said
Irene, speaking up loudly to drown the noise of the
controversy.
"I'm glad of that," said Corey, and when she led
him indoors the vanquished Colonel met his visitor
in a double breasted frock-coat, which he was still
buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at
once that Corey had not come upon some urgent
business matter, and when he was clear that he had
come out of civility, surprise mingled with his gratification
that he should be the object of solicitude to
the young man. In Lapham's circle of acquaintance
they complained when they were sick, but they made
no womanish inquiries after one another's health,
and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters
were serious. He would have enlarged upon the
particulars of his indisposition if he had been allowed
to do so; and after tea, which Corey took with them,
he would have remained to entertain him if his wife
had not sent him to bed. She followed him to see
him, but she went first to Penelope's room, where
she found the girl with a book in her hand, which
she was not reading.
"You better go down," said the mother. "I've
got to go to your father, and Irene is all alone
with Mr. Corey; and I know she'll be on pins and
needles without you're there to help make it go off."
"She'd better try to get along without me, mother,"
said Penelope soberly. "I can't always be with
them."
"Well," replied Mrs. Lapham, "then I must.
There'll be a perfect Quaker meeting down there."
"Oh, I guess 'Rene will find something to say if
you leave her to herself. Or if she don't, he must.
It'll be all right for you to go down when you get
ready; but I shan't go till toward the last. If he's
coming here to see Irene—and I don't believe he's
come on father's account—he wants to see her and
not me. If she can't interest him alone, perhaps
he'd as well find it out now as any time. At any
rate, I guess you'd better make the experiment.
You'll know whether it's a success if he comes
again."
"Well," said the mother, "may be you're right.
I'll go down directly. It does seem as if he did
mean something, after all."
Mrs. Lapham did not hasten to return to her
guest. In her own girlhood it was supposed that if a
young man seemed to be coming to see a girl, it was
only common-sense to suppose that he wished to
Lapham's simple traditions in this respect unchanged.
She did with her daughter as her mother would
have done with her.
Where Penelope sat with her book, she heard the
continuous murmur of voices below, and after a long
interval she heard her mother descend. She did
not read the open book that lay in her lap, though
she kept her eyes fast on the print. Once she rose
and almost shut the door, so that she could scarcely
hear; then she opened it wide again with a self-disdainful
air, and resolutely went back to her book,
which again she did not read. But she remained in
her room till it was nearly time for Corey to return
to his boat.
When they were alone again, Irene made a feint of
scolding her for leaving her to entertain Mr. Corey.
"Why! didn't you have a pleasant call?" asked
Penelope.
Irene threw her arms round her. "Oh, it was a
splendid call! I didn't suppose I could make it go
off so well. We talked nearly the whole time about
you!"
"I don't think that was a very interesting subject."
"He kept asking about you. He asked everything.
You don't know how much he thinks of
you, Pen. O Pen! what do you think made him
come? Do you think he really did come to see how
papa was?" Irene buried her face in her sister's
neck.
Penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting.
"Well," she said, "I don't think he did,
altogether."
Irene, all glowing, released her. "Don't you—
don't you really? O Pen! don't you think he is
nice? Don't you think he's handsome? Don't you
think I behaved horridly when we first met him this
evening, not thanking him for coming? I know he
thinks I've no manners. But it seemed as if it would
be thanking him for coming to see me. Ought I to
have asked him to come again, when he said good-night?
I didn't; I couldn't. Do you believe he'll
think I don't want him to? You don't believe he
would keep coming if he didn't—want to—"
"He hasn't kept coming a great deal, yet," suggested
Penelope.
"No; I know he hasn't. But if he—if he
should?"
"Then I should think he wanted to."
"Oh, would you—would you? Oh, how good you
always are, Pen! And you always say what you
think. I wish there was some one coming to see
you too. That's all that I don't like about it.
Perhaps— He was telling about his friend there
in Texas—"
"Well," said Penelope, "his friend couldn't call
often from Texas. You needn't ask Mr. Corey to
trouble about me, 'Rene. I think I can manage to
worry along, if you're satisfied."
"Oh, I am, Pen. When do you suppose he'll
come again?" Irene pushed some of Penelope's
and talk at ease. Penelope came up and put them
back.
"Well, not to-night," she said; "and if that's
what you're sitting up for—"
Irene caught her round the neck again, and ran
out of the room.
The Colonel was packed off on the eight o'clock
boat the next morning; but his recovery did not
prevent Corey from repeating his visit in a week.
This time Irene came radiantly up to Penelope's
room, where she had again withdrawn herself.
"You must come down, Pen," she said. "He's
asked if you're not well, and mamma says you've
got to come."
After that Penelope helped Irene through with
her calls, and talked them over with her far into
the night after Corey was gone. But when the impatient
curiosity of her mother pressed her for some
opinion of the affair, she said, "You know as much
as I do, mother."
"Don't he ever say anything to you about her—
praise her up, any?"
"He's never mentioned Irene to me."
"He hasn't to me, either," said Mrs. Lapham,
with a sigh of trouble. "Then what makes him
keep coming?"
"I can't tell you. One thing, he says there isn't
a house open in Boston where he's acquainted.
Wait till some of his friends get back, and then if
he keeps coming, it'll be time to inquire."
"Well!" said the mother; but as the weeks
passed she was less and less able to attribute Corey's
visits to his loneliness in town, and turned to her
husband for comfort.
"Silas, I don't know as we ought to let young
Corey keep coming so. I don't quite like it, with
all his family away."
"He's of age," said the Colonel. "He can go
where he pleases. It don't matter whether his
family's here or not."
"Yes, but if they don't want he should come?
Should you feel just right about letting him?"
"How're you going to stop him? I swear,
Persis, I don't know what's got over you! What
is it? You didn't use to be so. But to hear you
talk, you'd think those Coreys were too good for
this world, and we wan't fit for 'em to walk on."
"I'm not going to have 'em say we took an
advantage of their being away and tolled him on."
"I should like to hear 'em say it!" cried Lapham.
"Or anybody!"
"Well," said his wife, relinquishing this point of
anxiety, "I can't make out whether he cares anything
for her or not. And Pen can't tell either; or
else she won't."
"Oh, I guess he cares for her, fast enough," said
the Colonel.
"I can't make out that he's said or done the
first thing to show it."
"Well, I was better than a year getting my
courage up."
"Oh, that was different," said Mrs. Lapham, in
contemptuous dismissal of the comparison, and yet
with a certain fondness. "I guess, if he cared for
her, a fellow in his position wouldn't be long getting
up his courage to speak to Irene."
Lapham brought his fist down on the table
between them.
"Look here, Persis! Once for all, now, don't
you ever let me hear you say anything like that
again! I'm worth nigh on to a million, and I've
made it every cent myself; and my girls are the
equals of anybody, I don't care who it is. He ain't
the fellow to take on any airs; but if he ever tries
it with me, I'll send him to the right about mighty
quick. I'll have a talk with him, if—"
"No, no; don't do that!" implored his wife. "I
didn't mean anything. I don't know as I meant anything.
He's just as unassuming as he can be, and I
think Irene's a match for anybody. You just let
things go on. It'll be all right. You never can tell
how it is with young people. Perhaps she's offish.
Now you ain't—you ain't going to say anything?"
Lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the
more easily, no doubt, because after his explosion
he must have perceived that his pride itself stood
in the way of what his pride had threatened. He
contented himself with his wife's promise that she
would never again present that offensive view of
the case, and she did not remain without a certain
support in his sturdy self-assertion.
| XI. The rise of Silas Lapham | |