University of Virginia Library

XIII.

Having distinctly given up the project of asking
the Laphams to dinner, Mrs. Corey was able to carry
it out with the courage of sinners who have sacrificed
to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to
their intended transgression. She did not question
but the Laphams would come; and she only doubted
as to the people whom she should invite to meet
them. She opened the matter with some trepidation
to her daughters, but neither of them opposed her;
they rather looked at the scheme from her own point
of view, and agreed with her that nothing had really
yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams
helplessly contracted the summer before, and
strengthened by that ill-advised application to Mrs.
Lapham for charity. Not only the principal of their
debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing interest.
They said, What harm could giving the dinner possibly
do them? They might ask any or all of their
acquaintance without disadvantage to themselves;
but it would be perfectly easy to give the dinner
just the character they chose, and still flatter the
ignorance of the Laphams. The trouble would be

with Tom, if he were really interested in the girl;
but he could not say anything if they made it a
family dinner; he could not feel anything. They
had each turned in her own mind, as it appeared
from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most comprehensive
of those cousinships which form the
admiration and terror of the adventurer in Boston
society. He finds himself hemmed in and left out
at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all
hope of safe personality in his comments on people;
he is never less secure than when he hears some
given Bostonian denouncing or ridiculing another.
If he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring
in these criticisms, however just they appear,
for the probability is that their object is a cousin of
not more than one remove from the censor. When
the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling one
another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends,
by the familiar abbreviations of their Christian
names, he must feel keenly the exile to which he
was born; but he is then, at least, in comparatively
little danger; while these latent and tacit cousinships
open pitfalls at every step around him, in a
society where Middlesexes have married Essexes
and produced Suffolks for two hundred and fifty
years.

These conditions, however, so perilous to the
foreigner, are a source of strength and security to
those native to them. An uncertain acquaintance
may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such
a cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it

and tremendous stories are told of people who
have spent a whole winter in Boston, in a whirl of
gaiety, and who, the original guests of the Suffolks,
discover upon reflection that they have met no
one but Essexes and Middlesexes.

Mrs. Corey's brother James came first into her
mind, and she thought with uncommon toleration of
the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of his wife.
James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son
throughout, and might be said to have actively promoted
his connection with Lapham. She thought
next of the widow of her cousin, Henry Bellingham,
who had let her daughter marry that Western steamboat
man, and was fond of her son-in-law; she might
be expected at least to endure the paint-king and his
family. The daughters insisted so strongly upon
Mrs. Bellingham's son Charles, that Mrs. Corey put
him down—if he were in town; he might be in Central
America; he got on with all sorts of people. It
seemed to her that she might stop at this: four
Laphams, five Coreys, and four Bellinghams were
enough.

"That makes thirteen," said Nanny. "You can
have Mr. and Mrs. Sewell."

"Yes, that is a good idea," assented Mrs. Corey.
"He is our minister, and it is very proper."

"I don't see why you don't have Robert Chase.
It is a pity he shouldn't see her—for the colour."

"I don't quite like the idea of that," said Mrs.
Corey; "but we can have him too, if it won't make
too many." The painter had married into a poorer

branch of the Coreys, and his wife was dead. "Is
there any one else?"

"There is Miss Kingsbury."

"We have had her so much. She will begin to
think we are using her."

"She won't mind; she's so good-natured."

"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are
four Laphams, five Coreys, four Bellinghams, one
Chase, and one Kingsbury—fifteen. Oh! and two
Sewells. Seventeen. Ten ladies and seven gentlemen.
It doesn't balance very well, and it's too
large."

"Perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested
Lily.

"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny.

Their mother reflected. "Well, I will ask them.
The ladies will refuse in time to let us pick up some
gentlemen somewhere; some more artists. Why!
we must have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he's a
bachelor, and he's building their house, Tom says."

Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her
son's name, and she told him of her plan, when
he came home in the evening, with evident misgiving.

"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked,
looking at her with his honest eyes.

She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I
won't do it at all, my dear," she said, "if you don't
approve. But I thought— You know we have
never made any proper acknowledgment of their
kindness to us at Baie St. Paul. Then in the

winter, I'm ashamed to say, I got money from her
for a charity I was interested in; and I hate the
idea of merely using people in that way. And now
your having been at their house this summer—we
can't seem to disapprove of that; and your business
relations to him—"

"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it
amounts to a dinner?"

"Why, I don't know," returned his mother.
"We shall have hardly any one out of our family
connection."

"Well," Corey assented, "it might do. I suppose
what you wish is to give them a pleasure."

"Why, certainly. Don't you think they'd like to
come?"

"Oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would
be a pleasure after they were here is another thing.
I should have said that if you wanted to have them,
they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet
our own immediate family."

"That's what I thought of in the first place, but
your father seemed to think it implied a social distrust
of them; and we couldn't afford to have that
appearance, even to ourselves."

"Perhaps he was right."

"And besides, it might seem a little significant."

Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration.
"Whom did you think of asking?" His mother
repeated the names. "Yes, that would do," he
said, with a vague dissatisfaction.

"I won't have it at all, if you don't wish, Tom."

"Oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. Yes, I
dare say it's right. What did you mean by a family
dinner seeming significant?"

His mother hesitated. When it came to that, she
did not like to recognise in his presence the anxieties
that had troubled her. But "I don't know," she
said, since she must. "I shouldn't want to give
that young girl, or her mother, the idea that we
wished to make more of the acquaintance than—
than you did, Tom."

He looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did
not take her meaning. But he said, "Oh yes, of
course," and Mrs. Corey, in the uncertainty in which
she seemed destined to remain concerning this affair,
went off and wrote her invitation to Mrs. Lapham.
Later in the evening, when they again found themselves
alone, her son said, "I don't think I understood
you, mother, in regard to the Laphams. I
think I do now. I certainly don't wish you to make
more of the acquaintance than I have done. It
wouldn't be right; it might be very unfortunate.
Don't give the dinner!"

"It's too late now, my son," said Mrs. Corey.
"I sent my note to Mrs. Lapham an hour ago."
Her courage rose at the trouble which showed in
Corey's face. "But don't be annoyed by it, Tom.
It isn't a family dinner, you know, and everything
can be managed without embarrassment. If we
take up the affair at this point, you will seem to
have been merely acting for us; and they can't
possibly understand anything more."

"Well, well! Let it go! I dare say it's all right.
At any rate, it can't be helped now."

"I don't wish to help it, Tom," said Mrs. Corey,
with a cheerfulness which the thought of the Laphams
had never brought her before. "I am sure it is
quite fit and proper, and we can make them have a
very pleasant time. They are good, inoffensive
people, and we owe it to ourselves not to be afraid
to show that we have felt their kindness to us, and
his appreciation of you."

"Well," consented Corey. The trouble that his
mother had suddenly cast off was in his tone; but
she was not sorry. It was quite time that he should
think seriously of his attitude toward these people if
he had not thought of it before, but, according to
his father's theory, had been merely dangling.

It was a view of her son's character that could
hardly have pleased her in different circumstances,
yet it was now unquestionably a consolation if not
wholly a pleasure. If she considered the Laphams
at all, it was with the resignation which we feel at
the evils of others, even when they have not brought
them on themselves.

Mrs. Lapham, for her part, had spent the hours
between Mrs. Corey's visit and her husband's coming
home from business in reaching the same conclusion
with regard to Corey; and her spirits were at the
lowest when they sat down to supper. Irene was
downcast with her; Penelope was purposely gay; and
the Colonel was beginning, after his first plate of the
boiled ham,—which, bristling with cloves, rounded

its bulk on a wide platter before him,—to take note
of the surrounding mood, when the door-bell jingled
peremptorily, and the girl left waiting on the table
to go and answer it. She returned at once with a
note for Mrs. Lapham, which she read, and then,
after a helpless survey of her family, read again.

"Why, what is it, mamma?" asked Irene, while
the Colonel, who had taken up his carving-knife for
another attack on the ham, held it drawn half across
it.

"Why, I don't know what it does mean," answered
Mrs. Lapham tremulously, and she let the girl take
the note from her.

Irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at
the end with a joyful cry and a flush that burned
to the top of her forehead. Then she began to read
it once more.

The Colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently,
and Mrs. Lapham said, "You read it out
loud, if you know what to make of it, Irene." But
Irene, with a nervous scream of protest, handed it
to her father, who performed the office.

The brief invitation had been spread over two
pages, and the Colonel had difficulties with the
signature which he did not instantly surmount.
When he had made out the name and pronounced
it, he looked across at his wife for an explanation.

"I don't know what it all means," she said,
shaking her head and speaking with a pleased
flutter. "She was here this afternoon, and I should
have said she had come to see how bad she could
make us feel. I declare I never felt so put down in
my life by anybody."

"Why, what did she do? What did she say?"
Lapham was ready, in his dense pride, to resent any
affront to his blood, but doubtful, with the evidence
of this invitation to the contrary, if any affront had
been offered. Mrs. Lapham tried to tell him, but
there was really nothing tangible; and when she
came to put it into words, she could not make out
a case. Her husband listened to her excited attempt,
and then he said, with judicial superiority,
"I guess nobody's been trying to make you feel bad,
Persis. What would she go right home and invite
you to dinner for, if she'd acted the way you say?"

In this view it did seem improbable, and Mrs.
Lapham was shaken. She could only say, "Penelope
felt just the way I did about it."

Lapham looked at the girl, who said, "Oh, I can't
prove it! I begin to think it never happened. I
guess it didn't."

"Humph!" said her father, and he sat frowning
thoughtfully a while—ignoring her mocking irony, or
choosing to take her seriously. "You can't really
put your finger on anything," he said to his wife,
"and it ain't likely there is anything. Anyway,
she's done the proper thing by you now."

Mrs. Lapham faltered between her lingering resentment
and the appeals of her flattered vanity.
She looked from Penelope's impassive face to the
eager eyes of Irene. "Well—just as you say, Silas.
I don't know as she was so very bad. I guess may
be she was embarrassed some—"

"That's what I told you, mamma, from the start,"
interrupted Irene. "Didn't I tell you she didn't
mean anything by it? It's just the way she acted
at Baie St. Paul, when she got well enough to realise
what you'd done for her!"

Penelope broke into a laugh. "Is that her way
of showing her gratitude? I'm sorry I didn't understand
that before."

Irene made no effort to reply. She merely looked
from her mother to her father with a grieved face
for their protection and Lapham said, "When we've
done supper, you answer her, Persis. Say we'll
come."

"With one exception," said Penelope.

"What do you mean?" demanded her father,
with a mouth full of ham.

"Oh, nothing of importance. Merely that I'm
not going."

Lapham gave himself time to swallow his morsel,
and his rising wrath went down with it. "I guess
you'll change your mind when the time comes," he
said. "Anyway, Persis, you say we'll all come, and
then, if Penelope don't want to go, you can excuse
her after we get there. That's the best way."

None of them, apparently, saw any reason why
the affair should not be left in this way, or had a
sense of the awful and binding nature of a dinner
engagement. If she believed that Penelope would
not finally change her mind and go, no doubt Mrs.
Lapham thought that Mrs. Corey would easily excuse
her absence. She did not find it so simple a matter
to accept the invitation. Mrs. Corey had said "Dear
Mrs. Lapham," but Mrs. Lapham had her doubts
whether it would not be a servile imitation to say
"Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was tormented
as to the proper phrasing throughout and
the precise temperature which she should impart to
her politeness. She wrote an unpractised, uncharacteristic
round hand, the same in which she used to
set the children's copies at school, and she subscribed
herself, after some hesitation between her husband's
given name and her own, "Yours truly, Mrs. S.
Lapham."

Penelope had gone to her room, without waiting to
be asked to advise or criticise; but Irene had decided
upon the paper, and on the whole, Mrs. Lapham's
note made a very decent appearance on the page.

When the furnace-man came, the Colonel sent him
out to post it in the box at the corner of the square.
He had determined not to say anything more about
the matter before the girls, not choosing to let them
see that he was elated; he tried to give the effect of
its being an everyday sort of thing, abruptly closing
the discussion with his order to Mrs. Lapham to
accept; but he had remained swelling behind his
newspaper during her prolonged struggle with her
note, and he could no longer hide his elation when
Irene followed her sister upstairs.

"Well, Pers," he demanded, "what do you say
now?"

Mrs. Lapham had been sobered into something of
her former misgiving by her difficulties with her
note. "Well, I don't know what to say. I declare,
I'm all mixed up about it, and I don't know as
we've begun as we can carry out in promising to go.
I presume," she sighed, "that we can all send some
excuse at the last moment, if we don't want to go."

"I guess we can carry out, and I guess we shan't
want to send any excuse," bragged the Colonel.
"If we're ever going to be anybody at all, we've
got to go and see how it's done. I presume we've
got to give some sort of party when we get into the
new house, and this gives the chance to ask 'em back
again. You can't complain now but what they've
made the advances, Persis?"

"No," said Mrs. Lapham lifelessly; "I wonder
why they wanted to do it. Oh, I suppose it's all
right," she added in deprecation of the anger with

her humility which she saw rising in her husband's
face; "but if it's all going to be as much trouble as
that letter, I'd rather be whipped. I don't know
what I'm going to wear; or the girls either. I do
wonder—I've heard that people go to dinner in low-necks.
Do you suppose it's the custom?"

"How should I know?" demanded the Colonel.
"I guess you've got clothes enough. Any rate, you
needn't fret about it. You just go round to White's
or Jordan & Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress.
I guess that'll settle it; they'll know. Get some
of them imported dresses. I see 'em in the window
every time I pass; lots of 'em."

"Oh, it ain't the dress!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I
don't suppose but what we could get along with that;
and I want to do the best we can for the children;
but I don't know what we're going to talk about to
those people when we get there. We haven't got
anything in common with them. Oh, I don't say
they're any better," she again made haste to say in
arrest of her husband's resentment. "I don't believe
they are; and I don't see why they should be.
And there ain't anybody has got a better right to
hold up their head than you have, Silas. You've
got plenty of money, and you've made every cent
of it."

"I guess I shouldn't amounted to much without
you, Persis," interposed Lapham, moved to this
justice by her praise.

"Oh, don't talk about me!" protested the wife.
"Now that you've made it all right about Rogers,

there ain't a thing in this world against you. But
still, for all that, I can see—and I can feel it when I
can't see it—that we're different from those people.
They're well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it,
I presume, but we're too old to learn to be like
them."

"The children ain't," said Lapham shrewdly.

"No, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and
that's the only thing that reconciles me to it."

"You see how pleased Irene looked when I read
it?"

"Yes, she was pleased."

"And I guess Penelope'll think better of it before
the time comes."

"Oh yes, we do it for them. But whether we're
doing the best thing for 'em, goodness knows. I'm
not saying anything against him. Irene'll be a lucky
girl to get him, if she wants him. But there! I'd
ten times rather she was going to marry such a
fellow as you were, Si, that had to make every inch
of his own way, and she had to help him. It's in
her!"

Lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's
fondness; but neither of them wished that he should
respond directly to it. "I guess, if it wan't for me,
he wouldn't have a much easier time. But don't
you fret! It's all coming out right. That dinner
ain't a thing for you to be uneasy about. It'll pass
off perfectly easy and natural."

Lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite
to the end of the week that followed. It was his

theory not to let Corey see that he was set up about
the invitation, and when the young man said politely
that his mother was glad they were able to come,
Lapham was very short with him. He said yes, he
believed that Mrs. Lapham and the girls were going.
Afterward he was afraid Corey might not understand
that he was coming too; but he did not know
how to approach the subject again, and Corey did
not, so he let it pass. It worried him to see all the
preparation that his wife and Irene were making,
and he tried to laugh at them for it; and it worried
him to find that Penelope was making no preparation
at all for herself, but only helping the others. He
asked her what should she do if she changed her
mind at the last moment and concluded to go, and
she said she guessed she should not change her
mind, but if she did, she would go to White's with
him and get him to choose her an imported dress,
he seemed to like them so much. He was too proud
to mention the subject again to her.

Finally, all that dress-making in the house began
to scare him with vague apprehensions in regard to
his own dress. As soon as he had determined to go,
an ideal of the figure in which he should go presented
itself to his mind. He should not wear any
dress-coat, because, for one thing, he considered that
a man looked like a fool in a dress-coat, and, for
another thing, he had none—had none on principle.
He would go in a frock-coat and black pantaloons,
and perhaps a white waistcoat, but a black cravat
anyway. But as soon as he developed this ideal to

his family, which he did in pompous disdain of their
anxieties about their own dress, they said he should
not go so. Irene reminded him that he was the only
person without a dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner
which he had taken her to some years before, and
she remembered feeling awfully about it at the time.
Mrs. Lapham, who would perhaps have agreed of
herself, shook her head with misgiving. "I don't
see but what you'll have to get you one, Si," she
said. "I don't believe they ever go without 'em to a
private house."

He held out openly, but on his way home the
next day, in a sudden panic, he cast anchor before
his tailor's door and got measured for a dress-coat.
After that he began to be afflicted about his waistcoat,
concerning which he had hitherto been airily
indifferent. He tried to get opinion out of his
family, but they were not so clear about it as they
were about the frock. It ended in their buying a
book of etiquette, which settled the question adversely
to a white waistcoat. The author, however,
after being very explicit in telling them not to eat
with their knives, and above all not to pick their
teeth with their forks,—a thing which he said no
lady or gentleman ever did,—was still far from decided
as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought
to wear: shaken on other points, Lapham had begun
to waver also concerning the black cravat. As to
the question of gloves for the Colonel, which suddenly
flashed upon him one evening, it appeared
never to have entered the thoughts of the etiquette

man, as Lapham called him. Other authors on the
same subject were equally silent, and Irene could only
remember having heard, in some vague sort of way,
that gentlemen did not wear gloves so much any more.

Drops of perspiration gathered on Lapham's forehead
in the anxiety of the debate; he groaned, and
he swore a little in the compromise profanity which
he used.

"I declare," said Penelope, where she sat purblindly
sewing on a bit of dress for Irene, "the
Colonel's clothes are as much trouble as anybody's.
Why don't you go to Jordan & Marsh's and order
one of the imported dresses for yourself, father?"
That gave them all the relief of a laugh over it, the
Colonel joining in piteously.

He had an awful longing to find out from Corey
how he ought to go. He formulated and repeated
over to himself an apparently careless question, such
as, "Oh, by the way, Corey, where do you get your
gloves?" This would naturally lead to some talk
on the subject, which would, if properly managed,
clear up the whole trouble. But Lapham found that
he would rather die than ask this question, or any
question that would bring up the dinner again.
Corey did not recur to it, and Lapham avoided the
matter with positive fierceness. He shunned talking
with Corey at all, and suffered in grim silence.

One night, before they fell asleep, his wife said to
him, "I was reading in one of those books to-day,
and I don't believe but what we've made a mistake
if Pen holds out that she won't go."

"Why?" demanded Lapham, in the dismay which
beset him at every fresh recurrence to the subject.

"The book says that it's very impolite not to
answer a dinner invitation promptly. Well, we've
done that all right,—at first I didn't know but what
we had been a little too quick, may be,—but then it
says if you're not going, that it's the height of rudeness
not to let them know at once, so that they can
fill your place at the table."

The Colonel was silent for a while. "Well, I,'m
dumned," he said finally, "if there seems to be any
end to this thing. If it was to do over again, I'd
say no for all of us."

"I've wished a hundred times they hadn't asked
us; but it's too late to think about that now. The
question is, what are we going to do about Penelope?"

"Oh, I guess she'll go, at the last moment."

"She says she won't. She took a prejudice
against Mrs. Corey that day, and she can't seem to
get over it."

"Well, then, hadn't you better write in the morning,
as soon as you're up, that she ain't coming?"

Mrs. Lapham sighed helplessly. "I shouldn't
know how to get it in. It's so late now; I don't
see how I could have the face."

"Well, then, she's got to go, that's all."

"She's set she won't."

"And I'm set she shall," said Lapham with the
loud obstinacy of a man whose women always have
their way.

Mrs. Lapham was not supported by the sturdiness
of his proclamation.

But she did not know how to do what she knew
she ought to do about Penelope, and she let matters
drift. After all, the child had a right to stay at
home if she did not wish to go. That was what
Mrs. Lapham felt, and what she said to her husband
next morning, bidding him let Penelope alone, unless
she chose herself to go. She said it was too late
now to do anything, and she must make the best
excuse she could when she saw Mrs. Corey. She
began to wish that Irene and her father would go
and excuse her too. She could not help saying this,
and then she and Lapham had some unpleasant words.

"Look here!" he cried. "Who wanted to go in
for these people in the first place? Didn't you come
home full of'em last year, and want me to sell out
here and move somewheres else because it didn't seem
to suit'em? And now you want to put it all on me!
I ain't going to stand it."

"Hush!" said his wife. "Do you want to raise
the house? I didn't put it on you, as you say. You
took it on yourself. Ever since that fellow happened
to come into the new house that day, you've been
perfectly crazy to get in with them. And now
you're so afraid you shall do something wrong before'em,
you don't hardly dare to say your life's
your own. I declare, if you pester me any more
about those gloves, Silas Lapham, I won't go."

"Do you suppose I want to go on my own
account?" he demanded furiously.

"No," she admitted. "Of course I don't. I know
very well that you're doing it for Irene; but, for
goodness gracious' sake, don't worry our lives out,
and make yourself a perfect laughing-stock before
the children."

With this modified concession from her, the
quarrel closed in sullen silence on Lapham's part.
The night before the dinner came, and the question
of his gloves was still unsettled, and in a fair way to
remain so. He had bought a pair, so as to be on the
safe side, perspiring in company with the young lady
who sold them, and who helped him try them on
at the shop; his nails were still full of the powder
which she had plentifully peppered into them in
order to overcome the resistance of his blunt fingers.
But he was uncertain whether he should wear them.
They had found a book at last that said the ladies
removed their gloves on sitting down at table, but it
said nothing about gentlemen's gloves. He left his
wife where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass
in her new dress, and went down to his own den
beyond the parlour. Before he shut his door he
caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before
the long mirror in her new dress, followed by
the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her
mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made
Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her
train; Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling.
It made Lapham sick, and he despised himself
and all his brood for the trouble they were
taking. But another glance gave him a sight of the

young girl's face in the mirror, beautiful and radiant
with happiness, and his heart melted again with
paternal tenderness and pride. It was going to be a
great pleasure to Irene, and Lapham felt that she
was bound to cut out anything there. He was vexed
with Penelope that she was not going too; he would
have liked to have those people hear her talk. He
held his door a little open, and listened to the things
she was "getting off" there to Irene. He showed
that he felt really hurt and disappointed about Penelope,
and the girl's mother made her console him the
next evening before they all drove away without her.
"You try to look on the bright side of it, father.
I guess you'll see that it's best I didn't go when you
get there. Irene needn't open her lips, and they can
all see how pretty she is; but they wouldn't know
how smart I was unless I talked, and maybe then
they wouldn't."

This thrust at her father's simple vanity in her
made him laugh; and then they drove away, and
Penelope shut the door, and went upstairs with her
lips firmly shutting in a sob.