University of Virginia Library

XVIII.

Mrs. Lapham went away to put on her bonnet
and cloak, and she was waiting at the window when
her husband drove up. She opened the door and
ran down the steps. "Don't get out; I can help
myself in," and she clambered to his side, while he
kept the fidgeting mare still with voice and touch.

"Where do you want I should go?" he asked,
turning the buggy.

"Oh, I don't care. Out Brookline way, I guess.
I wish you hadn't brought this fool of a horse," she
gave way petulantly. "I wanted to have a talk."

"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll
sell out altogether," said Lapham. "She'll be
quiet enough when she's had her spin."

"Well," said his wife; and while they were
making their way across the city to the Milldam she
answered certain questions he asked about some
points in the new house.

"I should have liked to have you stop there,"
he began; but she answered so quickly, "Not today,"
that he gave it up and turned his horse's head
westward when they struck Beacon Street.

He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in
till he left the Brighton road and struck off under
the low boughs that met above one of the quiet
streets of Brookline, where the stone cottages, with
here and there a patch of determined ivy on their
northern walls, did what they could to look English
amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. The smooth
earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered
with flakes of the red and yellow gold that made
the air luminous around them, and the perspective
was gay with innumerable tints and tones.

"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sign,
letting the reins lie loose in his vigilant hand, to
which he seemed to relegate the whole charge of
the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers,
Persis. He's been getting in deeper and deeper
with me; and last night he pestered me half to
death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I
ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very
much confidence in Rogers. And I told him so last
night."

"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife
broke in. "There's something a good deal more
important than Rogers in the world, and more important
than your business. It seems as if you
couldn't think of anything else—that and the new
house. Did you suppose I wanted to ride so as to
talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to
the necessity a wife feels of making her husband
pay for her suffering, even if he has not inflicted it.
"I declare—"

"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham. "What
do you want to talk about? I'm listening."

His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas
Lapham!" and then she broke off to say, "Well,
you may wait, now—starting me wrong, when it's
hard enough anyway."

Lapham silently turned his whip over and over in
his hand and waited.

"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that
young Corey had been coming to see Irene?"

"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham
sullenly. "You always said so." He looked sharply
at her under his lowering brows.

"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she
replied to the frown that blackened on her husband's
face. "And I can tell you what, if you take it in
that way I shan't speak another word."

"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham
savagely. "What are you drivin' at?"

"I want you should promise that you'll hear me
out quietly."

"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. I
haven't said a word yet."

"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into
forty furies, and looking like a perfect thundercloud
at the very start. I've had to bear it, and
you've got to bear it too."

"Well, let me have a chance at it, then."

"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can
see, and the only question is, what's the best thing
to do about it. There's only one thing we can do;

for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to
make him. If he hasn't been coming to see her, he
hasn't, and that's all there is to it."

"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham.

"There!" protested his wife.

"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what has he
been coming for?"

"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife.
"Now are you satisfied?" Her tone implied that he
had brought it all upon them; but at the sight of
the swift passions working in his face to a perfect
comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to
trembling, and her broken voice lost all the spurious
indignation she had put into it. "O Silas! what
are we going to do about it? I'm afraid it'll kill
Irene."

Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his
right hand with the fingers of his left, in which the
reins lay. He passed it over his forehead, and then
flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there.
He caught his breath once or twice, like a man who
meditates a struggle with superior force and then
remains passive in its grasp.

His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she
had felt the need of afflicting him. "I don't say but
what it can be made to come out all right in the end.
All I say is, I don't see my way clear yet."

"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked
quietly.

"He told her so last night, and she told me this
morning. Was he at the office to-day?"

"Yes, he was there. I haven't been there much
myself. He didn't say anything to me. Does Irene
know?"

"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping.
She wants to get a pin like the one Nanny Corey
had on."

"O my Lord!" groaned Lapham.

"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost
from the start. I don't say but what he was
attracted some by Irene at the very first; but I
guess it's been Pen ever since he saw her; and
we've taken up with a notion, and blinded ourselves
with it. Time and again I've had my doubts
whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare to
goodness, when he kept coming, I never hardly
thought of Pen, and I couldn't help believing at
last he did care for Irene. Did it ever strike you
he might be after Pen?"

"No. I took what you said. I supposed you
knew."

"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly.

"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't
either of us want anything but the children's good.
What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that? That's
what we've both slaved for all our lives."

"Yes, I know. Plenty of people lose their
children," she suggested.

"Yes, but that don't comfort me any. I never
was one to feel good because another man felt bad.
How would you have liked it if some one had taken
comfort because his boy lived when ours died?

No, I can't do it. And this is worse than death,
someways. That comes and it goes; but this looks
as if it was one of those things that had come to
stay. The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for
anybody. Suppose we don't want Pen to have him;
will that help Irene any, if he don't want her?
Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does
that help either!"

"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our
say was going to settle it. Do you suppose that
Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a fellow
that her sister is in love with, and that she always
thought was in love with her sister, and go off and
be happy with him? Don't you believe but what it
would come back to her, as long as she breathed the
breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as
I've heard Pen tease Irene, and helped to make her
think he was in love with her, by showing that she
thought so herself? It's ridiculous!"

Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument.
His huge head hung forward over his breast;
the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the mare
took her own way. At last he lifted his face and
shut his heavy jaws.

"Well?" quavered his wife.

"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she
wants him, I don't see what that's got to do with it."
He looked straight forward, and not at his wife.

She laid her hands on the reins. "Now, you stop
right here, Silas Lapham! If I thought that—if I
really believed you could be willing to break that

poor child's heart, and let Pen disgrace herself by
marrying a man that had as good as killed her sister,
just because you wanted Bromfield Corey's son for
a son-in-law—"

Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look.
"You had better not believe that, Persis! Get
up!" he called to the mare, without glancing at her,
and she sprang forward. "I see you've got past
being any use to yourself on this subject."

"Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him. "Where
the devil you goin' to?"

"Do you want to kill somebody?" shrieked his
wife.

There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her
length, and separated their wheels from those of the
open buggy in front which Lapham had driven into.
He made his excuses to the occupant; and the
accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and
left them far from the point of mutual injury which
they had reached in their common trouble and their
unselfish will for their children's good.

It was Lapham who resumed the talk. "I'm
afraid we can't either of us see this thing in the
right light. We're too near to it. I wish to the
Lord there was somebody to talk to about it."

"Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody."

"Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a
moment; "why not talk to the minister of your
church? May be he could see some way out of it."

Mrs. Lapham shook her head hopelessly. "It
wouldn't do. I've never taken up my connection

with the church, and I don't feel as if I'd got any
claim on him."

"If he's anything of a man, or anything of a
preacher, you have got a claim on him," urged Lapham;
and he spoiled his argument by adding, "I've
contributed enough money to his church."

"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs. Lapham. "I
ain't well enough acquainted with Dr. Langworthy,
or else I'm too well. No; if I was to ask any one,
I should want to ask a total stranger. But what's
the use, Si? Nobody could make us see it any different
from what it is, and I don't know as I should
want they should."

It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and
weighed down their hearts ever more heavily within
them. They ceased to talk of it a hundred times,
and still came back to it. They drove on and on.
It began to be late. "I guess we better go back, Si,"
said his wife; and as he turned without speaking,
she pulled her veil down and began to cry softly
behind it, with low little broken sobs.

Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly
homeward. At last his wife stopped crying and
began trying to find her pocket. "Here, take mine,
Persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief,
and she took it and dried her eyes with it. "There
was one of those fellows there the other night," he
spoke again, when his wife leaned back against the
cushions in peaceful despair, "that I liked the looks
of about as well as any man I ever saw. I guess he
was a pretty good man. It was that Mr. Sewell."

He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything.
"Persis," he resumed, "I can't bear to go back with
nothing settled in our minds. I can't bear to let
you."

"We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle
gratitude. Lapham groaned. "Where does he
live?" she asked.

"On Bolingbroke Street. He gave me his
number."

"Well, it wouldn't do any good. What could he
say to us?"

"Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said
Lapham hopelessly; and neither of them said anything
more till they crossed the Milldam and found
themselves between the rows of city houses."

"Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his
wife. "I couldn't bear to see it. Drive—drive up
Bolingbroke Street. We might as well see where
he does live."

"Well," said Lapham. He drove along slowly.
"That's the place," he said finally, stopping the
mare and pointing with his whip.

"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a
tone which he understood as well as he understood
her words. He turned the mare up to the curb-stone.

"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing
them to his wife.

He got down and rang the bell, and waited till
the door opened; then he came back and lifted his
wife out. "He's in," he said.

He got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat
and made it fast to the mare's bit.

"Do you think she'll stand with that?" asked
Mrs. Lapham.

"I guess so. If she don't, no matter."

"Ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted,
trying to make delay.

"Let her!" said Lapham. He took his wife's
trembling hand under his arm, and drew her to the
door.

"He'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her
broken pride.

"Well, we are," said Lapham. "Tell him we'd
like to see him alone a while," he said to the girl
who was holding the door ajar for him, and she
showed him into the reception-room, which had
been the Protestant confessional for many burdened
souls before their time, coming, as they did, with the
belief that they were bowed down with the only
misery like theirs in the universe; for each one of
us must suffer long to himself before he can learn
that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness
which has been pitilessly repeating itself from
the foundation of the world.

They were as loath to touch their trouble when
the minister came in as if it were their disgrace;
but Lapham did so at last, and, with a simple
dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and
apologetic approaches, he laid the affair clearly before
the minister's compassionate and reverent eye.
He spared Corey's name, but he did not pretend that

it was not himself and his wife and their daughters
who were concerned.

"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble
you with this thing," he said, in the moment while
Sewell sat pondering the case, "and I don't know as
I've got any warrant for doing it. But, as I told
my wife here, there was something about you—I
don't know whether it was anything you said
exactly—that made me feel as if you could help us.
I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; but
that's the way I felt. And here we are. And if
it ain't all right—"

"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right. I thank
you for coming—for trusting your trouble to me.
A time comes to every one of us when we can't help
ourselves, and then we must get others to help us.
If people turn to me at such a time, I feel sure that
I was put into the world for something—if nothing
more than to give my pity, my sympathy."

The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a
welcome in them that these poor outcasts of sorrow
could not doubt.

"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began
to wipe the tears again under her veil.

Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he
should speak. "We can be of use to one another
here, because we can always be wiser for some one
else than we can for ourselves. We can see
another's sins and errors in a more merciful light
—and that is always a fairer light—than we can
our own; and we can look more sanely at others'

afflictions." He had addressed these words to
Lapham; now he turned to his wife. "If some
one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this
perplexity, what would you have thought?"

"I don't know as I understand you," faltered
Mrs. Lapham.

Sewell repeated his words, and added, "I mean,
what do you think some one else ought to do in
your place?"

"Was there ever any poor creatures in such a
strait before?" she asked, with pathetic incredulity.

"There's no new trouble under the sun," said
the minister.

"Oh, if it was any one else, I should say—I
should say— Why, of course! I should say that
their duty was to let—" She paused.

"One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?"
suggested Sewell. "That's sense, and that's justice.
It's the economy of pain which naturally suggests
itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we were
not all perverted by traditions which are the figment
of the shallowest sentimentality. Tell me, Mrs.
Lapham, didn't this come into your mind when you
first learned how matters stood?"

"Why, yes, it flashed across me. But I didn't
think it could be right."

"And how was it with you, Mr. Lapham?"

"Why, that's what I thought, of course. But I
didn't see my way—"

"No," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we
are all weakened by a false ideal of self-sacrifice. It

wraps us round with its meshes, and we can't fight
our way out of it. Mrs. Lapham, what made you
feel that it might be better for three to suffer than
one?"

"Why, she did herself. I know she would die
sooner than take him away from her."

"I supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly.
"And yet she is a sensible girl, your daughter?"

"She has more common-sense—"

"Of course! But in such a case we somehow
think it must be wrong to use our common-sense.
I don't know where this false ideal comes from,
unless it comes from the novels that befool and
debauch almost every intelligence in some degree.
It certainly doesn't come from Christianity, which
instantly repudiates it when confronted with it.
Your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense,
that she ought to make herself and the man
who loves her unhappy, in order to assure the lifelong
wretchedness of her sister, whom he doesn't
love, simply because her sister saw him and fancied
him first! And I'm sorry to say that ninety-nine
young people out of a hundred—oh, nine hundred
and ninety-nine out of a thousand!—would consider
that noble and beautiful and heroic; whereas you
know at the bottom of your hearts that it would be
foolish and cruel and revolting. You know what
marriage is! And what it must be without love on
both sides."

The minister had grown quite heated and red in
the face.

"I lose all patience!" he went on vehemently
"This poor child of yours has somehow been brought
to believe that it will kill her sister if her sister does
not have what does not belong to her, and what it
is not in the power of all the world, or any soul in
the world, to give her. Her sister will suffer—yes,
keenly!—in heart and in pride; but she will not die.
You will suffer too, in your tenderness for her; but
you must do your duty. You must help her to give
up. You would be guilty if you did less. Keep
clearly in mind that you are doing right, and the
only possible good. And God be with you!"