 | XX. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
XX.
After a week Mrs. Lapham returned, leaving
Irene alone at the old homestead in Vermont.
"She's comfortable there—as comfortable as she
can be anywheres, I guess," she said to her husband
as they drove together from the station, where he
had met her in obedience to her telegraphic summons.
"She keeps herself busy helping about the house;
and she goes round amongst the hands in their
houses. There's sickness, and you know how helpful
she is where there's sickness. She don't complain
any. I don't know as I've heard a word out
of her mouth since we left home; but I'm afraid
it'll wear on her, Silas."
"You don't look over and above well yourself,
Persis," said her husband kindly.
"Oh, don't talk about me. What I want to know
is whether you can't get the time to run off with
her somewhere. I wrote to you about Dubuque.
She'll work herself down, I'm afraid; and then I
don't know as she'll be over it. But if she could
go off, and be amused—see new people—"
"I could make the time," said Lapham, "if I had
to. But, as it happens, I've got to go out West on
Irene along."
"Good!" said his wife. "That's about the best
thing I've heard yet. Where you going?"
"Out Dubuque way."
"Anything the matter with Bill's folks?"
"No. It's business."
"How's Pen?"
"I guess she ain't much better than Irene."
"He been about any?"
"Yes. But I can't see as it helps matters much."
"Tchk!" Mrs. Lapham fell back against the
carriage cushions. "I declare, to see her willing to
take the man that we all thought wanted her sister!
I can't make it seem right."
"It's right," said Lapham stoutly; "but I guess
she ain't willing; I wish she was. But there don't
seem to be any way out of the thing, anywhere.
It's a perfect snarl. But I don't want you should
be anyways ha'sh with Pen."
Mrs. Lapham answered nothing; but when she
met Penelope she gave the girl's wan face a sharp
look, and began to whimper on her neck.
Penelope's tears were all spent. "Well, mother,"
she said, "you come back almost as cheerful as you
went away. I needn't ask if 'Rene's in good spirits.
We all seem to be overflowing with them. I suppose
this is one way of congratulating me. Mrs.
Corey hasn't been round to do it yet."
"Are you—are you engaged to him, Pen?"
gasped her mother.
"Judging by my feelings, I should say not. I
feel as if it was a last will and testament. But
you'd better ask him when he comes."
"I can't bear to look at him."
"I guess he's used to that. He don't seem to
expect to be looked at. Well! we're all just where
we started. I wonder how long it will keep up."
Mrs. Lapham reported to her husband when he
came home at night—he had left his business to go
and meet her, and then, after a desolate dinner at
the house, had returned to the office again—that
Penelope was fully as bad as Irene. "And she
don't know how to work it off. Irene keeps doing;
but Pen just sits in her room and mopes. She don't
even read. I went up this afternoon to scold her
about the state the house was in—you can see that
Irene's away by the perfect mess; but when I saw
her through the crack of the door I hadn't the heart.
She sat there with her hands in her lap, just staring.
And, my goodness! she jumped so when she saw
me; and then she fell back, and began to laugh,
and said she, `I thought it was my ghost, mother!'
I felt as if I should give way."
Lapham listened jadedly, and answered far from
the point. "I guess I've got to start out there
pretty soon, Persis."
"How soon?"
"Well, to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Lapham sat silent. Then, "All right," she
said. "I'll get you ready."
"I shall run up to Lapham for Irene, and then
as quick."
"Is it anything you can tell me about, Silas?"
"Yes," said Lapham. "But it's a long story,
and I guess you've got your hands pretty full as it
is. I've been throwing good money after bad,—
the usual way,—and now I've got to see if I can
save the pieces."
After a moment Mrs. Lapham asked, "Is it—
Rogers?"
"It's Rogers."
"I didn't want you should get in any deeper
with him."
"No. You didn't want I should press him either;
and I had to do one or the other. And so I got in
deeper."
"Silas," said his wife, "I'm afraid I made you!"
"It's all right, Persis, as far forth as that goes.
I was glad to make it up with him—I jumped at
the chance. I guess Rogers saw that he had a soft
thing in me, and he's worked it for all it was worth.
But it'll all come out right in the end."
Lapham said this as if he did not care to talk any
more about it. He added casually, "Pretty near
everybody but the fellows that owe me seem to
expect me to do a cash business, all of a sudden."
"Do you mean that you've got payments to
make, and that people are not paying you?"
Lapham winced a little. "Something like that,"
he said, and he lighted a cigar. "But when I tell
you it's all right, I mean it, Persis. I ain't going
especially while Rogers digs the ground away from
the roots."
"What are you going to do?"
"If it has to come to that, I'm going to squeeze
him." Lapham's countenance lighted up with
greater joy than had yet visited it since the day
they had driven out to Brookline. "Milton K.
Rogers is a rascal, if you want to know; or else all
the signs fail. But I guess he'll find he's got his
come-uppance." Lapham shut his lips so that the
short, reddish-grey beard stuck straight out on
them.
"What's he done?"
"What's he done? Well, now, I'll tell you
what he's done, Persis, since you think Rogers is
such a saint, and that I used him so badly in getting
him out of the business. He's been dabbling in
every sort of fool thing you can lay your tongue to,
—wild-cat stocks, patent-rights, land speculations,
oil claims,—till he's run through about everything.
But he did have a big milling property out on the
line of the P. Y. & X., —saw-mills and grist-mills
and lands,—and for the last eight years he's been
doing a land-office business with 'em—business that
would have made anybody else rich. But you can't
make Milton K. Rogers rich, any more than you
can fat a hide-bound colt. It ain't in him. He'd
run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott
rolled into one in less than six months, give him a
chance, and come out and want to borrow money
me; and if he thinks I don't know as much about
that milling property as he does he's mistaken.
I've taken his mills, but I guess I've got the inside
track; Bill's kept me posted; and now I'm going
out there to see how I can unload; and I shan't
mind a great deal if Rogers is under the load when
it's off once."
"I don't understand you, Silas."
"Why, it's just this. The Great Lacustrine &
Polar Railroad has leased the P. Y. & X. for ninety-nine
years,—bought it, practically,—and it's going
to build car-works right by those mills, and it may
want them. And Milton K. Rogers knew it when
he turned 'em in on me."
"Well, if the road wants them, don't that make the
mills valuable? You can get what you ask for them!"
"Can I? The P. Y. & X is the only road that
runs within fifty miles of the mills, and you can't
get a foot of lumber nor a pound of flour to market
any other way. As long as he had a little local
road like the P. Y. & X. to deal with, Rogers could
manage; but when it come to a big through line
like the G. L. & P., he couldn't stand any chance at
all. If such a road as that took a fancy to his mills,
do you think it would pay what he asked? No,
sir! He would take what the road offered, or else
the road would tell him to carry his flour and
lumber to market himself."
"And do you suppose he knew the G. L. & P.
wanted the mills when he turned them in on you?"
into his alphabetical parlance.
The Colonel laughed scoffingly. "Well, when
Milton K. Rogers don't know which side his
bread's buttered on! I don't understand," he
added thoughtfully, "how he's always letting it
fall on the buttered side. But such a man as that
is sure to have a screw loose in him somewhere."
Mrs. Lapham sat discomfited. All that she could
say was, "Well, I want you should ask yourself
whether Rogers would ever have gone wrong, or
got into these ways of his, if it hadn't been for your
forcing him out of the business when you did. I
want you should think whether you're not responsible
for everything he's done since."
"You go and get that bag of mine ready," said
Lapham sullenly. "I guess I can take care of
myself. And Milton K. Rogers too," he added.
That evening Corey spent the time after dinner
in his own room, with restless excursions to the
library, where his mother sat with his father and
sisters, and showed no signs of leaving them. At
last, in coming down, he encountered her on the
stairs, going up. They both stopped consciously.
"I would like to speak with you, mother. I have
been waiting to see you alone."
"Come to my room," she said.
"I have a feeling that you know what I want to
say," he began there.
She looked up at him where he stood by the
her questioning "Yes?"
"Yes; and I have a feeling that you won't like it
—that you won't approve of it. I wish you did—
I wish you could!"
"I'm used to liking and approving everything
you do, Tom. If I don't like this at once, I shall
try to like it—you know that—for your sake, whatever
it is."
"I'd better be short," he said, with a quick sigh.
"It's about Miss Lapham." He hastened to add,
"I hope it isn't surprising to you. I'd have told
you before, if I could."
"No, it isn't surprising. I was afraid—I suspected
something of the kind."
They were both silent in a painful silence.
"Well, mother?" he asked at last.
"If it's something you've quite made up your
mind to—"
"It is!"
"And if you've already spoken to her—"
"I had to do that first, of course."
"There would be no use of my saying anything,
even if I disliked it."
"You do dislike it!"
"No—no! I can't say that. Of course I should
have preferred it if you had chosen some nice girl
among those that you had been brought up with—
some friend or associate of your sisters, whose people
we had known—"
"Yes; I understand that, and I can assure you
have tried to consider them from the first, and it
kept me hesitating in a way that I'm ashamed to
think of; for it wasn't quite right towards—others.
But your feelings and my sisters' have been in my
mind, and if I couldn't yield to what I supposed
they must be, entirely—"
Even so good a son and brother as this, when it
came to his love affair, appeared to think that he
had yielded much in considering the feelings of his
family at all.
His mother hastened to comfort him. "I know
—I know. I've seen for some time that this might
happen, Tom, and I have prepared myself for it. I
have talked it over with your father, and we both
agreed from the beginning that you were not to be
hampered by our feeling. Still—it is a surprise.
It must be."
"I know it. I can understand your feeling. But
I'm sure that it's one that will last only while you
don't know her well."
"Oh, I'm sure of that, Tom. I'm sure that we
shall all be fond of her,—for your sake at first, even
—and I hope she'll like us."
"I am quite certain of that," said Corey, with that
confidence which experience does not always confirm
in such cases. "And your taking it as you do lifts
a tremendous load off me."
But he sighed so heavily, and looked so troubled,
that his mother said, "Well, now, you mustn't think
of that any more. We wish what is for your happiness,
to anything that might have been disagreeable. I
suppose we needn't speak of the family. We must
both think alike about them. They have their—
drawbacks, but they are thoroughly good people, and
I satisfied myself the other night that they were not
to be dreaded." She rose, and put her arm round
his neck. "And I wish you joy, Tom! If she's
half as good as you are, you will both be very
happy." She was going to kiss him, but something
in his looks stopped her—an absence, a trouble,
which broke out in his words.
"I must tell you, mother! There's been a complication—a
mistake—that's a blight on me yet,
and that it sometimes seems as if we couldn't escape
from. I wonder if you can help us! They all
thought I meant—the other sister."
"O Tom! But how could they?"
"I don't know. It seemed so glaringly plain—I
was ashamed of making it so outright from the
beginning. But they did. Even she did, herself!"
"But where could they have thought your eyes
were—your taste? It wouldn't be surprising if
any one were taken with that wonderful beauty;
and I'm sure she's good too. But I'm astonished
at them! To think you could prefer that little,
black, odd creature, with her joking and—"
"Mother!" cried the young man, turning a ghastly
face of warning upon her.
"What do you mean, Tom?"
"Did you—did—did you think so too—that it
was Irene I meant?"
"Why, of course!"
He stared at her hopelessly.
"O my son!" she said, for all comment on the
situation.
"Don't reproach me, mother! I couldn't stand
it."
"No. I didn't mean to do that. But how—how
could it happen?"
"I don't know. When she first told me that they
had understood it so, I laughed—almost—it was so
far from me. But now when you seem to have had
the same idea— Did you all think so?"
"Yes."
They remained looking at each other. Then Mrs.
Corey began: "It did pass through my mind once
—that day I went to call upon them—that it might
not be as we thought; but I knew so little of—
of—"
"Penelope," Corey mechanically supplied.
"Is that her name?—I forgot—that I only
thought of you in relation to her long enough to
reject the idea; and it was natural after our seeing
something of the other one last year, that I might
suppose you had formed some—attachment—"
"Yes; that's what they thought too. But I
never thought of her as anything but a pretty child.
I was civil to her because you wished it; and when
I met her here again, I only tried to see her so that
I could talk with her about her sister."
"You needn't defend yourself to me, Tom," said
his mother, proud to say it to him in his trouble.
"It's a terrible business for them, poor things," she
added. "I don't know how they could get over it.
But, of course, sensible people must see—"
"They haven't got over it. At least she hasn't.
Since it's happened, there's been nothing that hasn't
made me prouder and fonder of her! At first I
was charmed with her—my fancy was taken; she
delighted me—I don't know how; but she was
simply the most fascinating person I ever saw.
Now I never think of that. I only think how good
she is—how patient she is with me, and how
unsparing she is of herself. If she were concerned
alone—if I were not concerned too—it would soon
end. She's never had a thought for anything but
her sister's feeling and mine from the beginning. I
go there,—I know that I oughtn't, but I can't
help it,—and she suffers it, and tries not to let me
see that she is suffering it. There never was any
one like her—so brave, so true, so noble. I won't
give her up—I can't. But it breaks my heart when
she accuses herself of what was all my doing. We
spend our time trying to reason out of it, but we
always come back to it at last, and I have to hear
her morbidly blaming herself. Oh!"
Doubtless Mrs. Corey imagined some reliefs to
this suffering, some qualifications of this sublimity
in a girl she had disliked so distinctly; but she saw
none in her son's behaviour, and she gave him her
further sympathy. She tried to praise Penelope,
could reconcile herself at once to everything. "I
shouldn't have liked it in her if she had. But time
will bring it all right. And if she really cares for
you—"
"I extorted that from her."
"Well, then, you must look at it in the best light
you can. There is no blame anywhere, and the
mortification and pain is something that must be
lived down. That's all. And don't let what I
said grieve you, Tom. You know I scarcely knew
her, and I—I shall be sure to like any one you like,
after all."
"Yes, I know," said the young man drearily.
"Will you tell father?"
"If you wish."
"He must know. And I couldn't stand any more
of this, just yet—any more mistake."
"I will tell him," said Mrs. Corey; and it was
naturally the next thing for a woman who dwelt so
much on decencies to propose: "We must go to call
on her—your sisters and I. They have never seen
her even; and she mustn't be allowed to think we're
indifferent to her, especially under the circumstances."
"Oh no! Don't go—not yet," cried Corey, with
an instinctive perception that nothing could be worse
for him. "We must wait—we must be patient.
I'm afraid it would be painful to her now."
He turned away without speaking further; and
his mother's eyes followed him wistfully to the door.
There were some questions that she would have liked
to answer them when her husband put them to
her.
There was this comfort for her always in Bromfield
Corey, that he never was much surprised at anything,
however shocking or painful. His standpoint
in regard to most matters was that of the sympathetic
humorist who would be glad to have the victim
of circumstance laugh with him, but was not too
much vexed when the victim could not. He laughed
now when his wife, with careful preparation, got
the facts of his son's predicament fully under his eye.
"Really, Bromfield," she said, "I don't see how
you can laugh. Do you see any way out of it?"
"It seems to me that the way has been found
already. Tom has told his love to the right one,
and the wrong one knows it. Time will do the
rest."
"If I had so low an opinion of them all as that,
it would make me very unhappy. It's shocking to
think of it."
"It is upon the theory of ladies and all young
people," said her husband, with a shrug, feeling his
way to the matches on the mantel, and then dropping
them with a sigh, as if recollecting that he must
not smoke there. "I've no doubt Tom feels himself
an awful sinner. But apparently he's resigned
to his sin; he isn't going to give her up."
"I'm glad to say, for the sake of human nature
that she isn't resigned—little as I like her," cried
Mrs. Corey.
Her husband shrugged again. "Oh, there mustn't
be any indecent haste. She will instinctively observe
the proprieties. But come, now, Anna! you mustn't
pretend to me here, in the sanctuary of home, that
practically the human affections don't reconcile themselves
to any situation that the human sentiments
condemn. Suppose the wrong sister had died:
would the right one have had any scruple in marrying
Tom, after they had both `waited a proper time,'
as the phrase is?"
"Bromfield, you're shocking!"
"Not more shocking than reality. You may regard
this as a second marriage." He looked at her with
twinkling eyes, full of the triumph the spectator of
his species feels in signal exhibitions of human
nature. "Depend upon it, the right sister will be
reconciled; the wrong one will be consoled; and all
will go merry as a marriage bell—a second marriage
bell. Why, it's quite like a romance!" Here he
laughed outright again.
"Well," sighed the wife, "I could almost wish
the right one, as you call her, would reject Tom,
I dislike her so much."
"Ah, now you're talking business, Anna," said
her husband, with his hands spread behind the back
he turned comfortably to the fire. "The whole
Lapham tribe is distasteful to me. As I don't
happen to have seen our daughter-in-law elect, I
have still the hope—which you're disposed to forbid
me—that she may not be quite so unacceptable as
the others."
"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" anxiously
inquired his wife.
"Yes—I think I do;" and he sat down, and
stretched out his long legs toward the fire.
"But it's very inconsistent of you to oppose the
matter now, when you've shown so much indifference
up to this time. You've told me, all along,
that it was of no use to oppose it."
"So I have. I was convinced of that at the beginning,
or my reason was. You know very well
that I am equal to any trial, any sacrifice, day after
to-morrow; but when it comes to-day it's another
thing. As long as this crisis decently kept its
distance, I could look at it with an impartial eye;
but now that it seems at hand, I find that, while my
reason is still acquiescent, my nerves are disposed to
—excuse the phrase—kick. I ask myself, what
have I done nothing for, all my life, and lived as a
gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody
else, in the possession of every polite taste and feeling
that adorns leisure, if I'm to come to this at
last? And I find no satisfactory answer. I say to
myself that I might as well have yielded to the
pressure all round me, and gone to work, as Tom
has."
Mrs. Corey looked at him forlornly, divining the
core of real repugnance that existed in his self-satire.
"I assure you, my dear," he continued, "that the
recollection of what I suffered from the Laphams at
that dinner of yours is an anguish still. It wasn't
their behaviour,—they behaved well enough—or ill
Lapham's range was strictly domestic; and when
the Colonel got me in the library, he poured mineral
paint all over me, till I could have been safely
warranted not to crack or scale in any climate. I
suppose we shall have to see a good deal of them.
They will probably come here every Sunday night
to tea. It's a perspective without a vanishing-point."
"It may not be so bad, after all," said his wife;
and she suggested for his consolation that he knew
very little about the Laphams yet.
He assented to the fact. "I know very little
about them, and about my other fellow-beings. I
dare say that I should like the Laphams better if I
knew them better. But in any case, I resign myself.
And we must keep in view the fact that this
is mainly Tom's affair, and if his affections have
regulated it to his satisfaction, we must be content."
"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "And perhaps it
won't turn out so badly. It's a great comfort to
know that you feel just as I do about it."
"I do," said her husband, "and more too."
It was she and her daughters who would be
chiefly annoyed by the Lapham connection; she
knew that. But she had to begin to bear the
burden by helping her husband to bear his light
share of it. To see him so depressed dismayed her,
and she might well have reproached him more
sharply than she did for showing so much indifference,
when she was so anxious, at first. But that
even answered him patiently when he asked her,
"What did you say to Tom when he told you it
was the other one?"
"What could I say? I could do nothing, but
try to take back what I had said against her."
"Yes, you had quite enough to do, I suppose.
It's an awkward business. If it had been the pretty
one, her beauty would have been our excuse. But
the plain one—what do you suppose attracted him
in her?"
Mrs. Corey sighed at the futility of the question.
"Perhaps I did her injustice. I only saw her a few
moments. Perhaps I got a false impression. I
don't think she's lacking in sense, and that's a great
thing. She'll be quick to see that we don't mean
unkindness, and can't, by anything we say or do,
when she's Tom's wife." She pronounced the distasteful
word with courage, and went on: "The
pretty one might not have been able to see that.
She might have got it into her head that we were
looking down on her; and those insipid people are
terribly stubborn. We can come to some understanding
with this one; I'm sure of that." She
ended by declaring that it was now their duty to
help Tom out of his terrible predicament.
"Oh, even the Lapham cloud has a silver lining,"
said Corey. "In fact, it seems really to have all
turned out for the best, Anna; though it's rather
curious to find you the champion of the Lapham
side, at last. Confess, now, that the right girl has
you sympathise with the wrong one, you rejoice in
the tenacity with which the right one is clinging to
her own!" He added with final seriousness, "It's
just that she should, and, so far as I understand the
case, I respect her for it."
"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "It's natural,
and it's right." But she added, "I suppose they're
glad of him on any terms."
"That is what I have been taught to believe,"
said her husband. "When shall we see our
daughter-in-law elect? I find myself rather impatient
to have that part of it over."
Mrs. Corey hesitated. "Tom thinks we had
better not call, just yet."
"She has told him of your terrible behaviour
when you called before?"
"No, Bromfield! She couldn't be so vulgar as
that?"
"But anything short of it?"
| XX. The rise of Silas Lapham | |