 | XXII. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
XXII.
The morning postman brought Mrs. Lapham a
letter from Irene, which was chiefly significant because
it made no reference whatever to the writer or
her state of mind. It gave the news of her uncle's
family; it told of their kindness to her; her cousin
Will was going to take her and his sisters ice-boating
on the river, when it froze.
By the time this letter came, Lapham had gone to
his business, and the mother carried it to Penelope
to talk over. "What do you make out of it?" she
asked; and without waiting to be answered she
said, "I don't know as I believe in cousins marrying,
a great deal; but if Irene and Will were to fix
it up between 'em—" She looked vaguely at Penelope.
"It wouldn't make any difference as far as I was
concerned," replied the girl listlessly.
Mrs. Lapham lost her patience.
"Well, then, I'll tell you what, Penelope!" she
exclaimed. "Perhaps it'll make a difference to
you if you know that your father's in real trouble.
He's harassed to death, and he was awake half the
night, talking about it. That abominable old Rogers
lost by others that he's helped,"—Mrs. Lapham put
it in this way because she had no time to be explicit,
—"and I want you should come out of your room
now, and try to be of some help and comfort to
him when he comes home to-night. I guess Irene
wouldn't mope round much, if she was here," she
could not help adding.
The girl lifted herself on her elbow. "What's
that you say about father?" she demanded eagerly.
"Is he in trouble? Is he going to lose his money?
Shall we have to stay in this house?"
"We may be very glad to stay in this house," said
Mrs. Lapham, half angry with herself for having
given cause for the girl's conjectures, and half with
the habit of prosperity in her child, which could
conceive no better of what adversity was. "And I
want you should get up and show that you've got
some feeling for somebody in the world besides
yourself."
"Oh, I'll get up!" said the girl promptly, almost
cheerfully.
"I don't say it's as bad now as it looked a little
while ago," said her mother, conscientiously hedging
a little from the statement which she had based
rather upon her feelings than her facts. "Your
father thinks he'll pull through all right, and I
don't know but what he will. But I want you
should see if you can't do something to cheer him
up and keep him from getting so perfectly down-hearted
as he seems to get, under the load he's got
and behave yourself like a sensible girl."
"Yes, yes," said the girl; "I will. You needn't
be troubled about me any more."
Before she left her room she wrote a note, and
when she came down she was dressed to go out-of-doors
and post it herself. The note was to Corey:—
"Do not come to see me any more till you hear
from me. I have a reason which I cannot give you
now; and you must not ask what it is."
All day she went about in a buoyant desperation,
and she came down to meet her father at supper.
"Well, Persis," he said scornfully, as he sat down,
"we might as well saved our good resolutions till
they were wanted. I guess those English parties
have gone back on Rogers."
"Do you mean he didn't come?"
"He hadn't come up to half-past five," said Lapham.
"Tchk!" uttered his wife.
"But I guess I shall pull through without Mr.
Rogers," continued Lapham. "A firm that I didn't
think could weather it is still afloat, and so far forth
as the danger goes of being dragged under with it,
I'm all right." Penelope came in. "Hello, Pen!"
cried her father. "It ain't often I meet you nowadays."
He put up his hand as she passed his chair,
and pulled her down and kissed her.
"No," she said; "but I thought I'd come down
to-night and cheer you up a little. I shall not talk;
the sight of me will be enough."
Her father laughed out. "Mother been telling
you? Well, I was pretty blue last night; but I
guess I was more scared than hurt. How'd you
like to go to the theatre to-night? Sellers at the
Park. Heigh?"
"Well, I don't know. Don't you think they
could get along without me there?"
"No; couldn't work it at all," cried the Colonel.
"Let's all go. Unless," he added inquiringly,
"there's somebody coming here?"
"There's nobody coming," said Penelope.
"Good! Then we'll go. Mother, don't you be
late now."
"Oh, I shan't keep you waiting," said Mrs. Lapham.
She had thought of telling what a cheerful
letter she had got from Irene; but upon the whole it
seemed better not to speak of Irene at all just then.
After they returned from the theatre, where the
Colonel roared through the comedy, with continual
reference of his pleasure to Penelope, to make sure
that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the
whole affair had been for the girl's distraction rather
than his, "I don't believe but what it's going to
come out all right about the children;" and then
she told him of the letter, and the hopes she had
founded upon it.
"Well, perhaps you're right, Persis," he consented.
"I haven't seen Pen so much like herself since it
happened. I declare, when I see the way she came
out to-night, just to please you, I don't know as I
away."
"I guess there'll be enough to keep Pen going
for a while yet," said the Colonel, winding up his
watch.
But for a time there was a relief, which Walker
noted, in the atmosphere at the office, and then came
another cold wave, slighter than the first, but distinctly
felt there, and succeeded by another relief.
It was like the winter which was wearing on to the
end of the year, with alternations of freezing
weather, and mild days stretching to weeks, in
which the snow and ice wholly disappeared. It was
none the less winter, and none the less harassing for
these fluctuations, and Lapham showed in his face
and temper the effect of like fluctuations in his
affairs. He grew thin and old, and both at home
and at his office he was irascible to the point of
offence. In these days Penelope shared with her
mother the burden of their troubled home, and
united with her in supporting the silence or the
petulance of the gloomy, secret man who replaced
the presence of jolly prosperity there. Lapham had
now ceased to talk of his troubles, and savagely
resented his wife's interference. "You mind your
own business, Persis," he said one day, "if you've
got any;" and after that she left him mainly to Penelope,
who did not think of asking him questions.
"It's pretty hard on you, Pen," she said.
"That makes it easier for me," returned the girl,
who did not otherwise refer to her own trouble.
obedience of Corey, who had made no sign since
receiving her note. She would have liked to ask
her father if Corey was sick; she would have liked
him to ask her why Corey did not come any more.
Her mother went on—
"I don't believe your father knows where he stands.
He works away at those papers he brings home here
at night, as if he didn't half know what he was about.
He always did have that close streak in him, and I
don't suppose but what he's been going into things
he don't want anybody else to know about, and he's
kept these accounts of his own."
Sometimes he gave Penelope figures to work at,
which he would not submit to his wife's nimbler
arithmetic. Then she went to bed and left them
sitting up till midnight, struggling with problems in
which they were both weak. But she could see that
the girl was a comfort to her father, and that his
troubles were a defence and shelter to her. Some
nights she could hear them going out together, and
then she lay awake for their return from their long
walk. When the hour or day of respite came again,
the home felt it first. Lapham wanted to know
what the news from Irene was; he joined his wife
in all her cheerful speculations, and tried to make
her amends for his sullen reticence and irritability.
Irene was staying on at Dubuque. There came a
letter from her, saying that her uncle's people wanted
her to spend the winter there. "Well, let her,"
said Lapham. "It'll be the best thing for her."
frequent intervals. His brother was watching the
G. L. & P., which as yet had made no offer for
the mills. Once, when one of these letters came, he
submitted to his wife whether, in the absence of
any positive information that the road wanted
the property, he might not, with a good conscience,
dispose of it to the best advantage to anybody
who came along.
She looked wistfully at him; it was on the rise
from a season of deep depression with him. "No,
Si," she said; "I don't see how you could do
that."
He did not assent and submit, as he had done at
first, but began to rail at the unpracticality of women;
and then he shut some papers he had been looking
over into his desk, and flung out of the room.
One of the papers had slipped through the crevice
of the lid, and lay upon the floor. Mrs. Lapham kept
on at her sewing, but after a while she picked the
paper up to lay it on the desk. Then she glanced at
it, and saw that it was a long column of dates and
figures, recording successive sums, never large ones,
paid regularly to "Wm. M." The dates covered a
year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds.
Mrs. Lapham laid the paper down on the desk,
and then she took it up again and put it into her
work-basket, meaning to give it to him. When he
came in she saw him looking absent-mindedly about
for something, and then going to work upon his
would wait till he missed it definitely, and then give
him the scrap she had picked up. It lay in her
basket, and after some days it found its way under
the work in it, and she forgot it.
| XXII. The rise of Silas Lapham | |