 | XXIII. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
XXIII.
Since New Year's there had scarcely been a mild
day, and the streets were full of snow, growing foul
under the city feet and hoofs, and renewing its purity
from the skies with repeated falls, which in turn lost
their whiteness, beaten down, and beaten black and
hard into a solid bed like iron. The sleighing was
incomparable, and the air was full of the din of
bells; but Lapham's turnout was not of those that
thronged the Brighton road every afternoon; the
man at the livery-stable sent him word that the
mare's legs were swelling.
He and Corey had little to do with each other.
He did not know how Penelope had arranged it with
Corey; his wife said she knew no more than he did,
and he did not like to ask the girl herself, especially
as Corey no longer came to the house. He saw that
she was cheerfuller than she had been, and helpfuller
with him and her mother. Now and then Lapham
opened his troubled soul to her a little, letting his
thought break into speech without preamble or conclusion.
Once he said—
"Pen, I presume you know I'm in trouble."
"We all seem to be there," said the girl.
"Yes, but there's a difference between being there
by your own fault and being there by somebody
else's."
"I don't call it his fault," she said.
"I call it mine," said the Colonel.
The girl laughed. Her thought was of her own
care, and her father's wholly of his. She must
come to his ground. "What have you been doing
wrong?"
"I don't know as you'd call it wrong. It's what
people do all the time. But I wish I'd let stocks
alone. It's what I always promised your mother I
would do. But there's no use cryin' over spilt
milk; or watered stock, either."
"I don't think there's much use crying about
anything. If it could have been cried straight, it
would have been all right from the start," said the
girl, going back to her own affair; and if Lapham
had not been so deeply engrossed in his, he might
have seen how little she cared for all that money
could do or undo. He did not observe her enough
to see how variable her moods were in those days,
and how often she sank from some wild gaiety into
abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely
defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably
humble and patient. But no doubt none of these
signs had passed unnoticed by his wife, to whom
Lapham said one day, when he came home, "Persis,
what's the reason Pen don't marry Corey?"
"You know as well as I do, Silas," said Mrs.
lay behind his words.
"Well, I think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's
going on. There ain't any rhyme nor reason to it."
He stopped, and his wife waited. "If she said the
word, I could have some help from them." He hung
his head, and would not meet his wife's eye.
"I guess you're in a pretty bad way, Si," she said
pityingly, "or you wouldn't have come to that."
"I'm in a hole," said Lapham, "and I don't know
where to turn. You won't let me do anything about
those mills—"
"Yes, I'll let you," said his wife sadly.
He gave a miserable cry. "You know I can't do
anything, if you do. O my Lord!"
She had not seen him so low as that before. She
did not know what to say. She was frightened, and
could only ask, "Has it come to the worst?"
"The new house has got to go," he answered
evasively.
She did not say anything. She knew that the
work on the house had been stopped since the beginning
of the year. Lapham had told the architect
that he preferred to leave it unfinished till the
spring, as there was no prospect of their being able
to get into it that winter; and the architect had
agreed with him that it would not hurt it to stand.
Her heart was heavy for him, though she could not
say so. They sat together at the table, where she
had come to be with him at his belated meal. She
saw that he did not eat, and she waited for him to
They were past that.
"And I've sent orders to shut down at the
Works," he added.
"Shut down at the Works!" she echoed with
dismay. She could not take it in. The fire at the
Works had never been out before since it was first
kindled. She knew how he had prided himself upon
that; how he had bragged of it to every listener, and
had always lugged the fact in as the last expression
of his sense of success. "O Silas!"
"What's the use?" he retorted. "I saw it was
coming a month ago. There are some fellows out in
West Virginia that have been running the paint as
hard as they could. They couldn't do much; they
used to put it on the market raw. But lately
they got to baking it, and now they've struck a
vein of natural gas right by their works, and they
pay ten cents for fuel, where I pay a dollar, and
they make as good a paint. Anybody can see where
it's going to end. Besides, the market's overstocked.
It's glutted. There wan't anything to do
but to shut down, and I've shut down."
"I don't know what's going to become of the
hands in the middle of the winter, this way," said
Mrs. Lapham, laying hold of one definite thought
which she could grasp in the turmoil of ruin that
whirled before her eyes.
"I don't care what becomes of the hands," cried
Lapham. "They've shared my luck; now let 'em
share the other thing. And if you're so very sorry
for me. Don't you know what shutting down the
Works means?"
"Yes, indeed I do, Silas," said his wife tenderly.
"Well, then!" He rose, leaving his supper untasted,
and went into the sitting-room, where she
presently found him, with that everlasting confusion
of papers before him on the desk. That made her
think of the paper in her work-basket, and she
decided not to make the careworn, distracted man
ask her for it, after all. She brought it to him.
He glanced blankly at it and then caught it from
her, turning red and looking foolish. "Where'd
you get that?"
"You dropped it on the floor the other night, and
I picked it up. Who is `Wm. M.'?"
" `Wm. M.'?" he repeated, looking confusedly at
her, and then at the paper. "Oh,—it's nothing."
He tore the paper into small pieces, and went and
dropped them into the fire. When Mrs. Lapham
came into the room in the morning, before he was
down, she found a scrap of the paper, which must
have fluttered to the hearth; and glancing at it she
saw that the words were "Mrs. M." She wondered
what dealings with a woman her husband could have,
and she remembered the confusion he had shown
about the paper, and which she had thought was
because she had surprised one of his business secrets.
She was still thinking of it when he came down to
breakfast, heavy-eyed, tremulous, with deep seams
and wrinkles in his face.
After a silence which he did not seem inclined to
break, "Silas," she asked, "who is `Mrs. M.'?"
He started at her. "I don't know what you're
talking about."
"Don't you?" she returned mockingly. "When
you do, you tell me. Do you want any more coffee?"
"No."
"Well, then, you can ring for Alice when you've
finished. I've got some things to attend to." She
rose abruptly, and left the room. Lapham looked
after her in a dull way, and then went on with his
breakfast. While he still sat at his coffee, she flung
into the room again, and dashed some papers down
beside his plate. "Here are some more things of
yours, and I'll thank you to lock them up in your
desk and not litter my room with them, if you please."
Now he saw that she was angry, and it must be with
him. It enraged him that in such a time of trouble
she should fly out at him in that way. He left the
house without trying to speak to her.
That day Corey came just before closing, and,
knocking at Lapham's door, asked if he could speak
with him a few moments.
"Yes," said Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair
and kicking another towards Corey. "Sit
down. I want to talk to you. I'd ought to tell you
you're wasting your time here. I spoke the other
day about your placin' yourself better, and I can help
you to do it, yet. There ain't going to be the outcome
for the paint in the foreign markets that we
expected, and I guess you better give it up."
"I don't wish to give it up," said the young fellow,
setting his lips. "I've as much faith in it as ever;
and I want to propose now what I hinted at in the
first place. I want to put some money into the
business."
"Some money!" Lapham leaned towards him, and
frowned as if he had not quite understood, while he
clutched the arms of his chair.
"I've got about thirty thousand dollars that I
could put in, and if you don't want to consider me a
partner—I remember that you objected to a partner—
you can let me regard it as an investment. But I
think I see the way to doing something at once in
Mexico, and I should like to feel that I had something
more than a drummer's interest in the venture."
The men sat looking into each other's eyes. Then
Lapham leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his
hand hard and slowly over his face. His features
were still twisted with some strong emotion when
he took it away. "Your family know about
this?"
"My Uncle James knows."
"He thinks it would be a good plan for you?"
"He thought that by this time I ought to be able
to trust my own judgment."
"Do you suppose I could see your uncle at his
office?"
"I imagine he's there."
"Well, I want to have a talk with him, one of
these days." He sat pondering a while, and then
I shan't change my mind about taking you into the
business in that way," he said coldly. "If there
was any reason why I shouldn't at first, there's
more now."
"Very well, sir," answered the young man, and
went to close his desk. The outer office was empty;
but while Corey was putting his papers in order it
was suddenly invaded by two women, who pushed
by the protesting porter on the stairs and made
their way towards Lapham's room. One of them
was Miss Dewey, the type-writer girl, and the other
was a woman whom she would resemble in face and
figure twenty years hence, if she led a life of hard
work varied by paroxysms of hard drinking.
"That his room, Z'rilla?" asked this woman,
pointing towards Lapham's door with a hand that
had not freed itself from the fringe of dirty shawl
under which it had hung. She went forward without
waiting for the answer, but before she could reach
it the door opened, and Lapham stood filling its
space.
"Look here, Colonel Lapham!" began the woman,
in a high key of challenge. "I want to know if this
is the way you're goin' back on me and Z'rilla?"
"What do you want?" asked Lapham.
"What do I want? What do you s'pose I want?
I want the money to pay my month's rent; there
ain't a bite to eat in the house; and I want some
money to market."
Lapham bent a frown on the woman, under which
way to get it. Clear out!"
"I won't clear out!" said the woman, beginning
to whimper.
"Corey!" said Lapham, in the peremptory voice
of a master,—he had seemed so indifferent to Corey's
presence that the young man thought he must have
forgotten he was there,—"Is Dennis anywhere
round?"
"Yissor," said Dennis, answering for himself from
the head of the stairs, and appearing in the wareroom.
Lapham spoke to the woman again. "Do you
want I should call a hack, or do you want I should
call an officer?"
The woman began to cry into an end of her shawl.
"I don't know what we're goin' to do."
"You're going to clear out," said Lapham. "Call
a hack, Dennis. If you ever come here again, I'll
have you arrested. Mind that! Zerrilla, I shall
want you early to-morrow morning."
"Yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her
mother shrank out after the porter.
Lapham shut his door without a word.
At lunch the next day Walker made himself
amends for Corey's reticence by talking a great deal.
He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, more
than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the
fascination of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he
ended by asking, "Did you see that little circus last
night?"
"What little circus?" asked Corey in his turn.
"Those two women and the old man. Dennis
told me about it. I told him if he liked his place
he'd better keep his mouth shut."
"That was very good advice," said Corey.
"Oh, all right, if you don't want to talk. Don't
know as I should in your place," returned Walker,
in the easy security he had long felt that Corey had
no intention of putting on airs with him. "But I'll
tell you what: the old man can't expect it of everybody.
If he keeps this thing up much longer, it's
going to be talked about. You can't have a woman
walking into your place of business, and trying to
bulldoze you before your porter, without setting your
porter to thinking. And the last thing you want a
porter to do is to think; for when a porter thinks,
he thinks wrong."
"I don't see why even a porter couldn't think
right about that affair," replied Corey. "I don't
know who the woman was, though I believe she was
Miss Dewey's mother; but I couldn't see that
Colonel Lapham showed anything but a natural
resentment of her coming to him in that way. I
should have said she was some rather worthless
person whom he'd been befriending, and that she
had presumed upon his kindness."
"Is that so? What do you think of his never
letting Miss Dewey's name go on the books?"
"That it's another proof it's a sort of charity of
his. That's the only way to look at it."
"Oh, I'm all right." Walker lighted a cigar and
line. "It won't do for a book-keeper to think wrong,
any more than a porter, I suppose. But I guess you
and I don't think very different about this thing."
"Not if you think as I do," replied Corey steadily;
"and I know you would do that if you had seen the
`circus' yourself. A man doesn't treat people who
have a disgraceful hold upon him as he treated
them."
"It depends upon who he is," said Walker, taking
his cigar from his mouth. "I never said the old
man was afraid of anything."
"And character," continued Corey, disdaining to
touch the matter further, except in generalities,
"must go for something. If it's to be the prey of
mere accident and appearance, then it goes for
nothing."
"Accidents will happen in the best regulated
families," said Walker, with vulgar, good-humoured
obtuseness that filled Corey with indignation.
Nothing, perhaps, removed his matter-of-fact nature
further from the commonplace than a certain generosity
of instinct, which I should not be ready to say
was always infallible.
That evening it was Miss Dewey's turn to wait for
speech with Lapham after the others were gone.
He opened his door at her knock, and stood looking
at her with a worried air. "Well, what do you want,
Zerrilla?" he asked, with a sort of rough kindness.
"I want to know what I'm going to do about
Hen. He's back again; and he and mother have
after I went home, and carried on so that the neighbours
came in."
Lapham passed his hand over his red and heated
face. "I don't know what I'm going to do. You're
twice the trouble that my own family is, now. But
I know what I'd do, mighty quick, if it wasn't for
you, Zerrilla," he went on relentingly. "I'd shut
your mother up somewheres, and if I could get that
fellow off for a three years' voyage—"
"I declare," said Miss Dewey, beginning to
whimper, "it seems as if he came back just so often
to spite me. He's never gone more than a year at
the furthest, and you can't make it out habitual
drunkenness, either, when it's jst sprees. I'm at
my wit's end."
"Oh, well, you mustn't cry around here," said
Lapham soothingly.
"I know it," said Miss Dewey. "If I could get
rid of Hen, I could manage well enough with mother.
Mr. Wemmel would marry me if I could get the
divorce. He's said so over and over again."
"I don't know as I like that very well," said
Lapham, frowning. "I don't know as I want you
should get married in any hurry again. I don't
know as I like your going with anybody else just
yet."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid but what it'll be all
right. It'll be the best thing all round, if I can
marry him."
"Well!" said Lapham impatiently; "I can't
everything out again?"
"Yes, they have," said Zerrilla; "there isn't a
cent left."
"You're a pretty expensive lot," said Lapham.
"Well, here!" He took out his pocket-book and
gave her a note. "I'll be round to-night and see
what can be done."
He shut himself into his room again, and Zerrilla
dried her tears, put the note into her bosom, and
went her way.
Lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. It
was then six o'clock, the hour at which the Laphams
usually had tea; but all custom had been broken up
with him during the past months, and he did not go
home now. He determined, perhaps in the extremity
in which a man finds relief in combating one care
with another, to keep his promise to Miss Dewey,
and at the moment when he might otherwise have
been sitting down at his own table he was climbing
the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned dwelling
which had been portioned off into flats. It was in
a region of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and
"ladies' and gents' " dining-rooms, and restaurants
with bars, which abound near depots; and Lapham
followed to Miss Dewey's door a waiter from one of
these, who bore on a salver before him a supper
covered with a napkin. Zerrilla had admitted them,
and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby
shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the
nautical blue flannel of his shirt, got up from where
stood infirmly on his feet, in token of receiving the
visitor. The woman who sat on the other side did
not rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology.
"Well, I don't suppose but what you'll think
we're livin' on the fat o' the land, right straight
along, all the while. But it's just like this. When
that child came in from her work, she didn't seem to
have the spirit to go to cookin' anything, and I had
such a bad night last night I was feelin' all broke
up, and s'd I, what's the use, anyway? By the
time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' bone, and made
you pay for the suet he cuts away, it comes to the
same thing, and why not git it from the rest'rant
first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd I."
"What have you got there under your apron? A
bottle?" demanded Lapham, who stood with his hat
on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent alike to
the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair
Zerrilla had set him.
"Well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with
an assumption of virtuous frankness. "It's whisky;
I got to have something to rub my rheumatism with."
"Humph!" grumbled Lapham. "You've been
rubbing his rheumatism too, I see."
He twisted his head in the direction of the sailor,
now softly and rhythmically waving to and fro on
his feet.
"He hain't had a drop to-day in this house!" cried
the woman.
"What are you doing around here?" said Lapham,
turning fiercely upon him. "You've got no
I'm going to let you come here and eat your wife
out of house and home, and then give money to keep
the concern going?"
"Just the very words I said when he first showed
his face here, yist'day. Didn't I, Z'rilla?" said the
woman, eagerly joining in the rebuke of her late
boon companion. "You got no business here, Hen,
s'd I. You can't come here to live on me and Z'rilla,
s'd I. You want to go back to your ship, s'd I.
That's what I said."
The sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability
for Lapham, something about the crew being
discharged.
"Yes," the woman broke in, "that's always the
way with these coasters. Why don't you go off on
some them long v'y'ges? s'd I. It's pretty hard
when Mr. Wemmel stands ready to marry Z'rilla and
provide a comfortable home for us both—I hain't got
a great many years more to live, and I should like to
get some satisfaction out of 'em, and not be beholden
and dependent all my days,—to have Hen, here,
blockin' the way. I tell him there'd be more money
for him in the end; but he can't seem to make up
his mind to it."
"Well, now, look here," said Lapham. "I don't
care anything about all that. It's your own business,
and I'm not going to meddle with it. But it's my
business who lives off me; and so I tell you all three,
I'm willing to take care of Zerrilla, and I'm willing
to take care of her mother—"
"I guess if it hadn't been for that child's father,"
the mother interpolated, "you wouldn't been here
to tell the tale, Colonel Lapham."
"I know all about that," said Lapham. "But
I'll tell you what, Mr. Dewey, I'm not going to
support you."
"I don't see what Hen's done," said the old woman
impartially.
"He hasn't done anything, and I'm going to stop
it. He's got to get a ship, and he's got to get out
of this. And Zerrilla needn't come back to work
till he does. I'm done with you all."
"Well, I vow," said the mother, "if I ever heard
anything like it! Didn't that child's father lay down
his life for you? Hain't you said it yourself a hundred
times? And don't she work for her money, and
slave for it mornin', noon, and night? You talk as
if we was beholden to you for the very bread in
our mouths. I guess if it hadn't been for Jim, you
wouldn't been here crowin' over us."
"You mind what I say. I mean business this
time," said Lapham, turning to the door.
The woman rose and followed him, with her bottle
in her hand. "Say, Colonel! what should you
advise Z'rilla to do about Mr. Wemmel? I tell her
there ain't any use goin' to the trouble to git a divorce
without she's sure about him. Don't you think we'd
ought to git him to sign a paper, or something, that
he'll marry her if she gits it? I don't like to have
things going at loose ends the way they are. It ain't
sense. It ain't right."
Lapham made no answer to the mother anxious
for her child's future, and concerned for the moral
questions involved. He went out and down the
stairs, and on the pavement at the lower door he
almost struck against Rogers, who had a bag in his
hand, and seemed to be hurrying towards one of the
depots. He halted a little, as if to speak to Lapham;
but Lapham turned his back abruptly upon him, and
took the other direction.
The days were going by in a monotony of adversity
to him, from which he could no longer escape,
even at home. He attempted once or twice to talk
of his troubles to his wife, but she repulsed him
sharply; she seemed to despise and hate him; but he
set himself doggedly to make a confession to her, and
he stopped her one night, as she came into the room
where he sat—hastily upon some errand that was to
take her directly away again.
"Persis, there's something I've got to tell you."
She stood still, as if fixed against her will, to
listen.
"I guess you know something about it already,
and I guess it set you against me."
"Oh, I guess not, Colonel Lapham. You go your
way, and I go mine. That's all."
She waited for him to speak, listening with a cold,
hard smile on her face.
"I don't say it to make favour with you, because
I don't want you to spare me, and I don't ask you;
but I got into it through Milton K. Rogers."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Lapham contemptuously.
"I always felt the way I said about it—that it
wan't any better than gambling, and I say so now.
It's like betting on the turn of a card; and I give
you my word of honour, Persis, that I never was in
it at all till that scoundrel began to load me up with
those wild-cat securities of his. Then it seemed to
me as if I ought to try to do something to get somewhere
even. I know it's no excuse; but watching
the market to see what the infernal things were
worth from day to day, and seeing it go up, and
seeing it go down, was too much for me; and, to
make a long story short, I began to buy and sell on
a margin—just what I told you I never would do.
I seemed to make something—I did make something;
and I'd have stopped, I do believe, if I could have
reached the figure I'd set in my own mind to start
with; but I couldn't fetch it. I began to lose, and
then I began to throw good money after bad, just as
I always did with everything that Rogers ever came
within a mile of. Well, what's the use? I lost the
money that would have carried me out of this, and I
shouldn't have had to shut down the Works, or sell
the house, or—"
Lapham stopped. His wife, who at first had
listened with mystification, and then dawning incredulity,
changing into a look of relief that was
almost triumph, lapsed again into severity. "Silas
Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this
what you started to tell me?"
"Why, of course it is. What did you suppose I
started to tell you?"
"And—look me in the eyes!—you haven't got
anything else on your mind now?"
"No! There's trouble enough, the Lord knows;
but there's nothing else to tell you. I suppose Pen
gave you a hint about it. I dropped something to
her. I've been feeling bad about it, Persis, a good
while, but I hain't had the heart to speak of it. I
can't expect you to say you like it. I've been a fool,
I'll allow, and I've been something worse, if you
choose to say so; but that's all. I haven't hurt
anybody but myself—and you and the children."
Mrs. Lapham rose and said, with her face from
him, as she turned towards the door, "It's all right,
Silas. I shan't ever bring it up against you."
She fled out of the room, but all that evening she
was very sweet with him, and seemed to wish in all
tacit ways to atone for her past unkindness.
She made him talk of his business, and he told her
of Corey's offer, and what he had done about it. She
did not seem to care for his part in it, however; at
which Lapham was silently disappointed a little, for
he would have liked her to praise him.
"He did it on account of Pen!"
"Well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said
Lapham, who must have obscurely expected that
Corey would recognise his own magnanimity by
repeating his offer. If the doubt that follows a self-devoted
action—the question whether it was not
after all a needless folly—is mixed, as it was in
Lapham's case, with the vague belief that we might
have done ourselves a good turn without great risk
it becomes a regret that is hard to bear. Since Corey
spoke to him, some things had happened that gave
Lapham hope again.
"I'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and
she showed herself impatient to make up for the
time she had lost. "Why didn't you tell me before,
Silas?"
"I didn't know we were on speaking terms before,"
said Lapham sadly.
"Yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious
flush. "I hope he won't think Pen's known about
it all this while."
| XXIII. The rise of Silas Lapham | |