University of Virginia Library

XXIV.

That evening James Bellingham came to see
Corey after dinner, and went to find him in his own
room.

"I've come at the instance of Colonel Lapham,"
said the uncle. "He was at my office to-day, and I
had a long talk with him. Did you know that he
was in difficulties?"

"I fancied that he was in some sort of trouble.
And I had the book-keeper's conjectures—he doesn't
really know much about it."

"Well, he thinks it time—on all accounts—that
you should know how he stands, and why he declined
that proposition of yours. I must say he has
behaved very well—like a gentleman."

"I'm not surprised."

"I am. It's hard to behave like a gentleman
where your interest is vitally concerned. And Lapham
doesn't strike me as a man who's in the habit
of acting from the best in him always."

"Do any of us?" asked Corey.

"Not all of us, at any rate," said Bellingham.
"It must have cost him something to say no to

you, for he's just in that state when he believes
that this or that chance, however small, would save
him."

Corey was silent. "Is he really in such a bad
way?"

"It's hard to tell just where he stands. I suspect
that a hopeful temperament and fondness for round
numbers have always caused him to set his figures
beyond his actual worth. I don't say that he's been
dishonest about it, but he's had a loose way of
estimating his assets; he's reckoned his wealth on
the basis of his capital, and some of his capital is
borrowed. He's lost heavily by some of the recent
failures, and there's been a terrible shrinkage in his
values. I don't mean merely in the stock of paint
on hand, but in a kind of competition which has become
very threatening. You know about that West
Virginian paint?"

Corey nodded.

"Well, he tells me that they've struck a vein of
natural gas out there which will enable them to
make as good a paint as his own at a cost of manufacturing
so low that they can undersell him everywhere.
If this proves to be the case, it will not only
drive his paint out of the market, but will reduce
the value of his Works—the whole plant—at Lapham
to a merely nominal figure."

"I see," said Corey dejectedly. "I've understood
that he had put a great deal of money into his
Works."

"Yes, and he estimated his mine there at a high

figure. Of course it will be worth little or nothing
if the West Virginia paint drives his out. Then, besides,
Lapham has been into several things outside
of his own business, and, like a good many other
men who try outside things, he's kept account of
them himself; and he's all mixed up about them.
He's asked me to look into his affairs with him, and
I've promised to do so. Whether he can be tided
over his difficulties remains to be seen. I'm afraid
it will take a good deal of money to do it—a great
deal more than he thinks, at least. He believes comparatively
little would do it. I think differently. I
think that anything less than a great deal would be
thrown away on him. If it were merely a question
of a certain sum—even a large sum—to keep him
going, it might be managed; but it's much more
complicated. And, as I say, it must have been a
trial to him to refuse your offer."

This did not seem to be the way in which Bellingham
had meant to conclude. But he said no more;
and Corey made him no response.

He remained pondering the case, now hopefully,
now doubtfully, and wondering, whatever his mood
was, whether Penelope knew anything of the fact
with which her mother went nearly at the same
moment to acquaint her.

"Of course, he's done it on your account," Mrs.
Lapham could not help saying.

"Then he was very silly. Does he think I would
let him give father money? And if father lost it for
him, does he suppose it would make it any easier for

me? I think father acted twice as well. It was
very silly."

In repeating the censure, her look was not so
severe as her tone; she even smiled a little, and her
mother reported to her father that she acted more
like herself than she had yet since Corey's offer.

"I think, if he was to repeat his offer, she would
have him now," said Mrs. Lapham.

"Well, I'll let her know if he does," said the
Colonel.

"I guess he won't do it to you!" she cried.

"Who else will he do it to?" he demanded.

They perceived that they had each been talking
of a different offer.

After Lapham went to his business in the morning
the postman brought another letter from Irene,
which was full of pleasant things that were happening
to her; there was a great deal about her cousin
Will, as she called him. At the end she had written,
"Tell Pen I don't want she should be foolish."

"There!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I guess it's going
to come out right, all round;" and it seemed as if
even the Colonel's difficulties were past. "When
your father gets through this, Pen," she asked impulsively,
"what shall you do?"

"What have you been telling Irene about me?"

"Nothing much. What should you do?"

"It would be a good deal easier to say what I
should do if father didn't," said the girl.

"I know you think it was nice in him to make
your father that offer," urged the mother.

"It was nice, yes; but it was silly," said the
girl. "Most nice things are silly, I suppose," she
added.

She went to her room and wrote a letter. It was
very long, and very carefully written; and when she
read it over, she tore it into small pieces. She
wrote another one, short and hurried, and tore that
up too. Then she went back to her mother, in the
family room, and asked to see Irene's letter, and read
it over to herself. "Yes, she seems to be having a
good time," she sighed. "Mother, do you think I
ought to let Mr. Corey know that I know about
it?"

"Well, I should think it would be a pleasure to
him," said Mrs. Lapham judicially.

"I'm not so sure of that—the way I should have
to tell him. I should begin by giving him a scolding.
Of course, he meant well by it, but can't you see that
it wasn't very flattering? How did he expect it
would change me?"

"I don't believe he ever thought of that."

"Don't you? Why?"

"Because you can see that he isn't one of that
kind. He might want to please you without wanting
to change you by what he did."

"Yes. He must have known that nothing would
change me,—at least, nothing that he could do. I
thought of that. I shouldn't like him to feel that I
couldn't appreciate it, even if I did think it was silly.
Should you write to him?"

"I don't see why not."

"It would be too pointed. No, I shall just let it
go. I wish he hadn't done it."

"Well, he has done it."

"And I've tried to write to him about it—two
letters: one so humble and grateful that it couldn't
stand up on its edge, and the other so pert and flippant.
Mother, I wish you could have seen those
two letters! I wish I had kept them to look at if I
ever got to thinking I had any sense again. They
would take the conceit out of me."

"What's the reason he don't come here any more?"

"Doesn't he come?" asked Penelope in turn, as
if it were something she had not noticed particularly.

"You'd ought to know."

"Yes." She sat silent a while. "If he doesn't
come, I suppose it's because he's offended at something
I did."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. I—wrote to him—a little while ago.
I suppose it was very blunt, but I didn't believe he
would be angry at it. But this—this that he's done
shows he was angry, and that he wasn't just seizing
the first chance to get out of it."

"What have you done, Pen?" demanded her
mother sharply.

"Oh, I don't know. All the mischief in the world,
I suppose. I'll tell you. When you first told me
that father was in trouble with his business, I wrote
to him not to come any more till I let him. I said
I couldn't tell him why, and he hasn't been here
since. I'm sure I don't know what it means."

Her mother looked at her with angry severity.
"Well, Penelope Lapham! For a sensible child,
you are the greatest goose I ever saw. Did you
think he would come here and see if you wouldn't
let him come?"

"He might have written," urged the girl.

Her mother made that despairing "Tchk!" with
her tongue, and fell back in her chair. "I should
have despised him if he had written. He's acted
just exactly right, and you—you've acted—I don't
know how you've acted. I'm ashamed of you. A
girl that could be so sensible for her sister, and
always say and do just the right thing, and then
when it comes to herself to be such a disgusting
simpleton!"

"I thought I ought to break with him at once,
and not let him suppose that there was any hope for
him or me if father was poor. It was my one
chance, in this whole business, to do anything
heroic, and I jumped at it. You mustn't think, because
I can laugh at it now, that I wasn't in earnest,
mother! I was—dead! But the Colonel has gone
to ruin so gradually, that he's spoilt everything. I
expected that he would be bankrupt the next day,
and that then he would understand what I meant.
But to have it drag along for a fortnight seems
to take all the heroism out of it, and leave it as
flat!" She looked at her mother with a smile that
shone through her tears, and a pathos that quivered
round her jesting lips. "It's easy enough to be
sensible for other people. But when it comes to

myself, there I am! Especially, when I want to do
what I oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing
what I didn't want to do must be doing what I ought!
But it's been a great success one way, mother. It's
helped me to keep up before the Colonel. If it
hadn't been for Mr. Corey's staying away, and my
feeling so indignant with him for having been badly
treated by me, I shouldn't have been worth anything
at all."

The tears started down her cheeks, but her mother
said, "Well, now, go along, and write to him. It
don't matter what you say, much; and don't be so
very particular."

Her third attempt at a letter pleased her scarcely
better than the rest, but she sent it, though it seemed
so blunt and awkward. She wrote:—

She posted her letter, and he sent his reply in the
evening, by hand:—

The generous words were blurred to her eyes by
the tears that sprang into them. But she could only
write in answer:—

She brought his letter to her mother, and told her
what she had written in reply. Her mother was
thoughtful a while before she said, with a sigh, "Well,
I hope you've begun as you can carry out, Pen."

"Oh, I shall not have to carry out at all. I shall
not have to do anything. That's one comfort—the
only comfort." She went away to her own room,
and when Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the
affair, he was silent at first, as she had been. Then
he said, "I don't know as I should have wanted her
to done differently; I don't know as she could. If
I ever come right again, she won't have anything to
feel meeching about; and if I don't, I don't want
she should be beholden to anybody. And I guess
that's the way she feels."

The Coreys in their turn sat in judgment on the
fact which their son felt bound to bring to their
knowledge.

"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Corey, to
whom her son had spoken.

"My dear," said her husband, with his laugh,

"she has behaved too well. If she had studied the
whole situation with the most artful eye to its
mastery, she could not possibly have behaved
better."

The process of Lapham's financial disintegration
was like the course of some chronic disorder, which
has fastened itself upon the constitution, but advances
with continual reliefs, with apparent amelioration,
and at times seems not to advance at all, when it
gives hope of final recovery not only to the sufferer,
but to the eye of science itself. There were moments
when James Bellingham, seeing Lapham pass this
crisis and that, began to fancy that he might pull
through altogether; and at these moments, when his
adviser could not oppose anything but experience
and probability to the evidence of the fact, Lapham
was buoyant with courage, and imparted his hopefulness
to his household. Our theory of disaster, of
sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets and
novelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage in
our own lives and in the lives of others, so far as we
have witnessed them, teaches us that this is false.
The house of mourning is decorously darkened to the
world, but within itself it is also the house of laughing.
Bursts of gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve
the gloom, and the stricken survivors have
their jests together, in which the thought of the
dead is tenderly involved, and a fond sense, not
crazier than many others, of sympathy and enjoyment
beyond the silence, justifies the sunnier mood
before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing,

and making it all up again with the
conventional fitness of things. Lapham's adversity
had this quality in common with bereavement.
It was not always like the adversity we
figure in allegory; it had its moments of being
like prosperity, and if upon the whole it was
continual, it was not incessant. Sometimes there
was a week of repeated reverses, when he had to
keep his teeth set and to hold on hard to all his
hopefulness; and then days came of negative result
or slight success, when he was full of his jokes at
the tea-table, and wanted to go to the theatre, or to
do something to cheer Penelope up. In some miraculous
way, by some enormous stroke of success
which should eclipse the brightest of his past prosperity,
he expected to do what would reconcile all
difficulties, not only in his own affairs, but in hers
too. "You'll see," he said to his wife; "it's going
to come out all right. Irene'll fix it up with Bill's
boy, and then she'll be off Pen's mind; and if things
go on as they've been going for the last two days,
I'm going to be in a position to do the favours myself,
and Pen can feel that she's makin'a sacrifice,
and then I guess may be she'll do it. If things turn
out as I expect now, and times ever do get any better
generally, I can show Corey that I appreciate his
offer. I can offer him the partnership myself then."

Even in the other moods, which came when everything
had been going wrong, and there seemed no
way out of the net, there were points of consolation
to Lapham and his wife. They rejoiced that Irene

was safe beyond the range of their anxieties, and
they had a proud satisfaction that there had been no
engagement between Corey and Penelope, and that it
was she who had forbidden it. In the closeness of
interest and sympathy in which their troubles had
reunited them, they confessed to each other that
nothing would have been more galling to their pride
than the idea that Lapham should not have been able
to do everything for his daughter that the Coreys
might have expected. Whatever happened now,
the Coreys could not have it to say that the Laphams
had tried to bring any such thing about.

Bellingham had lately suggested an assignment to
Lapham, as the best way out of his difficulties. It
was evident that he had not the money to meet his
liabilities at present, and that he could not raise it
without ruinous sacrifices, that might still end in
ruin after all. If he made the assignment, Bellingham
argued, he could gain time and make terms;
the state of things generally would probably improve,
since it could not be worse, and the market,
which he had glutted with his paint, might recover
and he could start again. Lapham had not agreed with
him. When his reverses first began it had seemed
easy for him to give up everything, to let the people
he owed take all, so only they would let him go out
with clean hands; and he had dramatised this feeling
in his talk with his wife, when they spoke together
of the mills on the G. L. & P. But ever since then
it had been growing harder, and he could not consent
even to seem to do it now in the proposed

assignment. He had not found other men so very
liberal or faithful with him; a good many of them
appeared to have combined to hunt him down; a
sense of enmity towards all his creditors asserted it
self in him; he asked himself why they should not
suffer a little too. Above all, he shrank from the
publicity of the assignment. It was open confession
that he had been a fool in some way; he could not
bear to have his family—his brother the judge,
especially, to whom he had always appeared the
soul of business wisdom—think him imprudent or
stupid. He would make any sacrifice before it came
to that. He determined in parting with Bellingham
to make the sacrifice which he had oftenest in his
mind, because it was the hardest, and to sell his new
house. That would cause the least comment. Most
people would simply think that he had got a splendid
offer, and with his usual luck had made a very good
thing of it; others who knew a little more about him
would say that he was hauling in his horns, but they
could not blame him; a great many other men were
doing the same in those hard times—the shrewdest
and safest men: it might even have a good effect.
He went straight from Bellingham's office to the real-estate
broker in whose hands he meant to put his
house, for he was not the sort of man to shilly-shally
when he had once made up his mind. But he found
it hard to get his voice up out of his throat, when he
said he guessed he would get the broker to sell that
new house of his on the water side of Beacon. The
broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed
Colonel Lapham knew it was a pretty dull time in
real estate? and Lapham said yes, he knew that,
but he should not sell at a sacrifice, and he did
not care to have the broker name him or describe
the house definitely unless parties meant business.
Again the broker said yes; and he added, as a
joke Lapham would appreciate, that he had half a
dozen houses on the water side of Beacon, on the
same terms; that nobody wanted to be named or to
have his property described.

It did, in fact, comfort Lapham a little to find
himself in the same boat with so many others; he
smiled grimly, and said in his turn, yes, he guessed
that was about the size of it with a good many
people. But he had not the heart to tell his wife
what he had done, and he sat taciturn that whole
evening, without even going over his accounts, and
went early to bed, where he lay tossing half the night
before he fell asleep. He slept at last only upon the
promise he made himself that he would withdraw
the house from the broker's hands; but he went
heavily to his own business in the morning without
doing so. There was no such rush, anyhow, he reflected
bitterly; there would be time to do that a
month later, probably.

It struck him with a sort of dismay when a boy
came with a note from a broker, saying that a party
who had been over the house in the fall had come to
him to know whether it could be bought, and was
willing to pay the cost of the house up to the time
he had seen it. Lapham took refuge in trying to

think who the party could be; he concluded that it
must have been somebody who had gone over it with
the architect, and he did not like that; but he was
aware that this was not an answer to the broker,
and he wrote that he would give him an answer in
the morning.

Now that it had come to the point, it did not seem
to him that he could part with the house. So much
of his hope for himself and his children had gone
into it that the thought of selling it made him tremulous
and sick. He could not keep about his work
steadily, and with his nerves shaken by want of
sleep, and the shock of this sudden and unexpected
question, he left his office early, and went over to
look at the house and try to bring himself to some
conclusion here. The long procession of lamps on
the beautiful street was flaring in the clear red of the
sunset towards which it marched, and Lapham, with
a lump in his throat, stopped in front of his house
and looked at their multitude. They were not merely
a part of the landscape; they were a part of his pride
and glory, his success, his triumphant life's work
which was fading into failure in his helpless hands.
He ground his teeth to keep down that lump, but the
moisture in his eyes blurred the lamps, and the keen
pale crimson against which it made them flicker. He
turned and looked up, as he had so often done at the
window-spaces, neatly glazed for the winter with white
linen, and recalled the night when he had stopped
with Irene before the house, and she had said that
she should never live there, and he had tried to coax

her into courage about it. There was no such façade
as that on the whole street, to his thinking. Through
his long talks with the architect, he had come to
feel almost as intimately and fondly as the architect
himself the satisfying simplicity of the whole design
and the delicacy of its detail. It appealed to him as
an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearned
ear, and he recognised the difference between this
fine work and the obstreperous pretentiousness
of the many overloaded house-fronts which Seymour
had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere
on the Back Bay. Now, in the depths of
his gloom, he tried to think what Italian city it was
where Seymour said he had first got the notion of
treating brick-work in that way.

He unlocked the temporary door with the key he
always carried, so that he could let himself in and
out whenever he liked, and entered the house, dim
and very cold with the accumulated frigidity of the
whole winter in it, and looking as if the arrest of
work upon it had taken place a thousand years
betore. It smelt of the unpainted woods and the
clean, hard surfaces of the plaster, where the experiments
in decoration had left it untouched; and
mingled with these odours was that of some rank
pigments and metallic compositions which Seymour
had used in trying to realise a certain daring novelty
of finish, which had not proved successful. Above
all, Lapham detected the peculiar odour of his own
paint, with which the architect had been greatly
interested one day, when Lapham showed it to him

at the office. He had asked Lapham to let him try
the Persis Brand in realising a little idea he had for
the finish of Mrs. Lapham's room. If it succeeded
they could tell her what it was, for a surprise.

Lapham glanced at the bay-window in the reception-room,
where he sat with his girls on the
trestles when Corey first came by; and then he
explored the whole house to the attic, in the light
faintly admitted through the linen sashes. The
floors were strewn with shavings and chips which
the carpenters had left, and in the music-room these
had been blown into long irregular windrows by the
draughts through a wide rent in the linen sash.
Lapham tried to pin it up, but failed, and stood
looking out of it over the water. The ice had left
the river, and the low tide lay smooth and red in
the light of the sunset. The Cambridge flats showed
the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bare
after a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked
trees, the spires and roofs had a black outline, as if
they were objects in a landscape of the French
school.

The whim seized Lapham to test the chimney in
the music-room; it had been tried in the dining-room
below, and in his girls' fireplaces above, but
here the hearth was still clean. He gathered some
shavings and blocks together, and kindled them, and
as the flame mounted gaily from them, he pulled up
a nail keg which he found there and sat down to
watch it. Nothing could have been better; the
chimney was a perfect success; and as Lapham

glanced out of the torn linen sash he said to himself
that that party, whoever he was, who had offered to
buy his house might go to the devil; he would never
sell it as long as he had a dollar. He said that he
should pull through yet; and it suddenly came into
his mind that, if he could raise the money to buy out
those West Virginia fellows, he should be all right,
and would have the whole game in his own hand.
He slapped himself on the thigh, and wondered that
he had never thought of that before; and then, lighting
a cigar with a splinter from the fire, he sat down
again to work the scheme out in his own mind.

He did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the
stairs, and coming towards the room where he sat;
and the policeman to whom the feet belonged had to
call out to him, smoking at his chimney-corner, with
his back turned to the door, "Hello! what are you
doing here?"

"What's that to you?" retorted Lapham, wheeling
half round on his nail-keg.

"I'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon
him, and then stopping short as he recognised him.
"Why, Colonel Lapham! I thought it was some
tramp got in here!"

"Have a cigar?" said Lapham hospitably. "Sorry
there ain't another nail-keg."

The officer took the cigar. "I'll smoke it outside.
I've just come on, and I can't stop. Tryin' your
chimney?"

"Yes, I thought I'd see how it would draw, in
here. It seems to go first-rate."

The policeman looked about him with an eye of
inspection. "You want to get that linen window,
there, mended up."

"Yes, I'll speak to the builder about that. It can
go for one night."

The policeman went to the window and failed to
pin the linen together where Lapham had failed
before. "I can't fix it." He looked round once
more, and saying, "Well, good night," went out and
down the stairs.

Lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked
his cigar; then he rose and stamped upon the embers
that still burned with his heavy boots, and went
home. He was very cheerful at supper. He told
his wife that he guessed he had a sure thing of it
now, and in another twenty-four hours he should tell
her just how. He made Penelope go to the theatre
with him, and when they came out, after the play,
the night was so fine that he said they must walk
round by the new house and take a look at it in the
starlight. He said he had been there before he came
home, and tried Seymour's chimney in the music-room,
and it worked like a charm.

As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware
of unwonted stir and tumult, and presently the still
air transmitted a turmoil of sound, through which a
powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt.
The sky had reddened above them, and turning the
corner at the Public Garden, they saw a black mass
of people obstructing the perspective of the brightly-lighted
street, and out of this mass a half-dozen

engines, whose strong heart-beats had already reached
them, sent up volumes of fire-tinged smoke and
steam from their funnels. Ladders were planted
against the façade of a building, from the roof of
which a mass of flame burnt smoothly upward, except
where here and there it seemed to pull contemptuously
away from the heavy streams of water which
the firemen, clinging like great beetles to their
ladders, poured in upon it.

Lapham had no need to walk down through the
crowd, gazing and gossiping, with shouts and cries
and hysterical laughter, before the burning house, to
make sure that it was his.

"I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said.

Among the people who were looking at it were a
party who seemed to have run out from dinner in
some neighbouring house; the ladies were fantastically
wrapped up, as if they had flung on the first
things they could seize.

"Isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl.
"I wouldn't have missed it on any account. Thank
you so much, Mr. Symington, for bringing us out!"

"Ah, I thought you'd like it," said this Mr.
Symington, who must have been the host; "and
you can enjoy it without the least compunction,
Miss Delano, for I happen to know that the house
belongs to a man who could afford to burn one up
for you once a year."

"Oh, do you think he would, if I came again?"

"I haven't the least doubt of it. We don't do
things by halves in Boston."

"He ought to have had a coat of his noncombustible
paint on it," said another gentleman of the
party.

Penelope pulled her father away toward the first
carriage she could reach of a number that had driven
up. "Here, father! get into this."

"No, no; I couldn't ride," he answered heavily,
and he walked home in silence. He greeted his wife
with, "Well, Persis, our house is gone! And I guess
I set it on fire myself;" and while he rummaged
among the papers in his desk, still with his coat and
hat on, his wife got the facts as she could from
Penelope. She did not reproach him. Here was a
case in which his self-reproach must be sufficiently
sharp without any edge from her. Besides, her
mind was full of a terrible thought.

"O Silas," she faltered, "they'll think you set
it on fire to get the insurance!"

Lapham was staring at a paper which he held in
his hand. "I had a builder's risk on it, but it
expired last week. It's a dead loss."

"Oh, thank the merciful Lord!" cried his wife.

"Merciful!" said Lapham. "Well, it's a queer
way of showing it."

He went to bed, and fell into the deep sleep
which sometimes follows a great moral shock. It
was perhaps rather a torpor than a sleep.