 | XXVI. The rise of Silas Lapham |  |
XXVI.
Later in the forenoon came the despatch from the
West Virginians in New York, saying their brother
assented to their agreement; and it now remained
for Lapham to fulfil his part of it. He was ludicrously
far from able to do this; and unless he could
get some extension of time from them, he must lose
this chance, his only chance, to retrieve himself.
He spent the time in a desperate endeavour to raise
the money, but he had not raised the half of it when
the banks closed. With shame in his heart he
went to Bellingham, from whom he had parted so
haughtily, and laid his plan before him. He could
not bring himself to ask Bellingham's help, but he
told him what he proposed to do. Bellingham
pointed out that the whole thing was an experiment,
and that the price asked was enormous, unless
a great success were morally certain. He advised
delay, he advised prudence; he insisted that Lapham
ought at least to go out to Kanawha Falls, and see
the mines and works before he put any such sum
into the development of the enterprise.
"That's all well enough," cried Lapham; "but if
I don't clinch this offer within twenty-four hours,
then where am I?"
"Go on and see them again," said Bellingham.
"They can't be so peremptory as that with you.
They must give you time to look at what they
want to sell. If it turns out what you hope, then
—I'll see what can be done. But look into it
thoroughly."
"Well!" cried Lapham, helplessly submitting.
He took out his watch, and saw that he had forty
minutes to catch the four o'clock train. He hurried
back to his office, and put together some papers preparatory
to going, and despatched a note by his boy
to Mrs. Lapham saying that he was starting for
New York, and did not know just when he should
get back.
The early spring day was raw and cold. As he
went out through the office he saw the clerks at
work with their street-coats and hats on; Miss
Dewey had her jacket dragged up on her shoulders,
and looked particularly comfortless as she operated
her machine with her red fingers. "What's up?"
asked Lapham, stopping a moment.
"Seems to be something the matter with the
steam," she answered, with the air of unmerited
wrong habitual with so many pretty women who
have to work for a living.
"Well, take your writer into my room. There's
a fire in the stove there," said Lapham, passing
out.
Half an hour later his wife came into the outer
gradually mounting from the mental numbness
in which he had left her, and now she could
wait no longer to tell him that she saw how she had
forsaken him in his hour of trial and left him to
bear it alone. She wondered at herself in shame
and dismay; she wondered that she could have
been so confused as to the real point by that old
wretch of a Rogers, that she could have let him
hoodwink her so, even for a moment. It astounded
her that such a thing should have happened, for if
there was any virtue upon which this good woman
prided herself, in which she thought herself superior
to her husband, it was her instant and steadfast perception
of right and wrong, and the ability to choose
the right to her own hurt. But she had now to
confess, as each of us has had likewise to confess in
his own case, that the very virtue on which she had
prided herself was the thing that had played her
false; that she had kept her mind so long upon
that old wrong which she believed her husband had
done this man that she could not detach it, but
clung to the thought of reparation for it when she
ought to have seen that he was proposing a piece of
roguery as the means. The suffering which Lapham
must inflict on him if he decided against him had
been more to her apprehension than the harm he
might do if he decided for him. But now she
owned her limitations to herself, and above everything
in the world she wished the man whom her
conscience had roused and driven on whither her
what he felt to be right, and nothing else. She
admired and revered him for going beyond her, and
she wished to tell him that she did not know what
he had determined to do about Rogers, but that she
knew it was right, and would gladly abide the consequences
with him, whatever they were.
She had not been near his place of business for
nearly a year, and her heart smote her tenderly as
she looked about her there, and thought of the early
days when she knew as much about the paint as he
did; she wished that those days were back again.
She saw Corey at his desk, and she could not bear
to speak to him; she dropped her veil that she need
not recognise him, and pushed on to Lapham's room,
and opening the door without knocking, shut it behind
her.
Then she became aware with intolerable disappointment
that her husband was not there. Instead,
a very pretty girl sat at his desk, operating a typewriter.
She seemed quite at home, and she paid
Mrs. Lapham the scant attention which such young
women often bestow upon people not personally interesting
to them. It vexed the wife that any one
else should seem to be helping her husband about business
that she had once been so intimate with; and
she did not at all like the girl's indifference to her
presence. Her hat and sack hung on a nail in one
corner, and Lapham's office coat, looking intensely
like him to his wife's familiar eye, hung on a nail in
the other corner; and Mrs. Lapham liked even less
garments in her husband's office. She began to ask
herself excitedly why he should be away from his
office when she happened to come; and she had not
the strength at the moment to reason herself out of
her unreasonableness.
"When will Colonel Lapham be in, do you suppose?"
she sharply asked of the girl.
"I couldn't say exactly," replied the girl, without
looking round.
"Has he been out long?"
"I don't know as I noticed," said the girl, looking
up at the clock, without looking at Mrs. Lapham.
She went on working her machine.
"Well, I can't wait any longer," said the wife
abruptly. "When Colonel Lapham comes in, you
please tell him Mrs. Lapham wants to see him."
The girl started to her feet and turned toward
Mrs. Lapham with a red and startled face, which
she did not lift to confront her. "Yes—yes—I
will," she faltered.
The wife went home with a sense of defeat mixed
with an irritation about this girl which she could
not quell or account for. She found her husband's
message, and it seemed intolerable that he should
have gone to New York without seeing her; she
asked herself in vain what the mysterious business
could be that took him away so suddenly. She said
to herself that he was neglecting her; he was leaving
her out a little too much; and in demanding of herself
why he had never mentioned that girl there in
out of his business life. That was another curse of
their prosperity. Well, she was glad the prosperity
was going; it had never been happiness. After this
she was going to know everything as she used.
She tried to dismiss the whole matter till Lapham
returned; and if there had been anything for her to
do in that miserable house, as she called it in her
thought, she might have succeeded. But again the
curse was on her; there was nothing to do; and the
looks of that girl kept coming back to her vacancy,
her disoccupation. She tried to make herself something
to do, but that beauty, which she had not
liked, followed her amid the work of overhauling the
summer clothing, which Irene had seen to putting
away in the fall. Who was the thing, anyway? It
was very strange, her being there; why did she
jump up in that frightened way when Mrs. Lapham
had named herself?
After dark, that evening, when the question had
worn away its poignancy from mere iteration, a note
for Mrs. Lapham was left at the door by a messenger
who said there was no answer. "A note for me?"
she said, staring at the unknown, and somehow
artificial-looking, handwriting of the superscription.
Then she opened it and read: "Ask your husband
about his lady copying-clerk. A Friend and
Well-wisher," who signed the note, gave no other
name.
Mrs. Lapham sat helpless with it in her hand.
Her brain reeled; she tried to fight the madness off;
it had become, with lessening intervals of sanity and
release, a demoniacal possession. She passed the
night without sleep, without rest, in the frenzy of
the cruellest of the passions, which covers with
shame the unhappy soul it possesses, and murderously
lusts for the misery of its object. If she had
known where to find her husband in New York, she
would have followed him; she waited his return in
an ecstasy of impatience. In the morning he came
back, looking spent and haggard. She saw him
drive up to the door, and she ran to let him in herself.
"Who is that girl you've got in your office, Silas
Lapham?" she demanded, when her husband entered.
"Girl in my office?"
"Yes! Who is she? What is she doing there?"
"Why, what have you heard about her?"
"Never you mind what I've heard. Who is she?
Is it Mrs. M. that you gave that money to? I want to
know who she is! I want to know what a respectable
man, with grown-up girls of his own, is doing
with such a looking thing as that in his office? I
want to know how long she's been there? I want
to know what she's there at all for?"
He had mechanically pushed her before him into
the long, darkened parlour, and he shut himself in
there with her now, to keep the household from
hearing her lifted voice. For a while he stood bewildered,
and could not have answered if he would;
ever accused you of anything wrong, Persis?"
"You no need to!" she answered furiously,
placing herself against the closed door.
"Did you ever know me to do anything out of
the way?"
"That isn't what I asked you."
"Well, I guess you may find out about that girl
yourself. Get away from the door."
"I won't get away from the door."
She felt herself set lightly aside, and her husband
opened the door and went out. "I will find out
about her," she screamed after him. "I'll find out,
and I'll disgrace you. I'll teach you how to treat
me—"
The air blackened round her: she reeled to the
sofa and then she found herself waking from a
faint. She did not know how long she had lain
there; she did not care. In a moment her madness
came whirling back upon her. She rushed up to his
room; it was empty; the closet-doors stood ajar and
the drawers were open; he must have packed a bag
hastily and fled. She went out and wandered crazily
up and down till she found a hack. She gave the
driver her husband's business address, and told him
to drive there as fast as he could; and three times
she lowered the window to put her head out and
ask him if he could not hurry. A thousand things
thronged into her mind to support her in her evil
will. She remembered how glad and proud that
man had been to marry her, and how everybody said
She remembered how good she had always been to
him, how perfectly devoted, slaving early and late to
advance him, and looking out for his interests in all
things, and sparing herself in nothing. If it had not
been for her, he might have been driving stage yet;
and since their troubles had begun, the troubles which
his own folly and imprudence had brought on them,
her conduct had been that of a true and faithful wife.
Was he the sort of man to be allowed to play her
false with impunity? She set her teeth and drew
her breath sharply through them when she thought
how willingly she had let him befool her, and delude
her about that memorandum of payments to Mrs. M.,
because she loved him so much, and pitied him for
his cares and anxieties. She recalled his confusion,
his guilty looks.
She plunged out of the carriage so hastily when
she reached the office that she did not think of paying
the driver; and he had to call after her when she
had got half-way up the stairs. Then she went
straight to Lapham's room, with outrage in her heart.
There was again no one there but that type-writer
girl; she jumped to her feet in a fright, as Mrs.
Lapham dashed the door to behind her and flung up
her veil.
The two women confronted each other.
"Why, the good land!" cried Mrs. Lapham, "ain't
you Zerrilla Millon?"
"I—I'm married," faltered the girl. "My name's
Dewey, now."
"You're Jim Millon's daughter, anyway. How
long have you been here?"
"I haven't been here regularly; I've been here
off and on ever since last May."
"Where's your mother?"
"She's here—in Boston."
Mrs. Lapham kept her eyes on the girl, but she
dropped, trembling, into her husband's chair, and a
sort of amaze and curiosity were in her voice instead
of the fury she had meant to put there.
"The Colonel," continued Zerrilla, "he's been
helping us, and he's got me a type-writer, so that I
can help myself a little. Mother's doing pretty well
now; and when Hen isn't around we can get along."
"That your husband?"
"I never wanted to marry him; but he promised
to try to get something to do on shore; and mother
was all for it, because he had a little property then,
and I thought may be I'd better. But it's turned
out just as I said, and if he don't stay away long
enough this time to let me get the divorce,—he's
agreed to it, time and again,—I don't know what
we're going to do." Zerrilla's voice fell, and the
trouble which she could keep out of her face usually,
when she was comfortably warmed and fed and
prettily dressed, clouded it in the presence of a
sympathetic listener. "I saw it was you, when you
came in the other day," she went on; "but you
didn't seem to know me. I suppose the Colonel's
told you that there's a gentleman going to marry
me—Mr. Wemmel's his name—as soon as I get the
it don't seem as if I ever could get it."
Mrs. Lapham would not let her know that she was
ignorant of the fact attributed to her knowledge.
She remained listening to Zerrilla, and piecing out
the whole history of her presence there from the
facts of the past, and the traits of her husband's
character. One of the things she had always had
to fight him about was that idea of his that he was
bound to take care of Jim Millon's worthless wife
and her child because Millon had got the bullet that
was meant for him. It was a perfect superstition of
his; she could not beat it out of him; but she had
made him promise the last time he had done anvthing
for that woman that it should be the last time.
He had then got her a little house in one of the
fishing ports where she could take the sailors to
board and wash for, and earn an honest living if she
would keep straight. That was five or six years
ago, and Mrs. Lapham had heard nothing of Mrs.
Millon since; she had heard quite enough of her
before; and had known her idle and baddish ever
since she was the worst little girl at school in Lumberville,
and all through her shameful girlhood, and
the married days which she had made so miserable
to the poor fellow who had given her his decent
name and a chance to behave herself. Mrs. Lapham
had no mercy on Moll Millon, and she had quarrelled
often enough with her husband for befriending her.
As for the child, if the mother would put Zerrilla
out with some respectable family, that would be one
she was against letting her husband do anything for
either of them. He had done ten times as much for
them now as he had any need to, and she had made
him give her his solemn word that he would do no
more. She saw now that she was wrong to make
him give it, and that he must have broken it again
and again for the reason that he had given when she
once scolded him for throwing away his money on
that hussy—
"When I think of Jim Millon, I've got to; that's
all."
She recalled now that whenever she had brought
up the subject of Mrs. Millon and her daughter, he
had seemed shy of it, and had dropped it with some
guess that they were getting along now. She wondered
that she had not thought at once of Mrs.
Millon when she saw that memorandum about Mrs.
M.; but the woman had passed so entirely out of
her life, that she had never dreamt of her in connection
with it. Her husband had deceived her, yet
her heart was no longer hot against him, but rather
tenderly grateful that his deceit was in this sort, and
not in that other. All cruel and shameful doubt of
him went out of it. She looked at this beautiful
girl, who had blossomed out of her knowledge since
she saw her last, and she knew that she was only a
blossomed weed, of the same worthless root as her
mother, and saved, if saved, from the same evil
destiny, by the good of her father in her; but so far
as the girl and her mother were concerned, Mrs.
nothing but his wilful, wrong-headed, kind-heartedness,
which her own exactions had turned into
deceit. She remained a while, questioning the girl
quietly about herself and her mother, and then, with
a better mind towards Zerrilla, at least, than she had
ever had before, she rose up and went out. There
must have been some outer hint of the exhaustion
in which the subsidence of her excitement had left
her within, for before she had reached the head of
the stairs, Corey came towards her.
"Can I be of any use to you, Mrs. Lapham? The
Colonel was here just before you came in, on his way
to the train."
"Yes,—yes. I didn't know—I thought perhaps
I could catch him here. But it don't matter. I
wish you would let some one go with me to get a
carriage," she begged feebly.
"I'll go with you myself," said the young fellow,
ignoring the strangeness in her manner. He offered
her his arm in the twilight of the staircase, and she
was glad to put her trembling hand through it, and
keep it there till he helped her into a hack which he
found for her. He gave the driver her direction,
and stood looking a little anxiously at her.
"I thank you; I am all right now," she said, and
he bade the man drive on.
When she reached home she went to bed, spent
with the tumult of her emotions and sick with shame
and self-reproach. She understood now, as clearly
as if he had told her in as many words, that if he
characterised themselves so, even to Mrs. Lapham's
remorse—secretly and in defiance of her, it was because
he dreaded her blame, which was so sharp
and bitter, for what he could not help doing. It
consoled her that he had defied her, deceived her;
when he came back she should tell him that; and
then it flashed upon her that she did not know
where he was gone, or whether he would ever come
again. If he never came, it would be no more than
she deserved; but she sent for Penelope, and tried
to give herself hopes of escape from this just
penalty.
Lapham had not told his daughter where he was
going; she had heard him packing his bag, and had
offered to help him; but he had said he could do it
best, and had gone off, as he usually did, without
taking leave of any one.
"What were you talking about so loud, down in
the parlour," she asked her mother, "just before he
came up? Is there any new trouble?"
"No; it was nothing."
"I couldn't tell. Once I thought you were laugh
ing." She went about, closing the curtains on account
of her mother's headache, and doing awkwardly and
imperfectly the things that Irene would have done
so skilfully for her comfort.
The day wore away to nightfall, and then Mrs.
Lapham said she must know. Penelope said there
was no one to ask; the clerks would all be gone
home, and her mother said yes, there was Mr.
know.
The girl hesitated. "Very well," she said, then,
scarcely above a whisper, and she presently laughed
huskily. "Mr. Corey seems fated to come in, somewhere.
I guess it's a Providence, mother."
She sent off a note, inquiring whether he could
tell her just where her father had expected to be
that night; and the answer came quickly back that
Corey did not know, but would look up the bookkeeper
and inquire. This office brought him in
person, an hour later, to tell Penelope that the
Colonel was to be at Lapham that night and next
day.
"He came in from New York, in a great hurry,
and rushed off as soon as he could pack his bag,"
Penelope explained, "and we hadn't a chance to ask
him where he was to be to-night. And mother
wasn't very well, and—"
"I thought she wasn't looking well when she was
at the office to-day. And so I thought I would come
rather than send," Corey explained in his turn.
"Oh, thank you!"
"If there is anything I can do—telegraph Colonel
Lapham, or anything?"
"Oh no, thank you; mother's better now. She
merely wanted to be sure where he was."
He did not offer to go, upon this conclusion of his
business, but hoped he was not keeping her from her
mother. She thanked him once again, and said no,
that her mother was much better since she had had
and without any apparent exchange of intelligence
he remained, and at eleven o'clock he was still there.
He was honest in saying he did not know it was so
late; but he made no pretence of being sorry, and
she took the blame to herself.
"I oughtn't to have let you stay," she said.
"But with father gone, and all that trouble hanging
over us—"
She was allowing him to hold her hand a moment
at the door, to which she had followed him.
"I'm so glad you could let me!" he said, "and I
want to ask you now when I may come again. But
if you need me, you'll—"
A sharp pull at the door-bell outside made them
start asunder, and at a sign from Penelope, who
knew that the maids were abed by this time, he
opened it.
"Why, Irene!" shrieked the girl.
Irene entered with the hackman, who had driven
her unheard to the door, following with her small
bags, and kissed her sister with resolute composure.
"That's all," she said to the hackman. "I gave
my checks to the expressman," she explained to
Penelope.
Corey stood helpless. Irene turned upon him,
and gave him her hand. "How do you do, Mr.
Corey?" she said, with a courage that sent a thrill
of admiring gratitude through him. "Where's
mamma, Pen? Papa gone to bed?"
Penelope faltered out some reply embodying the
room. Mrs. Lapham started up in bed at her
apparition.
"Irene Lapham"
"Uncle William thought he ought to tell me the
trouble papa was in; and did you think I was going
to stay off there junketing, while you were going
through all this at home, and Pen acting so silly,
too? You ought to have been ashamed to let me
stay so long! I started just as soon as I could pack.
Did you get my despatch? I telegraphed from
Springfield. But it don't matter, now. Here I am.
And I don't think I need have hurried on Pen's
account," she added, with an accent prophetic of the
sort of old maid she would become, if she happened
not to marry.
"Did you see him?" asked her mother. "It's
the first time he's been here since she told him he
mustn't come."
"I guess it isn't the last time, by the looks," said
Irene, and before she took off her bonnet she began
to undo some of Penelope's mistaken arrangements
of the room.
At breakfast, where Corey and his mother met the
next morning before his father and sisters came
down, he told her, with embarrassment which told
much more, that he wished now that she would go
and call upon the Laphams.
Mrs. Corey turned a little pale, but shut her lips
tight and mourned in silence whatever hopes she
had lately permitted herself. She answered with
between you and Miss Lapham, your family ought
to recognise it."
"Yes," said Corey.
"You were reluctant to have me call at first, but
now if the affair is going on—"
"It is! I hope—yes, it is!"
"Then I ought to go and see her, with your
sisters; and she ought to come here and—we ought
all to see her and make the matter public. We
can't do so too soon. It will seem as if we were
ashamed if we don't."
"Yes, you are quite right, mother," said the
young man gratefully, `and I feel how kind and
good you are. I have tried to consider you in this
matter, though I don't seem to have done so; I
know what your rights are, and I wish with all my
heart that I were meeting even your tastes perfectly.
But I know you will like her when you come to
know her. It's been very hard for her every way
—about her sister,—and she's made a great sacrifice
for me. She's acted nobly."
Mrs. Corey, whose thoughts cannot always be
reported, said she was sure of it, and that all she
desired was her son's happiness.
"She's been very unwilling to consider it an
engagement on that account, and on account of
Colonel Lapham's difficulties. I should like to have
you go, now, for that very reason. I don't know
just how serious the trouble is; but it isn't a time
when we can seem indifferent."
The logic of this was not perhaps so apparent to
the glasses of fifty as to the eyes of twenty-six; but
Mrs. Corey, however she viewed it, could not allow
herself to blench before the son whom she had
taught that to want magnanimity was to be less
than gentlemanly. She answered, with what composure
she could, "I will take your sisters," and
then she made some natural inquiries about Lapham's
affairs.
"Oh, I hope it will come out all right," Corey
said, with a lover's vague smile, and left her.
When his father came down, rubbing his long hands
together, and looking aloof from all the cares of the
practical world, in an artistic withdrawal, from which
his eye ranged over the breakfast-table before he sat
down, Mrs. Corey told him what she and their son
had been saying.
He laughed, with a delicate impersonal appreciation
of the predicament. "Well, Anna, you can't
say but if you ever were guilty of supposing yourself
porcelain, this is a just punishment of your
arrogance. Here you are bound by the very quality
on which you've prided yourself to behave well to
a bit of earthenware who is apparently in danger of
losing the gilding that rendered her tolerable."
"We never cared for the money," said Mrs.
Corey. "You know that."
"No; and now we can't seem to care for the loss
of it. That would be still worse. Either horn of
the dilemma gores us. Well, we still have the
comfort we had in the beginning; we can't help
trying. Unless we can look to Tom's inamorata
herself for help."
Mrs. Corey shook her head so gloomily that her
husband broke off with another laugh. But at the
continued trouble of her face, he said, sympathetically.
"My dear, I know it's a very disagreeable
affair; and I don't think either of us has failed to
see that it was so from the beginning. I have had
my way of expressing my sense of it, and you yours,
but we have always been of the same mind about it.
We would both have preferred to have Tom marry
in his own set; the Laphams are about the last set
we could have wished him to marry into. They are
uncultivated people, and so far as I have seen them,
I'm not able to believe that poverty will improve
them. Still, it may. Let us hope for the best, and
let us behave as well as we know how. I'm sure
you will behave well, and I shall try. I'm going
with you to call on Miss Lapham. This is a thing
that can't be done by halves!"
He cut his orange in the Neapolitan manner, and
ate it in quarters.
| XXVI. The rise of Silas Lapham | |