University of Virginia Library

III.

Toward the end of the winter there came a newspaper,
addressed to Miss Irene Lapham; it proved
to be a Texas newspaper, with a complimentary
account of the ranch of the Hon. Loring G. Stanton,
which the representative of the journal had visited.

"It must be his friend," said Mrs. Lapham, to
whom her daughter brought the paper; "the one
he's staying with."

The girl did not say anything, but she carried the
paper to her room, where she scanned every line of
it for another name. She did not find it, but she
cut the notice out and stuck it into the side of her
mirror, where she could read it every morning when
she brushed her hair, and the last thing at night
when she looked at herself in the glass just before
turning off the gas. Her sister often read it aloud,
standing behind her and rendering it with elocutionary
effects.

"The first time I ever heard of a love-letter in the
form of a puff to a cattle-ranch. But perhaps that's
the style on the Hill."

Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the arrival of

the paper, treating the fact with an importance that
he refused to see in it.

"How do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?'
he demanded.

"Oh, I know he did."

"I don't see why he couldn't write to 'Rene, if he
really meant anything."

"Well, I guess that wouldn't be their way," said
Mrs. Lapham; she did not at all know what their
way would be.

When the spring opened Colonel Lapham showed
that he had been in earnest about building on the
New Land. His idea of a house was a brown-stone
front, four stories high, and a French roof with an
air-chamber above. Inside, there was to be a reception-room
on the street and a dining-room back.
The parlours were to be on the second floor, and
finished in black walnut or party-coloured paint.
The chambers were to be on the three floors above,
front and rear, with side-rooms over the front door.
Black walnut was to be used everywhere except in
the attic, which was to be painted and grained to
look like black walnut. The whole was to be very
high-studded, and there were to be handsome cornices
and elaborate centre pieces throughout except, again,
in the attic.

These ideas he had formed from the inspection of
many new buildings which he had seen going up,
and which he had a passion for looking into. He
was confirmed in his ideas by a master builder who
had put up a great many houses on the Back Bay

as a speculation, and who told him that if he wanted
to have a house in the style, that was the way to
have it.

The beginnings of the process by which Lapham
escaped from the master builder and ended in the
hands of an architect are so obscure that it would
be almost impossible to trace them. But it all
happened, and Lapham promptly developed his
ideas of black walnut finish, high studding, and
cornices. The architect was able to conceal the
shudder which they must have sent through him.
He was skilful, as nearly all architects are, in playing
upon that simple instrument Man. He began
to touch Colonel Lapham's stops.

"Oh, certainly, have the parlours high-studded.
But you've seen some of those pretty old-fashioned
country-houses, haven't you, where the entrance-story
is very low-studded?"

"Yes," Lapham assented.

"Well, don't you think something of that kind
would have a very nice effect? Have the entrance-story
low-studded, and your parlours on the next
floor as high as you please. Put your little reception-room
here beside the door and get the whole
width of your house frontage for a square hall, and
an easy low-tread staircase running up three sides
of it. I'm sure Mrs. Lapham would find it much
pleasanter." The architect caught toward him a
scrap of paper lying on the table at which they were
sitting and sketched his idea. "Then have your
dining-room behind the hall, looking on the water."

He glanced at Mrs. Lapham, who said, "Of course,"
and the architect went on—

"That gets you rid of one of those long, straight,
ugly staircases,"—until that moment Lapham had
thought a long, straight staircase the chief ornament
of a house,—"and gives you an effect of amplitude
and space."

"That's so!" said Mrs. Lapham. Her husband
merely made a noise in his throat.

"Then, were you thinking of having your parlours
together, connected by folding doors?" asked
the architect deferentially.

"Yes, of course," said Lapham. "They're always
so, ain't they?"

"Well, nearly," said the architect. "I was
wondering how would it do to make one large
square room at the front, taking the whole breadth
of the house, and, with this hall-space between, have
a music-room back for the young ladies?"

Lapham looked helplessly at his wife, whose
quicker apprehension had followed the architect's
pencil with instant sympathy. "First-rate!" she
cried.

The Colonel gave way. "I guess that would do.
It'll be kind of odd, won't it?"

"Well, I don't know," said the architect. "Not
so odd, I hope, as the other thing will be a few
years from now." He went on to plan the rest of
the house, and he showed himself such a master in
regard to all the practical details that Mrs. Lapham
began to feel a motherly affection for the young

man, and her husband could not deny in his heart
that the fellow seemed to understand his business.
He stopped walking about the room, as he had
begun to do when the architect and Mrs. Lapham
entered into the particulars of closets, drainage,
kitchen arrangements, and all that, and came back
to the table. "I presume," he said, "you'll have
the drawing-room finished in black walnut?"

"Well, yes," replied the architect, "if you like.
But some less expensive wood can be made just as
effective with paint. Of course you can paint black
walnut too."

"Paint it?" gasped the Colonel.

"Yes," said the architect quietly. "White, or a
little off white."

Lapham dropped the plan he had picked up from
the table. His wife made a little move toward him
of consolation or support.

"Of course," resumed the architect, I know
there has been a great craze for black walnut. But
it's an ugly wood; and for a drawing-room there is
really nothing like white paint. We should want to
introduce a little gold here and there. Perhaps we
might run a painted frieze round under the cornice
—garlands of roses on a gold ground; it would tell
wonderfully in a white room."

The Colonel returned less courageously to the
charge. "I presume you'll want Estlake mantel-shelves
and tiles?" He meant this for a sarcastic
thrust at a prevailing foible of the profession.

"Well, no," gently answered the architect. "I

was thinking perhaps a white marble chimney-piece,
treated in the refined Empire style, would be the
thing for that room."

"White marble!" exclaimed the Colonel. "I
thought that had gone out long ago."

"Really beautiful things can't go out. They may
disappear for a little while, but they must come
back. It's only the ugly things that stay out after
they've had their day."

Lapham could only venture very modestly,
"Hard-wood floors?"

"In the music-room, of course," consented the
architect.

"And in the drawing-room?"

"Carpet. Some sort of moquette, I should say.
But I should prefer to consult Mrs. Lapham's taste
in that matter."

"And in the other rooms?"

"Oh, carpets, of course."

"And what about the stairs?"

"Carpet. And I should have the rail and banisters
white—banisters turned or twisted."

The Colonel said under his breath, "Well, I'm
dumned!" but he gave no utterance to his astonishment
in the architect's presence. When he went at
last,—the session did not end till eleven o'clock,—
Lapham said, "Well, Pert, I guess that fellow's fifty
years behind, or ten years ahead. I wonder what
the Ongpeer style is?"

"I don't know. I hated to ask. But he seemed
to understand what he was talking about. I declare,

he knows what a woman wants in a house
better than she does herself."

"And a man's simply nowhere in comparison,"
said Lapham. But he respected a fellow who could
beat him at every point, and have a reason ready, as
this architect had; and when he recovered from the
daze into which the complete upheaval of all his
preconceived notions had left him, he was in a fit
state to swear by the architect. It seemed to him
that he had discovered the fellow (as he always
called him) and owned him now, and the fellow did
nothing to disturb this impression. He entered into
that brief but intense intimacy with the Laphams
which the sympathetic architect holds with his
clients. He was privy to all their differences of
opinion and all their disputes about the house. He
knew just where to insist upon his own ideas, and
where to yield. He was really building several
other houses, but he gave the Laphams the impression
that he was doing none but theirs.

The work was not begun till the frost was
thoroughly out of the ground, which that year was
not before the end of April. Even then it did not
proceed very rapidly. Lapham said they might as
well take their time to it; if they got the walls up
and the thing closed in before the snow flew, they
could be working at it all winter. It was found
necessary to dig for the kitchen; at that point the
original salt-marsh lay near the surface, and before
they began to put in the piles for the foundation
they had to pump. The neighbourhood smelt like

the hold of a ship after a three years' voyage.
People who had cast their fortunes with the New
Land went by professing not to notice it; people
who still "hung on to the Hill" put their handkerchiefs
to their noses, and told each other the old
terrible stories of the material used in filling up the
Back Bay.

Nothing gave Lapham so much satisfaction in the
whole construction of his house as the pile-driving.
When this began, early in the summer, he took Mrs.
Lapham every day in his buggy and drove round to
look at it; stopping the mare in front of the lot, and
watching the operation with even keener interest
than the little loafing Irish boys who superintended
it in force. It pleased him to hear the portable
engine chuckle out a hundred thin whiffs of steam in
carrying the big iron weight to the top of the framework
above the pile, then seem to hesitate, and cough
once or twice in pressing the weight against the
detaching apparatus. There was a moment in which
the weight had the effect of poising before it fell;
then it dropped with a mighty whack on the ironbound
head of the pile, and drove it a foot into the
earth.

"By gracious!" he would say, "there ain't anything
like that in this world for business, Persis!"

Mrs. Lapham suffered him to enjoy the sight
twenty or thirty times before she said, "Well, now
drive on, Si."

By the time the foundation was in and the brick
walls had begun to go up, there were so few people

left in the neighbourhood that she might indulge
with impunity her husband's passion for having her
clamber over the floor-timbers and the skeleton staircases
with him. Many of the householders had
boarded up their front doors before the buds had
begun to swell and the assessor to appear in early
May; others had followed soon; and Mrs. Lapham
was as safe from remark as if she had been in the
depth of the country. Ordinarily she and her girls
left town early in July, going to one of the hotels at
Nantasket, where it was convenient for the Colonel
to get to and from his business by the boat. But
this summer they were all lingering a few weeks
later, under the novel fascination of the new house,
as they called it, as if there were no other in the
world.

Lapham drove there with his wife after he had set
Bartley Hubbard down at the Events office, but on
this day something happened that interfered with
the solid pleasure they usually took in going over
the house. As the Colonel turned from casting
anchor at the mare's head with the hitching-weight,
after helping his wife to alight, he encountered a
man to whom he could not help speaking, though
the man seemed to share his hesitation if not his
reluctance at the necessity. He was a tallish, thin
man, with a dust-coloured face, and a dead, clerical
air, which somehow suggested at once feebleness and
tenacity.

Mrs. Lapham held out her hand to him.

"Why, Mr. Rogers!" she exclaimed; and then,

turning toward her husband, seemed to refer the two
men to each other. They shook hands, but Lapham
did not speak. "I didn't know you were in Boston,"
pursued Mrs. Lapham. "Is Mrs. Rogers with you?"

"No," said Mr. Rogers, with a voice which had
the flat, succinct sound of two pieces of wood clapped
together. "Mrs. Rogers is still in Chicago."

A little silence followed, and then Mrs. Lapham
said—

"I presume you are quite settled out there."

"No; we have left Chicago. Mrs. Rogers has
merely remained to finish up a little packing."

"Oh, indeed! Are you coming back to Boston?"

"I cannot say as yet. We some think of so
doing."

Lapham turned away and looked up at the building.
His wife pulled a little at her glove, as if
embarrassed, or even pained. She tried to make a
diversion.

"We are building a house," she said, with a
meaningless laugh.

"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Rogers, looking up at it.

Then no one spoke again, and she said helplessly—

"If you come to Boston, I hope I shall see Mrs.
Rogers."

"She will be happy to have you call," said Mr.
Rogers.

He touched his hat-brim, and made a bow forward
rather than in Mrs. Lapham's direction.

She mounted the planking that led into the shelter
of the bare brick walls, and her husband slowly

followed. When she turned her face toward him
her cheeks were burning, and tears that looked hot
stood in her eyes.

"You left it all to me!" she cried. "Why couldn't
you speak a word?"

"I hadn't anything to say to him," replied Lapham
sullenly.

They stood a while, without looking at the work
which they had come to enjoy, and without speaking
to each other.

"I suppose we might as well go on," said Mrs.
Lapham at last, as they returned to the buggy. The
Colonel drove recklessly toward the Milldam. His
wife kept her veil down and her face turned from
him. After a time she put her handkerchief up
under her veil and wiped her eyes, and he set his
teeth and squared his jaw.

"I don't see how he always manages to appear
just at the moment when he seems to have gone
fairly out of our lives, and blight everything," she
whimpered.

"I supposed he was dead," said Lapham.

"Oh, don't say such a thing! It sounds as if you
wished it."

"Why do you mind it? What do you let him
blight everything for?"

"I can't help it, and I don't believe I ever shall.
I don't know as his being dead would help it any.
I can't ever see him without feeling just as I did at
first."

"I tell you," said Lapham, "it was a perfectly

square thing. And I wish, once for all, you would
quit bothering about it. My conscience is easy as
far as he's concerned, and it always was."

"And I can't look at him without feeling as if
you'd ruined him, Silas."

"Don't look at him, then," said her husband, with
a scowl. "I want you should recollect in the first
place, Persis, that I never wanted a partner."

"If he hadn't put his money in when he did,
you'd 'a' broken down."

"Well, he got his money out again, and more,
too," said the Colonel, with a sulky weariness.

"He didn't want to take it out."

"I gave him his choice: buy out or go out."

"You know he couldn't buy out then. It was no
choice at all."

"It was a business chance."

"No; you had better face the truth, Silas. It
was no chance at all. You crowded him out. A
man that had saved you! No, you had got greedy,
Silas. You had made your paint your god, and you
couldn't bear to let anybody else share in its blessings."

"I tell you he was a drag and a brake on me
from the word go. You say he saved me. Well, if
I hadn't got him out he'd 'a' ruined me sooner or
later. So it's an even thing, as far forth as that
goes."

"No, it ain't an even thing, and you know it,
Silas. Oh, if I could only get you once to acknowledge
that you did wrong about it, then I should

have some hope. I don't say you meant wrong
exactly, but you took an advantage. Yes, you took
an advantage! You had him where he couldn't help
himself, and then you wouldn't show him any
mercy."

"I'm sick of this," said Lapham. "If you'll
'tend to the house, I'll manage my business without
your help."

"You were very glad of my help once."

"Well, I'm tired of it now. Don't meddle."

"I will meddle. When I see you hardening
yourself in a wrong thing, it's time for me to
meddle, as you call it, and I will. I can't ever get
you to own up the least bit about Rogers, and I feel
as if it was hurting you all the while."

"What do you want I should own up about a
thing for when I don't feel wrong? I tell you
Rogers hain't got anything to complain of, and that's
what I told you from the start. It's a thing that's
done every day. I was loaded up with a partner
that didn't know anything, and couldn't do anything,
and I unloaded; that's all."

"You unloaded just at the time when you knew
that your paint was going to be worth about twice
what it ever had been; and you wanted all the
advantage for yourself."

"I had a right to it. I made the success."

"Yes, you made it with Rogers's money; and
when you'd made it you took his share of it. I
guess you thought of that when you saw him, and
that's why you couldn't look him in the face."

At these words Lapham lost his temper.

"I guess you don't want to ride with me any
more to-day," he said, turning the mare abruptly
round.

"I'm as ready to go back as what you are," replied
his wife. "And don't you ask me to go to
that house with you any more. You can sell it, for
all me. I sha'n't live in it. There's blood on it."