A WEEK after she had parted with her son at Bar Harbour, Mrs. Corey
suddenly walked in upon her husband in their house in Boston. He was
at breakfast, and he gave her the patronising welcome with which the
husband who has been staying in town all summer receives his wife when
she drops down upon him from the mountains or the sea-side. For a
little moment she feels herself strange in the house, and suffers
herself to be treated like a guest, before envy of his comfort vexes
her back into possession and authority. Mrs. Corey was a lady, and she
did not let her envy take the form of open reproach.
"Well, Anna, you find me here in the luxury you left me to. How did
you leave the girls?"
"The girls were well," said Mrs. Corey, looking absently at her
husband's brown velvet coat, in which he was so handsome. No man had
ever grown grey more beautifully. His hair, while not remaining dark
enough to form a theatrical contrast with his moustache, was yet some
shades darker, and, in becoming a little thinner, it had become a
little more gracefully wavy. His skin had the pearly tint which that
of elderly men sometimes assumes, and the lines which time had traced
upon it were too delicate for the name of wrinkles. He had never had
any personal vanity, and there was no consciousness in his good looks
now.
"I am glad of that. The boy I have with me," he returned; "that is,
when he IS with me."
"Why, where is he?" demanded the mother.
"Probably carousing with the boon Lapham somewhere. He left me
yesterday afternoon to go and offer his allegiance to the Mineral Paint
King, and I haven't seen him since."
"Bromfield!" cried Mrs. Corey. "Why didn't you stop him?"
"Well, my dear, I'm not sure that it isn't a very good thing."
"A good thing? It's horrid!"
"No, I don't think so. It's decent. Tom had found out--without
consulting the landscape, which I believe proclaims it everywhere----"
"Hideous!"
"That it's really a good thing; and he thinks that he has some ideas in
regard to its dissemination in the parts beyond seas."
"Why shouldn't he go into something else?" lamented the mother.
"I believe he has gone into nearly everything else and come out of it.
So there is a chance of his coming out of this. But as I had nothing
to suggest in place of it, I thought it best not to interfere. In
fact, what good would my telling him that mineral paint was nasty have
done? I dare say YOU told him it was nasty."
"Yes! I did."
"And you see with what effect, though he values your opinion three
times as much as he values mine. Perhaps you came up to tell him again
that it was nasty?"
"I feel very unhappy about it. He is throwing himself away. Yes, I
should like to prevent it if I could!"
The father shook his head.
"If Lapham hasn't prevented it, I fancy it's too late. But there may
be some hopes of Lapham. As for Tom's throwing himself away, I don't
know. There's no question but he is one of the best fellows under the
sun. He's tremendously energetic, and he has plenty of the kind of
sense which we call horse; but he isn't brilliant. No, Tom is not
brilliant. I don't think he would get on in a profession, and he's
instinctively kept out of everything of the kind. But he has got to do
something. What shall he do? He says mineral paint, and really I don't
see why he shouldn't. If money is fairly and honestly earned, why
should we pretend to care what it comes out of, when we don't really
care? That superstition is exploded everywhere."
"Oh, it isn't the paint alone," said Mrs. Corey; and then she
perceptibly arrested herself, and made a diversion in continuing: "I
wish he had married some one."
"With money?" suggested her husband. "From time to time I have
attempted Tom's corruption from that side, but I suspect Tom has a
conscience against it, and I rather like him for it. I married for
love myself," said Corey, looking across the table at his wife.
She returned his look tolerantly, though she felt it right to say,
"What nonsense!"
"Besides," continued her husband, "if you come to money, there is the
paint princess. She will have plenty."
"Ah, that's the worst of it," sighed the mother. "I suppose I could
get on with the paint----"
"But not with the princess? I thought you said she was a very pretty,
well-behaved girl?"
"She is very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there is nothing of
her. She is insipid; she is very insipid."
"But Tom seemed to like her flavour, such as it was?"
"How can I tell? We were under a terrible obligation to them, and I
naturally wished him to be polite to them. In fact, I asked him to be
so."
"And he was too polite."
"I can't say that he was. But there is no doubt that the child is
extremely pretty."
"Tom says there are two of them. Perhaps they will neutralise each
other."
"Yes, there is another daughter," assented Mrs. Corey. "I don't see
how you can joke about such things, Bromfield," she added.
"Well, I don't either, my dear, to tell you the truth. My hardihood
surprises me. Here is a son of mine whom I see reduced to making his
living by a shrinkage in values. It's very odd," interjected Corey,
"that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never
hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real
estate--all those values shrink abominably. Perhaps it might be argued
that one should put all his values into pictures; I've got a good many
of mine there."
"Tom needn't earn his living," said Mrs. Corey, refusing her husband's
jest. "There's still enough for all of us."
"That is what I have sometimes urged upon Tom. I have proved to him
that with economy, and strict attention to business, he need do nothing
as long as he lives. Of course he would be somewhat restricted, and it
would cramp the rest of us; but it is a world of sacrifices and
compromises. He couldn't agree with me, and he was not in the least
moved by the example of persons of quality in Europe, which I alleged
in support of the life of idleness. It appears that he wishes to do
something--to do something for himself. I am afraid that Tom is
selfish."
Mrs. Corey smiled wanly. Thirty years before, she had married the rich
young painter in Rome, who said so much better things than he
painted--charming things, just the things to please the fancy of a girl
who was disposed to take life a little too seriously and practically.
She saw him in a different light when she got him home to Boston; but
he had kept on saying the charming things, and he had not done much
else. In fact, he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. It was a
good trait in him that he was not actively but only passively
extravagant. He was not adventurous with his money; his tastes were as
simple as an Italian's; he had no expensive habits. In the process of
time he had grown to lead a more and more secluded life. It was hard
to get him out anywhere, even to dinner. His patience with their
narrowing circumstances had a pathos which she felt the more the more
she came into charge of their joint life. At times it seemed too bad
that the children and their education and pleasures should cost so
much. She knew, besides, that if it had not been for them she would
have gone back to Rome with him, and lived princely there for less than
it took to live respectably in Boston.
"Tom hasn't consulted me," continued his father, "but he has consulted
other people. And he has arrived at the conclusion that mineral paint
is a good thing to go into. He has found out all about it, and about
its founder or inventor. It's quite impressive to hear him talk. And
if he must do something for himself, I don't see why his egotism
shouldn't as well take that form as another. Combined with the paint
princess, it isn't so agreeable; but that's only a remote possibility,
for which your principal ground is your motherly solicitude. But even
if it were probable and imminent, what could you do? The chief
consolation that we American parents have in these matters is that we
can do nothing. If we were Europeans, even English, we should take
some cognisance of our children's love affairs, and in some measure
teach their young affections how to shoot. But it is our custom to
ignore them until they have shot, and then they ignore us. We are
altogether too delicate to arrange the marriages of our children; and
when they have arranged them we don't like to say anything, for fear we
should only make bad worse. The right way is for us to school
ourselves to indifference. That is what the young people have to do
elsewhere, and that is the only logical result of our position here.
It is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we don't interfere
with."
"Oh, people do interfere with their children's marriages very often,"
said Mrs. Corey.
"Yes, but only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make it disagreeable
for themselves if the marriages go on in spite of them, as they're
pretty apt to do. Now, my idea is that I ought to cut Tom off with a
shilling. That would be very simple, and it would be economical. But
you would never consent, and Tom wouldn't mind it."
"I think our whole conduct in regard to such things is wrong," said
Mrs. Corey.
"Oh, very likely. But our whole civilisation is based upon it. And
who is going to make a beginning? To which father in our acquaintance
shall I go and propose an alliance for Tom with his daughter? I should
feel like an ass. And will you go to some mother, and ask her sons in
marriage for our daughters? You would feel like a goose. No; the only
motto for us is, Hands off altogether."
"I shall certainly speak to Tom when the time comes," said Mrs. Corey.
"And I shall ask leave to be absent from your discomfiture, my dear,"
answered her husband.
The son returned that afternoon, and confessed his surprise at finding
his mother in Boston. He was so frank that she had not quite the
courage to confess in turn why she had come, but trumped up an excuse.
"Well, mother," he said promptly, "I have made an engagement with Mr.
Lapham."
"Have you, Tom?" she asked faintly.
"Yes. For the present I am going to have charge of his foreign
correspondence, and if I see my way to the advantage I expect to find
in it, I am going out to manage that side of his business in South
America and Mexico. He's behaved very handsomely about it. He says
that if it appears for our common interest, he shall pay me a salary as
well as a commission. I've talked with Uncle Jim, and he thinks it's a
good opening."
"Your Uncle Jim does?" queried Mrs. Corey in amaze.
"Yes; I consulted him the whole way through, and I've acted on his
advice."
This seemed an incomprehensible treachery on her brother's part.
"Yes; I thought you would like to have me. And besides, I couldn't
possibly have gone to any one so well fitted to advise me."
His mother said nothing. In fact, the mineral paint business, however
painful its interest, was, for the moment, superseded by a more
poignant anxiety. She began to feel her way cautiously toward this.
"Have you been talking about your business with Mr. Lapham all night?"
"Well, pretty much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh. "I went to
see him yesterday afternoon, after I had gone over the whole ground
with Uncle Jim, and Mr. Lapham asked me to go down with him and finish
up."
"Down?" repeated Mrs. Corey. "Yes, to Nantasket. He has a cottage
down there."
"At Nantasket?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows a little. "What in the
world can a cottage at Nantasket be like?"
"Oh, very much like a 'cottage' anywhere. It has the usual allowance
of red roof and veranda. There are the regulation rocks by the sea;
and the big hotels on the beach about a mile off, flaring away with
electric lights and roman-candles at night. We didn't have them at
Nahant."
"No," said his mother. "Is Mrs. Lapham well? And her daughter?"
"Yes, I think so," said the young man. "The young ladies walked me
down to the rocks in the usual way after dinner, and then I came back
and talked paint with Mr. Lapham till midnight. We didn't settle
anything till this morning coming up on the boat."
"What sort of people do they seem to be at home?"
"What sort? Well, I don't know that I noticed." Mrs. Corey permitted
herself the first part of a sigh of relief; and her son laughed, but
apparently not at her. "They're just reading Middlemarch. They say
there's so much talk about it. Oh, I suppose they're very good people.
They seemed to be on very good terms with each other."
"I suppose it's the plain sister who's reading Middlemarch."
"Plain? Is she plain?" asked the young man, as if searching his
consciousness. "Yes, it's the older one who does the reading,
apparently. But I don't believe that even she overdoes it. They like
to talk better. They reminded me of Southern people in that." The
young man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions of the Lapham
family. "The living, as the country people call it, is tremendously
good. The Colonel--he's a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's
coffee, as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, though I
believe it was merely inspired by her. And there was everything in the
house that money could buy. But money has its limitations."
This was a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realise more and more
unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring her a certain
comfort in its application to the Laphams. "Yes, there is a point
where taste has to begin," she said.
"They seemed to want to apologise to me for not having more books,"
said Corey. "I don't know why they should. The Colonel said they
bought a good many books, first and last; but apparently they don't
take them to the sea-side."
"I dare say they NEVER buy a NEW book. I've met some of these moneyed
people lately, and they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then
borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper editions."
"I fancy that's the way with the Lapham family," said the young man,
smilingly. "But they are very good people. The other daughter is
humorous."
"Humorous?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows in some perplexity. "Do you
mean like Mrs. Sayre?" she asked, naming the lady whose name must come
into every Boston mind when humour is mentioned.
"Oh no; nothing like that. She never says anything that you can
remember; nothing in flashes or ripples; nothing the least literary.
But it's a sort of droll way of looking at things; or a droll medium
through which things present themselves. I don't know. She tells what
she's seen, and mimics a little."
"Oh," said Mrs. Corey coldly. After a moment she asked: "And is Miss
Irene as pretty as ever?"
"She's a wonderful complexion," said the son unsatisfactorily. "I
shall want to be by when father and Colonel Lapham meet," he added,
with a smile.
"Ah, yes, your father!" said the mother, in that way in which a wife at
once compassionates and censures her husband to their children.
"Do you think it's really going to be a trial to him?" asked the young
man quickly.
"No, no, I can't say it is. But I confess I wish it was some other
business, Tom."
"Well, mother, I don't see why. The principal thing looked at now is
the amount of money; and while I would rather starve than touch a
dollar that was dirty with any sort of dishonesty----"
"Of course you would, my son!" interposed his mother proudly.
"I shouldn't at all mind its having a little mineral paint on it. I'll
use my influence with Colonel Lapham--if I ever have any--to have his
paint scraped off the landscape."
"I suppose you won't begin till the autumn."
"Oh yes, I shall," said the son, laughing at his mother's simple
ignorance of business. "I shall begin to-morrow morning."
"To-morrow morning!"
"Yes. I've had my desk appointed already, and I shall be down there at
nine in the morning to take possession."
"Tom," cried his mother, "why do you think Mr. Lapham has taken you
into business so readily? I've always heard that it was so hard for
young men to get in."
"And do you think I found it easy with him? We had about twelve hours'
solid talk."
"And you don't suppose it was any sort of--personal consideration?"
"Why, I don't know exactly what you mean, mother. I suppose he likes
me."
Mrs. Corey could not say just what she meant. She answered,
ineffectually enough--
"Yes. You wouldn't like it to be a favour, would you?"
"I think he's a man who may be trusted to look after his own interest.
But I don't mind his beginning by liking me. It'll be my own fault if
I don't make myself essential to him."
"Yes," said Mrs. Corey.
"Well," demanded her husband, at their first meeting after her
interview with their son, "what did you say to Tom?"
"Very little, if anything. I found him with his mind made up, and it
would only have distressed him if I had tried to change it."
"That is precisely what I said, my dear."
"Besides, he had talked the matter over fully with James, and seems to
have been advised by him. I can't understand James."
"Oh! it's in regard to the paint, and not the princess, that he's made
up his mind. Well, I think you were wise to let him alone, Anna. We
represent a faded tradition. We don't really care what business a man
is in, so it is large enough, and he doesn't advertise offensively; but
we think it fine to affect reluctance."
"Do you really feel so, Bromfield?" asked his wife seriously.
"Certainly I do. There was a long time in my misguided youth when I
supposed myself some sort of porcelain; but it's a relief to be of the
common clay, after all, and to know it. If I get broken, I can be
easily replaced."
"If Tom must go into such a business," said Mrs. Corey, "I'm glad James
approves of it."
"I'm afraid it wouldn't matter to Tom if he didn't; and I don't know
that I should care," said Corey, betraying the fact that he had perhaps
had a good deal of his brother-in-law's judgment in the course of his
life. "You had better consult him in regard to Tom's marrying the
princess."
"There is no necessity at present for that," said Mrs. Corey, with
dignity. After a moment, she asked, "Should you feel quite so easy if
it were a question of that, Bromfield?"
"It would be a little more personal."
"You feel about it as I do. Of course, we have both lived too long,
and seen too much of the world, to suppose we can control such things.
The child is good, I haven't the least doubt, and all those things can
be managed so that they wouldn't disgrace us. But she has had a
certain sort of bringing up. I should prefer Tom to marry a girl with
another sort, and this business venture of his increases the chances
that he won't. That's all."
"''Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'twill
serve.'"
"I shouldn't like it."
"Well, it hasn't happened yet."
"Ah, you never can realise anything beforehand."
"Perhaps that has saved me some suffering. But you have at least the
consolation of two anxieties at once. I always find that a great
advantage. You can play one off against the other."
Mrs. Corey drew a long breath as if she did not experience the
suggested consolation; and she arranged to quit, the following
afternoon, the scene of her defeat, which she had not had the courage
to make a battlefield. Her son went down to see her off on the boat,
after spending his first day at his desk in Lapham's office. He was in
a gay humour, and she departed in a reflected gleam of his good
spirits. He told her all about it, as he sat talking with her at the
stern of the boat, lingering till the last moment, and then stepping
ashore, with as little waste of time as Lapham himself, on the
gang-plank which the deck-hands had laid hold of. He touched his hat
to her from the wharf to reassure her of his escape from being carried
away with her, and the next moment his smiling face hid itself in the
crowd.
He walked on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with trucks and
hacks and piles of freight, and, taking his way through the deserted
business streets beyond this bustle, made a point of passing the door
of Lapham's warehouse, on the jambs of which his name and paint were
lettered in black on a square ground of white. The door was still
open, and Corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to go upstairs and
fetch away some foreign letters which he had left on his desk, and
which he thought he might finish up at home. He was in love with his
work, and he felt the enthusiasm for it which nothing but the work we
can do well inspires in us. He believed that he had found his place in
the world, after a good deal of looking, and he had the relief, the
repose, of fitting into it. Every little incident of the momentous,
uneventful day was a pleasure in his mind, from his sitting down at his
desk, to which Lapham's boy brought him the foreign letters, till his
rising from it an hour ago. Lapham had been in view within his own
office, but he had given Corey no formal reception, and had, in fact,
not spoken to him till toward the end of the forenoon, when he suddenly
came out of his den with some more letters in his hand, and after a
brief "How d'ye do?" had spoken a few words about them, and left them
with him. He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person
seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. He did not go out
to lunch, but had it brought to him in his office, where Corey saw him
eating it before he left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging
seat before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. He observed
that all the others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to anticipate
his usual hour. When he returned, the pretty girl who had been
clicking away at a type-writer all the morning was neatly putting out
of sight the evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood,
and was preparing to go on with her copying. In his office Lapham lay
asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over his face.
Now, while Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway, these two
came down the stairs together, and he heard Lapham saying, "Well, then,
you better get a divorce."
He looked red and excited, and the girl's face, which she veiled at
sight of Corey, showed traces of tears. She slipped round him into the
street.
But Lapham stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling but surprise:
"Hello, Corey! Did you want to go up?"
"Yes; there were some letters I hadn't quite got through with."
"You'll find Dennis up there. But I guess you better let them go till
to-morrow. I always make it a rule to stop work when I'm done."
"Perhaps you're right," said Corey, yielding.
"Come along down as far as the boat with me. There's a little matter I
want to talk over with you."
It was a business matter, and related to Corey's proposed connection
with the house.
The next day the head book-keeper, who lunched at the long counter of
the same restaurant with Corey, began to talk with him about Lapham.
Walker had not apparently got his place by seniority; though with his
forehead, bald far up toward the crown, and his round smooth face, one
might have taken him for a plump elder, if he had not looked equally
like a robust infant. The thick drabbish yellow moustache was what
arrested decision in either direction, and the prompt vigour of all his
movements was that of a young man of thirty, which was really Walker's
age. He knew, of course, who Corey was, and he had waited for a man
who might look down on him socially to make the overtures toward
something more than business acquaintance; but, these made, he was
readily responsive, and drew freely on his philosophy of Lapham and his
affairs.
"I think about the only difference between people in this world is that
some know what they want, and some don't. Well, now," said Walker,
beating the bottom of his salt-box to make the salt come out, "the old
man knows what he wants every time. And generally he gets it. Yes,
sir, he generally gets it. He knows what he's about, but I'll be
blessed if the rest of us do half the time. Anyway, we don't till he's
ready to let us. You take my position in most business houses. It's
confidential. The head book-keeper knows right along pretty much
everything the house has got in hand. I'll give you my word I don't.
He may open up to you a little more in your department, but, as far as
the rest of us go, he don't open up any more than an oyster on a hot
brick. They say he had a partner once; I guess he's dead. I wouldn't
like to be the old man's partner. Well, you see, this paint of his is
like his heart's blood. Better not try to joke him about it. I've
seen people come in occasionally and try it. They didn't get much fun
out of it."
While he talked, Walker was plucking up morsels from his plate, tearing
off pieces of French bread from the long loaf, and feeding them into
his mouth in an impersonal way, as if he were firing up an engine.
"I suppose he thinks," suggested Corey, "that if he doesn't tell,
nobody else will."
Walker took a draught of beer from his glass, and wiped the foam from
his moustache.
"Oh, but he carries it too far! It's a weakness with him. He's just so
about everything. Look at the way he keeps it up about that
type-writer girl of his. You'd think she was some princess travelling
incognito. There isn't one of us knows who she is, or where she came
from, or who she belongs to. He brought her and her machine into the
office one morning, and set 'em down at a table, and that's all there
is about it, as far as we're concerned. It's pretty hard on the girl,
for I guess she'd like to talk; and to any one that didn't know the old
man----" Walker broke off and drained his glass of what was left in it.
Corey thought of the words he had overheard from Lapham to the girl.
But he said, "She seems to be kept pretty busy."
"Oh yes," said Walker; "there ain't much loafing round the place, in
any of the departments, from the old man's down. That's just what I
say. He's got to work just twice as hard, if he wants to keep
everything in his own mind. But he ain't afraid of work. That's one
good thing about him. And Miss Dewey has to keep step with the rest of
us. But she don't look like one that would take to it naturally. Such
a pretty girl as that generally thinks she does enough when she looks
her prettiest."
"She's a pretty girl," said Corey, non-committally. "But I suppose a
great many pretty girls have to earn their living."
"Don't any of 'em like to do it," returned the book-keeper. "They
think it's a hardship, and I don't blame 'em. They have got a right to
get married, and they ought to have the chance. And Miss Dewey's
smart, too. She's as bright as a biscuit. I guess she's had trouble.
I shouldn't be much more than half surprised if Miss Dewey wasn't Miss
Dewey, or hadn't always been. Yes, sir," continued the book-keeper,
who prolonged the talk as they walked back to Lapham's warehouse
together, "I don't know exactly what it is,--it isn't any one thing in
particular,--but I should say that girl had been married. I wouldn't
speak so freely to any of the rest, Mr. Corey,--I want you to
understand that,--and it isn't any of my business, anyway; but that's
my opinion."
Corey made no reply, as he walked beside the book-keeper, who
continued--
"It's curious what a difference marriage makes in people. Now, I know
that I don't look any more like a bachelor of my age than I do like the
man in the moon, and yet I couldn't say where the difference came in,
to save me. And it's just so with a woman. The minute you catch sight
of her face, there's something in it that tells you whether she's
married or not. What do you suppose it is?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Corey, willing to laugh away the topic.
"And from what I read occasionally of some people who go about
repeating their happiness, I shouldn't say that the intangible
evidences were always unmistakable."
"Oh, of course," admitted Walker, easily surrendering his position.
"All signs fail in dry weather. Hello! What's that?" He caught Corey
by the arm, and they both stopped.
At a corner, half a block ahead of them, the summer noon solitude of
the place was broken by a bit of drama. A man and woman issued from
the intersecting street, and at the moment of coming into sight the
man, who looked like a sailor, caught the woman by the arm, as if to
detain her. A brief struggle ensued, the woman trying to free herself,
and the man half coaxing, half scolding. The spectators could now see
that he was drunk; but before they could decide whether it was a case
for their interference or not, the woman suddenly set both hands
against the man's breast and gave him a quick push. He lost his
footing and tumbled into a heap in the gutter. The woman faltered an
instant, as if to see whether he was seriously hurt, and then turned
and ran.
When Corey and the book-keeper re-entered the office, Miss Dewey had
finished her lunch, and was putting a sheet of paper into her
type-writer. She looked up at them with her eyes of turquoise blue,
under her low white forehead, with the hair neatly rippled over it, and
then began to beat the keys of her machine.