IT was late June, almost July, when Corey took up his life in Boston
again, where the summer slips away so easily. If you go out of town
early, it seems a very long summer when you come back in October; but
if you stay, it passes swiftly, and, seen foreshortened in its flight,
seems scarcely a month's length. It has its days of heat, when it is
very hot, but for the most part it is cool, with baths of the east wind
that seem to saturate the soul with delicious freshness. Then there
are stretches of grey westerly weather, when the air is full of the
sentiment of early autumn, and the frying, of the grasshopper in the
blossomed weed of the vacant lots on the Back Bay is intershot with the
carol of crickets; and the yellowing leaf on the long slope of Mt.
Vernon Street smites the sauntering observer with tender melancholy.
The caterpillar, gorged with the spoil of the lindens on Chestnut, and
weaving his own shroud about him in his lodgment on the brick-work,
records the passing of summer by mid-July; and if after that comes
August, its breath is thick and short, and September is upon the
sojourner before he has fairly had time to philosophise the character
of the town out of season.
But it must have appeared that its most characteristic feature was the
absence of everybody he knew. This was one of the things that
commended Boston to Bromfield Corey during the summer; and if his son
had any qualms about the life he had entered upon with such vigour, it
must have been a relief to him that there was scarcely a soul left to
wonder or pity. By the time people got back to town the fact of his
connection with the mineral paint man would be an old story, heard afar
off with different degrees of surprise, and considered with different
degrees of indifference. A man has not reached the age of twenty-six
in any community where he was born and reared without having had his
capacity pretty well ascertained; and in Boston the analysis is
conducted with an unsparing thoroughness which may fitly impress the
un-Bostonian mind, darkened by the popular superstition that the
Bostonians blindly admire one another. A man's qualities are sifted as
closely in Boston as they doubtless were in Florence or Athens; and, if
final mercy was shown in those cities because a man was, with all his
limitations, an Athenian or Florentine, some abatement might as justly
be made in Boston for like reason. Corey's powers had been gauged in
college, and he had not given his world reason to think very
differently of him since he came out of college. He was rated as an
energetic fellow, a little indefinite in aim, with the smallest amount
of inspiration that can save a man from being commonplace. If he was
not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which
was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of
qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him
sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable
excellences. Some of the more nervous and excitable said that Tom
Corey was as sweet as he could live; but this perhaps meant no more
than the word alone. No man ever had a son less like him than
Bromfield Corey. If Tom Corey had ever said a witty thing, no one
could remember it; and yet the father had never said a witty thing to a
more sympathetic listener than his own son. The clear mind which
produced nothing but practical results reflected everything with
charming lucidity; and it must have been this which endeared Tom Corey
to every one who spoke ten words with him. In a city where people have
good reason for liking to shine, a man who did not care to shine must
be little short of universally acceptable without any other effort for
popularity; and those who admired and enjoyed Bromfield Corey loved his
son. Yet, when it came to accounting for Tom Corey, as it often did in
a community where every one's generation is known to the remotest
degrees of cousinship, they could not trace his sweetness to his
mother, for neither Anna Bellingham nor any of her family, though they
were so many blocks of Wenham ice for purity and rectangularity, had
ever had any such savour; and, in fact, it was to his father, whose
habit of talk wronged it in himself, that they had to turn for this
quality of the son's. They traced to the mother the traits of
practicality and common-sense in which he bordered upon the
commonplace, and which, when they had dwelt upon them, made him seem
hardly worth the close inquiry they had given him.
While the summer wore away he came and went methodically about his
business, as if it had been the business of his life, sharing his
father's bachelor liberty and solitude, and expecting with equal
patience the return of his mother and sisters in the autumn. Once or
twice he found time to run down to Mt. Desert and see them; and then
he heard how the Philadelphia and New York people were getting in
everywhere, and was given reason to regret the house at Nahant which he
had urged to be sold. He came back and applied himself to his desk
with a devotion that was exemplary rather than necessary; for Lapham
made no difficulty about the brief absences which he asked, and set no
term to the apprenticeship that Corey was serving in the office before
setting off upon that mission to South America in the early winter, for
which no date had yet been fixed.
The summer was a dull season for the paint as well as for everything
else. Till things should brisk up, as Lapham said, in the fall, he was
letting the new house take a great deal of his time. AEsthetic ideas
had never been intelligibly presented to him before, and he found a
delight in apprehending them that was very grateful to his imaginative
architect. At the beginning, the architect had foreboded a series of
mortifying defeats and disastrous victories in his encounters with his
client; but he had never had a client who could be more reasonably led
on from one outlay to another. It appeared that Lapham required but to
understand or feel the beautiful effect intended, and he was ready to
pay for it. His bull-headed pride was concerned in a thing which the
architect made him see, and then he believed that he had seen it
himself, perhaps conceived it. In some measure the architect seemed to
share his delusion, and freely said that Lapham was very suggestive.
Together they blocked out windows here, and bricked them up there; they
changed doors and passages; pulled down cornices and replaced them with
others of different design; experimented with costly devices of
decoration, and went to extravagant lengths in novelties of finish.
Mrs. Lapham, beginning with a woman's adventurousness in the unknown
region, took fright at the reckless outlay at last, and refused to let
her husband pass a certain limit. He tried to make her believe that a
far-seeing economy dictated the expense; and that if he put the money
into the house, he could get it out any time by selling it. She would
not be persuaded.
"I don't want you should sell it. And you've put more money into it
now than you'll ever get out again, unless you can find as big a goose
to buy it, and that isn't likely. No, sir! You just stop at a hundred
thousand, and don't you let him get you a cent beyond. Why, you're
perfectly bewitched with that fellow! You've lost your head, Silas
Lapham, and if you don't look out you'll lose your money too."
The Colonel laughed; he liked her to talk that way, and promised he
would hold up a while.
"But there's no call to feel anxious, Pert. It's only a question what
to do with the money. I can reinvest it; but I never had so much of it
to spend before."
"Spend it, then," said his wife; "don't throw it away! And how came
you to have so much more money than you know what to do with, Silas
Lapham?" she added.
"Oh, I've made a very good thing in stocks lately."
"In stocks? When did you take up gambling for a living?"
"Gambling? Stuff! What gambling? Who said it was gambling?"
"You have; many a time."
"Oh yes, buying and selling on a margin. But this was a bona fide
transaction. I bought at forty-three for an investment, and I sold at
a hundred and seven; and the money passed both times."
"Well, you better let stocks alone," said his wife, with the
conservatism of her sex. "Next time you'll buy at a hundred and seven
and sell at forty three. Then where'll you be?"
"Left," admitted the Colonel.
"You better stick to paint a while yet." The Colonel enjoyed this too,
and laughed again with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. A
few days after that he came down to Nantasket with the radiant air
which he wore when he had done a good thing in business and wanted his
wife's sympathy. He did not say anything of what had happened till he
was alone with her in their own room; but he was very gay the whole
evening, and made several jokes which Penelope said nothing but very
great prosperity could excuse: they all understood these moods of his.
"Well, what is it, Silas?" asked his wife when the time came. "Any
more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint business with you?"
"Something better than that."
"I could think of a good many better things," said his wife, with a
sigh of latent bitterness. "What's this one?"
"I've had a visitor."
"Who?"
"Can't you guess?"
"I don't want to try. Who was it?"
"Rogers."
Mrs. Lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared at the smile
on her husband's face, where he sat facing her.
"I guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, Si," she said, a
little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin about it unless you had some
good news. I don't know what the miracle is, but if you could tell
quick----"
She stopped like one who can say no more.
"I will, Persis," said her husband, and with that awed tone in which he
rarely spoke of anything but the virtues of his paint. "He came to
borrow money of me, and I lent him it. That's the short of it. The
long----"
"Go on," said his wife, with gentle patience.
"Well, Pert, I was never so much astonished in my life as I was to see
that man come into my office. You might have knocked me down with--I
don't know what."
"I don't wonder. Go on!"
"And he was as much embarrassed as I was. There we stood, gaping at
each other, and I hadn't hardly sense enough to ask him to take a
chair. I don't know just how we got at it. And I don't remember just
how it was that he said he came to come to me. But he had got hold of
a patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, and there he
was wanting me to supply him the funds."
"Go on!" said Mrs. Lapham, with her voice further in her throat.
"I never felt the way you did about Rogers, but I know how you always
did feel, and I guess I surprised him with my answer. He had brought
along a lot of stock as security----"
"You didn't take it, Silas!" his wife flashed out.
"Yes, I did, though," said Lapham. "You wait. We settled our
business, and then we went into the old thing, from the very start.
And we talked it all over. And when we got through we shook hands.
Well, I don't know when it's done me so much good to shake hands with
anybody."
"And you told him--you owned up to him that you were in the wrong,
Silas?"
"No, I didn't," returned the Colonel promptly; "for I wasn't. And
before we got through, I guess he saw it the same as I did."
"Oh, no matter! so you had the chance to show how you felt."
"But I never felt that way," persisted the Colonel. "I've lent him the
money, and I've kept his stocks. And he got what he wanted out of me."
"Give him back his stocks!"
"No, I shan't. Rogers came to borrow. He didn't come to beg. You
needn't be troubled about his stocks. They're going to come up in
time; but just now they're so low down that no bank would take them as
security, and I've got to hold them till they do rise. I hope you're
satisfied now, Persis," said her husband; and he looked at her with the
willingness to receive the reward of a good action which we all feel
when we have performed one. "I lent him the money you kept me from
spending on the house."
"Truly, Si? Well, I'm satisfied," said Mrs. Lapham, with a deep
tremulous breath. "The Lord has been good to you, Silas," she
continued solemnly. "You may laugh if you choose, and I don't know as
I believe in his interfering a great deal; but I believe he's
interfered this time; and I tell you, Silas, it ain't always he gives
people a chance to make it up to others in this life. I've been afraid
you'd die, Silas, before you got the chance; but he's let you live to
make it up to Rogers."
"I'm glad to be let live," said Lapham stubbornly, "but I hadn't
anything to make up to Milton K. Rogers. And if God has let me live
for that----"
"Oh, say what you please, Si! Say what you please, now you've done it!
I shan't stop you. You've taken the one spot--the one SPECK--off you
that was ever there, and I'm satisfied."
"There wa'n't ever any speck there," Lapham held out, lapsing more and
more into his vernacular; "and what I done I done for you, Persis."
"And I thank you for your own soul's sake, Silas."
"I guess my soul's all right," said Lapham.
"And I want you should promise me one thing more."
"Thought you said you were satisfied?"
"I am. But I want you should promise me this: that you won't let
anything tempt you--anything!--to ever trouble Rogers for that money
you lent him. No matter what happens--no matter if you lose it all.
Do you promise?"
"Why, I don't ever EXPECT to press him for it. That's what I said to
myself when I lent it. And of course I'm glad to have that old trouble
healed up. I don't THINK I ever did Rogers any wrong, and I never did
think so; but if I DID do it--IF I did--I'm willing to call it square,
if I never see a cent of my money back again."
"Well, that's all," said his wife.
They did not celebrate his reconciliation with his old enemy--for such
they had always felt him to be since he ceased to be an ally--by any
show of joy or affection. It was not in their tradition, as stoical
for the woman as for the man, that they should kiss or embrace each
other at such a moment. She was content to have told him that he had
done his duty, and he was content with her saying that. But before she
slept she found words to add that she always feared the selfish part he
had acted toward Rogers had weakened him, and left him less able to
overcome any temptation that might beset him; and that was one reason
why she could never be easy about it. Now she should never fear for
him again.
This time he did not explicitly deny her forgiving impeachment. "Well,
it's all past and gone now, anyway; and I don't want you should think
anything more about it."
He was man enough to take advantage of the high favour in which he
stood when he went up to town, and to abuse it by bringing Corey down
to supper. His wife could not help condoning the sin of disobedience
in him at such a time. Penelope said that between the admiration she
felt for the Colonel's boldness and her mother's forbearance, she was
hardly in a state to entertain company that evening; but she did what
she could.
Irene liked being talked to better than talking, and when her sister
was by she was always, tacitly or explicitly, referring to her for
confirmation of what she said. She was content to sit and look pretty
as she looked at the young man and listened to her sister's drolling.
She laughed and kept glancing at Corey to make sure that he was
understanding her. When they went out on the veranda to see the moon
on the water, Penelope led the way and Irene followed.
They did not look at the moonlight long. The young man perched on the
rail of the veranda, and Irene took one of the red-painted
rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her
sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase
is. That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed
now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little,
had a fascination which kept his eye. Her talk was very unliterary,
and its effect seemed hardly conscious. She was far from epigram in
her funning. She told of this trifle and that; she sketched the
characters and looks of people who had interested her, and nothing
seemed to have escaped her notice; she mimicked a little, but not much;
she suggested, and then the affair represented itself as if without her
agency. She did not laugh; when Corey stopped she made a soft cluck in
her throat, as if she liked his being amused, and went on again.
The Colonel, left alone with his wife for the first time since he had
come from town, made haste to take the word. "Well, Pert, I've
arranged the whole thing with Rogers, and I hope you'll be satisfied to
know that he owes me twenty thousand dollars, and that I've got
security from him to the amount of a fourth of that, if I was to force
his stocks to a sale."
"How came he to come down with you?" asked Mrs. Lapham.
"Who? Rogers?"
"Mr. Corey."
"Corey? Oh!" said Lapham, affecting not to have thought she could mean
Corey. "He proposed it."
"Likely!" jeered his wife, but with perfect amiability.
"It's so," protested the Colonel. "We got talking about a matter just
before I left, and he walked down to the boat with me; and then he said
if I didn't mind he guessed he'd come along down and go back on the
return boat. Of course I couldn't let him do that."
"It's well for you you couldn't."
"And I couldn't do less than bring him here to tea."
"Oh, certainly not."
"But he ain't going to stay the night--unless," faltered Lapham, "you
want him to."
"Oh, of course, I want him to! I guess he'll stay, probably."
"Well, you know how crowded that last boat always is, and he can't get
any other now."
Mrs. Lapham laughed at the simple wile. "I hope you'll be just as well
satisfied, Si, if it turns out he doesn't want Irene after all."
"Pshaw, Persis! What are you always bringing that up for?" pleaded the
Colonel. Then he fell silent, and presently his rude, strong face was
clouded with an unconscious frown.
"There!" cried his wife, startling him from his abstraction. "I see
how you'd feel; and I hope that you'll remember who you've got to
blame."
"I'll risk it," said Lapham, with the confidence of a man used to
success.
From the veranda the sound of Penelope's lazy tone came through the
closed windows, with joyous laughter from Irene and peals from Corey.
"Listen to that!" said her father within, swelling up with
inexpressible satisfaction. "That girl can talk for twenty, right
straight along. She's better than a circus any day. I wonder what
she's up to now."
"Oh, she's probably getting off some of those yarns of hers, or telling
about some people. She can't step out of the house without coming back
with more things to talk about than most folks would bring back from
Japan. There ain't a ridiculous person she's ever seen but what she's
got something from them to make you laugh at; and I don't believe we've
ever had anybody in the house since the girl could talk that she hain't
got some saying from, or some trick that'll paint 'em out so't you can
see 'em and hear 'em. Sometimes I want to stop her; but when she gets
into one of her gales there ain't any standing up against her. I guess
it's lucky for Irene that she's got Pen there to help entertain her
company. I can't ever feel down where Pen is."
"That's so," said the Colonel. "And I guess she's got about as much
culture as any of them. Don't you?"
"She reads a great deal," admitted her mother. "She seems to be at it
the whole while. I don't want she should injure her health, and
sometimes I feel like snatchin' the books away from her. I don't know
as it's good for a girl to read so much, anyway, especially novels. I
don't want she should get notions."
"Oh, I guess Pen'll know how to take care of herself," said Lapham.
"She's got sense enough. But she ain't so practical as Irene. She's
more up in the clouds--more of what you may call a dreamer. Irene's
wide-awake every minute; and I declare, any one to see these two
together when there's anything to be done, or any lead to be taken,
would say Irene was the oldest, nine times out of ten. It's only when
they get to talking that you can see Pen's got twice as much brains."
"Well," said Lapham, tacitly granting this point, and leaning back in
his chair in supreme content. "Did you ever see much nicer girls
anywhere?"
His wife laughed at his pride. "I presume they're as much swans as
anybody's geese."
"No; but honestly, now!"
"Oh, they'll do; but don't you be silly, if you can help it, Si."
The young people came in, and Corey said it was time for his boat.
Mrs. Lapham pressed him to stay, but he persisted, and he would not let
the Colonel send him to the boat; he said he would rather walk.
Outside, he pushed along toward the boat, which presently he could see
lying at her landing in the bay, across the sandy tract to the left of
the hotels. From time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk, as
a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then he went forward
at a swifter pace. "She's charming!" he said, and he thought he had
spoken aloud. He found himself floundering about in the deep sand,
wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat just before
she started. The clerk came to take his fare, and Corey looked
radiantly up at him in his lantern-light, with a smile that he must
have been wearing a long time; his cheek was stiff with it. Once some
people who stood near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then
he suspected himself of having laughed outright.