"No, I don't really think they are. They are unambitious, I should
say." Mrs. Corey permitted herself a long breath. But her son added,
"It's the parents who are ambitious for them," and her respiration
became shorter again.
"Yes," she said.
"They're very simple, nice girls," pursued Corey. "I think you'll like
the elder, when you come to know her."
When you come to know her. The words implied an expectation that the
two families were to be better acquainted.
"Then she is more intellectual than her sister?" Mrs. Corey ventured.
"Intellectual?" repeated her son. "No; that isn't the word, quite.
Though she certainly has more mind."
"The younger seemed very sensible."
"Oh, sensible, yes. And as practical as she's pretty. She can do all
sorts of things, and likes to be doing them. Don't you think she's an
extraordinary beauty?"
"Yes--yes, she is," said Mrs. Corey, at some cost.
"She's good, too," said Corey, "and perfectly innocent and transparent.
I think you will like her the better the more you know her."
"I thought her very nice from the beginning," said the mother
heroically; and then nature asserted itself in her. "But I should be
afraid that she might perhaps be a little bit tiresome at last; her
range of ideas seemed so extremely limited."
"Yes, that's what I was afraid of. But, as a matter of fact, she
isn't. She interests you by her very limitations. You can see the
working of her mind, like that of a child. She isn't at all conscious
even of her beauty."
"I don't believe young men can tell whether girls are conscious or
not," said Mrs. Corey. "But I am not saying the Miss Laphams are
not----" Her son sat musing, with an inattentive smile on his face.
"What is it?"
"Oh! nothing. I was thinking of Miss Lapham and something she was
saying. She's very droll, you know."
"The elder sister? Yes, you told me that. Can you see the workings of
her mind too?"
"No; she's everything that's unexpected." Corey fell into another
reverie, and smiled again; but he did not offer to explain what amused
him, and his mother would not ask.
"I don't know what to make of his admiring the girl so frankly," she
said afterward to her husband. "That couldn't come naturally till
after he had spoken to her, and I feel sure that he hasn't yet."
"You women haven't risen yet--it's an evidence of the backwardness of
your sex--to a conception of the Bismarck idea in diplomacy. If a man
praises one woman, you still think he's in love with another. Do you
mean that because Tom didn't praise the elder sister so much, he HAS
spoken to HER?"
Mrs. Corey refused the consequence, saying that it did not follow.
"Besides, he did praise her."
"You ought to be glad that matters are in such good shape, then. At
any rate, you can do absolutely nothing."
"Oh! I know it," sighed Mrs. Corey. "I wish Tom would be a little
opener with me."
"He's as open as it's in the nature of an American-born son to be with
his parents. I dare say if you'd asked him plumply what he meant in
regard to the young lady, he would have told you--if he knew."
"Why, don't you think he does know, Bromfield?"
"I'm not at all sure he does. You women think that because a young man
dangles after a girl, or girls, he's attached to them. It doesn't at
all follow. He dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to do
with his time, and because they seem to like it. I dare say that Tom
has dangled a good deal in this instance because there was nobody else
in town."
"Do you really think so?"
"I throw out the suggestion. And it strikes me that a young lady
couldn't do better than stay in or near Boston during the summer. Most
of the young men are here, kept by business through the week, with
evenings available only on the spot, or a few miles off. What was the
proportion of the sexes at the seashore and the mountains?"
"Oh, twenty girls at least for even an excuse of a man. It's shameful."
"You see, I am right in one part of my theory. Why shouldn't I be
right in the rest?"
"I wish you were. And yet I can't say that I do. Those things are
very serious with girls. I shouldn't like Tom to have been going to
see those people if he meant nothing by it."
"And you wouldn't like it if he did. You are difficult, my dear." Her
husband pulled an open newspaper toward him from the table.
"I feel that it wouldn't be at all like him to do so," said Mrs. Corey,
going on to entangle herself in her words, as women often do when their
ideas are perfectly clear. "Don't go to reading, please, Bromfield! I
am really worried about this matter I must know how much it means. I
can't let it go on so. I don't see how you can rest easy without
knowing."
"I don't in the least know what's going to become of me when I die; and
yet I sleep well," replied Bromfield Corey, putting his newspaper aside.
"Ah! but this is a very different thing."
"So much more serious? Well, what can you do? We had this out when you
were here in the summer, and you agreed with me then that we could do
nothing. The situation hasn't changed at all."
"Yes, it has; it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, again
expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "I think I must ask
Tom outright."
"You know you can't do that, my dear."
"Then why doesn't he tell us?"
"Ah, that's what HE can't do, if he's making love to Miss Irene--that's
her name, I believe--on the American plan. He will tell us after he
has told HER. That was the way I did. Don't ignore our own youth,
Anna. It was a long while ago, I'll admit."
"It was very different," said Mrs. Corey, a little shaken.
"I don't see how. I dare say Mamma Lapham knows whether Tom is in love
with her daughter or not; and no doubt Papa Lapham knows it at second
hand. But we shall not know it until the girl herself does. Depend
upon that. Your mother knew, and she told your father; but my poor
father knew nothing about it till we were engaged; and I had been
hanging about--dangling, as you call it----"
"No, no; YOU called it that."
"Was it I?--for a year or more."
The wife could not refuse to be a little consoled by the image of her
young love which the words conjured up, however little she liked its
relation to her son's interest in Irene Lapham. She smiled pensively.
"Then you think it hasn't come to an understanding with them yet?"
"An understanding? Oh, probably."
"An explanation, then?"
"The only logical inference from what we've been saying is that it
hasn't. But I don't ask you to accept it on that account. May I read
now, my dear?"
"Yes, you may read now," said Mrs. Corey, with one of those sighs which
perhaps express a feminine sense of the unsatisfactoriness of husbands
in general, rather than a personal discontent with her own.
"Thank you, my dear; then I think I'll smoke too," said Bromfield
Corey, lighting a cigar.
She left him in peace, and she made no further attempt upon her son's
confidence. But she was not inactive for that reason. She did not, of
course, admit to herself, and far less to others, the motive with which
she went to pay an early visit to the Laphams, who had now come up from
Nantasket to Nankeen Square. She said to her daughters that she had
always been a little ashamed of using her acquaintance with them to get
money for her charity, and then seeming to drop it. Besides, it seemed
to her that she ought somehow to recognise the business relation that
Tom had formed with the father; they must not think that his family
disapproved of what he had done. "Yes, business is business," said
Nanny, with a laugh. "Do you wish us to go with you again?"
"No; I will go alone this time," replied the mother with dignity.
Her coupe now found its way to Nankeen Square without difficulty, and
she sent up a card, which Mrs. Lapham received in the presence of her
daughter Penelope.
"I presume I've got to see her," she gasped.
"Well, don't look so guilty, mother," joked the girl; "you haven't been
doing anything so VERY wrong."
"It seems as if I HAD. I don't know what's come over me. I wasn't
afraid of the woman before, but now I don't seem to feel as if I could
look her in the face. He's been coming here of his own accord, and I
fought against his coming long enough, goodness knows. I didn't want
him to come. And as far forth as that goes, we're as respectable as
they are; and your father's got twice their money, any day. We've no
need to go begging for their favour. I guess they were glad enough to
get him in with your father."
"Yes, those are all good points, mother," said the girl; "and if you
keep saying them over, and count a hundred every time before you speak,
I guess you'll worry through."
Mrs. Lapham had been fussing distractedly with her hair and ribbons, in
preparation for her encounter with Mrs. Corey. She now drew in a long
quivering breath, stared at her daughter without seeing her, and
hurried downstairs. It was true that when she met Mrs. Corey before
she had not been awed by her; but since then she had learned at least
her own ignorance of the world, and she had talked over the things she
had misconceived and the things she had shrewdly guessed so much that
she could not meet her on the former footing of equality. In spite of
as brave a spirit and as good a conscience as woman need have, Mrs.
Lapham cringed inwardly, and tremulously wondered what her visitor had
come for. She turned from pale to red, and was hardly coherent in her
greetings; she did not know how they got to where Mrs. Corey was saying
exactly the right things about her son's interest and satisfaction in
his new business, and keeping her eyes fixed on Mrs. Lapham's, reading
her uneasiness there, and making her feel, in spite of her indignant
innocence, that she had taken a base advantage of her in her absence to
get her son away from her and marry him to Irene. Then, presently,
while this was painfully revolving itself in Mrs. Lapham's mind, she
was aware of Mrs. Corey's asking if she was not to have the pleasure of
seeing Miss Irene.
"No; she's out, just now," said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't know just when
she'll be in. She went to get a book." And here she turned red again,
knowing that Irene had gone to get the book because it was one that
Corey had spoken of.
"Oh! I'm sorry," said Mrs. Corey. "I had hoped to see her. And your
other daughter, whom I never met?"
"Penelope?" asked Mrs. Lapham, eased a little. "She is at home. I
will go and call her." The Laphams had not yet thought of spending
their superfluity on servants who could be rung for; they kept two
girls and a man to look after the furnace, as they had for the last ten
years. If Mrs. Lapham had rung in the parlour, her second girl would
have gone to the street door to see who was there. She went upstairs
for Penelope herself, and the girl, after some rebellious derision,
returned with her.
Mrs. Corey took account of her, as Penelope withdrew to the other side
of the room after their introduction, and sat down, indolently
submissive on the surface to the tests to be applied, and following
Mrs. Corey's lead of the conversation in her odd drawl.
"You young ladies will be glad to be getting into your new house," she
said politely.
"I don't know," said Penelope. "We're so used to this one."
Mrs. Corey looked a little baffled, but she said sympathetically, "Of
course, you will be sorry to leave your old home."
Mrs. Lapham could not help putting in on behalf of her daughters: "I
guess if it was left to the girls to say, we shouldn't leave it at all."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey; "are they so much attached? But I can
quite understand it. My children would be heart-broken too if we were
to leave the old place." She turned to Penelope. "But you must think
of the lovely new house, and the beautiful position."
"Yes, I suppose we shall get used to them too," said Penelope, in
response to this didactic consolation.
"Oh, I could even imagine your getting very fond of them," pursued Mrs.
Corey patronisingly. "My son has told me of the lovely outlook you're
to have over the water. He thinks you have such a beautiful house. I
believe he had the pleasure of meeting you all there when he first came
home."
"Yes, I think he was our first visitor."
"He is a great admirer of your house," said Mrs. Corey, keeping her
eyes very sharply, however politely, on Penelope's face, as if to
surprise there the secret of any other great admiration of her son's
that might helplessly show itself.
"Yes," said the girl, "he's been there several times with father; and
he wouldn't be allowed to overlook any of its good points."
Her mother took a little more courage from her daughter's tranquillity.
"The girls make such fun of their father's excitement about his
building, and the way he talks it into everybody."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey, with civil misunderstanding and inquiry.
Penelope flushed, and her mother went on: "I tell him he's more of a
child about it than any of them."
"Young people are very philosophical nowadays," remarked Mrs. Corey.
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Lapham. "I tell them they've always had
everything, so that nothing's a surprise to them. It was different
with us in our young days."
"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, without assenting.
"I mean the Colonel and myself," explained Mrs. Lapham.
"Oh yes--yes!" said Mrs. Corey.
"I'm sure," the former went on, rather helplessly, "we had to work hard
enough for everything we got. And so we appreciated it."
"So many things were not done for young people then," said Mrs. Corey,
not recognising the early-hardships standpoint of Mrs. Lapham. "But I
don't know that they are always the better for it now," she added
vaguely, but with the satisfaction we all feel in uttering a just
commonplace.
"It's rather hard living up to blessings that you've always had," said
Penelope.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Corey distractedly, and coming back to her slowly
from the virtuous distance to which she had absented herself. She
looked at the girl searchingly again, as if to determine whether this
were a touch of the drolling her son had spoken of. But she only
added: "You will enjoy the sunsets on the Back Bay so much." "Well, not
unless they're new ones," said Penelope. "I don't believe I could
promise to enjoy any sunsets that I was used to, a great deal."
Mrs. Corey looked at her with misgiving, hardening into dislike. "No,"
she breathed vaguely. "My son spoke of the fine effect of the lights
about the hotel from your cottage at Nantasket," she said to Mrs.
Lapham.
"Yes, they're splendid!" exclaimed that lady. "I guess the girls went
down every night with him to see them from the rocks."
"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, a little dryly; and she permitted herself to
add: "He spoke of those rocks. I suppose both you young ladies spend a
great deal of your time on them when you're there. At Nahant my
children were constantly on them."
"Irene likes the rocks," said Penelope. "I don't care much about
them,--especially at night."
"Oh, indeed! I suppose you find it quite as well looking at the lights
comfortably from the veranda."
"No; you can't see them from the house."
"Oh," said Mrs. Corey. After a perceptible pause, she turned to Mrs.
Lapham. "I don't know what my son would have done for a breath of sea
air this summer, if you had not allowed him to come to Nantasket. He
wasn't willing to leave his business long enough to go anywhere else."
"Yes, he's a born business man," responded Mrs. Lapham
enthusiastically. "If it's born in you, it's bound to come out.
That's what the Colonel is always saying about Mr. Corey. He says it's
born in him to be a business man, and he can't help it." She recurred
to Corey gladly because she felt that she had not said enough of him
when his mother first spoke of his connection with the business. "I
don't believe," she went on excitedly, "that Colonel Lapham has ever
had anybody with him that he thought more of."
"You have all been very kind to my son," said Mrs. Corey in
acknowledgment, and stiffly bowing a little, "and we feel greatly
indebted to you. Very much so." At these grateful expressions Mrs.
Lapham reddened once more, and murmured that it had been very pleasant
to them, she was sure. She glanced at her daughter for support, but
Penelope was looking at Mrs. Corey, who doubtless saw her from the
corner of her eyes, though she went on speaking to her mother.
"I was sorry to hear from him that Mr.--Colonel?--Lapham had not been
quite well this summer. I hope he's better now?"
"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Lapham; "he's all right now. He's
hardly ever been sick, and he don't know how to take care of himself.
That's all. We don't any of us; we're all so well."
"Health is a great blessing," sighed Mrs. Corey.
"Yes, so it is. How is your oldest daughter?" inquired Mrs. Lapham.
"Is she as delicate as ever?"
"She seems to be rather better since we returned." And now Mrs. Corey,
as if forced to the point, said bunglingly that the young ladies had
wished to come with her, but had been detained. She based her
statement upon Nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple
a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. "But we shall
hope for some--some other occasion," she said vaguely, and she put on a
parting smile, and shook hands with Mrs. Lapham and Penelope, and then,
after some lingering commonplaces, got herself out of the house.
Penelope and her mother were still looking at each other, and trying to
grapple with the effect or purport of the visit, when Irene burst in
upon them from the outside.
"O mamma! wasn't that Mrs. Corey's carriage just drove away?"
Penelope answered with her laugh. "Yes! You've just missed the most
delightful call, 'Rene. So easy and pleasant every way. Not a bit
stiff! Mrs. Corey was so friendly! She didn't make one feel at all as
if she'd bought me, and thought she'd given too much; and mother held
up her head as if she were all wool and a yard wide, and she would just
like to have anybody deny it."
In a few touches of mimicry she dashed off a sketch of the scene: her
mother's trepidation, and Mrs. Corey's well-bred repose and polite
scrutiny of them both. She ended by showing how she herself had sat
huddled up in a dark corner, mute with fear.
"If she came to make us say and do the wrong thing, she must have gone
away happy; and it's a pity you weren't here to help, Irene. I don't
know that I aimed to make a bad impression, but I guess I
succeeded--even beyond my deserts." She laughed; then suddenly she
flashed out in fierce earnest. "If I missed doing anything that could
make me as hateful to her as she made herself to me----" She checked
herself, and began to laugh. Her laugh broke, and the tears started
into her eyes; she ran out of the room, and up the stairs.
"What--what does it mean?" asked Irene in a daze.
Mrs. Lapham was still in the chilly torpor to which Mrs. Corey's call
had reduced her. Penelope's vehemence did not rouse her. She only
shook her head absently, and said, "I don't know."
"Why should Pen care what impression she made? I didn't suppose it
would make any difference to her whether Mrs. Corey liked her or not."
"I didn't, either. But I could see that she was just as nervous as she
could be, every minute of the time. I guess she didn't like Mrs. Corey
any too well from the start, and she couldn't seem to act like herself."
"Tell me about it, mamma," said Irene, dropping into a chair.
Mrs. Corey described the interview to her husband on her return home.
"Well, and what are your inferences?" he asked.
"They were extremely embarrassed and excited--that is, the mother. I
don't wish to do her injustice, but she certainly behaved consciously."
"You made her feel so, I dare say, Anna. I can imagine how terrible
you must have been in the character of an accusing spirit, too
lady-like to say anything. What did you hint?"
"I hinted nothing," said Mrs. Corey, descending to the weakness of
defending herself. "But I saw quite enough to convince me that the
girl is in love with Tom, and the mother knows it."
"That was very unsatisfactory. I supposed you went to find out whether
Tom was in love with the girl. Was she as pretty as ever?"
"I didn't see her; she was not at home; I saw her sister."
"I don't know that I follow you quite, Anna. But no matter. What was
the sister like?"
"A thoroughly disagreeable young woman."
"What did she do?"
"Nothing. She's far too sly for that. But that was the impression."
"Then you didn't find her so amusing as Tom does?"
"I found her pert. There's no other word for it. She says things to
puzzle you and put you out."
"Ah, that was worse than pert, Anna; that was criminal. Well, let us
thank heaven the younger one is so pretty."
Mrs. Corey did not reply directly. "Bromfield," she said, after a
moment of troubled silence, "I have been thinking over your plan, and I
don't see why it isn't the right thing."
"What is my plan?" inquired Bromfield Corey.
"A dinner."
Her husband began to laugh. "Ah, you overdid the accusing-spirit
business, and this is reparation." But Mrs. Corey hurried on, with
combined dignity and anxiety--
"We can't ignore Tom's intimacy with them--it amounts to that; it will
probably continue even if it's merely a fancy, and we must seem to know
it; whatever comes of it, we can't disown it. They are very simple,
unfashionable people, and unworldly; but I can't say that they are
offensive, unless--unless," she added, in propitiation of her husband's
smile, "unless the father--how did you find the father?" she implored.
"He will be very entertaining," said Corey, "if you start him on his
paint. What was the disagreeable daughter like? Shall you have her?"
"She's little and dark. We must have them all," Mrs. Corey sighed.
"Then you don't think a dinner would do?"
"Oh yes, I do. As you say, we can't disown Tom's relation to them,
whatever it is. We had much better recognise it, and make the best of
the inevitable. I think a Lapham dinner would be delightful." He
looked at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, and she
fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he laughed outright.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "it would be the best way of curing Tom of his
fancy, if he has one. He has been seeing her with the dangerous
advantages which a mother knows how to give her daughter in the family
circle, and with no means of comparing her with other girls. You must
invite several other very pretty girls."
"Do you really think so, Bromfield?" asked Mrs. Corey, taking courage a
little. "That might do," But her spirits visibly sank again. "I don't
know any other girl half so pretty."
"Well, then, better bred."
"She is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing."
"Well, more cultivated."
"Tom doesn't get on with such people."
"Oh, you wish him to marry her, I see."
"No, no."
"Then you'd better give the dinner to bring them together, to promote
the affair."
"You know I don't want to do that, Bromfield. But I feel that we must
do something. If we don't, it has a clandestine appearance. It isn't
just to them. A dinner won't leave us in any worse position, and may
leave us in a better. Yes," said Mrs. Corey, after another thoughtful
interval, "we must have them--have them all. It could be very simple."
"Ah, you can't give a dinner under a bushel, if I take your meaning, my
dear. If we do this at all, we mustn't do it as if we were ashamed of
it. We must ask people to meet them."
"Yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "There are not many people in town yet," she
added, with relief that caused her husband another smile. "There
really seems a sort of fatality about it," she concluded religiously.
"Then you had better not struggle against it. Go and reconcile Lily
and Nanny to it as soon as possible."
Mrs. Corey blanched a little. "But don't you think it will be the best
thing, Bromfield?"
"I do indeed, my dear. The only thing that shakes my faith in the
scheme is the fact that I first suggested it. But if you have adopted
it, it must be all right, Anna. I can't say that I expected it."
"No," said his wife, "it wouldn't do."