HAVING distinctly given up the project of asking the Laphams to dinner,
Mrs. Corey was able to carry it out with the courage of sinners who
have sacrificed to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to
their intended transgression. She did not question but the Laphams
would come; and she only doubted as to the people whom she should
invite to meet them. She opened the matter with some trepidation to
her daughters, but neither of them opposed her; they rather looked at
the scheme from her own point of view, and agreed with her that nothing
had really yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams
helplessly contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that
ill-advised application to Mrs. Lapham for charity. Not only the
principal of their debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing
interest. They said, What harm could giving the dinner possibly do
them? They might ask any or all of their acquaintance without
disadvantage to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give the
dinner just the character they chose, and still flatter the ignorance
of the Laphams. The trouble would be with Tom, if he were really
interested in the girl; but he could not say anything if they made it a
family dinner; he could not feel anything. They had each turned in her
own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most
comprehensive of those cousinships which form the admiration and terror
of the adventurer in Boston society. He finds himself hemmed in and
left out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all hope of
safe personality in his comments on people; he is never less secure
than when he hears some given Bostonian denouncing or ridiculing
another. If he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring
in these criticisms, however just they appear, for the probability is
that their object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the
censor. When the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling one
another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, by the familiar
abbreviations of their Christian names, he must feel keenly the exile
to which he was born; but he is then, at least, in comparatively little
danger; while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls at every
step around him, in a society where Middlesexes have married Essexes
and produced Suffolks for two hundred and fifty years.
These conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, are a source
of strength and security to those native to them. An uncertain
acquaintance may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such a
cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it and tremendous
stories are told of people who have spent a whole winter in Boston, in
a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of the Suffolks,
discover upon reflection that they have met no one but Essexes and
Middlesexes.
Mrs. Corey's brother James came first into her mind, and she thought
with uncommon toleration of the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of
his wife. James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout,
and might be said to have actively promoted his connection with Lapham.
She thought next of the widow of her cousin, Henry Bellingham, who had
let her daughter marry that Western steamboat man, and was fond of her
son-in-law; she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king and
his family. The daughters insisted so strongly upon Mrs. Bellingham's
son Charles, that Mrs. Corey put him down--if he were in town; he might
be in Central America; he got on with all sorts of people. It seemed
to her that she might stop at this: four Laphams, five Coreys, and four
Bellinghams were enough.
"That makes thirteen," said Nanny. "You can have Mr. and Mrs. Sewell."
"Yes, that is a good idea," assented Mrs. Corey. "He is our minister,
and it is very proper."
"I don't see why you don't have Robert Chase. It is a pity he
shouldn't see her--for the colour."
"I don't quite like the idea of that," said Mrs. Corey; "but we can
have him too, if it won't make too many." The painter had married into
a poorer branch of the Coreys, and his wife was dead. "Is there any
one else?"
"There is Miss Kingsbury."
"We have had her so much. She will begin to think we are using her."
"She won't mind; she's so good-natured."
"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four Laphams, five
Coreys, four Bellinghams, one Chase, and one Kingsbury--fifteen. Oh!
and two Sewells. Seventeen. Ten ladies and seven gentlemen. It
doesn't balance very well, and it's too large."
"Perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested Lily.
"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny.
Their mother reflected. "Well, I will ask them. The ladies will
refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more
artists. Why! we must have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he's a
bachelor, and he's building their house, Tom says."
Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, and she told
him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident
misgiving.
"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his
honest eyes.
She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I won't do it at all, my
dear," she said, "if you don't approve. But I thought--You know we
have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at
Baie St. Paul. Then in the winter, I'm ashamed to say, I got money
from her for a charity I was interested in; and I hate the idea of
merely USING people in that way. And now your having been at their
house this summer--we can't seem to disapprove of that; and your
business relations to him----"
"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it amounts to a dinner?"
"Why, I don't know," returned his mother. "We shall have hardly any
one out of our family connection."
"Well," Corey assented, "it might do. I suppose what you wish is to
give them a pleasure."
"Why, certainly. Don't you think they'd like to come?"
"Oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure after they
were here is another thing. I should have said that if you wanted to
have them, they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet our own
immediate family."
"That's what I thought of in the first place, but your father seemed to
think it implied a social distrust of them; and we couldn't afford to
have that appearance, even to ourselves."
"Perhaps he was right."
"And besides, it might seem a little significant."
Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "Whom did you think of
asking?" His mother repeated the names. "Yes, that would do," he said,
with a vague dissatisfaction.
"I won't have it at all, if you don't wish, Tom."
"Oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. Yes, I dare say it's right. What
did you mean by a family dinner seeming significant?"
His mother hesitated. When it came to that, she did not like to
recognise in his presence the anxieties that had troubled her. But "I
don't know," she said, since she must. "I shouldn't want to give that
young girl, or her mother, the idea that we wished to make more of the
acquaintance than--than you did, Tom."
He looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did not take her meaning.
But he said, "Oh yes, of course," and Mrs. Corey, in the uncertainty in
which she seemed destined to remain concerning this affair, went off
and wrote her invitation to Mrs. Lapham. Later in the evening, when
they again found themselves alone, her son said, "I don't think I
understood you, mother, in regard to the Laphams. I think I do now. I
certainly don't wish you to make more of the acquaintance than I have
done. It wouldn't be right; it might be very unfortunate. Don't give
the dinner!"
"It's too late now, my son," said Mrs. Corey. "I sent my note to Mrs.
Lapham an hour ago." Her courage rose at the trouble which showed in
Corey's face. "But don't be annoyed by it, Tom. It isn't a family
dinner, you know, and everything can be managed without embarrassment.
If we take up the affair at this point, you will seem to have been
merely acting for us; and they can't possibly understand anything more."
"Well, well! Let it go! I dare say it's all right. At any rate, it can't
be helped now."
"I don't wish to help it, Tom," said Mrs. Corey, with a cheerfullness
which the thought of the Laphams had never brought her before. "I am
sure it is quite fit and proper, and we can make them have a very
pleasant time. They are good, inoffensive people, and we owe it to
ourselves not to be afraid to show that we have felt their kindness to
us, and his appreciation of you."
"Well," consented Corey. The trouble that his mother had suddenly cast
off was in his tone; but she was not sorry. It was quite time that he
should think seriously of his attitude toward these people if he had
not thought of it before, but, according to his father's theory, had
been merely dangling.
It was a view of her son's character that could hardly have pleased her
in different circumstances, yet it was now unquestionably a consolation
if not wholly a pleasure. If she considered the Laphams at all, it was
with the resignation which we feel at the evils of others, even when
they have not brought them on themselves.
Mrs. Lapham, for her part, had spent the hours between Mrs. Corey's
visit and her husband's coming home from business in reaching the same
conclusion with regard to Corey; and her spirits were at the lowest
when they sat down to supper. Irene was downcast with her; Penelope
was purposely gay; and the Colonel was beginning, after his first plate
of the boiled ham,--which, bristling with cloves, rounded its bulk on a
wide platter before him,--to take note of the surrounding mood, when
the door-bell jingled peremptorily, and the girl left waiting on the
table to go and answer it. She returned at once with a note for Mrs.
Lapham, which she read, and then, after a helpless survey of her
family, read again.
"Why, what IS it, mamma?" asked Irene, while the Colonel, who had taken
up his carving-knife for another attack on the ham, held it drawn half
across it.
"Why, I don't know what it does mean," answered Mrs. Lapham
tremulously, and she let the girl take the note from her.
Irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at the end with a joyful
cry and a flush that burned to the top of her forehead. Then she began
to read it once more.
The Colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently, and Mrs. Lapham
said, "You read it out loud, if you know what to make of it, Irene."
But Irene, with a nervous scream of protest, handed it to her father,
who performed the office.
"DEAR MRS. LAPHAM:
"Will you and General Lapham----"
"I didn't know I was a general," grumbled Lapham. "I guess I shall
have to be looking up my back pay. Who is it writes this, anyway?" he
asked, turning the letter over for the signature.
"Oh, never mind. Read it through!" cried his wife, with a kindling
glance of triumph at Penelope, and he resumed--
"--and your daughters give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on
Thursday, the 28th, at half-past six.
"Yours sincerely,
"ANNA B. COREY."
The brief invitation had been spread over two pages, and the Colonel
had difficulties with the signature which he did not instantly
surmount. When he had made out the name and pronounced it, he looked
across at his wife for an explanation.
"I don't know what it all means," she said, shaking her head and
speaking with a pleased flutter. "She was here this afternoon, and I
should have said she had come to see how bad she could make us feel. I
declare I never felt so put down in my life by anybody."
"Why, what did she do? What did she say?" Lapham was ready, in his
dense pride, to resent any affront to his blood, but doubtful, with the
evidence of this invitation to the contrary, if any affront had been
offered. Mrs. Lapham tried to tell him, but there was really nothing
tangible; and when she came to put it into words, she could not make
out a case. Her husband listened to her excited attempt, and then he
said, with judicial superiority, "I guess nobody's been trying to make
you feel bad, Persis. What would she go right home and invite you to
dinner for, if she'd acted the way you say?"
In this view it did seem improbable, and Mrs. Lapham was shaken. She
could only say, "Penelope felt just the way I did about it."
Lapham looked at the girl, who said, "Oh, I can't prove it! I begin to
think it never happened. I guess it didn't."
"Humph!" said her father, and he sat frowning thoughtfully a
while--ignoring her mocking irony, or choosing to take her seriously.
"You can't really put your finger on anything," he said to his wife,
"and it ain't likely there is anything. Anyway, she's done the proper
thing by you now."
Mrs. Lapham faltered between her lingering resentment and the appeals
of her flattered vanity. She looked from Penelope's impassive face to
the eager eyes of Irene. "Well--just as you say, Silas. I don't know
as she WAS so very bad. I guess may be she was embarrassed some----"
"That's what I told you, mamma, from the start," interrupted Irene.
"Didn't I tell you she didn't mean anything by it? It's just the way
she acted at Baie St. Paul, when she got well enough to realise what
you'd done for her!"
Penelope broke into a laugh. "Is that her way of showing her
gratitude? I'm sorry I didn't understand that before."
Irene made no effort to reply. She merely looked from her mother to
her father with a grieved face for their protection, and Lapham said,
"When we've done supper, you answer her, Persis. Say we'll come."
"With one exception," said Penelope.
"What do you mean?" demanded her father, with a mouth full of ham.
"Oh, nothing of importance. Merely that I'm not going."
Lapham gave himself time to swallow his morsel, and his rising wrath
went down with it. "I guess you'll change your mind when the time
comes," he said. "Anyway, Persis, you say we'll all come, and then, if
Penelope don't want to go, you can excuse her after we get there.
That's the best way."
None of them, apparently, saw any reason why the affair should not be
left in this way, or had a sense of the awful and binding nature of a
dinner engagement. If she believed that Penelope would not finally
change her mind and go, no doubt Mrs. Lapham thought that Mrs. Corey
would easily excuse her absence. She did not find it so simple a
matter to accept the invitation. Mrs. Corey had said "Dear Mrs.
Lapham," but Mrs. Lapham had her doubts whether it would not be a
servile imitation to say "Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was
tormented as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise
temperature which she should impart to her politeness. She wrote an
unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, the same in which she used to
set the children's copies at school, and she subscribed herself, after
some hesitation between her husband's given name and her own, "Yours
truly, Mrs. S. Lapham."
Penelope had gone to her room, without waiting to be asked to advise or
criticise; but Irene had decided upon the paper, and on the whole, Mrs.
Lapham's note made a very decent appearance on the page.
When the furnace-man came, the Colonel sent him out to post it in the
box at the corner of the square. He had determined not to say anything
more about the matter before the girls, not choosing to let them see
that he was elated; he tried to give the effect of its being an
everyday sort of thing, abruptly closing the discussion with his order
to Mrs. Lapham to accept; but he had remained swelling behind his
newspaper during her prolonged struggle with her note, and he could no
longer hide his elation when Irene followed her sister upstairs.
"Well, Pers," he demanded, "what do you say now?"
Mrs. Lapham had been sobered into something of her former misgiving by
her difficulties with her note. "Well, I don't know what TO say. I
declare, I'm all mixed up about it, and I don't know as we've begun as
we can carry out in promising to go. I presume," she sighed, "that we
can all send some excuse at the last moment, if we don't want to go."
"I guess we can carry out, and I guess we shan't want to send any
excuse," bragged the Colonel. "If we're ever going to be anybody at
all, we've got to go and see how it's done. I presume we've got to
give some sort of party when we get into the new house, and this gives
the chance to ask 'em back again. You can't complain now but what
they've made the advances, Persis?"
"No," said Mrs. Lapham lifelessly; "I wonder why they wanted to do it.
Oh, I suppose it's all right," she added in deprecation of the anger
with her humility which she saw rising in her husband's face; "but if
it's all going to be as much trouble as that letter, I'd rather be
whipped. I don't know what I'm going to wear; or the girls either. I
do wonder--I've heard that people go to dinner in low-necks. Do you
suppose it's the custom?"
"How should I know?" demanded the Colonel. "I guess you've got clothes
enough. Any rate, you needn't fret about it. You just go round to
White's or Jordan & Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress. I guess
that'll settle it; they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I
see 'em in the window every time I pass; lots of 'em."
"Oh, it ain't the dress!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I don't suppose but what
we could get along with that; and I want to do the best we can for the
children; but I don't know what we're going to talk about to those
people when we get there. We haven't got anything in common with them.
Oh, I don't say they're any better," she again made haste to say in
arrest of her husband's resentment. "I don't believe they are; and I
don't see why they should be. And there ain't anybody has got a better
right to hold up their head than you have, Silas. You've got plenty of
money, and you've made every cent of it."
"I guess I shouldn't amounted to much without you, Persis," interposed
Lapham, moved to this justice by her praise.
"Oh, don't talk about ME!" protested the wife. "Now that you've made
it all right about Rogers, there ain't a thing in this world against
you. But still, for all that, I can see--and I can feel it when I
can't see it--that we're different from those people. They're
well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it, I presume, but we're too old
to learn to be like them."
"The children ain't," said Lapham shrewdly.
"No, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and that's the only thing
that reconciles me to it."
"You see how pleased Irene looked when I read it?"
"Yes, she was pleased."
"And I guess Penelope'll think better of it before the time comes."
"Oh yes, we do it for them. But whether we're doing the best thing for
'em, goodness knows. I'm not saying anything against HIM. Irene'll be
a lucky girl to get him, if she wants him. But there! I'd ten times
rather she was going to marry such a fellow as you were, Si, that had
to make every inch of his own way, and she had to help him. It's in
her!"
Lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's fondness; but neither
of them wished that he should respond directly to it. "I guess, if it
wa'n't for me, he wouldn't have a much easier time. But don't you
fret! It's all coming out right. That dinner ain't a thing for you to
be uneasy about. It'll pass off perfectly easy and natural."
Lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite to the end of the week
that followed. It was his theory not to let Corey see that he was set
up about the invitation, and when the young man said politely that his
mother was glad they were able to come, Lapham was very short with him.
He said yes, he believed that Mrs. Lapham and the girls were going.
Afterward he was afraid Corey might not understand that he was coming
too; but he did not know how to approach the subject again, and Corey
did not, so he let it pass. It worried him to see all the preparation
that his wife and Irene were making, and he tried to laugh at them for
it; and it worried him to find that Penelope was making no preparation
at all for herself, but only helping the others. He asked her what
should she do if she changed her mind at the last moment and concluded
to go, and she said she guessed she should not change her mind, but if
she did, she would go to White's with him and get him to choose her an
imported dress, he seemed to like them so much. He was too proud to
mention the subject again to her.
Finally, all that dress-making in the house began to scare him with
vague apprehensions in regard to his own dress. As soon as he had
determined to go, an ideal of the figure in which he should go
presented itself to his mind. He should not wear any dress-coat,
because, for one thing, he considered that a man looked like a fool in
a dress-coat, and, for another thing, he had none--had none on
principle. He would go in a frock-coat and black pantaloons, and
perhaps a white waistcoat, but a black cravat anyway. But as soon as
he developed this ideal to his family, which he did in pompous disdain
of their anxieties about their own dress, they said he should not go
so. Irene reminded him that he was the only person without a
dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner which he had taken her to some
years before, and she remembered feeling awfully about it at the time.
Mrs. Lapham, who would perhaps have agreed of herself, shook her head
with misgiving. "I don't see but what you'll have to get you one, Si,"
she said. "I don't believe they ever go without 'em to a private
house."
He held out openly, but on his way home the next day, in a sudden
panic, he cast anchor before his tailor's door and got measured for a
dress-coat. After that he began to be afflicted about his waist-coat,
concerning which he had hitherto been airily indifferent. He tried to
get opinion out of his family, but they were not so clear about it as
they were about the frock. It ended in their buying a book of
etiquette, which settled the question adversely to a white waistcoat.
The author, however, after being very explicit in telling them not to
eat with their knives, and above all not to pick their teeth with their
forks,--a thing which he said no lady or gentleman ever did,--was still
far from decided as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought to wear:
shaken on other points, Lapham had begun to waver also concerning the
black cravat. As to the question of gloves for the Colonel, which
suddenly flashed upon him one evening, it appeared never to have
entered the thoughts of the etiquette man, as Lapham called him. Other
authors on the same subject were equally silent, and Irene could only
remember having heard, in some vague sort of way, that gentlemen did
not wear gloves so much any more.
Drops of perspiration gathered on Lapham's forehead in the anxiety of
the debate; he groaned, and he swore a little in the compromise
profanity which he used.
"I declare," said Penelope, where she sat purblindly sewing on a bit of
dress for Irene, "the Colonel's clothes are as much trouble as
anybody's. Why don't you go to Jordan & Marsh's and order one of the
imported dresses for yourself, father?" That gave them all the relief
of a laugh over it, the Colonel joining in piteously.
He had an awful longing to find out from Corey how he ought to go. He
formulated and repeated over to himself an apparently careless
question, such as, "Oh, by the way, Corey, where do you get your
gloves?" This would naturally lead to some talk on the subject, which
would, if properly managed, clear up the whole trouble. But Lapham
found that he would rather die than ask this question, or any question
that would bring up the dinner again. Corey did not recur to it, and
Lapham avoided the matter with positive fierceness. He shunned talking
with Corey at all, and suffered in grim silence.
One night, before they fell asleep, his wife said to him, "I was
reading in one of those books to-day, and I don't believe but what
we've made a mistake if Pen holds out that she won't go."
"Why?" demanded Lapham, in the dismay which beset him at every fresh
recurrence to the subject.
"The book says that it's very impolite not to answer a dinner
invitation promptly. Well, we've done that all right,--at first I
didn't know but what we had been a little too quick, may be,--but then
it says if you're not going, that it's the height of rudeness not to
let them know at once, so that they can fill your place at the table."
The Colonel was silent for a while. "Well, I'm dumned," he said
finally, "if there seems to be any end to this thing. If it was to do
over again, I'd say no for all of us."
"I've wished a hundred times they hadn't asked us; but it's too late to
think about that now. The question is, what are we going to do about
Penelope?"
"Oh, I guess she'll go, at the last moment."
"She says she won't. She took a prejudice against Mrs. Corey that day,
and she can't seem to get over it."
"Well, then, hadn't you better write in the morning, as soon as you're
up, that she ain't coming?"
Mrs. Lapham sighed helplessly. "I shouldn't know how to get it in.
It's so late now; I don't see how I could have the face."
"Well, then, she's got to go, that's all."
"She's set she won't."
"And I'm set she shall," said Lapham with the loud obstinacy of a man
whose women always have their way.
Mrs. Lapham was not supported by the sturdiness of his proclamation.
But she did not know how to do what she knew she ought to do about
Penelope, and she let matters drift. After all, the child had a right
to stay at home if she did not wish to go. That was what Mrs. Lapham
felt, and what she said to her husband next morning, bidding him let
Penelope alone, unless she chose herself to go. She said it was too
late now to do anything, and she must make the best excuse she could
when she saw Mrs. Corey. She began to wish that Irene and her father
would go and excuse her too. She could not help saying this, and then
she and Lapham had some unpleasant words.
"Look here!" he cried. "Who wanted to go in for these people in the
first place? Didn't you come home full of 'em last year, and want me to
sell out here and move somewheres else because it didn't seem to suit
'em? And now you want to put it all on me! I ain't going to stand it."
"Hush!" said his wife. "Do you want to raise the house? I didn't put
it on you, as you say. You took it on yourself. Ever since that
fellow happened to come into the new house that day, you've been
perfectly crazy to get in with them. And now you're so afraid you
shall do something wrong before 'em, you don't hardly dare to say your
life's your own. I declare, if you pester me any more about those
gloves, Silas Lapham, I won't go."
"Do you suppose I want to go on my own account?" he demanded furiously.
"No," she admitted. "Of course I don't. I know very well that you're
doing it for Irene; but, for goodness gracious' sake, don't worry our
lives out, and make yourself a perfect laughing-stock before the
children."
With this modified concession from her, the quarrel closed in sullen
silence on Lapham's part. The night before the dinner came, and the
question of his gloves was still unsettled, and in a fair way to remain
so. He had bought a pair, so as to be on the safe side, perspiring in
company with the young lady who sold them, and who helped him try them
on at the shop; his nails were still full of the powder which she had
plentifully peppered into them in order to overcome the resistance of
his blunt fingers. But he was uncertain whether he should wear them.
They had found a book at last that said the ladies removed their gloves
on sitting down at table, but it said nothing about gentlemen's gloves.
He left his wife where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass in her
new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he
shut his door he caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before
the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her
knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she
made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train;
Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham
sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for the trouble they
were taking. But another glance gave him a sight of the young girl's
face in the mirror, beautiful and radiant with happiness, and his heart
melted again with paternal tenderness and pride. It was going to be a
great pleasure to Irene, and Lapham felt that she was bound to cut out
anything there. He was vexed with Penelope that she was not going too;
he would have liked to have those people hear her talk. He held his
door a little open, and listened to the things she was "getting off"
there to Irene. He showed that he felt really hurt and disappointed
about Penelope, and the girl's mother made her console him the next
evening before they all drove away without her. "You try to look on
the bright side of it, father. I guess you'll see that it's best I
didn't go when you get there. Irene needn't open her lips, and they
can all see how pretty she is; but they wouldn't know how smart I was
unless I talked, and maybe then they wouldn't."
This thrust at her father's simple vanity in her made him laugh; and
then they drove away, and Penelope shut the door, and went upstairs
with her lips firmly shutting in a sob.