THE Nova Scotia second-girl who answered Corey's ring said that Lapham
had not come home yet.
"Oh," said the young man, hesitating on the outer step.
"I guess you better come in," said the girl, "I'll go and see when
they're expecting him."
Corey was in the mood to be swayed by any chance. He obeyed the
suggestion of the second-girl's patronising friendliness, and let her
shut him into the drawing-room, while she went upstairs to announce him
to Penelope. "Did you tell him father wasn't at home?"
"Yes. He seemed so kind of disappointed, I told him to come in, and I'd
see when he WOULD be in," said the girl, with the human interest which
sometimes replaces in the American domestic the servile deference of
other countries.
A gleam of amusement passed over Penelope's face, as she glanced at
herself in the glass. "Well," she cried finally, dropping from her
shoulders the light shawl in which she had been huddled over a book
when Corey rang, "I will go down."
"All right," said the girl, and Penelope began hastily to amend the
disarray of her hair, which she tumbled into a mass on the top of her
little head, setting off the pale dark of her complexion with a flash
of crimson ribbon at her throat. She moved across the carpet once or
twice with the quaint grace that belonged to her small figure, made a
dissatisfied grimace at it in the glass, caught a handkerchief out of a
drawer and slid it into her pocket, and then descended to Corey.
The Lapham drawing-room in Nankeen Square was in the parti-coloured
paint which the Colonel had hoped to repeat in his new house: the trim
of the doors and windows was in light green and the panels in salmon;
the walls were a plain tint of French grey paper, divided by gilt
mouldings into broad panels with a wide stripe of red velvet paper
running up the corners; the chandelier was of massive imitation bronze;
the mirror over the mantel rested on a fringed mantel-cover of green
reps, and heavy curtains of that stuff hung from gilt lambrequin frames
at the window; the carpet was of a small pattern in crude green, which,
at the time Mrs. Lapham bought it, covered half the new floors in
Boston. In the panelled spaces on the walls were some stone-coloured
landscapes, representing the mountains and canyons of the West, which
the Colonel and his wife had visited on one of the early official
railroad excursions. In front of the long windows looking into the
Square were statues, kneeling figures which turned their backs upon the
company within-doors, and represented allegories of Faith and Prayer to
people without. A white marble group of several figures, expressing an
Italian conception of Lincoln Freeing the Slaves,--a Latin negro and
his wife,--with our Eagle flapping his wings in approval, at Lincoln's
feet, occupied one corner, and balanced the what-not of an earlier
period in another. These phantasms added their chill to that imparted
by the tone of the walls, the landscapes, and the carpets, and
contributed to the violence of the contrast when the chandelier was
lighted up full glare, and the heat of the whole furnace welled up from
the registers into the quivering atmosphere on one of the rare
occasions when the Laphams invited company.
Corey had not been in this room before; the family had always received
him in what they called the sitting-room. Penelope looked into this
first, and then she looked into the parlour, with a smile that broke
into a laugh as she discovered him standing under the single burner
which the second-girl had lighted for him in the chandelier.
"I don't understand how you came to be put in there," she said, as she
led the way to the cozier place, "unless it was because Alice thought
you were only here on probation, anyway. Father hasn't got home yet,
but I'm expecting him every moment; I don't know what's keeping him.
Did the girl tell you that mother and Irene were out?"
"No, she didn't say. It's very good of you to see me." She had not
seen the exaltation which he had been feeling, he perceived with half a
sigh; it must all be upon this lower level; perhaps it was best so.
"There was something I wished to say to your father----I hope," he
broke off, "you're better to-night."
"Oh yes, thank you," said Penelope, remembering that she had not been
well enough to go to dinner the night before.
"We all missed you very much."
"Oh, thank you! I'm afraid you wouldn't have missed me if I had been
there."
"Oh yes, we should," said Corey, "I assure you."
They looked at each other.
"I really think I believed I was saying something," said the girl.
"And so did I," replied the young man. They laughed rather wildly, and
then they both became rather grave.
He took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, where she sat
on the other side of the hearth, in a chair lower than his, with her
hands dropped in her lap, and the back of her head on her shoulders as
she looked up at him. The soft-coal fire in the grate purred and
flickered; the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face. She let
her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant glance at the
clock on the mantel.
"Mother and Irene have gone to the Spanish Students' concert."
"Oh, have they?" asked Corey; and he put his hat, which he had been
holding in his hand, on the floor beside his chair.
She looked down at it for no reason, and then looked up at his face for
no other, and turned a little red. Corey turned a little red himself.
She who had always been so easy with him now became a little
constrained.
"Do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?" he asked.
"No, is it warm? I haven't been out all day."
"It's like a summer night."
She turned her face towards the fire, and then started abruptly.
"Perhaps it's too warm for you here?"
"Oh no, it's very comfortable."
"I suppose it's the cold of the last few days that's still in the
house. I was reading with a shawl on when you came."
"I interrupted you."
"Oh no. I had finished the book. I was just looking over it again."
"Do you like to read books over?"
"Yes; books that I like at all."
"That was it?" asked Corey.
The girl hesitated. "It has rather a sentimental name. Did you ever
read it?--Tears, Idle Tears."
"Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous book with
ladies. They break their hearts over it. Did it make you cry?"
"Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said Penelope, laughing;
"and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. Then
the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I
guess it's rather forced."
"Her giving him up to the other one?"
"Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared
for him first. Why should she have done it? What right had she?"
"I don't know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice----"
"But it WASN'T self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone. She was
sacrificing him too; and for some one who couldn't appreciate him half
as much as she could. I'm provoked with myself when I think how I
cried over that book--for I did cry. It's silly--it's wicked for any
one to do what that girl did. Why can't they let people have a chance
to behave reasonably in stories?"
"Perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," suggested Corey, with a
smile.
"It would be novel, at any rate," said the girl. "But so it would in
real life, I suppose," she added.
"I don't know. Why shouldn't people in love behave sensibly?"
"That's a very serious question," said Penelope gravely. "I couldn't
answer it," and she left him the embarrassment of supporting an inquiry
which she had certainly instigated herself. She seemed to have finally
recovered her own ease in doing this. "Do you admire our autumnal
display, Mr. Corey?"
"Your display?"
"The trees in the Square. WE think it's quite equal to an opening at
Jordan & Marsh's."
"Ah, I'm afraid you wouldn't let me be serious even about your maples."
"Oh yes, I should--if you like to be serious."
"Don't you?"
"Well not about serious matters. That's the reason that book made me
cry."
"You make fun of everything. Miss Irene was telling me last night
about you."
"Then it's no use for me to deny it so soon. I must give Irene a
talking to."
"I hope you won't forbid her to talk about you!"
She had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, now between her
face and the fire, and now between her face and him. Her little
visage, with that arch, lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky
hair, and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, had a
Japanese effect in the subdued light, and it had the charm which comes
to any woman with happiness. It would be hard to say how much of this
she perceived that he felt. They talked about other things a while,
and then she came back to what he had said. She glanced at him
obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it. "Does Irene talk about
me?" she asked. "I think so--yes. Perhaps it's only I who talk about
you. You must blame me if it's wrong," he returned.
"Oh, I didn't say it was wrong," she replied. "But I hope if you said
anything very bad of me you'll let me know what it was, so that I can
reform----"
"No, don't change, please!" cried the young man.
Penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely,--"or rebuke you
for speaking evil of dignities." She looked down at the fan, now flat
in her lap, and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she
remained looking down. Again they let the talk stray, and then it was
he who brought it back to themselves, as if it had not left them.
"I have to talk OF you," said Corey, "because I get to talk TO you so
seldom."
"You mean that I do all the talking when we're--together?" She glanced
sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking the last word.
"We're so seldom together," he pursued.
"I don't know what you mean----"
"Sometimes I've thought--I've been afraid that you avoided me."
"Avoided you?"
"Yes! Tried not to be alone with me."
She might have told him that there was no reason why she should be
alone with him, and that it was very strange he should make this
complaint of her. But she did not. She kept looking down at the fan,
and then she lifted her burning face and looked at the clock again.
"Mother and Irene will be sorry to miss you," she gasped.
He instantly rose and came towards her. She rose too, and mechanically
put out her hand. He took it as if to say good-night. "I didn't mean
to send you away," she besought him.
"Oh, I'm not going," he answered simply. "I wanted to say--to say that
it's I who make her talk about you. To say I----There is something I
want to say to you; I've said it so often to myself that I feel as if
you must know it." She stood quite still, letting him keep her hand,
and questioning his face with a bewildered gaze. "You MUST know--she
must have told you--she must have guessed----" Penelope turned white,
but outwardly quelled the panic that sent the blood to her heart.
"I--I didn't expect--I hoped to have seen your father--but I must speak
now, whatever----I love you!"
She freed her hand from both of those he had closed upon it, and went
back from him across the room with a sinuous spring. "ME!" Whatever
potential complicity had lurked in her heart, his words brought her
only immeasurable dismay.