MRS. LAPHAM went away to put on her bonnet and cloak, and she was
waiting at the window when her husband drove up. She opened the door
and ran down the steps. "Don't get out; I can help myself in," and she
clambered to his side, while he kept the fidgeting mare still with
voice and touch.
"Where do you want I should go?" he asked, turning the buggy.
"Oh, I don't care. Out Brookline way, I guess. I wish you hadn't
brought this fool of a horse," she gave way petulantly. "I wanted to
have a talk."
"When I can't drive this mare and talk too, I'll sell out altogether,"
said Lapham. "She'll be quiet enough when she's had her spin."
"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the
city to the Milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some
points in the new house.
"I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she
answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his
horse's head westward when they struck Beacon Street.
He let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he left the
Brighton road and struck off under the low boughs that met above one of
the quiet streets of Brookline, where the stone cottages, with here and
there a patch of determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they
could to look English amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. The
smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered with flakes
of the red and yellow gold that made the air luminous around them, and
the perspective was gay with innumerable tints and tones.
"Pretty sightly," said Lapham, with a long sigh, letting the reins lie
loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole
charge of the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis.
He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he
pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I
ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in
Rogers. And I told him so last night."
"Oh, don't talk to me about Rogers!" his wife broke in. "There's
something a good deal more important than Rogers in the world, and more
important than your business. It seems as if you couldn't think of
anything else--that and the new house. Did you suppose I wanted to
ride so as to talk Rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to the
necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay for her suffering,
even if he has not inflicted it. "I declare----"
"Well, hold on, now!" said Lapham. "What DO you want to talk about?
I'm listening."
His wife began, "Why, it's just this, Silas Lapham!" and then she broke
off to say, "Well, you may wait, now--starting me wrong, when it's hard
enough anyway."
Lapham silently turned his whip over and over in his hand and waited.
"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young Corey had been
coming to see Irene?"
"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham sullenly. "You always
said so." He looked sharply at her under his lowering brows.
"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she replied to the frown that
blackened on her husband's face. "And I can tell you what, if you take
it in that way I shan't speak another word."
"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham savagely. "What are you
drivin' at?"
"I want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly."
"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. I haven't said a word
yet."
"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, and looking
like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start. I've had to bear it,
and you've got to bear it too."
"Well, let me have a chance at it, then."
"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can see, and the only
question is, what's the best thing to do about it. There's only one
thing we can do; for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to
make him. If he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's
all there is to it."
"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham.
"There!" protested his wife.
"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what HAS he been coming for?"
"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife. "NOW are you
satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but
at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect
comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her
broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. "O
Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid it'll kill Irene."
Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right hand with the
fingers of his left, in which the reins lay. He passed it over his
forehead, and then flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there.
He caught his breath once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle
with superior force and then remains passive in its grasp.
His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt the need of
afflicting him. "I don't say but what it can be made to come out all
right in the end. All I say is, I don't see my way clear yet."
"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked quietly.
"He told her so last night, and she told me this morning. Was he at
the office to-day?"
"Yes, he was there. I haven't been there much myself. He didn't say
anything to me. Does Irene know?"
"No; I left her getting ready to go out shopping. She wants to get a
pin like the one Nanny Corey had on." "O my Lord!" groaned Lapham.
"It's been Pen from the start, I guess, or almost from the start. I
don't say but what he was attracted some by Irene at the very first;
but I guess it's been Pen ever since he saw her; and we've taken up
with a notion, and blinded ourselves with it. Time and again I've had
my doubts whether he cared for Irene any; but I declare to goodness,
when he kept coming, I never hardly thought of Pen, and I couldn't help
believing at last he DID care for Irene. Did it ever strike you he
might be after Pen?"
"No. I took what you said. I supposed you knew."
"Do you blame me, Silas?" she asked timidly.
"No. What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want anything but
the children's good. What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that?
That's what we've both slaved for all our lives."
"Yes, I know. Plenty of people LOSE their children," she suggested.
"Yes, but that don't comfort me any. I never was one to feel good
because another man felt bad. How would you have liked it if some one
had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? No, I can't do
it. And this is worse than death, someways. That comes and it goes;
but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay.
The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody. Suppose we
don't want Pen to have him; will that help Irene any, if he don't want
her? Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help
either!"
"You talk," exclaimed Mrs. Lapham, "as if our say was going to settle
it. Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a
fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was
in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him? Don't you
believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the
breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease
Irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing
that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!"
Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument. His huge head hung
forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the
mare took her own way. At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy
jaws.
"Well?" quavered his wife.
"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, I don't see
what that's got to do with it." He looked straight forward, and not at
his wife.
She laid her hands on the reins. "Now, you stop right here, Silas
Lapham! If I thought that--if I really believed you could be willing to
break that poor child's heart, and let Pen disgrace herself by marrying
a man that had as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted
Bromfield Corey's son for a son-in-law----"
Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look. "You had better NOT
believe that, Persis! Get up!" he called to the mare, without glancing
at her, and she sprang forward. "I see you've got past being any use
to yourself on this subject."
"Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him. "Where the devil you goin'
to?"
"Do you want to KILL somebody!" shrieked his wife.
There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, and
separated their wheels from those of the open buggy in front which
Lapham had driven into. He made his excuses to the occupant; and the
accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and left them far from
the point of mutual injury which they had reached in their common
trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good.
It was Lapham who resumed the talk. "I'm afraid we can't either of us
see this thing in the right light. We're too near to it. I wish to
the Lord there was somebody to talk to about it."
"Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody."
"Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a moment; "why not talk to the
minister of your church? May be he could see some way out of it."
Mrs. Lapham shook her head hopelessly. "It wouldn't do. I've never
taken up my connection with the church, and I don't feel as if I'd got
any claim on him."
"If he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, you HAVE got a
claim on him," urged Lapham; and he spoiled his argument by adding,
"I've contributed enough MONEY to his church."
"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs. Lapham. "I ain't well enough
acquainted with Dr. Langworthy, or else I'm TOO well. No; if I was to
ask any one, I should want to ask a total stranger. But what's the
use, Si? Nobody could make us see it any different from what it is, and
I don't know as I should want they should."
It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed down their
hearts ever more heavily within them. They ceased to talk of it a
hundred times, and still came back to it. They drove on and on. It
began to be late. "I guess we better go back, Si," said his wife; and
as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil down and began to
cry softly behind it, with low little broken sobs.
Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward. At last his
wife stopped crying and began trying to find her pocket. "Here, take
mine, Persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief, and she
took it and dried her eyes with it. "There was one of those fellows
there the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned back
against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that I liked the looks of
about as well as any man I ever saw. I guess he was a pretty good man.
It was that Mr. Sewell."
He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything. "Persis," he
resumed, "I can't bear to go back with nothing settled in our minds. I
can't bear to let you."
"We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude. Lapham
groaned. "Where does he live?" she asked.
"On Bolingbroke Street. He gave me his number."
"Well, it wouldn't do any good. What could he say to us?"
"Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said Lapham hopelessly;
and neither of them said anything more till they crossed the Milldam
and found themselves between the rows of city houses.
"Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his wife. "I couldn't
bear to see it. Drive--drive up Bolingbroke Street. We might as well
see where he DOES live."
"Well," said Lapham. He drove along slowly. "That's the place," he
said finally, stopping the mare and pointing with his whip.
"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood
as well as he understood her words. He turned the mare up to the
curbstone.
"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing them to his wife.
He got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened; then he
came back and lifted his wife out. "He's in," he said.
He got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat and made it fast
to the mare's bit.
"Do you think she'll stand with that?" asked Mrs. Lapham.
"I guess so. If she don't, no matter."
"Ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted, trying to make
delay.
"Let her!" said Lapham. He took his wife's trembling hand under his
arm, and drew her to the door.
"He'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her broken pride.
"Well, we ARE," said Lapham. "Tell him we'd like to see him alone a
while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and
she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant
confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they
did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery
like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to
himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of
wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the
foundation of the world.
They were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister came in as
if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did so at last, and, with a
simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic
approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's
compassionate and reverent eye. He spared Corey's name, but he did not
pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their daughters who
were concerned.
"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble you with this thing," he
said, in the moment while Sewell sat pondering the case, "and I don't
know as I've got any warrant for doing it. But, as I told my wife
here, there was something about you--I don't know whether it was
anything you SAID exactly--that made me feel as if you could help us.
I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; but that's the way I felt.
And here we are. And if it ain't all right."
"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right. I thank you for coming--for
trusting your trouble to me. A time comes to every one of us when we
can't help ourselves, and then we must get others to help us. If
people turn to me at such a time, I feel sure that I was put into the
world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, my sympathy."
The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome in them that
these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt.
"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe the tears again
under her veil.
Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak. "We can
be of use to one another here, because we can always be wiser for some
one else than we can for ourselves. We can see another's sins and
errors in a more merciful light--and that is always a fairer
light--than we can our own; and we can look more sanely at others'
afflictions." He had addressed these words to Lapham; now he turned to
his wife. "If some one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this
perplexity, what would you have thought?"
"I don't know as I understand you," faltered Mrs. Lapham.
Sewell repeated his words, and added, "I mean, what do you think some
one else ought to do in your place?"
"Was there ever any poor creatures in such a strait before?" she asked,
with pathetic incredulity.
"There's no new trouble under the sun," said the minister.
"Oh, if it was any one else, I should say--I should say--Why, of
course! I should say that their duty was to let----" She paused.
"One suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" suggested Sewell.
"That's sense, and that's justice. It's the economy of pain which
naturally suggests itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we
were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the
shallowest sentimentality. Tell me, Mrs. Lapham, didn't this come into
your mind when you first learned how matters stood?"
"Why, yes, it flashed across me. But I didn't think it could be right."
"And how was it with you, Mr. Lapham?"
"Why, that's what I thought, of course. But I didn't see my way----"
"No," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we are all weakened by a
false ideal of self-sacrifice. It wraps us round with its meshes, and
we can't fight our way out of it. Mrs. Lapham, what made you feel that
it might be better for three to suffer than one?"
"Why, she did herself. I know she would die sooner than take him away
from her."
"I supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly. "And yet she is a
sensible girl, your daughter?"
"She has more common-sense----"
"Of course! But in such a case we somehow think it must be wrong to use
our common-sense. I don't know where this false ideal comes from,
unless it comes from the novels that befool and debauch almost every
intelligence in some degree. It certainly doesn't come from
Christianity, which instantly repudiates it when confronted with it.
Your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense, that she ought to
make herself and the man who loves her unhappy, in order to assure the
life-long wretchedness of her sister, whom he doesn't love, simply
because her sister saw him and fancied him first! And I'm sorry to say
that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred--oh, nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of a thousand!--would consider that noble and beautiful
and heroic; whereas you know at the bottom of your hearts that it would
be foolish and cruel and revolting. You know what marriage is! And
what it must be without love on both sides."
The minister had grown quite heated and red in the face.
"I lose all patience!" he went on vehemently. "This poor child of
yours has somehow been brought to believe that it will kill her sister
if her sister does not have what does not belong to her, and what it is
not in the power of all the world, or any soul in the world, to give
her. Her sister will suffer--yes, keenly!--in heart and in pride; but
she will not die. You will suffer too, in your tenderness for her; but
you must do your duty. You must help her to give up. You would be
guilty if you did less. Keep clearly in mind that you are doing right,
and the only possible good. And God be with you!"