LAPHAM was gone a fortnight. He was in a sullen humour when he came
back, and kept himself shut close within his own den at the office the
first day. He entered it in the morning without a word to his clerks
as he passed through the outer room, and he made no sign throughout the
forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell from time to time,
and send out to Walker for some book of accounts or a letter-file. His
boy confidentially reported to Walker that the old man seemed to have
got a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper said to Corey,
at the little table which they had taken in a corner together, in
default of seats at the counter, "Well, sir, I guess there's a cold
wave coming."
Corey looked up innocently, and said, "I haven't read the weather
report."
"Yes, sir," Walker continued, "it's coming. Areas of rain along the
whole coast, and increased pressure in the region of the private
office. Storm-signals up at the old man's door now."
Corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, and that his
meteorology was entirely personal to Lapham. "What do you mean?" he
asked, without vivid interest in the allegory, his mind being full of
his own tragi-comedy.
"Why, just this: I guess the old man's takin' in sail. And I guess
he's got to. As I told you the first time we talked about him, there
don't any one know one-quarter as much about the old man's business as
the old man does himself; and I ain't betraying any confidence when I
say that I guess that old partner of his has got pretty deep into his
books. I guess he's over head and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone
in after him, and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck. There
seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, I call it--in the
paint market just now; and then again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man
don't build a hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain,
unless there's a regular boom. And just now there ain't any boom at
all. Oh, I don't say but what the old man's got anchors to windward;
guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN' to leave me his money, I wish he'd left
it six weeks ago. Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but
you can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, where the old
man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess." Walker began to feed in his
breaded chop with the same nervous excitement with which he abandoned
himself to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks. Corey had
listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain
moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him. It came from
Lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had
hitherto seemed so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster
would befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the
unselfishness of his constancy. He thought of the sum of money that
was his own, and that he might offer to lend, or practically give, if
the time came; and with his crude hopes and purposes formlessly
exulting in his heart, he kept on listening with an unchanged
countenance.
Walker could not rest till he had developed the whole situation, so far
as he knew it. "Look at the stock we've got on hand. There's going to
be an awful shrinkage on that, now! And when everybody is shutting
down, or running half-time, the works up at Lapham are going full chip,
just the same as ever. Well, it's his pride. I don't say but what
it's a good sort of pride, but he likes to make his brags that the
fire's never been out in the works since they started, and that no
man's work or wages has ever been cut down yet at Lapham, it don't
matter WHAT the times are. Of course," explained Walker, "I shouldn't
talk so to everybody; don't know as I should talk so to anybody but
you, Mr. Corey."
"Of course," assented Corey.
"Little off your feed to-day," said Walker, glancing at Corey's plate.
"I got up with a headache."
"Well, sir, if you're like me you'll carry it round all day, then. I
don't know a much meaner thing than a headache--unless it's earache, or
toothache, or some other kind of ache I'm pretty hard to suit, when it
comes to diseases. Notice how yellow the old man looked when he came
in this morning? I don't like to see a man of his build look
yellow--much." About the middle of the afternoon the dust-coloured face
of Rogers, now familiar to Lapham's clerks, showed itself among them.
"Has Colonel Lapham returned yet?" he asked, in his dry, wooden tones,
of Lapham's boy.
"Yes, he's in his office," said the boy; and as Rogers advanced, he
rose and added, "I don't know as you can see him to-day. His orders are
not to let anybody in."
"Oh, indeed!" said Rogers; "I think he will see ME!" and he pressed
forward.
"Well, I'll have to ask," returned the boy; and hastily preceding
Rogers, he put his head in at Lapham's door, and then withdrew it.
"Please to sit down," he said; "he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with
an air of some surprise, Rogers obeyed. His sere, dull-brown whiskers
and the moustache closing over both lips were incongruously and
illogically clerical in effect, and the effect was heightened for no
reason by the parchment texture of his skin; the baldness extending to
the crown of his head was like a baldness made up for the stage. What
his face expressed chiefly was a bland and beneficent caution. Here,
you must have said to yourself, is a man of just, sober, and prudent
views, fixed purposes, and the good citizenship that avoids debt and
hazard of every kind.
"What do you want?" asked Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair as
Rogers entered his room, and pushing the door shut with his foot,
without rising.
Rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat with his
hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed towards Lapham. "I want
to know what you are going to do," he answered with sufficient
self-possession.
"I'll tell you, first, what I've done," said Lapham. "I've been to
Dubuque, and I've found out all about that milling property you turned
in on me. Did you know that the G. L. & P. had leased the P. Y. & X.?"
"I some suspected that it might."
"Did you know it when you turned the property in on me? Did you know
that the G. L. & P. wanted to buy the mills?"
"I presumed the road would give a fair price for them," said Rogers,
winking his eyes in outward expression of inwardly blinking the point.
"You lie," said Lapham, as quietly as if correcting him in a slight
error; and Rogers took the word with equal sang froid. "You knew the
road wouldn't give a fair price for the mills. You knew it would give
what it chose, and that I couldn't help myself, when you let me take
them. You're a thief, Milton K. Rogers, and you stole money I lent
you." Rogers sat listening, as if respectfully considering the
statements. "You knew how I felt about that old matter--or my wife
did; and that I wanted to make it up to you, if you felt anyway badly
used. And you took advantage of it. You've got money out of me, in
the first place, on securities that wa'n't worth thirty-five cents on
the dollar, and you've let me in for this thing, and that thing, and
you've bled me every time. And all I've got to show for it is a
milling property on a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it
wants to, as dry as it pleases. And you want to know what I'm going to
do? I'm going to squeeze YOU. I'm going to sell these collaterals of
yours,"--he touched a bundle of papers among others that littered his
desk,--"and I'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch. I
ain't going to fight the G. L. & P."
Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his
visitor, who sat wholly unmoved.
"There are some parties," he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring
Lapham's words, as if they had been an outburst against some third
person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little
interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his
condemnation,--"there are some English parties who have been making
inquiries in regard to those mills."
"I guess you're lying, Rogers," said Lapham, without looking round.
"Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not act hastily."
"I see you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, facing fiercely
about. "You think I'm fooling, do you?" He struck his bell, and
"William," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting
while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the
bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to Gallop &
Paddock's, in State Street, right away. Now go!" he said to Rogers,
when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to
his desk.
Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand. He was
not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was
impartial. He wore the air of a man who was ready to return to
business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted.
"Then I understand," he said, "that you will take no action in regard
to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of."
Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of
Rogers in silence. "I wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "I
should like to know." But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his
curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham's as of the
irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party
that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll
talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll
give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again."
Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking
thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly
withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour.
Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, during the
afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the
sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed
swearing, penetrated to the outer office. Somewhat earlier than the
usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat on and his
overcoat buttoned about him. He said briefly to his boy, "William, I
shan't be back again this afternoon," and then went to Miss Dewey and
left a number of letters on her table to be copied, and went out.
Nothing had been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself
through those who saw him go out.
That evening as he sat down with his wife alone at tea, he asked,
"Ain't Pen coming to supper?"
"No, she ain't," said his wife. "I don't know as I like the way she's
going on, any too well. I'm afraid, if she keeps on, she'll be down
sick. She's got deeper feelings than Irene."
Lapham said nothing, but having helped himself to the abundance of his
table in his usual fashion, he sat and looked at his plate with an
indifference that did not escape the notice of his wife. "What's the
matter with YOU?" she asked.
"Nothing. I haven't got any appetite."
"What's the matter?" she persisted.
"Trouble's the matter; bad luck and lots of it's the matter," said
Lapham. "I haven't ever hid anything from you, Persis, well you asked
me, and it's too late to begin now. I'm in a fix. I'll tell you what
kind of a fix, if you think it'll do you any good; but I guess you'll
be satisfied to know that it's a fix."
"How much of a one?" she asked with a look of grave, steady courage in
her eyes.
"Well, I don't know as I can tell, just yet," said Lapham, avoiding
this look. "Things have been dull all the fall, but I thought they'd
brisk up come winter. They haven't. There have been a lot of
failures, and some of 'em owed me, and some of 'em had me on their
paper; and----" Lapham stopped.
"And what?" prompted his wife.