The Rise of Silas Lapham

by William Dean Howells

  “Well, let us compromise,” he seemed to be saying to his father’s portrait. “I will travel.” “Travel? How long?” the keen eyes demanded. “Oh, indefinitely. I won’t be hard with you, Father.” He could see the eyes soften, and the smile of yielding come over his father’s face; the merchant could not resist a son who was so much like his dead mother. There was some vague understanding between them that Bromfield Corey was to come back and go into business after a time, but he never did so. He traveled about over Europe, and traveled handsomely, frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself presented at several courts, at a period when it was a distinction to do so. He had always sketched, and with his father’s leave he fixed himself at Rome, where he remained studying art and rounding the being inherited from his Yankee progenitors, till there was very little left of the ancestral angularities. After ten years he came home and painted that portrait of his father. It was very good, if a little amateurish, and he might have made himself a name as a painter of portraits if he had not had so much money. But he had plenty of money, though by this time he was married and beginning to have a family. It was absurd for him to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all. He continued to dilettante, never quite abandoning his art, but working at it fitfully, and talking more about it than working at it. He had his theory of Titian’s method; and now and then a Bostonian insisted upon buying a picture of his. After a while he hung it more and more inconspicuously, and said apologetically, “Oh yes! that’s one of Bromfield Corey’s things. It has nice qualities, but it’s amateurish.”

  In process of time the money seemed less abundant. There were shrinkages of one kind and another, and living had grown much more expensive and luxurious. For many years he talked about going back to Rome, but he never went, and his children grew up in the usual way. Before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day spread at Harvard, and then he had his son on his hands. The son made various unsuccessful provisions for himself, and still continued upon his father’s hands, to their common dissatisfaction, though it was chiefly the younger who repined. He had the Roman nose and the energy without the opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father said to him, “You ought not to have that nose, Tom; then you would do very well. You would go and travel, as I did.”

  * * *

  Lapham and his wife continued talking after he had quelled the disturbance in his daughters’ room overhead; and their talk was not altogether of the new house.

  “I tell you,” he said, “if I had that fellow in the business with me I would make a man of him.”

  “Well, Silas Lapham,” returned his wife, “I do believe you’ve got mineral paint on the brain. Do you suppose a fellow like young Corey, brought up the way he’s been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot pole?”

  “Why not?” haughtily asked the Colonel.

  “Well, if you don’t know already, there’s no use trying to tell you.”

  VI

  THE Coreys had always had a house at Nahant, but after letting it for a season or two they found they could get on without it, and sold it at the son’s insistence, who foresaw that if things went on as they were going, the family would be straitened to the point of changing their mode of life altogether. They began to be of the people of whom it was said that they stayed in town very late; and when the ladies did go away, it was for a brief summering in this place and that. The father remained at home altogether; and the son joined them in the intervals of his enterprises, which occurred only too often.

  At Bar Harbor, where he now went to find them after his winter in Texas, he confessed to his mother that there seemed no very good opening there for him. He might do as well as Loring Stanton, but he doubted if Stanton was doing very well. Then he mentioned the new project which he had been thinking over. She did not deny that there was something in it, but she could not think of any young man who had gone into such a business as that, and it appeared to her that he might as well go into a patent medicine or a stove polish.

  “There was one of his hideous advertisements,” she said, “painted on a reef that we saw as we came down.”

  Corey smiled. “Well, I suppose, if it was in a good state of preservation, that is proof positive of the efficacy of the paint on the hulls of vessels.”

  “It’s very distasteful to me, Tom,” said his mother; and if there was something else in her mind, she did not speak more plainly of it than to add: “It’s not only the kind of business, but the kind of people you would be mixing up with.”

  “I thought you didn’t find them so very bad,” suggested Corey.

  “I hadn’t seen them in Nankeen Square then.”

  “You can see them on the water side of Beacon Street when you go back.”

  Then he told of his encounter with the Lapham family in their new house. At the end his mother merely said, “It is getting very common down there,” and she did not try to oppose anything further to his scheme.

  The young man went to see Colonel Lapham shortly after his return to Boston. He paid his visit at Lapham’s office, and if he had studied simplicity in his summer dress he could not have presented himself in a figure more to the mind of a practical man. His hands and neck still kept the brown of the Texas suns and winds, and he looked as businesslike as Lapham himself.

  He spoke up promptly and briskly in the outer office, and caused the pretty girl to look away from her copying at him. “Is Mr. Lapham in?” he asked; and after that moment for reflection which an array of bookkeepers so addressed likes to give the inquirer, a head was lifted from a ledger, and nodded toward the inner office.

  Lapham had recognized the voice, and he was standing, in considerable perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirtsleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his present address. He looked at the young man’s face, as if he expected him to dispatch whatever unimaginable affair he had come upon.

  “Won’t you sit down? How are you? You’ll excuse me,” he added, in brief allusion to the shirtsleeves. “I’m about roasted.”

  Corey laughed. “I wish you’d let me take off my coat.”

  “Why, take it off!” cried the Colonel, with instant pleasure. There is something in human nature which causes the man in his shirtsleeves to wish all other men to appear in the same dishabille.

  “I will, if you ask me after I’ve talked with you two minutes,” said the young fellow, companionably pulling up the chair offered him toward the desk, where Lapham had again seated himself. “But perhaps you haven’t got two minutes to give me?”

  “Oh yes, I have,” said the Colonel. “I was just going to knock off. I can give you twenty, and then I shall have fifteen minutes to catch the boat.”

  “All right,” said Corey. “I want you to take me into the mineral-paint business.”

  The Colonel sat dumb. He twisted his thick neck, and looked ’round at the door to see if it was shut. He would not have liked to have any of those fellows outside hear him, but there is no saying what sum of money he would not have given if his wife had been there to hear what Corey had just said.

  “I suppose,” continued the young man, “I could have got several people whose names you know to back my industry and sobriety, and say a word for my business capacity. But I thought I wouldn’t trouble anybody for certificates till I found whether there was a chance, or the ghost of one, of your wanting me. So I came straight to you.”

  Lapham gathered himself together as well as he could. He had not yet forgiven Corey for Mrs. Lapham’s insinuation that he would feel himself too good for the mineral-paint business; and though he was dispersed by that astounding shot at first, he was not going to let anyone even hypothetically despise his paint with impunity. “How do you t
hink I am going to take you on?” They took on hands at the Works; and Lapham put it as if Corey were a hand coming to him for employment. Whether he satisfied himself by this or not, he reddened a little after he had said it.

  Corey answered, ignorant of the offense. “I haven’t a very clear idea, I’m afraid; but I’ve been looking a little into the matter from the outside—”

  “I hope you hain’t been paying any attention to that fellow’s stuff in The Events?” Lapham interrupted. Since Bartley’s interview had appeared, Lapham had regarded it with very mixed feelings. At first it gave him a glow of secret pleasure, blended with doubt as to how his wife would like the use Bartley had made of her in it. But she had not seemed to notice it much, and Lapham had experienced the gratitude of the man who escapes. Then his girls had begun to make fun of it; and though he did not mind Penelope’s jokes much, he did not like to see that Irene’s gentility was wounded. Business friends met him with the kind of knowing smile about it that implied their sense of the fraudulent character of its praise—the smile of men who had been there and who knew how it was themselves. Lapham had his misgivings as to how his clerks and underlings looked at it; he treated them with stately severity for a while after it came out, and he ended by feeling rather sore about it. He took it for granted that everybody had read it.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” replied Corey. “I don’t see The Events regularly.”

  “Oh, it was nothing. They sent a fellow down here to interview me, and he got everything about as twisted as he could.”

  “I believe they always do,” said Corey. “I hadn’t seen it. Perhaps it came out before I got home.”

  “Perhaps it did.”

  “My notion of making myself useful to you was based on a hint I got from one of your own circulars.”

  Lapham was proud of those circulars; he thought they read very well. “What was that?”

  “I could put a little capital into the business,” said Corey, with the tentative accent of a man who chances a thing. “I’ve got a little money, but I didn’t imagine you cared for anything of that kind.”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” returned the Colonel bluntly. “I’ve had one partner, and one’s enough.”

  “Yes,” assented the young man, who doubtless had his own ideas as to eventualities—or perhaps rather had the vague hopes of youth. “I didn’t come to propose a partnership. But I see that you are introducing your paint into the foreign markets, and there I really thought I might be of use to you, and to myself too.”

  “How?” asked the Colonel scantly.

  “Well, I know two or three languages pretty well. I know French, and I know German, and I’ve got a pretty fair sprinkling of Spanish.”

  “You mean that you can talk them?” asked the Colonel, with the mingled awe and slight that such a man feels for such accomplishments.

  “Yes; and I write an intelligible letter in either of them.”

  Lapham rubbed his nose. “It’s easy enough to get all the letters we want translated.”

  “Well,” pursued Corey, not showing his discouragement if he felt any, “I know the countries where you want to introduce this paint of yours. I’ve been there. I’ve been in Germany and France, and I’ve been in South America and Mexico; I’ve been in Italy, of course. I believe I could go to any of those countries and place it to advantage.”

  Lapham had listened with a trace of persuasion in his face, but now he shook his head.

  “It’s placing itself as fast as there’s any call for it. It wouldn’t pay us to send anybody out to look after it. Your salary and expenses would eat up about all we should make on it.”

  “Yes,” returned the young man intrepidly, “if you had to pay me any salary and expenses.”

  “You don’t propose to work for nothing?”

  “I propose to work for a commission.” The Colonel was beginning to shake his head again, but Corey hurried on. “I haven’t come to you without making some inquiries about the paint, and I know how it stands with those who know best. I believe in it.”

  Lapham lifted his head and looked at the young man, deeply moved.

  “It’s the best paint in God’s universe,” he said, with the solemnity of prayer.

  “It’s the best in the market,” said Corey; and he repeated, “I believe in it.”

  “You believe in it,” began the Colonel, and then he stopped. If there had really been any purchasing power in money, a year’s income would have brought Mrs. Lapham’s instant presence. He warmed and softened to the young man in every way, not only because he must do so to anyone who believed in his paint, but because he had done this innocent person the wrong of listening to a defamation of his instinct and good sense, and had been willing to see him suffer for a purely supposititious offense.

  Corey rose.

  “You mustn’t let me outstay my twenty minutes,” he said, taking out his watch. “I don’t expect you to give a decided answer on the spot. All that I ask is that you’ll consider my proposition.”

  “Don’t hurry,” said Lapham. “Sit still! I want to tell you about this paint,” he added, in a voice husky with the feeling that his hearer could not divine. “I want to tell you all about it.”

  “I could walk with you to the boat,” suggested the young man.

  “Never mind the boat! I can take the next one. Look here!” The Colonel pulled open a drawer, as Corey sat down again, and took out a photograph of the locality of the mine. “Here’s where we get it. This photograph don’t half do the place justice,” he said, as if the imperfect art had slighted the features of a beloved face. “It’s one of the sightliest places in the country, and here’s the very spot”—he covered it with his huge forefinger—“where my father found that paint, more than forty . . . years . . . ago. Yes, sir!”

  He went on, and told the story in unsparing detail, while his chance for the boat passed unheeded, and the clerks in the outer office hung up their linen office coats and put on their seersucker or flannel street coats. The young lady went too, and nobody was left but the porter, who made from time to time a noisy demonstration of fastening a distant blind or putting something in place. At last the Colonel roused himself from the autobiographical delight of the history of his paint. “Well, sir, that’s the story.”

  “It’s an interesting story,” said Corey, with a long breath, as they rose together and Lapham put on his coat.

  “That’s what it is,” said the Colonel. “Well!” he added, “I don’t see but what we’ve got to have another talk about this thing. It’s a surprise to me, and I don’t see exactly how you’re going to make it pay.”

  “I’m willing to take the chances,” answered Corey. “As I said, I believe in it. I should try South America first. I should try Chile.”

  “Look here!” said Lapham, with his watch in his hand. “I like to get things over. We’ve just got time for the six o’clock boat. Why don’t you come down with me to Nantasket? I can give you a bed as well as not. And then we can finish up.”

  The impatience of youth in Corey responded to the impatience of temperament in his elder.

  “Why, I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” he allowed himself to say. “I confess I should like to have it finished up myself, if it could be finished up in the right way.”

  “Well, we’ll see. Dennis!” Lapham called to the remote porter, and the man came. “Want to send any word home?” he asked Corey.

  “No; my father and I go and come as we like, without keeping account of each other. If I don’t come home, he knows that I’m not there. That’s all.”

  “Well, that’s convenient. You’ll find you can’t do that when you’re married. Never mind, Dennis,” said the Colonel.

  He had time to buy two newspapers on the wharf before he jumped on board the steamboat with Corey. “Just made it,” he said; “and that’s what I like to do. I can�
��t stand it to be aboard much more than a minute before she shoves out.” He gave one of the newspapers to Corey as he spoke, and set him the example of catching up a campstool on their way to that point on the boat which his experience had taught him was the best. He opened his paper at once and began to run over its news, while the young man watched the spectacular recession of the city, and was vaguely conscious of the people about him, and of the gay life of the water ’round the boat. The air freshened; the craft thinned in number; they met larger sail, lagging slowly inward in the afternoon light; the islands of the bay waxed and waned as the steamer approached and left them behind.

  “I hate to see them stirring up those Southern fellows again,” said the Colonel, speaking into the paper on his lap. “Seems to me it’s time to let those old issues go.”

  “Yes,” said the young man. “What are they doing now?”

  “Oh, stirring up the Confederate brigadiers in Congress. I don’t like it. Seems to me, if our party hain’t got any other stock-in-trade, we better shut up shop altogether.” Lapham went on, as he scanned his newspaper, to give his ideas of public questions, in a fragmentary way, while Corey listened patiently and waited for him to come back to business. He folded up his paper at last, and stuffed it into his coat pocket. “There’s one thing I always make it a rule to do,” he said, “and that is to give my mind a complete rest from business while I’m going down on the boat. I like to get the fresh air all through me, soul and body. I believe a man can give his mind a rest, just the same as he can give his legs a rest, or his back. All he’s got to do is use his willpower. Why, I suppose, if I hadn’t adopted some such rule, with the strain I’ve had on me for the last ten years, I shoulda been a dead man long ago. That’s the reason I like a horse. You’ve got to give your mind to the horse; you can’t help it, unless you want to break your neck; but a boat’s different, and there you got to use your willpower. You got to take your mind right up and put it where you want it. I make it a rule to read the paper on the boat—Hold on!” he interrupted himself to prevent Corey from paying his fare to the man who had come ’round for it. “I’ve got tickets. And when I get through the paper, I try to get somebody to talk to, or I watch the people. It’s an astonishing thing to me where they all come from. I’ve been riding up and down on these boats for six or seven years, and I don’t know but very few of the faces I see on board. Seems to be a perfectly fresh lot every time. Well, of course! Town’s full of strangers in the summer season anyway, and folks keep coming down from the country. They think it’s a great thing to get down to the beach, and they’ve all heard of the electric light on the water, and they want to see it. But you take faces now! The astonishing thing to me is not what a face tells, but what it don’t tell. When you think of what a man is, or a woman is, and what most of ’em have been through before they get to be thirty, it seems as if their experience would burn right through. But it don’t. I like to watch the couples, and try to make out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, or better be. But half the time I can’t make any sort of guess. Of course, where they’re young and kittenish, you can tell; but where they’re always on, you can’t. Heigh?”