There was some sense in this, and Lapham felt it—felt it only too eagerly, as he recognized the next instant.
Rogers went on quietly: “You’re not obliged to sell to these parties when you meet them; but you’ve allowed me to commit myself to them by the promise that you would talk with them.”
“’Twan’t a promise,” said Lapham.
“It was the same thing; they have come out from England on my guarantee that there was such and such an opening for their capital; and now what am I to say to them? It places me in a ridiculous position.” Rogers urged his grievance calmly, almost impersonally, making his appeal to Lapham’s sense of justice. “I can’t go back to those parties and tell them you won’t see them. It’s no answer to make. They’ve got a right to know why you won’t see them.”
“Very well, then!” cried Lapham; “I’ll come and tell them why. Who shall I ask for? When shall I be there?”
“At eight o’clock, please,” said Rogers, rising, without apparent alarm at his threat, if it was a threat. “And ask for me; I’ve taken a room at the hotel for the present.”
“I won’t keep you five minutes when I get there,” said Lapham; but he did not come away till ten o’clock.
It appeared to him as if the very devil was in it. The Englishmen treated his downright refusal to sell as a piece of bluff, and talked on as though it were merely the opening of the negotiation. When he became plain with them in his anger, and told them why he would not sell, they seemed to have been prepared for this as a stroke of business, and were ready to meet it.
“Has this fellow,” he demanded, twisting his head in the direction of Rogers, but disdaining to notice him otherwise, “been telling you that it’s part of my game to say this? Well, sir, I can tell you, on my side, that there isn’t a slipperier rascal unhung in America than Milton K. Rogers!”
The Englishmen treated this as a piece of genuine American humor, and returned to the charge with unabated courage. They owned, now, that a person interested with them had been out to look at the property, and that they were satisfied with the appearance of things. They developed further the fact that they were not acting solely, or even principally, in their own behalf, but were the agents of people in England who had projected the colonization of a sort of community on the spot, somewhat after the plan of other English dreamers, and that they were satisfied, from a careful inspection, that the resources and facilities were those best calculated to develop the energy and enterprise of the proposed community. They were prepared to meet Mr. Lapham—Colonel, they begged his pardon, at the instance of Rogers—at any reasonable figure, and were quite willing to assume the risks he had pointed out. Something in the eyes of these men, something that lurked at an infinite depth below their speech, and was not really in their eyes when Lapham looked again, had flashed through him a sense of treachery in them. He had thought them the dupes of Rogers; but in that brief instant he had seen them—or thought he had seen them—his accomplices, ready to betray the interests of which they went on to speak with a certain comfortable jocosity, and a certain incredulous slight of his show of integrity. It was a deeper game than Lapham was used to, and he sat looking with a sort of admiration from one Englishman to the other, and then to Rogers, who maintained an exterior of modest neutrality, and whose air said, “I have brought you gentlemen together as the friend of all parties, and I now leave you to settle it among yourselves. I ask nothing, and expect nothing, except the small sum which shall accrue to me after the discharge of my obligations to Colonel Lapham.”
While Rogers’ presence expressed this, one of the Englishmen was saying, “And if you have any scruple in allowin’ us to assume this risk, Colonel Lapham, perhaps you can console yourself with the fact that the loss, if there is to be any, will fall upon people who are able to bear it—upon an association of rich and charitable people. But we’re quite satisfied there will be no loss,” he added savingly. “All you have to do is to name your price, and we will do our best to meet it.”
There was nothing in the Englishman’s sophistry very shocking to Lapham. It addressed itself in him to that easygoing, not evilly intentioned, potential immorality which regards common property as common prey, and gives us the most corrupt municipal governments under the sun—which makes the poorest voter, when he has tricked into place, as unscrupulous in regard to others’ money as an hereditary prince. Lapham met the Englishman’s eye, and with difficulty kept himself from winking. Then he looked away, and tried to find out where he stood, or what he wanted to do. He could hardly tell. He had expected to come into that room and unmask Rogers, and have it over. But he had unmasked Rogers without any effect whatever, and the play had only begun. He had a whimsical and sarcastic sense of its being very different from the plays at the theater. He could not get up and go away in silent contempt; he could not tell the Englishmen that he believed them a pair of scoundrels and should have nothing to do with them; he could no longer treat them as innocent dupes. He remained baffled and perplexed, and the one who had not spoken hitherto remarked:
“Of course, we shan’t ’aggle about a few pound, more or less. If Colonel Lapham’s figure should be a little larger than ours, I’ve no doubt ’e’ll not be too ’ard upon us in the end.”
Lapham appreciated all the intent of this subtle suggestion, and understood as plainly as if it had been said in so many words, that if they paid him a larger price, it was to be expected that a certain portion of the purchase money was to return to their own hands. Still he could not move; and it seemed to him that he could not speak.
“Ring that bell, Mr. Rogers,” said the Englishman who had last spoken, glancing at the annunciator button in the wall near Rogers’ head, “and ’ave up something ’ot, can’t you? I should like to wet me whistle, as you say ’ere, and Colonel Lapham seems to find it rather dry work.”
Lapham jumped to his feet, and buttoned his overcoat about him. He remembered with terror the dinner at Corey’s, where he had disgraced and betrayed himself, and if he went into this thing at all, he was going into it sober. “I can’t stop,” he said. “I must be going.”
“But you haven’t given us an answer yet, Mr. Lapham,” said the first Englishman with a successful show of dignified surprise.
“The only answer I can give you now is, “No,” said Lapham. “If you want another, you must let me have time to think it over.”
“But ’ow much time?” said the other Englishman. “We’re pressed for time ourselves, and we hoped for an answer—’oped for a hanswer,” he corrected himself, “at once. That was our understandin’ with Mr. Rogers.”
“I can’t let you know till morning, anyway,” said Lapham, and he went out, as his custom often was, without any parting salutation. He thought Rogers might try to detain him; but Rogers had remained seated when the others got to their feet, and paid no attention to his departure.
He walked out into the night air, every pulse throbbing with the strong temptation. He knew very well those men would wait, and gladly wait, till the morning, and that the whole affair was in his hands. It made him groan in spirit to think that it was. If he had hoped that some chance might take the decision from him, there was no such chance, in the present or future, that he could see. It was for him alone to commit this rascality—if it was a rascality—or not.
He walked all the way home, letting one car after another pass him on the street, now so empty of other passings, and it was almost eleven o’clock when he reached home. A carriage stood before his house, and when he let himself in with his key, he heard talking in the family room. It came into his head that Irene had got back unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it harder for him; then he thought it might be Corey, come upon some desperate pretext to see Penelope; but when he opened the door, he saw, with a certain absence of surprise, that it was Rogers. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, talking to Mrs. Lapham, and he ha
d been shedding tears; dry tears they seemed, and they had left a sort of sandy, glistening trace on his cheeks. Apparently he was not ashamed of them, for the expression with which he met Lapham was that of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, which was identical with that of humanity, if not that of justice.
“I some expected,” began Rogers, “to find you here—”
“No, you didn’t,” interrupted Lapham; “you wanted to come here and make a poor mouth to Mrs. Lapham before I got home.”
“I knew that Mrs. Lapham would know what was going on,” said Rogers more candidly, but not more virtuously, for that he could not, “and I wished her to understand a point that I hadn’t put to you at the hotel, and that I want you should consider. And I want you should consider me a little in this business too; you’re not the only one that’s concerned, I tell you, and I’ve been telling Mrs. Lapham that it’s my one chance; that if you don’t meet me on it, my wife and children will be reduced to beggary.”
“So will mine,” said Lapham, “or the next thing to it.”
“Well, then, I want you to give me this chance to get on my feet again. You’ve no right to deprive me of it; it’s unchristian. In our dealings with each other we should be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying to Mrs. Lapham before you came in. I told her that if I knew myself, I should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who had honorably endeavored to discharge his obligations to me, and had patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. I should consider that man’s family, I told Mrs. Lapham.”
“Did you tell her that if I went in with you and those fellows, I should be robbing the people who trusted them?”
“I don’t see what you’ve got to do with the people that sent them here. They are rich people, and could bear it if it came to the worst; you can see yourself that the Road has changed its mind about buying. And here am I without a cent in the world; and my wife is an invalid. She needs comforts, she needs little luxuries, and she hasn’t even the necessaries; and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! You don’t know in the first place that the Road will ever want to buy; and if it does, the probability is that with a colony like that planted on its line, it would make very different terms from what it would with you or me. These agents are not afraid, and their principals are rich people; and if there was any loss, it would be divided up among them so that they wouldn’t any of them feel it.”
Lapham stole a troubled glance at his wife, and saw that there was no help in her. Whether she was daunted and confused in her own conscience by the outcome, so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to Rogers which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which Rogers had now used, it would be difficult to say. Probably there was a mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and from which he turned, girding himself anew, to Rogers.
“I have no wish to recur to the past,” continued Rogers, with growing superiority. “You have shown a proper spirit in regard to that, and you have done what you could to wipe it out.”
“I should think I had,” said Lapham. “I’ve used up about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars trying.”
“Some of my enterprises,” Rogers admitted, “have been unfortunate, seemingly; but I have hopes that they will yet turn out well—in time. I can’t understand why you should be so mindful of others now, when you showed so little regard for me then. I had come to your aid at a time when you needed help, and when you got on your feet you kicked me out of the business. I don’t complain, but that is the fact; and I had to begin again, after I had supposed myself settled in life, and establish myself elsewhere.”
Lapham glanced again at his wife; her head had fallen; he could see that she was so rooted in her old remorse for that questionable act of his, amply and more than fully atoned for since, that she was helpless, now, in the crucial moment, when he had the utmost need of her insight. He had counted upon her; he perceived now that when he had thought it was for him alone to decide, he had counted upon her just spirit to stay his own in its struggle to be just. He had not forgotten how she held out against him only a little while ago, when he asked her whether he might not rightfully sell in some contingency as this; and it was not now that she had said or even looked anything in favor of Rogers, but that she was silent against him, which dismayed Lapham. He swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, the self-pity, the pity for her, the despair, and said gently, “I guess you better go to bed, Persis. It’s pretty late.”
She turned toward the door, when Rogers said, with the obvious intention of detaining her through her curiosity: “But I let that pass. And I don’t ask now that you should sell to these men.”
Mrs. Lapham paused, irresolute.
“What are you making this bother for, then?” demanded Lapham. “What do you want?”
“What I’ve been telling your wife here. I want you should sell to me. I don’t say what I’m going to do with the property, and you will not have an iota of responsibility, whatever happens.”
Lapham was staggered, and he saw his wife’s face light up with eager question.
“I want that property,” continued Rogers, “and I’ve got the money to buy it. What will you take for it? If it’s the price you’re standing out for—”
“Persis,” said Lapham, “go to bed,” and he gave her a look that meant obedience for her. She went out of the door, and left him with his tempter.
“If you think I’m going to help you whip the devil ’round the stump, you’re mistaken in your man, Milton Rogers,” said Lapham, lighting a cigar. “As soon as I sold to you, you would sell to that other pair of rascals. I smelled ’em out in half a minute.”
“They are Christian gentlemen,” said Rogers. “But I don’t purpose defending them; and I don’t purpose telling you what I shall or shall not do with the property when it is in my hands again. The question is, Will you sell, and, if so, what is your figure? You have got nothing whatever to do with it after you’ve sold.”
It was perfectly true. Any lawyer would have told him the same. He could not help admiring Rogers for his ingenuity, and every selfish interest of his nature joined with many obvious duties to urge him to consent. He did not see why he should refuse. There was no longer a reason. He was standing out alone for nothing, anyone else would say. He smoked on as if Rogers were not there, and Rogers remained before the fire as patient as the clock ticking behind his head on the mantel, and showing the gleam of its pendulum beyond his face on either side. But at last he said, “Well?”
“Well,” answered Lapham, “you can’t expect me to give you an answer tonight, any more than before. You know that what you’ve said now hasn’t changed the thing a bit. I wish it had. The Lord knows, I want to be rid of the property fast enough.”
“Then why don’t you sell to me? Can’t you see that you will not be responsible for what happens after you have sold?”
“No, I can’t see that; but if I can by morning, I’ll sell.”
“Why do you expect to know any better by morning? You’re wasting time for nothing!” cried Rogers, in his disappointment. “Why are you so particular? When you drove me out of the business you were not so very particular.”
Lapham winced. It was certainly ridiculous for a man who had once so selfishly consulted his own interests to be stickling now about the rights of others.
“I guess nothing’s going to happen overnight,” he answered sullenly. “Anyway, I shan’t say what I shall do till morning.”
“What time can I see you in the morning?”
“Half-past nine.”
Rogers buttoned his coat, and went out of the room without another word. Lapham followed him to close the street door after him.
His wife called down to him from above as he approached the room again, “Well?”
“I’ve told him I’d let him kn
ow in the morning.”
“Want I should come down and talk with you?”
“No,” answered Lapham, in the proud bitterness which his isolation brought, “you couldn’t do any good.” He went in and shut the door, and by and by his wife heard him begin walking up and down; and then the rest of the night she lay awake and listened to him walking up and down. But when the first light whitened the window, the words of the Scripture came into her mind: “And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. . . . And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.”
She could not ask him anything when they met, but he raised his dull eyes after the first silence, and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to say to Rogers.”
She could not speak; she did not know what to say, and she saw her husband, when she followed him with her eyes from the window, drag heavily down toward the corner, where he was to take the horsecar.
He arrived rather later than usual at his office, and he found his letters already on his table. There was one, long and official-looking, with a printed letter heading on the outside, and Lapham had no need to open it in order to know that it was the offer of the Great Lacustrine & Polar Railroad for his mills. But he went mechanically through the verification of his prophetic fear, which was also his sole hope, and then sat looking blankly at it.
Rogers came promptly at the appointed time, and Lapham handed him the letter. He must have taken it all in at a glance, and seen the impossibility of negotiating any further now, even with victims so pliant and willing as those Englishmen.
“You’ve ruined me!” Rogers broke out. “I haven’t a cent left in the world! God help my poor wife!”
He went out, and Lapham remained staring at the door, which closed upon him. This was his reward for standing firm for right and justice to his own destruction: to feel like a thief and a murderer.
The Rise of Silas Lapham Page 36
