Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Go on and dress, Irene,” ordered her mother, “and then you and Pen come out into the parlour. They can have just two hours for business, and then we must all be there to receive him. You haven’t got headache enough to hurt you.”

  “Oh, it’s all gone now,” said the girl.

  At the end of the limit she had given the Colonel, Mrs. Lapham looked into the dining-room, which she found blue with his smoke.

  “I think you gentlemen will find the parlour pleasanter now, and we can give it up to you.”

  “Oh no, you needn’t,” said her husband. “We’ve got about through.” Corey was already standing, and Lapham rose too. “I guess we can join the ladies now. We can leave that little point till to-morrow.”

  Both of the young ladies were in the parlour when Corey entered with their father, and both were frankly indifferent to the few books and the many newspapers scattered about on the table where the large lamp was placed. But after Corey had greeted Irene he glanced at the novel under his eye, and said, in the dearth that sometimes befalls people at such times: “I see you’re reading Middlemarch. Do you like George Eliot?”

  “Who?” asked the girl.

  Penelope interposed. “I don’t believe Irene’s read it yet. I’ve just got it out of the library; I heard so much talk about it. I wish she would let you find out a little about the people for yourself,” she added. But here her father struck in —

  “I can’t get the time for books. It’s as much as I can do to keep up with the newspapers; and when night comes, I’m tired, and I’d rather go out to the theatre, or a lecture, if they’ve got a good stereopticon to give you views of the places. But I guess we all like a play better than ‘most anything else. I want something that’ll make me laugh. I don’t believe in tragedy. I think there’s enough of that in real life without putting it on the stage. Seen ‘Joshua Whitcomb’?”

  The whole family joined in the discussion, and it appeared that they all had their opinions of the plays and actors. Mrs. Lapham brought the talk back to literature. “I guess Penelope does most of our reading.”

  “Now, mother, you’re not going to put it all on me!” said the girl, in comic protest.

  Her mother laughed, and then added, with a sigh: “I used to like to get hold of a good book when I was a girl; but we weren’t allowed to read many novels in those days. My mother called them all LIES. And I guess she wasn’t so very far wrong about some of them.”

  “They’re certainly fictions,” said Corey, smiling.

  “Well, we do buy a good many books, first and last,” said the Colonel, who probably had in mind the costly volumes which they presented to one another on birthdays and holidays. “But I get about all the reading I want in the newspapers. And when the girls want a novel, I tell ’em to get it out of the library. That’s what the library’s for. Phew!” he panted, blowing away the whole unprofitable subject. “How close you women-folks like to keep a room! You go down to the sea-side or up to the mountains for a change of air, and then you cork yourselves into a room so tight you don’t have any air at all. Here! You girls get on your bonnets, and go and show Mr. Corey the view of the hotels from the rocks.”

  Corey said that he should be delighted. The girls exchanged looks with each other, and then with their mother. Irene curved her pretty chin in comment upon her father’s incorrigibility, and Penelope made a droll mouth, but the Colonel remained serenely content with his finesse. “I got ’em out of the way,” he said, as soon as they were gone, and before his wife had time to fall upon him, “because I’ve got through my talk with him, and now I want to talk with YOU. It’s just as I said, Persis; he wants to go into the business with me.”

  “It’s lucky for you,” said his wife, meaning that now he would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. But she was too intensely interested to pursue that matter further. “What in the world do you suppose he means by it?”

  “Well, I should judge by his talk that he had been trying a good many different things since he left college, and he hain’t found just the thing he likes — or the thing that likes him. It ain’t so easy. And now he’s got an idea that he can take hold of the paint and push it in other countries — push it in Mexico and push it in South America. He’s a splendid Spanish scholar,” — this was Lapham’s version of Corey’s modest claim to a smattering of the language,— “and he’s been among the natives enough to know their ways. And he believes in the paint,” added the Colonel.

  “I guess he believes in something else besides the paint,” said Mrs. Lapham.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Silas Lapham, if you can’t see NOW that he’s after Irene, I don’t know what ever CAN open your eyes. That’s all.”

  The Colonel pretended to give the idea silent consideration, as if it had not occurred to him before. “Well, then, all I’ve got to say is, that he’s going a good way round. I don’t say you’re wrong, but if it’s Irene, I don’t see why he should want to go off to South America to get her. And that’s what he proposes to do. I guess there’s some paint about it too, Persis. He says he believes in it,” — the Colonel devoutly lowered his voice,— “and he’s willing to take the agency on his own account down there, and run it for a commission on what he can sell.”

  “Of course! He isn’t going to take hold of it any way so as to feel beholden to you. He’s got too much pride for that.”

  “He ain’t going to take hold of it at all, if he don’t mean paint in the first place and Irene afterward. I don’t object to him, as I know, either way, but the two things won’t mix; and I don’t propose he shall pull the wool over my eyes — or anybody else. But, as far as heard from, up to date, he means paint first, last, and all the time. At any rate, I’m going to take him on that basis. He’s got some pretty good ideas about it, and he’s been stirred up by this talk, just now, about getting our manufactures into the foreign markets. There’s an overstock in everything, and we’ve got to get rid of it, or we’ve got to shut down till the home demand begins again. We’ve had two or three such flurries before now, and they didn’t amount to much. They say we can’t extend our commerce under the high tariff system we’ve got now, because there ain’t any sort of reciprocity on our side, — we want to have the other fellows show all the reciprocity, — and the English have got the advantage of us every time. I don’t know whether it’s so or not; but I don’t see why it should apply to my paint. Anyway, he wants to try it, and I’ve about made up my mind to let him. Of course I ain’t going to let him take all the risk. I believe in the paint TOO, and I shall pay his expenses anyway.”

  “So you want another partner after all?” Mrs. Lapham could not forbear saying.

  “Yes, if that’s your idea of a partner. It isn’t mine,” returned her husband dryly.

  “Well, if you’ve made up your mind, Si, I suppose you’re ready for advice,” said Mrs. Lapham.

  The Colonel enjoyed this. “Yes, I am. What have you got to say against it?”

  “I don’t know as I’ve got anything. I’m satisfied if you are.”

  “Well?”

  “When is he going to start for South America?”

  “I shall take him into the office a while. He’ll get off some time in the winter. But he’s got to know the business first.”

  “Oh, indeed! Are you going to take him to board in the family?”

  “What are you after, Persis?”

  “Oh, nothing! I presume he will feel free to visit in the family, even if he don’t board with us.”

  “I presume he will.”

  “And if he don’t use his privileges, do you think he’ll be a fit person to manage your paint in South America?”

  The Colonel reddened consciously. “I’m not taking him on that basis.”

  “Oh yes, you are! You may pretend you ain’t to yourself, but you mustn’t pretend so to me. Because I know you.”

  The Colonel laughed. “Pshaw!” he said.

  Mrs. Lapham conti
nued: “I don’t see any harm in hoping that he’ll take a fancy to her. But if you really think it won’t do to mix the two things, I advise you not to take Mr. Corey into the business. It will do all very well if he DOES take a fancy to her; but if he don’t, you know how you’ll feel about it. And I know you well enough, Silas, to know that you can’t do him justice if that happens. And I don’t think it’s right you should take this step unless you’re pretty sure. I can see that you’ve set your heart on this thing.”

  “I haven’t set my heart on it at all,” protested Lapham.

  “And if you can’t bring it about, you’re going to feel unhappy over it,” pursued his wife, regardless of his protest.

  “Oh, very well,” he said. “If you know more about what’s in my mind than I do, there’s no use arguing, as I can see.”

  He got up, to carry off his consciousness, and sauntered out of the door on to his piazza. He could see the young people down on the rocks, and his heart swelled in his breast. He had always said that he did not care what a man’s family was, but the presence of young Corey as an applicant to him for employment, as his guest, as the possible suitor of his daughter, was one of the sweetest flavours that he had yet tasted in his success. He knew who the Coreys were very well, and, in his simple, brutal way, he had long hated their name as a symbol of splendour which, unless he should live to see at least three generations of his descendants gilded with mineral paint, he could not hope to realise in his own. He was acquainted in a business way with the tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great many things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father’s money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything that was offensively aristocratic. He had bristled up aggressively at the name when his wife told how she had made the acquaintance of the fellow’s family the summer before, and he had treated the notion of young Corey’s caring for Irene with the contempt which such a ridiculous superstition deserved. He had made up his mind about young Corey beforehand; yet when he met him he felt an instant liking for him, which he frankly acknowledged, and he had begun to assume the burden of his wife’s superstition, of which she seemed now ready to accuse him of being the inventor.

  Nothing had moved his thick imagination like this day’s events since the girl who taught him spelling and grammar in the school at Lumberville had said she would have him for her husband.

  The dark figures, stationary on the rocks, began to move, and he could see that they were coming toward the house. He went indoors, so as not to appear to have been watching them.

  VIII.

  A WEEK after she had parted with her son at Bar Harbour, Mrs. Corey suddenly walked in upon her husband in their house in Boston. He was at breakfast, and he gave her the patronising welcome with which the husband who has been staying in town all summer receives his wife when she drops down upon him from the mountains or the sea-side. For a little moment she feels herself strange in the house, and suffers herself to be treated like a guest, before envy of his comfort vexes her back into possession and authority. Mrs. Corey was a lady, and she did not let her envy take the form of open reproach.

  “Well, Anna, you find me here in the luxury you left me to. How did you leave the girls?”

  “The girls were well,” said Mrs. Corey, looking absently at her husband’s brown velvet coat, in which he was so handsome. No man had ever grown grey more beautifully. His hair, while not remaining dark enough to form a theatrical contrast with his moustache, was yet some shades darker, and, in becoming a little thinner, it had become a little more gracefully wavy. His skin had the pearly tint which that of elderly men sometimes assumes, and the lines which time had traced upon it were too delicate for the name of wrinkles. He had never had any personal vanity, and there was no consciousness in his good looks now.

  “I am glad of that. The boy I have with me,” he returned; “that is, when he IS with me.”

  “Why, where is he?” demanded the mother.

  “Probably carousing with the boon Lapham somewhere. He left me yesterday afternoon to go and offer his allegiance to the Mineral Paint King, and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Bromfield!” cried Mrs. Corey. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “Well, my dear, I’m not sure that it isn’t a very good thing.”

  “A good thing? It’s horrid!”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s decent. Tom had found out — without consulting the landscape, which I believe proclaims it everywhere — —”

  “Hideous!”

  “That it’s really a good thing; and he thinks that he has some ideas in regard to its dissemination in the parts beyond seas.”

  “Why shouldn’t he go into something else?” lamented the mother.

  “I believe he has gone into nearly everything else and come out of it. So there is a chance of his coming out of this. But as I had nothing to suggest in place of it, I thought it best not to interfere. In fact, what good would my telling him that mineral paint was nasty have done? I dare say YOU told him it was nasty.”

  “Yes! I did.”

  “And you see with what effect, though he values your opinion three times as much as he values mine. Perhaps you came up to tell him again that it was nasty?”

  “I feel very unhappy about it. He is throwing himself away. Yes, I should like to prevent it if I could!”

  The father shook his head.

  “If Lapham hasn’t prevented it, I fancy it’s too late. But there may be some hopes of Lapham. As for Tom’s throwing himself away, I don’t know. There’s no question but he is one of the best fellows under the sun. He’s tremendously energetic, and he has plenty of the kind of sense which we call horse; but he isn’t brilliant. No, Tom is not brilliant. I don’t think he would get on in a profession, and he’s instinctively kept out of everything of the kind. But he has got to do something. What shall he do? He says mineral paint, and really I don’t see why he shouldn’t. If money is fairly and honestly earned, why should we pretend to care what it comes out of, when we don’t really care? That superstition is exploded everywhere.”

  “Oh, it isn’t the paint alone,” said Mrs. Corey; and then she perceptibly arrested herself, and made a diversion in continuing: “I wish he had married some one.”

  “With money?” suggested her husband. “From time to time I have attempted Tom’s corruption from that side, but I suspect Tom has a conscience against it, and I rather like him for it. I married for love myself,” said Corey, looking across the table at his wife.

  She returned his look tolerantly, though she felt it right to say, “What nonsense!”

  “Besides,” continued her husband, “if you come to money, there is the paint princess. She will have plenty.”

  “Ah, that’s the worst of it,” sighed the mother. “I suppose I could get on with the paint — —”

  “But not with the princess? I thought you said she was a very pretty, well-behaved girl?”

  “She is very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there is nothing of her. She is insipid; she is very insipid.”

  “But Tom seemed to like her flavour, such as it was?”

  “How can I tell? We were under a terrible obligation to them, and I naturally wished him to be polite to them. In fact, I asked him to be so.”

  “And he was too polite.”

  “I can’t say that he was. But there is no doubt that the child is extremely pretty.”

  “Tom says there are two of them. Perhaps they will neutralise each other.”

  “Yes, there is another daughter,” assented Mrs. Corey. “I don’t see how you can joke about such things, Bromfield,” she added.

  “Well, I don’t either, my dear, to tell you the truth. My hardihood surprises me. Here is a son of mine whom I see reduced to making his livin
g by a shrinkage in values. It’s very odd,” interjected Corey, “that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate — all those values shrink abominably. Perhaps it might be argued that one should put all his values into pictures; I’ve got a good many of mine there.”

  “Tom needn’t earn his living,” said Mrs. Corey, refusing her husband’s jest. “There’s still enough for all of us.”

  “That is what I have sometimes urged upon Tom. I have proved to him that with economy, and strict attention to business, he need do nothing as long as he lives. Of course he would be somewhat restricted, and it would cramp the rest of us; but it is a world of sacrifices and compromises. He couldn’t agree with me, and he was not in the least moved by the example of persons of quality in Europe, which I alleged in support of the life of idleness. It appears that he wishes to do something — to do something for himself. I am afraid that Tom is selfish.”

  Mrs. Corey smiled wanly. Thirty years before, she had married the rich young painter in Rome, who said so much better things than he painted — charming things, just the things to please the fancy of a girl who was disposed to take life a little too seriously and practically. She saw him in a different light when she got him home to Boston; but he had kept on saying the charming things, and he had not done much else. In fact, he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. It was a good trait in him that he was not actively but only passively extravagant. He was not adventurous with his money; his tastes were as simple as an Italian’s; he had no expensive habits. In the process of time he had grown to lead a more and more secluded life. It was hard to get him out anywhere, even to dinner. His patience with their narrowing circumstances had a pathos which she felt the more the more she came into charge of their joint life. At times it seemed too bad that the children and their education and pleasures should cost so much. She knew, besides, that if it had not been for them she would have gone back to Rome with him, and lived princely there for less than it took to live respectably in Boston.