Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

“Thank you,” said the young man. He did so, and now she ran her parasol point easily through it. They looked at each other and laughed. “That was wonderful. Would you like to try another?” he asked.

  “No, I thank you,” she replied. “I think one will do.”

  They both laughed again, for whatever reason or no reason, and then the young girl became sober. To a girl everything a young man does is of significance; and if he holds a shaving down with his foot while she pokes through it with her parasol, she must ask herself what he means by it.

  “They seem to be having rather a long interview with the carpenter to-day,” said Irene, looking vaguely toward the ceiling. She turned with polite ceremony to Corey. “I’m afraid you’re letting them keep you. You mustn’t.”

  “Oh no. You’re letting me stay,” he returned.

  She bridled and bit her lip for pleasure. “I presume they will be down before a great while. Don’t you like the smell of the wood and the mortar? It’s so fresh.”

  “Yes, it’s delicious.” He bent forward and picked up from the floor the shaving with which they had been playing, and put it to his nose. “It’s like a flower. May I offer it to you?” he asked, as if it had been one.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” She took it from him and put it into her belt, and then they both laughed once more.

  Steps were heard descending. When the elder people reached the floor where they were sitting, Corey rose and presently took his leave.

  “What makes you so solemn, ‘Rene?” asked Mrs. Lapham.

  “Solemn?” echoed the girl. “I’m not a BIT solemn. What CAN you mean?”

  Corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking across the table at his father, he said, “I wonder what the average literature of non-cultivated people is.”

  “Ah,” said the elder, “I suspect the average is pretty low even with cultivated people. You don’t read a great many books yourself, Tom.”

  “No, I don’t,” the young man confessed. “I read more books when I was with Stanton, last winter, than I had since I was a boy. But I read them because I must — there was nothing else to do. It wasn’t because I was fond of reading. Still I think I read with some sense of literature and the difference between authors. I don’t suppose that people generally do that; I have met people who had read books without troubling themselves to find out even the author’s name, much less trying to decide upon his quality. I suppose that’s the way the vast majority of people read.”

  “Yes. If authors were not almost necessarily recluses, and ignorant of the ignorance about them, I don’t see how they could endure it. Of course they are fated to be overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor fellows; but to see it weltering all round them while they are in the very act of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. I don’t suppose that we who have the habit of reading, and at least a nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness of the great mass of people — even people whose houses are rich and whose linen is purple and fine. But occasionally we get glimpses of it. I suppose you found the latest publications lying all about in Lapham cottage when you were down there?”

  Young Corey laughed. “It wasn’t exactly cumbered with them.”

  “No?”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t suppose they ever buy books. The young ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating library.”

  “Had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?”

  “Yes, in certain ways — to a certain degree.”

  “It’s a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation,” said the elder musingly. “We think it is an affair of epochs and of nations. It’s really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilised and the other a barbarian. I’ve occasionally met young girls who were so brutally, insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the skins of wild beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs over their shoulders. Yet they were of polite origin, and their parents were at least respectful of the things that these young animals despised.”

  “I don’t think that is exactly the case with the Lapham family,” said the son, smiling. “The father and mother rather apologised about not getting time to read, and the young ladies by no means scorned it.”

  “They are quite advanced!”

  “They are going to have a library in their Beacon Street house.”

  “Oh, poor things! How are they ever going to get the books together?”

  “Well, sir,” said the son, colouring a little, “I have been indirectly applied to for help.”

  “You, Tom!” His father dropped back in his chair and laughed.

  “I recommended the standard authors,” said the son.

  “Oh, I never supposed your PRUDENCE would be at fault, Tom!”

  “But seriously,” said the young man, generously smiling in sympathy with his father’s enjoyment, “they’re not unintelligent people. They are very quick, and they are shrewd and sensible.”

  “I have no doubt that some of the Sioux are so. But that is not saying that they are civilised. All civilisation comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilisation by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise. Once we were softened, if not polished, by religion; but I suspect that the pulpit counts for much less now in civilising.”

  “They’re enormous devourers of newspapers, and theatre-goers; and they go a great deal to lectures. The Colonel prefers them with the stereopticon.”

  “They might get a something in that way,” said the elder thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose one must take those things into account — especially the newspapers and the lectures. I doubt if the theatre is a factor in civilisation among us. I dare say it doesn’t deprave a great deal, but from what I’ve seen of it I should say that it was intellectually degrading. Perhaps they might get some sort of lift from it; I don’t know. Tom!” he added, after a moment’s reflection. “I really think I ought to see this patron of yours. Don’t you think it would be rather decent in me to make his acquaintance?”

  “Well, if you have the fancy, sir,” said the young man. “But there’s no sort of obligation. Colonel Lapham would be the last man in the world to want to give our relation any sort of social character. The meeting will come about in the natural course of things.”

  “Ah, I didn’t intend to propose anything immediate,” said the father. “One can’t do anything in the summer, and I should prefer your mother’s superintendence. Still, I can’t rid myself of the idea of a dinner. It appears to me that there ought to be a dinner.”

  “Oh, pray don’t feel that there’s any necessity.”

  “Well,” said the elder, with easy resignation, “there’s at least no hurry.”

  “There is one thing I don’t like,” said Lapham, in the course of one of those talks which came up between his wife and himself concerning Corey, “or at least I don’t understand it; and that’s the way his father behaves. I don’t want to force myself on any man; but it seems to me pretty queer the way he holds off. I should think he would take enough interest in his son to want to know something about his business. What is he afraid of?” demanded Lapham angrily. “Does he think I’m going to jump at a chance to get in with him, if he gives me one? He’s mightily mistaken if he does. I don’t want to know him.”

  “Silas,” said his wife, making a wife’s free version of her husband’s words, and replying to their spirit rather than their letter, “I hope you never said a word to Mr. Corey to let him know the way you feel.”

  “I never mentioned his father to him!” roared the Colonel. “That’s the way I feel about it!”

  “Because it would spoil everything. I wouldn’t have them think we cared the least thing in the world for their acquaintance. We shouldn’t be a bit better off. We don’t know the same people they
do, and we don’t care for the same kind of things.”

  Lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife’s implication. “Don’t I tell you,” he gasped, “that I don’t want to know them? Who began it? They’re friends of yours if they’re anybody’s.”

  “They’re distant acquaintances of mine,” returned Mrs. Lapham quietly; “and this young Corey is a clerk of yours. And I want we should hold ourselves so that when they get ready to make the advances we can meet them half-way or not, just as we choose.”

  “That’s what grinds me,” cried her husband. “Why should we wait for them to make the advances? Why shouldn’t we make ‘em? Are they any better than we are? My note of hand would be worth ten times what Bromfield Corey’s is on the street to-day. And I made MY money. I haven’t loafed my life away.”

  “Oh, it isn’t what you’ve got, and it isn’t what you’ve done exactly. It’s what you are.”

  “Well, then, what’s the difference?”

  “None that really amounts to anything, or that need give you any trouble, if you don’t think of it. But he’s been all his life in society, and he knows just what to say and what to do, and he can talk about the things that society people like to talk about, and you — can’t.”

  Lapham gave a furious snort. “And does that make him any better?”

  “No. But it puts him where he can make the advances without demeaning himself, and it puts you where you can’t. Now, look here, Silas Lapham! You understand this thing as well as I do. You know that I appreciate you, and that I’d sooner die than have you humble yourself to a living soul. But I’m not going to have you coming to me, and pretending that you can meet Bromfield Corey as an equal on his own ground. You can’t. He’s got a better education than you, and if he hasn’t got more brains than you, he’s got different. And he and his wife, and their fathers and grandfathers before ‘em, have always had a high position, and you can’t help it. If you want to know them, you’ve got to let them make the advances. If you don’t, all well and good.”

  “I guess,” said the chafed and vanquished Colonel, after a moment for swallowing the pill, “that they’d have been in a pretty fix if you’d waited to let them make the advances last summer.”

  “That was a different thing altogether. I didn’t know who they were, or may be I should have waited. But all I say now is that if you’ve got young Corey into business with you, in hopes of our getting into society with his father, you better ship him at once. For I ain’t going to have it on that basis.”

  “Who wants to have it on that basis?” retorted her husband.

  “Nobody, if you don’t,” said Mrs. Lapham tranquilly.

  Irene had come home with the shaving in her belt, unnoticed by her father, and unquestioned by her mother. But her sister saw it at once, and asked her what she was doing with it.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Irene, with a joyful smile of self-betrayal, taking the shaving carefully out, and laying it among the laces and ribbons in her drawer.

  “Hadn’t you better put it in water, ‘Rene? It’ll be all wilted by morning,” said Pen.

  “You mean thing!” cried the happy girl. “It isn’t a flower!”

  “Oh, I thought it was a whole bouquet. Who gave it to you?”

  “I shan’t tell you,” said Irene saucily.

  “Oh, well, never mind. Did you know Mr. Corey had been down here this afternoon, walking on the beach with me?”

  “He wasn’t — he wasn’t at all! He was at the house with ME. There! I’ve caught you fairly.”

  “Is that so?” drawled Penelope. “Then I never could guess who gave you that precious shaving.”

  “No, you couldn’t!” said Irene, flushing beautifully. “And you may guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!” With her lovely eyes she coaxed her sister to keep on teasing her, and Penelope continued the comedy with the patience that women have for such things.

  “Well, I’m not going to try, if it’s no use. But I didn’t know it had got to be the fashion to give shavings instead of flowers. But there’s some sense in it. They can be used for kindlings when they get old, and you can’t do anything with old flowers. Perhaps he’ll get to sending ’em by the barrel.”

  Irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. “O Pen, I want to tell you how it all happened.”

  “Oh, he DID give it to you, then? Well, I guess I don’t care to hear.”

  “You shall, and you’ve got to!” Irene ran and caught her sister, who feigned to be going out of the room, and pushed her into a chair. “There, now!” She pulled up another chair, and hemmed her in with it. “He came over, and sat down on the trestle alongside of me — —”

  “What? As close as you are to me now?”

  “You wretch! I will GIVE it to you! No, at a proper distance. And here was this shaving on the floor, that I’d been poking with my parasol — —”

  “To hide your embarrassment.”

  “Pshaw! I wasn’t a bit embarrassed. I was just as much at my ease! And then he asked me to let him hold the shaving down with his foot, while I went on with my poking. And I said yes he might — —”

  “What a bold girl! You said he might hold a shaving down for you?”

  “And then — and then — —” continued Irene, lifting her eyes absently, and losing herself in the beatific recollection, “and then —— Oh yes! Then I asked him if he didn’t like the smell of pine shavings. And then he picked it up, and said it smelt like a flower. And then he asked if he might offer it to me — just for a joke, you know. And I took it, and stuck it in my belt. And we had such a laugh! We got into a regular gale. And O Pen, what do you suppose he meant by it?” She suddenly caught herself to her sister’s breast, and hid her burning face on her shoulder.

  “Well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. But I never knew much about the language of shavings, and I can’t say exactly — —”

  “Oh, don’t — DON’T, Pen!” and here Irene gave over laughing, and began to sob in her sister’s arms.

  “Why, ‘Rene!” cried the elder girl.

  “You KNOW he didn’t mean anything. He doesn’t care a bit about me. He hates me! He despises me! Oh, what shall I do?”

  A trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently comforted the child in her arms; then the drolling light came back into her eyes. “Well, ‘Rene, YOU haven’t got to do ANYthing. That’s one advantage girls have got — if it IS an advantage. I’m not always sure.”

  Irene’s tears turned to laughing again. When she lifted her head it was to look into the mirror confronting them, where her beauty showed all the more brilliant for the shower that had passed over it. She seemed to gather courage from the sight.

  “It must be awful to have to DO,” she said, smiling into her own face. “I don’t see how they ever can.”

  “Some of ’em can’t — especially when there’s such a tearing beauty around.”

  “Oh, pshaw, Pen! you know that isn’t so. You’ve got a real pretty mouth, Pen,” she added thoughtfully, surveying the feature in the glass, and then pouting her own lips for the sake of that effect on them.

  “It’s a useful mouth,” Penelope admitted; “I don’t believe I could get along without it now, I’ve had it so long.”

  “It’s got such a funny expression — just the mate of the look in your eyes; as if you were just going to say something ridiculous. He said, the very first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous.”

  “Is it possible? It must be so, if the Grand Mogul said it. Why didn’t you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a common person?”

  Irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in that way rather than another.

  “I’ve got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth,” she said, drawing it down, and then looking anxiously at it.

  “I hope you didn’t put on that expression when he offered you the shaving. If you did, I don’t believe he’ll ever give you ano
ther splinter.”

  The severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in a kiss against Penelope’s cheek.

  “There! Be done, you silly thing! I’m not going to have you accepting ME before I’ve offered myself, ANYWAY.” She freed herself from her sister’s embrace, and ran from her round the room.

  Irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder again. “O Pen! O Pen!” she cried.

  The next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her eldest daughter, Mrs. Lapham asked, as if knowing that Penelope must have already made it subject of inquiry: “What was Irene doing with that shaving in her belt yesterday?”

  “Oh, just some nonsense of hers with Mr. Corey. He gave it to her at the new house.” Penelope did not choose to look up and meet her mother’s grave glance.

  “What do you think he meant by it?”

  Penelope repeated Irene’s account of the affair, and her mother listened without seeming to derive much encouragement from it.

  “He doesn’t seem like one to flirt with her,” she said at last. Then, after a thoughtful pause: “Irene is as good a girl as ever breathed, and she’s a perfect beauty. But I should hate the day when a daughter of mine was married for her beauty.”

  “You’re safe as far as I’m concerned, mother.”

  Mrs. Lapham smiled ruefully. “She isn’t really equal to him, Pen. I misdoubted that from the first, and it’s been borne in upon me more and more ever since. She hasn’t mind enough.”

  “I didn’t know that a man fell in love with a girl’s intellect,” said Penelope quietly.

  “Oh no. He hasn’t fallen in love with Irene at all. If he had, it wouldn’t matter about the intellect.”

  Penelope let the self-contradiction pass.

  “Perhaps he has, after all.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Lapham. “She pleases him when he sees her. But he doesn’t try to see her.”

  “He has no chance. You won’t let father bring him here.”

  “He would find excuses to come without being brought, if he wished to come,” said the mother. “But she isn’t in his mind enough to make him. He goes away and doesn’t think anything more about her. She’s a child. She’s a good child, and I shall always say it; but she’s nothing but a child. No, she’s got to forget him.”