The Rise of Silas Lapham

by William Dean Howells

  “I don’t see why he shouldn’t be pleasant,” said Mrs. Lapham. “He’s never done anything else.”

  Lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy laugh. “Pshaw, Persis! you never forget anything?”

  “Oh, I’ve got more than that to remember. I suppose you asked him to ride after the mare?”

  “Well,” said Lapham, reddening guiltily, “he said he was afraid of a good horse.”

  “Then, of course, you hadn’t asked him.” Mrs. Lapham crocheted in silence, and her husband leaned back in his chair and smoked.

  At last he said, “I’m going to push that house forward. They’re loafing on it. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be in it by Thanksgiving. I don’t believe in moving in the dead of winter.”

  “We can wait till spring. We’re very comfortable in the old place,” answered his wife. Then she broke out on him: “What are you in such a hurry to get into that house for? Do you want to invite the Coreys to a housewarming?”

  Lapham looked at her without speaking.

  “Don’t you suppose I can see through you? I declare, Silas Lapham, if I didn’t know different, I should say you were about the biggest fool! Don’t you know anything? Don’t you know that it wouldn’t do to ask those people to our house before they’ve asked us to theirs? They’d laugh in our faces!”

  “I don’t believe they’d laugh in our faces. What’s the difference between our asking them and their asking us?” demanded the Colonel sulkily.

  “Oh, well! If you don’t see!”

  “Well, I don’t see. But I don’t want to ask them to the house. I suppose, if I want to, I can invite him down to a fish dinner at Taft’s.”

  Mrs. Lapham fell back in her chair, and let her work drop in her lap with that “Tchk!” in which her sex knows how to express utter contempt and despair.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, if you do such a thing, Silas, I’ll never speak to you again! It’s no use! It’s no use! I did think, after you’d behaved so well about Rogers, I might trust you a little. But I see I can’t. I presume as long as you live you’ll have to be nosed about like a perfect—I don’t know what!”

  “What are you making such a fuss about?” demanded Lapham, terribly crestfallen, but trying to pluck up a spirit. “I haven’t done anything yet. I can’t ask your advice about anything anymore without having you fly out. Confound it! I shall do as I please after this.”

  But as if he could not endure that contemptuous atmosphere, he got up, and his wife heard him in the dining room pouring himself out a glass of ice water, and then heard him mount the stairs to their room, and slam its door after him.

  “Do you know what your father’s wanting to do now?” Mrs. Lapham asked her eldest daughter, who lounged into the parlor a moment with her wrap stringing from her arm, while the younger went straight to bed. “He wants to invite Mr. Corey’s father to a fish dinner at Taft’s!”

  Penelope was yawning with her hand on her mouth; she stopped, and, with a laugh of amused expectance, sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged forward.

  “Why! what in the world has put the Colonel up to that?”

  “Put him up to it! There’s that fellow, who ought have come to see him long ago, drops into his office this morning, and talks five minutes with him, and your father is flattered out of his five senses. He’s crazy to get in with those people, and I shall have a perfect battle to keep him within bounds.”

  “Well, Persis, ma’am, you can’t say but what you began it,” said Penelope.

  “Oh yes, I began it,” confessed Mrs. Lapham. “Pen,” she broke out, “what do you suppose he means by it?”

  “Who? Mr. Corey’s father? What does the Colonel think?”

  “Oh, the Colonel!” cried Mrs. Lapham. She added tremulously: “Perhaps he is right. He did seem to take a fancy to her last summer, and now if he’s called in that way—” She left her daughter to distribute the pronouns aright, and resumed: “Of course, I should have said once that there wasn’t any question about it. I should have said so last year; and I don’t know what it is keeps me from saying so now. I suppose I know a little more about things than I did; and your father’s being so bent on it sets me all in a twitter. He thinks his money can do everything. Well, I don’t say but what it can, a good many. And ’Rene is as good a child as ever there was; and I don’t see but what she’s pretty-appearing enough to suit anyone. She’s pretty-behaved too; and she is the most capable girl. I presume young men don’t care very much for such things nowadays; but there ain’t a great many girls can go right into the kitchen and make such a custard as she did yesterday. And look at the way she does, through the whole house! She can’t seem to go into a room without the things fly right into their places. And if she had to do it tomorrow, she could make all her own dresses a great deal better than them we pay to do it. I don’t say but what he’s about as nice a fellow as ever stepped. But there! I’m ashamed of going on so.”

  “Well, Mother,” said the girl after a pause, in which she looked as if a little weary of the subject, “why do you worry about it? If it’s to be it’ll be, and if it isn’t—”

  “Yes, that’s what I tell your father. But when it comes to myself, I see how hard it is for him to rest quiet. I’m afraid we shall all do something we’ll repent of afterward.”

  “Well, ma’am,” said Penelope, “I don’t intend to do anything wrong; but if I do, I promise not to be sorry for it. I’ll go that far. And I think I wouldn’t be sorry for it beforehand, if I were in your place, Mother. Let the Colonel go on! He likes to maneuver, and he isn’t going to hurt anyone. The Corey family can take care of themselves, I guess.”

  She laughed in her throat, drawing down the corners of her mouth and enjoying the resolution with which her mother tried to fling off the burden of her anxieties. “Pen! I believe you’re right. You always do see things in such a light! There! I don’t care if he brings him down every day.”

  “Well, ma’am,” said Pen, “I don’t believe ’Rene would, either. She’s just so indifferent!”

  The Colonel slept badly that night, and in the morning Mrs. Lapham came to breakfast without him.

  “Your father ain’t well,” she reported. “He’s had one of his turns.”

  “I should have thought he had two or three of them,” said Penelope, “by the stamping ’round I heard. Isn’t he coming to breakfast?”

  “Not just yet,” said her mother. “He’s asleep, and he’ll be all right if he gets his nap out. I don’t want you girls should make any great noise.”

  “Oh, we’ll be quiet enough,” returned Penelope. “Well, I’m glad the Colonel isn’t sojering. At first I thought he might be sojering.” She broke into a laugh, and, struggling indolently with it, looked at her sister. “You don’t think it’ll be necessary for anybody to come down from the office and take orders from him while he’s laid up, do you, Mother?” she inquired.

  “Pen!” cried Irene.

  “He’ll be well enough to go up on the ten o’clock boat,” said the mother sharply.

  “I think Papa works too hard all through the summer. Why don’t you make him take a rest, Mama?” asked Irene.

  “Oh, take a rest! The man slaves harder every year. It used to be so that he’d take a little time off now and then; but I declare, he hardly ever seems to breathe now away from his office. And this year he says he doesn’t intend to go down to Lapham, except to see after the Works for a few days. I don’t know what to do with the man anymore! Seems as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. It scares me to think what would happen to him if he lost it. I know one thing,” concluded Mrs. Lapham. “He shall not go back to the office today.”

  “Then he won’t go up on the ten o’clock boat,” Pen reminded her.

  “No, he won’t. You can just drive over to the hotel as soon as you’re through,
girls, and telegraph that he’s not well and won’t be at the office till tomorrow. I’m not going to have them send anybody down here to bother him.”

  “That’s a blow,” said Pen. “I didn’t know but they might send”—she looked demurely at her sister—“Dennis!”

  “Mama!” cried Irene.

  “Well, I declare, there’s no living with this family anymore,” said Penelope.

  “There, Pen, be done!” commanded her mother. But perhaps she did not intend to forbid her teasing. It gave a pleasant sort of reality to the affair that was in her mind, and made what she wished appear not only possible but probable.

  Lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling as each boat departed without him, through the day; before night he became very cross, in spite of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and grumbled that he had been kept from going up to town. “I might as well have gone as not,” he repeated, till his wife lost her patience.

  “Well, you shall go tomorrow, Silas, if you have to be carried to the boat.”

  “I declare,” said Penelope, “the Colonel don’t pet worth a cent.”

  The six o’clock boat brought Corey. The girls were sitting on the piazza, and Irene saw him first.

  “Oh, Pen!” she whispered, with her heart in her face; and Penelope had no time for mockery before he was at the steps.

  “I hope Colonel Lapham isn’t ill,” he said, and they could hear their mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors.

  “Go and put on your coat! I say you shall! It don’t matter how he sees you at the office, shirtsleeves or not. You’re in a gentleman’s house now—or you ought to be—and you shan’t see company in your dressing gown.”

  Penelope hurried in to subdue her mother’s anger.

  “Oh, he’s very much better, thank you!” said Irene, speaking up loudly to drown the noise of the controversy.

  “I’m glad of that,” said Corey, and when she led him indoors the vanquished Colonel met his visitor in a double-breasted frock coat, which he was still buttoning up. He could not persuade himself at once that Corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, and when he was clear that he had come out of civility, surprise mingled with his gratification that he should be the object of solicitude to the young man. In Lapham’s circle of acquaintance they complained when they were sick, but they made no womanish inquiries after one another’s health, and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters were serious. He would have enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he had been allowed to do so; and after tea, which Corey took with them, he would have remained to entertain him if his wife had not sent him to bed. She followed him to see that he took some medicine she had prescribed for him, but she went first to Penelope’s room, where she found the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading.

  “You better go down,” said the mother. “I’ve got to go to your father, and Irene is all alone with Mr. Corey; and I know she’ll be on pins and needles without you there to help make it go off.”

  “She’d better try to get along without me, Mother,” said Penelope soberly. “I can’t always be with them.”

  “Well,” replied Mrs. Lapham, “then I must. There’ll be a perfect Quaker meeting down there.”

  “Oh, I guess ’Rene will find something to say if you leave her to herself. Or if she don’t, he must. It’ll be all right for you to go down when you get ready; but I shan’t go till toward the last. If he’s coming here to see Irene—and I don’t believe he’s come on Father’s account—he wants to see her and not me. If she can’t interest him alone, perhaps he’d as well find it out now as anytime. At any rate, I guess you’d better make the experiment. You’ll know whether it’s a success if he comes again.”

  “Well,” said the mother, “maybe you’re right. I’ll go down directly. It does seem as if he did mean something, after all.”

  Mrs. Lapham did not hasten to return to her guest. In her own girlhood it was supposed that if a young man seemed to be coming to see a girl, it was only common sense to suppose that he wished to see her alone; and her life in town had left Mrs. Lapham’s simple traditions in this respect unchanged. She did with her daughter as her mother would have done with her.

  Where Penelope sat with her book, she heard the continuous murmur of voices below, and after a long interval she heard her mother descend. She did not read the open book that lay in her lap, though she kept her eyes fast on the print. Once she rose and almost shut the door, so that she could scarcely hear; then she opened it wide again with a self-disdainful air, and resolutely went back to her book, which again she did not read. But she remained in her room till it was nearly time for Corey to return to his boat.

  When they were alone again, Irene made a feint of scolding her for leaving her to entertain Mr. Corey.

  “Why! didn’t you have a pleasant call?” asked Penelope.

  Irene threw her arms ’round her. “Oh, it was a splendid call! I didn’t suppose I could make it go off so well. We talked nearly the whole time about you!”

  “I don’t think that was a very interesting subject.”

  “He kept asking about you. He asked everything. You don’t know how much he thinks of you, Pen. Oh, Pen! what do you think made him come? Do you think he really did come to see how Papa was?” Irene buried her face in her sister’s neck.

  Penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think he did, altogether.”

  Irene, all glowing, released her. “Don’t you—don’t you really? Oh, Pen! don’t you think he is nice? Don’t you think he’s handsome? Don’t you think I behaved horridly when we first met him this evening, not thanking him for coming? I know he thinks I have no manners. But it seemed as if it would be thanking him for coming to see me. Ought I to have asked him to come again, when he said good night? I didn’t; I couldn’t. Do you believe he’ll think I don’t want him to? You don’t believe he would keep coming if he didn’t—want to—”

  “He hasn’t kept coming a great deal, yet,” suggested Penelope.

  “No; I know he hasn’t. But if he—if he should?”

  “Then I should think he wanted to.”

  “Oh, would you—would you? Oh, how good you always are, Pen! And you always say what you think. I wish there was someone coming to see you too. That’s all that I don’t like about it. Perhaps— He was telling about his friend there in Texas—”

  “Well,” said Penelope, “his friend couldn’t call often from Texas. You needn’t ask Mr. Corey to trouble about me, ’Rene. I think I can manage to worry along, if you’re satisfied.”

  “Oh, I am, Pen. When do you suppose he’ll come again?” Irene pushed some of Penelope’s things aside on the dressing case to rest her elbow and talk at ease. Penelope came up and put them back.

  “Well, not tonight,” she said; “and if that’s what you’re sitting up for—”

  Irene caught her ’round the neck again, and ran out of the room.

  The Colonel was packed off on the eight o’clock boat the next morning; but his recovery did not prevent Corey from repeating his visit in a week. This time Irene came radiantly up to Penelope’s room, where she had again withdrawn herself. “You must come down, Pen,” she said. “He’s asked if you’re not well, and Mama says you’ve got to come.”

  After that Penelope helped Irene through with her calls, and talked them over with her far into the night after Corey was gone. But when the impatient curiosity of her mother pressed her for some opinion of the affair, she said, “You know as much as I do, Mother.”

  “Don’t he ever say anything to you about her—praise her up, any?”

  “He’s never mentioned Irene to me.”

  “He hasn’t to me, either,” said Mrs. Lapham, with a sigh of trouble. “Then what makes him keep coming?”

  “I c
an’t tell you. One thing, he says there isn’t a house open in Boston where he’s acquainted. Wait till some of his friends get back, and then if he keeps coming, it’ll be time to inquire.”

  “Well!” said the mother; but as the weeks passed she was less and less able to attribute Corey’s visits to his loneliness in town, and turned to her husband for comfort.

  “Silas, I don’t know as we ought to let young Corey keep coming so. I don’t quite like it, with all his family away.”

  “He’s of age,” said the Colonel. “He can go where he pleases. It don’t matter whether his family’s here or not.”

  “Yes, but if they don’t want he should come? Should you feel just right about letting him?”

  “How’re you going to stop him? I swear, Persis, I don’t know what’s got over you! What is it? You didn’t use to be so. But to hear you talk, you’d think those Coreys were too good for this world, and we wan’t fit for ’em to walk on.”