The Rise of Silas Lapham

by William Dean Howells

  “About one in five of us got out safe,” said Lapham, breaking his cigar ash off on the edge of a plate. James Bellingham reached him a bottle of Apollinaris. He drank a glass, and then went on smoking.

  They all waited, as if expecting him to speak, and then Corey said: “How incredible those things seem already! You gentlemen know that they happened; but are you still able to believe it?”

  “Ah, nobody feels that anything happened,” said Charles Bellingham. “The past of one’s experience doesn’t differ a great deal from the past of one’s knowledge. It isn’t much more probable; it’s really a great deal less vivid than some scenes in a novel that one read when a boy.”

  “I’m not sure of that,” said James Bellingham.

  “Well, James, neither am I,” consented his cousin, helping himself from Lapham’s Apollinaris bottle. “There would be very little talking at dinner if one only said the things that one was sure of.”

  The others laughed, and Bromfield Corey remarked thoughtfully, “What astonishes the craven civilian in all these things is the abundance—the superabundance—of heroism. The cowards were the exception; the men that were ready to die, the rule.”

  “The woods were full of them,” said Lapham, without taking his cigar from his mouth.

  “That’s a nice little touch in School,” interposed Charles Bellingham, “where the girl says to the fellow who was at Inkerman, ‘I should think you would be so proud of it,’ and he reflects awhile and says, ‘Well, the fact is, you know, there were so many of us.’”

  “Yes, I remember that,” said James Bellingham, smiling for pleasure in it. “But I don’t see why you claim the credit of being a craven civilian, Bromfield,” he added, with a friendly glance at his brother-in-law, and with the willingness Boston men often show to turn one another’s good points to the light in company; bred so intimately together at school and college and in society, they all know these points. “A man who was out with Garibaldi in ’48,” continued James Bellingham.

  “Oh, a little amateur red-shirting,” Corey interrupted in deprecation. “But even if you choose to dispute my claim, what has become of all the heroism? Tom, how many club men do you know who would think it sweet and fitting to die for their country?”

  “I can’t think of a great many at the moment, sir,” replied the son, with the modesty of his generation.

  “And I couldn’t in ’61,” said his uncle. “Nevertheless, they were there.”

  “Then your theory is that it’s the occasion that is wanting,” said Bromfield Corey. “But why shouldn’t civil-service reform, and the resumption of specie payment, and a tariff for revenue only, inspire heroes? They are all good causes.”

  “It’s the occasion that’s wanting,” said James Bellingham, ignoring the persiflage. “And I’m very glad of it.”

  “So am I,” said Lapham, with a depth of feeling that expressed itself in spite of the haze in which his brain seemed to float. There was a great deal of the talk that he could not follow; it was too quick for him; but here was something he was clear of. “I don’t want to see any more men killed in my time.” Something serious, something somber, must lurk behind these words, and they waited for Lapham to say more; but the haze closed ’round him again, and he remained silent, drinking Apollinaris.

  “We noncombatants were notoriously reluctant to give up fighting,” said Mr. Sewell, the minister; “but I incline to think Colonel Lapham and Mr. Bellingham may be right. I daresay we shall have the heroism again if we have the occasion. Till it comes, we must content ourselves with the everyday generosities and sacrifices. They make up in quantity what they lack in quality, perhaps.”

  “They’re not so picturesque,” said Bromfield Corey. “You can paint a man dying for his country, but you can’t express on canvas a man fulfilling the duties of a good citizen.”

  “Perhaps the novelists will get at him by and by,” suggested Charles Bellingham. “If I were one of these fellows, I shouldn’t propose to myself anything short of that.”

  “What? the commonplace?” asked his cousin.

  “Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light, impalpable, aerial essence which they’ve never got into their confounded books yet. The novelists who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people would have the answer to ‘the riddle of the painful earth’ on his tongue.”

  “Oh, not so bad as that, I hope,” said the host; and Lapham looked from one to the other, trying to make out what they were at. He had never been so up a tree before.

  “I suppose it isn’t well for us to see human nature at white heat habitually,” continued Bromfield Corey, after a while. “It would make us vain of our species. Many a poor fellow in that war and in many another has gone into battle simply and purely for his country’s sake, not knowing whether, if he laid down his life, he should ever find it again, or whether, if he took it up hereafter, he should take it up in heaven or hell. Come, Parson!” he said, turning to the minister, “what has ever been conceived of omnipotence, of omniscience, so sublime, so divine, as that?”

  “Nothing,” answered the minister quietly. “God has never been imagined at all. But if you suppose such a man as that was Authorized, I think it will help you to imagine what God must be.”

  “There’s sense in that,” said Lapham. He took his cigar out of his mouth and pulled his chair a little toward the table, on which he placed his ponderous forearms. “I want to tell you about a fellow I had in my own company when we first went out. We were all privates to begin with; after a while they elected me captain—I’d had the tavern stand, and most of ’em knew me. That Jim Millon never got to be anything more than corporal; corporal when he was killed.” The others arrested themselves in various attitudes of attention, and remained listening to Lapham with an interest that profoundly flattered him. Now, at last, he felt that he was holding up his end of the rope. “I can’t say he went into the thing from the highest motives, altogether; our motives are always pretty badly mixed, and when there’s such a hurrah, boys, as there was then, you can’t tell which is which. I suppose Jim Millon’s wife was enough to account for his going, herself. She was a pretty bad assortment,” said Lapham, lowering his voice and glancing ’round at the door to make sure that it was shut, “and she used to lead Jim one kind of life. Well, sir,” continued Lapham, synthetizing his auditors in that form of address, “that fellow used to save every cent of his pay and send it to that woman. Used to get me to do it for him. I tried to stop him. ‘Why, Jim,’ said I, ‘you know what she’ll do with it.’ ‘That’s so, Cap,’ says he, ‘but I don’t know what she’ll do without it.’ And it did keep her straight—straight as a string—as long as Jim lasted. Seemed as if there was something mysterious about it. They had a little girl—about as old as my oldest girl—and Jim used to talk to me about her. Guess he done it as much for her as for her mother; and he said to me before the last action we went into, ‘I should like to turn tail and run, Cap. I ain’t comin’ out o’ this one. But I don’t suppose it would do.’ ‘Well, not for you, Jim,’ said I. ‘I want to live,’ he says; and he bust out crying right there in my tent. ‘I want to live for poor Molly and Zerrilla’—that’s what they called the little one; I dunno where they got the name. ‘I ain’t ever had half a chance; and now she’s doing better, and I believe we should get along after this.’ He set there cryin’ like a baby. But he wan’t no baby when he went into action. I hated to look at him after it was over, not so much because he’d got a ball that was meant for me by a sharpshooter—he saw the devil takin’ aim, and he jumped to warn me—as because he didn’t look like Jim; he looked like—fun; all desperate and savage. I guess he died hard.”

  The story made its impression, and Lapham saw it. “Now I say,” he resumed, as if he felt that he was going to do himself justice, and say something to heighten the effect his story had produced. At the same time he was aware of a certain want of c
learness. He had the idea, but it floated vague, elusive, in his brain. He looked about as if for something to precipitate it in tangible shape.

  “Apollinaris?” asked Charles Bellingham, handing the bottle from the other side. He had drawn his chair closer than the rest to Lapham’s, and was listening with great interest. When Mrs. Corey asked him to meet Lapham, he accepted gladly. “You know I go in for that sort of thing, Anna. Since Leslie’s affair we’re rather bound to it. And I think we meet these practical fellows too little. There’s always something original about them.” He might naturally have believed that the reward of his faith was coming.

  “Thanks, I will take some of this wine,” said Lapham, pouring himself a glass of Madeira from a black and dusty bottle caressed by a label bearing the date of the vintage. He tossed off the wine, unconscious of its preciousness, and waited for the result. That cloudiness in his brain disappeared before it, but a mere blank remained. He not only could not remember what he was going to say, but he could not recall what they had been talking about. They waited, looking at him, and he stared at them in return. After a while he heard the host saying, “Shall we join the ladies?”

  Lapham went, trying to think what had happened. It seemed to him a long time since he had drunk that wine.

  Miss Corey gave him a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from his wife, who was talking with Miss Kingsbury and Mrs. Sewell; Irene was with Miss Nanny Corey. He could not hear what they were talking about; but if Penelope had come, he knew that she would have done them all credit. He meant to let her know how he felt about her behavior when he got home. It was a shame for her to miss such a chance. Irene was looking beautiful, as pretty as all the rest of them put together, but she was not talking, and Lapham perceived that at a dinner party you ought to talk. He was himself conscious of having talked very well. He now wore an air of great dignity, and, in conversing with the other gentlemen, he used a grave and weighty deliberation. Some of them wanted him to go into the library. There he gave his ideas of books. He said he had not much time for anything but the papers; but he was going to have a complete library in his new place. He made an elaborate acknowledgment to Bromfield Corey of his son’s kindness in suggesting books for his library; he said that he had ordered them all, and that he meant to have pictures. He asked Mr. Corey who was about the best American painter going now. “I don’t set up to be a judge of pictures, but I know what I like,” he said. He lost the reserve which he had maintained earlier, and began to boast. He himself introduced the subject of his paint, in a natural transition from pictures; he said Mr. Corey must take a run up to Lapham with him someday, and see the Works; they would interest him, and he would drive him ’round the country; he kept most of his horses up there, and he could show Mr. Corey some of the finest Jersey grades in the country. He told about his brother William, the judge at Dubuque; and a farm he had out there that paid for itself every year in wheat. As he cast off all fear, his voice rose, and he hammered his armchair with the thick of his hand for emphasis. Mr. Corey seemed impressed; he sat perfectly quiet, listening, and Lapham saw the other gentlemen stop in their talk every now and then to listen. After this proof of his ability to interest them, he would have liked to have Mrs. Lapham suggest again that he was unequal to their society, or to the society of anybody else. He surprised himself by his ease among men whose names had hitherto overawed him. He got to calling Bromfield Corey by his surname alone. He did not understand why young Corey seemed so preoccupied, and he took occasion to tell the company how he had said to his wife the first time he saw that fellow that he could make a man of him if he had him in the business; and he guessed he was not mistaken. He began to tell stories of the different young men he had had in his employ. At last he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, and he talked unceasingly. It was a great time; it was a triumph.

  He was in this successful mood when word came to him that Mrs. Lapham was going; Tom Corey seemed to have brought it, but he was not sure. Anyway, he was not going to hurry. He made cordial invitations to each of the gentlemen to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each. He told Charles Bellingham that he liked him, and assured James Bellingham that it had always been his ambition to know him, and that if anyone had said when he first came to Boston that in less than ten years he should be hobnobbing with Jim Bellingham, he should have told that person he lied. He would have told anybody he lied that had told him ten years ago that a son of Bromfield Corey would have come and asked him to take him into the business. Ten years ago he, Silas Lapham, had come to Boston a little worse off than nothing at all, for he was in debt for half the money that he had bought out his partner with, and here he was now worth a million, and meeting you gentlemen like one of you. And every cent of that was honest money—no speculation—every copper of it for value received. And here, only the other day, his old partner, who had been going to the dogs ever since he went out of the business, came and borrowed twenty thousand dollars of him! Lapham lent it because his wife wanted him to; she had always felt bad about the fellow’s having to go out of the business.

  He took leave of Mr. Sewell with patronizing affection, and bade him come to him if he ever got into a tight place with his parish work; he would let him have all the money he wanted; he had more money than he knew what to do with. “Why, when your wife sent to mine last fall,” he said, turning to Mr. Corey, “I drew my check for five hundred dollars, but my wife wouldn’t take more than one hundred; said she wasn’t going to show off before Mrs. Corey. I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs. Corey. I must tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of a cool four hundred dollars.”

  He started toward the door of the drawing room to take leave of the ladies; but Tom Corey was at his elbow, saying, “I think Mrs. Lapham is waiting for you below, sir,” and in obeying the direction Corey gave him toward another door he forgot all about his purpose, and came away without saying good night to his hostess.

  Mrs. Lapham had not known how soon she ought to go, and had no idea that in her quality of chief guest she was keeping the others. She stayed till eleven o’clock, and was a little frightened when she found what time it was; but Mrs. Corey, without pressing her to stay longer, had said it was not at all late. She and Irene had had a perfect time. Everybody had been very polite; on the way home they celebrated the amiability of both the Miss Coreys and of Miss Kingsbury. Mrs. Lapham thought that Mrs. Bellingham was about the pleasantest person she ever saw; she had told her all about her married daughter who had married an inventor and gone to live in Omaha—a Mrs. Blake.

  “If it’s that car-wheel Blake,” said Lapham proudly, “I know all about him. I’ve sold him tons of the paint.”

  “Pooh, Papa! How you do smell of smoking!” cried Irene.

  “Pretty strong, eh?” laughed Lapham, letting down a window of the carriage. His heart was throbbing wildly in the close air, and he was glad of the rush of cold that came in, though it stopped his tongue, and he listened more and more drowsily to the rejoicings that his wife and daughter exchanged. He meant to have them wake Penelope up and tell her what she had lost; but when he reached home he was too sleepy to suggest it. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, full of supreme triumph.

  But in the morning his skull was sore with the unconscious, night-long ache; and he rose cross and taciturn. They had a silent breakfast. In the cold gray light of the morning the glories of the night before showed poorer. Here and there a painful doubt obtruded itself and marred them with its awkward shadow. Penelope sent down word that she was not well, and was not coming to breakfast, and Lapham was glad to go to his office without seeing her.

  He was severe and silent all day with his clerks, and peremptory with customers. Of Corey he was slyly observant, and as the day wore away he grew more restively conscious. He sent out word by his office boy that he would like to see Mr. Corey for a few minutes after closing. The typ
ewriter girl had lingered too, as if she wished to speak with him, and Corey stood in abeyance as she went toward Lapham’s door.

  “Can’t see you tonight, Zerrilla,” he said bluffly, but not unkindly. “Perhaps I’ll call at the house, if it’s important.”

  “It is,” said the girl, with a spoiled air of insistence.

  “Well,” said Lapham, and, nodding to Corey to enter, he closed the door upon her. Then he turned to the young man and demanded: “Was I drunk last night?”

  XV

  LAPHAM’S strenuous face was broken up with the emotions that had forced him to this question: shame, fear of the things that must have been thought of him, mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, which died out at the shocked and pitying look in Corey’s eyes.

  “Was I drunk?” he repeated. “I ask you, because I was never touched by drink in my life before, and I don’t know.” He stood with his huge hands trembling on the back of his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he stared at Corey.

  “That is what everyone understood, Colonel Lapham,” said the young man. “Everyone saw how it was. Don’t—”

  “Did they talk it over after I left?” asked Lapham vulgarly.

  “Excuse me,” said Corey, blushing, “my father doesn’t talk his guests over with one another.” He added, with youthful superfluity, “You were among gentlemen.”

  “I was the only one that wasn’t a gentleman there!” lamented Lapham. “I disgraced you! I disgraced my family! I mortified your father before his friends!” His head dropped. “I showed that I wasn’t fit to go with you. I’m not fit for any decent place. What did I say? What did I do?” he asked, suddenly lifting his head and confronting Corey. “Out with it! If you could bear to see it and hear it, I had ought to bear to know it!”