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," a.s.sented 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 living 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 pa.s.sively 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 circ.u.mstances 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.
"Tom hasn"t consulted me," continued his father, "but he has consulted other people. And he has arrived at the conclusion that mineral paint is a good thing to go into. He has found out all about it, and about its founder or inventor. It"s quite impressive to hear him talk. And if he must do something for himself, I don"t see why his egotism shouldn"t as well take that form as another. Combined with the paint princess, it isn"t so agreeable; but that"s only a remote possibility, for which your princ.i.p.al ground is your motherly solicitude. But even if it were probable and imminent, what could you do? The chief consolation that we American parents have in these matters is that we can do nothing. If we were Europeans, even English, we should take some cognisance of our children"s love affairs, and in some measure teach their young affections how to shoot. But it is our custom to ignore them until they have shot, and then they ignore us. We are altogether too delicate to arrange the marriages of our children; and when they have arranged them we don"t like to say anything, for fear we should only make bad worse. The right way is for us to school ourselves to indifference. That is what the young people have to do elsewhere, and that is the only logical result of our position here.
It is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we don"t interfere with."
"Oh, people do interfere with their children"s marriages very often,"
said Mrs. Corey.
"Yes, but only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make it disagreeable for themselves if the marriages go on in spite of them, as they"re pretty apt to do. Now, my idea is that I ought to cut Tom off with a shilling. That would be very simple, and it would be economical. But you would never consent, and Tom wouldn"t mind it."
"I think our whole conduct in regard to such things is wrong," said Mrs. Corey.
"Oh, very likely. But our whole civilisation is based upon it. And who is going to make a beginning? To which father in our acquaintance shall I go and propose an alliance for Tom with his daughter? I should feel like an a.s.s. And will you go to some mother, and ask her sons in marriage for our daughters? You would feel like a goose. No; the only motto for us is, Hands off altogether."
"I shall certainly speak to Tom when the time comes," said Mrs. Corey.
"And I shall ask leave to be absent from your discomfiture, my dear,"
answered her husband.
The son returned that afternoon, and confessed his surprise at finding his mother in Boston. He was so frank that she had not quite the courage to confess in turn why she had come, but trumped up an excuse.
"Well, mother," he said promptly, "I have made an engagement with Mr.
Lapham."
"Have you, Tom?" she asked faintly.
"Yes. For the present I am going to have charge of his foreign correspondence, and if I see my way to the advantage I expect to find in it, I am going out to manage that side of his business in South America and Mexico. He"s behaved very handsomely about it. He says that if it appears for our common interest, he shall pay me a salary as well as a commission. I"ve talked with Uncle Jim, and he thinks it"s a good opening."
"Your Uncle Jim does?" queried Mrs. Corey in amaze.
"Yes; I consulted him the whole way through, and I"ve acted on his advice."
This seemed an incomprehensible treachery on her brother"s part.
"Yes; I thought you would like to have me. And besides, I couldn"t possibly have gone to any one so well fitted to advise me."
His mother said nothing. In fact, the mineral paint business, however painful its interest, was, for the moment, superseded by a more poignant anxiety. She began to feel her way cautiously toward this.
"Have you been talking about your business with Mr. Lapham all night?"
"Well, pretty much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh. "I went to see him yesterday afternoon, after I had gone over the whole ground with Uncle Jim, and Mr. Lapham asked me to go down with him and finish up."
"Down?" repeated Mrs. Corey. "Yes, to Nantasket. He has a cottage down there."
"At Nantasket?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows a little. "What in the world can a cottage at Nantasket be like?"
"Oh, very much like a "cottage" anywhere. It has the usual allowance of red roof and veranda. There are the regulation rocks by the sea; and the big hotels on the beach about a mile off, flaring away with electric lights and roman-candles at night. We didn"t have them at Nahant."
"No," said his mother. "Is Mrs. Lapham well? And her daughter?"
"Yes, I think so," said the young man. "The young ladies walked me down to the rocks in the usual way after dinner, and then I came back and talked paint with Mr. Lapham till midnight. We didn"t settle anything till this morning coming up on the boat."
"What sort of people do they seem to be at home?"
"What sort? Well, I don"t know that I noticed." Mrs. Corey permitted herself the first part of a sigh of relief; and her son laughed, but apparently not at her. "They"re just reading Middlemarch. They say there"s so much talk about it. Oh, I suppose they"re very good people.
They seemed to be on very good terms with each other."
"I suppose it"s the plain sister who"s reading Middlemarch."
"Plain? Is she plain?" asked the young man, as if searching his consciousness. "Yes, it"s the older one who does the reading, apparently. But I don"t believe that even she overdoes it. They like to talk better. They reminded me of Southern people in that." The young man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions of the Lapham family. "The living, as the country people call it, is tremendously good. The Colonel--he"s a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife"s coffee, as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, though I believe it was merely inspired by her. And there was everything in the house that money could buy. But money has its limitations."
This was a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realise more and more unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring her a certain comfort in its application to the Laphams. "Yes, there is a point where taste has to begin," she said.
"They seemed to want to apologise to me for not having more books,"
said Corey. "I don"t know why they should. The Colonel said they bought a good many books, first and last; but apparently they don"t take them to the sea-side."
"I dare say they NEVER buy a NEW book. I"ve met some of these moneyed people lately, and they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper editions."
"I fancy that"s the way with the Lapham family," said the young man, smilingly. "But they are very good people. The other daughter is humorous."