"I feel that it wouldn"t be at all like him to do so," said Mrs. Corey, going on to entangle herself in her words, as women often do when their ideas are perfectly clear. "Don"t go to reading, please, Bromfield! I am really worried about this matter I must know how much it means. I can"t let it go on so. I don"t see how you can rest easy without knowing."
"I don"t in the least know what"s going to become of me when I die; and yet I sleep well," replied Bromfield Corey, putting his newspaper aside.
"Ah! but this is a very different thing."
"So much more serious? Well, what can you do? We had this out when you were here in the summer, and you agreed with me then that we could do nothing. The situation hasn"t changed at all."
"Yes, it has; it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, again expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "I think I must ask Tom outright."
"You know you can"t do that, my dear."
"Then why doesn"t he tell us?"
"Ah, that"s what HE can"t do, if he"s making love to Miss Irene--that"s her name, I believe--on the American plan. He will tell us after he has told HER. That was the way I did. Don"t ignore our own youth, Anna. It was a long while ago, I"ll admit."
"It was very different," said Mrs. Corey, a little shaken.
"I don"t see how. I dare say Mamma Lapham knows whether Tom is in love with her daughter or not; and no doubt Papa Lapham knows it at second hand. But we shall not know it until the girl herself does. Depend upon that. Your mother knew, and she told your father; but my poor father knew nothing about it till we were engaged; and I had been hanging about--dangling, as you call it----"
"No, no; YOU called it that."
"Was it I?--for a year or more."
The wife could not refuse to be a little consoled by the image of her young love which the words conjured up, however little she liked its relation to her son"s interest in Irene Lapham. She smiled pensively.
"Then you think it hasn"t come to an understanding with them yet?"
"An understanding? Oh, probably."
"An explanation, then?"
"The only logical inference from what we"ve been saying is that it hasn"t. But I don"t ask you to accept it on that account. May I read now, my dear?"
"Yes, you may read now," said Mrs. Corey, with one of those sighs which perhaps express a feminine sense of the unsatisfactoriness of husbands in general, rather than a personal discontent with her own.
"Thank you, my dear; then I think I"ll smoke too," said Bromfield Corey, lighting a cigar.
She left him in peace, and she made no further attempt upon her son"s confidence. But she was not inactive for that reason. She did not, of course, admit to herself, and far less to others, the motive with which she went to pay an early visit to the Laphams, who had now come up from Nantasket to Nankeen Square. She said to her daughters that she had always been a little ashamed of using her acquaintance with them to get money for her charity, and then seeming to drop it. Besides, it seemed to her that she ought somehow to recognise the business relation that Tom had formed with the father; they must not think that his family disapproved of what he had done. "Yes, business is business," said Nanny, with a laugh. "Do you wish us to go with you again?"
"No; I will go alone this time," replied the mother with dignity.
Her coupe now found its way to Nankeen Square without difficulty, and she sent up a card, which Mrs. Lapham received in the presence of her daughter Penelope.
"I presume I"ve got to see her," she gasped.
"Well, don"t look so guilty, mother," joked the girl; "you haven"t been doing anything so VERY wrong."
"It seems as if I HAD. I don"t know what"s come over me. I wasn"t afraid of the woman before, but now I don"t seem to feel as if I could look her in the face. He"s been coming here of his own accord, and I fought against his coming long enough, goodness knows. I didn"t want him to come. And as far forth as that goes, we"re as respectable as they are; and your father"s got twice their money, any day. We"ve no need to go begging for their favour. I guess they were glad enough to get him in with your father."
"Yes, those are all good points, mother," said the girl; "and if you keep saying them over, and count a hundred every time before you speak, I guess you"ll worry through."
Mrs. Lapham had been fussing distractedly with her hair and ribbons, in preparation for her encounter with Mrs. Corey. She now drew in a long quivering breath, stared at her daughter without seeing her, and hurried downstairs. It was true that when she met Mrs. Corey before she had not been awed by her; but since then she had learned at least her own ignorance of the world, and she had talked over the things she had misconceived and the things she had shrewdly guessed so much that she could not meet her on the former footing of equality. In spite of as brave a spirit and as good a conscience as woman need have, Mrs.
Lapham cringed inwardly, and tremulously wondered what her visitor had come for. She turned from pale to red, and was hardly coherent in her greetings; she did not know how they got to where Mrs. Corey was saying exactly the right things about her son"s interest and satisfaction in his new business, and keeping her eyes fixed on Mrs. Lapham"s, reading her uneasiness there, and making her feel, in spite of her indignant innocence, that she had taken a base advantage of her in her absence to get her son away from her and marry him to Irene. Then, presently, while this was painfully revolving itself in Mrs. Lapham"s mind, she was aware of Mrs. Corey"s asking if she was not to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Irene.
"No; she"s out, just now," said Mrs. Lapham. "I don"t know just when she"ll be in. She went to get a book." And here she turned red again, knowing that Irene had gone to get the book because it was one that Corey had spoken of.
"Oh! I"m sorry," said Mrs. Corey. "I had hoped to see her. And your other daughter, whom I never met?"
"Penelope?" asked Mrs. Lapham, eased a little. "She is at home. I will go and call her." The Laphams had not yet thought of spending their superfluity on servants who could be rung for; they kept two girls and a man to look after the furnace, as they had for the last ten years. If Mrs. Lapham had rung in the parlour, her second girl would have gone to the street door to see who was there. She went upstairs for Penelope herself, and the girl, after some rebellious derision, returned with her.
Mrs. Corey took account of her, as Penelope withdrew to the other side of the room after their introduction, and sat down, indolently submissive on the surface to the tests to be applied, and following Mrs. Corey"s lead of the conversation in her odd drawl.
"You young ladies will be glad to be getting into your new house," she said politely.
"I don"t know," said Penelope. "We"re so used to this one."
Mrs. Corey looked a little baffled, but she said sympathetically, "Of course, you will be sorry to leave your old home."
Mrs. Lapham could not help putting in on behalf of her daughters: "I guess if it was left to the girls to say, we shouldn"t leave it at all."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey; "are they so much attached? But I can quite understand it. My children would be heart-broken too if we were to leave the old place." She turned to Penelope. "But you must think of the lovely new house, and the beautiful position."
"Yes, I suppose we shall get used to them too," said Penelope, in response to this didactic consolation.
"Oh, I could even imagine your getting very fond of them," pursued Mrs.
Corey patronisingly. "My son has told me of the lovely outlook you"re to have over the water. He thinks you have such a beautiful house. I believe he had the pleasure of meeting you all there when he first came home."
"Yes, I think he was our first visitor."
"He is a great admirer of your house," said Mrs. Corey, keeping her eyes very sharply, however politely, on Penelope"s face, as if to surprise there the secret of any other great admiration of her son"s that might helplessly show itself.
"Yes," said the girl, "he"s been there several times with father; and he wouldn"t be allowed to overlook any of its good points."
Her mother took a little more courage from her daughter"s tranquillity.
"The girls make such fun of their father"s excitement about his building, and the way he talks it into everybody."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Corey, with civil misunderstanding and inquiry.
Penelope flushed, and her mother went on: "I tell him he"s more of a child about it than any of them."
"Young people are very philosophical nowadays," remarked Mrs. Corey.
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Lapham. "I tell them they"ve always had everything, so that nothing"s a surprise to them. It was different with us in our young days."
"Yes," said Mrs. Corey, without a.s.senting.
"I mean the Colonel and myself," explained Mrs. Lapham.
"Oh yes--yes!" said Mrs. Corey.