"We can"t ignore Tom"s intimacy with them--it amounts to that; it will probably continue even if it"s merely a fancy, and we must seem to know it; whatever comes of it, we can"t disown it. They are very simple, unfashionable people, and unworldly; but I can"t say that they are offensive, unless--unless," she added, in propitiation of her husband"s smile, "unless the father--how did you find the father?" she implored.
"He will be very entertaining," said Corey, "if you start him on his paint. What was the disagreeable daughter like? Shall you have her?"
"She"s little and dark. We must have them all," Mrs. Corey sighed.
"Then you don"t think a dinner would do?"
"Oh yes, I do. As you say, we can"t disown Tom"s relation to them, whatever it is. We had much better recognise it, and make the best of the inevitable. I think a Lapham dinner would be delightful." He looked at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, and she fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he laughed outright.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "it would be the best way of curing Tom of his fancy, if he has one. He has been seeing her with the dangerous advantages which a mother knows how to give her daughter in the family circle, and with no means of comparing her with other girls. You must invite several other very pretty girls."
"Do you really think so, Bromfield?" asked Mrs. Corey, taking courage a little. "That might do," But her spirits visibly sank again. "I don"t know any other girl half so pretty."
"Well, then, better bred."
"She is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing."
"Well, more cultivated."
"Tom doesn"t get on with such people."
"Oh, you wish him to marry her, I see."
"No, no."
"Then you"d better give the dinner to bring them together, to promote the affair."
"You know I don"t want to do that, Bromfield. But I feel that we must do something. If we don"t, it has a clandestine appearance. It isn"t just to them. A dinner won"t leave us in any worse position, and may leave us in a better. Yes," said Mrs. Corey, after another thoughtful interval, "we must have them--have them all. It could be very simple."
"Ah, you can"t give a dinner under a bushel, if I take your meaning, my dear. If we do this at all, we mustn"t do it as if we were ashamed of it. We must ask people to meet them."
"Yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "There are not many people in town yet," she added, with relief that caused her husband another smile. "There really seems a sort of fatality about it," she concluded religiously.
"Then you had better not struggle against it. Go and reconcile Lily and Nanny to it as soon as possible."
Mrs. Corey blanched a little. "But don"t you think it will be the best thing, Bromfield?"
"I do indeed, my dear. The only thing that shakes my faith in the scheme is the fact that I first suggested it. But if you have adopted it, it must be all right, Anna. I can"t say that I expected it."
"No," said his wife, "it wouldn"t do."
XIII.
HAVING distinctly given up the project of asking the Laphams to dinner, Mrs. Corey was able to carry it out with the courage of sinners who have sacrificed to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to their intended transgression. She did not question but the Laphams would come; and she only doubted as to the people whom she should invite to meet them. She opened the matter with some trepidation to her daughters, but neither of them opposed her; they rather looked at the scheme from her own point of view, and agreed with her that nothing had really yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams helplessly contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that ill-advised application to Mrs. Lapham for charity. Not only the princ.i.p.al of their debt of grat.i.tude remained, but the accruing interest. They said, What harm could giving the dinner possibly do them? They might ask any or all of their acquaintance without disadvantage to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give the dinner just the character they chose, and still flatter the ignorance of the Laphams. The trouble would be with Tom, if he were really interested in the girl; but he could not say anything if they made it a family dinner; he could not feel anything. They had each turned in her own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most comprehensive of those cousinships which form the admiration and terror of the adventurer in Boston society. He finds himself hemmed in and left out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all hope of safe personality in his comments on people; he is never less secure than when he hears some given Bostonian denouncing or ridiculing another. If he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring in these criticisms, however just they appear, for the probability is that their object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the censor. When the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling one another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, by the familiar abbreviations of their Christian names, he must feel keenly the exile to which he was born; but he is then, at least, in comparatively little danger; while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls at every step around him, in a society where Middles.e.xes have married Ess.e.xes and produced Suffolks for two hundred and fifty years.
These conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, are a source of strength and security to those native to them. An uncertain acquaintance may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such a cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it and tremendous stories are told of people who have spent a whole winter in Boston, in a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of the Suffolks, discover upon reflection that they have met no one but Ess.e.xes and Middles.e.xes.
Mrs. Corey"s brother James came first into her mind, and she thought with uncommon toleration of the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of his wife. James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout, and might be said to have actively promoted his connection with Lapham.
She thought next of the widow of her cousin, Henry Bellingham, who had let her daughter marry that Western steamboat man, and was fond of her son-in-law; she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king and his family. The daughters insisted so strongly upon Mrs. Bellingham"s son Charles, that Mrs. Corey put him down--if he were in town; he might be in Central America; he got on with all sorts of people. It seemed to her that she might stop at this: four Laphams, five Coreys, and four Bellinghams were enough.
"That makes thirteen," said Nanny. "You can have Mr. and Mrs. Sewell."
"Yes, that is a good idea," a.s.sented Mrs. Corey. "He is our minister, and it is very proper."
"I don"t see why you don"t have Robert Chase. It is a pity he shouldn"t see her--for the colour."
"I don"t quite like the idea of that," said Mrs. Corey; "but we can have him too, if it won"t make too many." The painter had married into a poorer branch of the Coreys, and his wife was dead. "Is there any one else?"
"There is Miss Kingsbury."
"We have had her so much. She will begin to think we are using her."
"She won"t mind; she"s so good-natured."
"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four Laphams, five Coreys, four Bellinghams, one Chase, and one Kingsbury--fifteen. Oh!
and two Sewells. Seventeen. Ten ladies and seven gentlemen. It doesn"t balance very well, and it"s too large."
"Perhaps some of the ladies won"t come," suggested Lily.
"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny.
Their mother reflected. "Well, I will ask them. The ladies will refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more artists. Why! we must have Mr. Seymour, the architect; he"s a bachelor, and he"s building their house, Tom says."
Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son"s name, and she told him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident misgiving.
"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his honest eyes.
She dropped her own in a little confusion. "I won"t do it at all, my dear," she said, "if you don"t approve. But I thought--You know we have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at Baie St. Paul. Then in the winter, I"m ashamed to say, I got money from her for a charity I was interested in; and I hate the idea of merely USING people in that way. And now your having been at their house this summer--we can"t seem to disapprove of that; and your business relations to him----"
"Yes, I see," said Corey. "Do you think it amounts to a dinner?"
"Why, I don"t know," returned his mother. "We shall have hardly any one out of our family connection."
"Well," Corey a.s.sented, "it might do. I suppose what you wish is to give them a pleasure."
"Why, certainly. Don"t you think they"d like to come?"
"Oh, they"d like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure after they were here is another thing. I should have said that if you wanted to have them, they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet our own immediate family."
"That"s what I thought of in the first place, but your father seemed to think it implied a social distrust of them; and we couldn"t afford to have that appearance, even to ourselves."
"Perhaps he was right."
"And besides, it might seem a little significant."
Corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "Whom did you think of asking?" His mother repeated the names. "Yes, that would do," he said, with a vague dissatisfaction.
"I won"t have it at all, if you don"t wish, Tom."