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 This time Irene came radiantly up to Penelope"s room, where she had again withdrawn herself.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 mamma 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 can"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 pa.s.sed 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 wa"n"t fit for "em to walk on."
"I"m not going to have "em say we took an advantage of their being away and tolled him on."
"I should like to HEAR "em say it!" cried Lapham. "Or anybody!"
"Well," said his wife, relinquishing this point of anxiety, "I can"t make out whether he cares anything for her or not. And Pen can"t tell either; or else she won"t."
"Oh, I guess he cares for her, fast enough," said the Colonel.
"I can"t make out that he"s said or done the first thing to show it."
"Well, I was better than a year getting my courage up."
"Oh, that was different," said Mrs. Lapham, in contemptuous dismissal of the comparison, and yet with a certain fondness. "I guess, if he cared for her, a fellow in his position wouldn"t be long getting up his courage to speak to Irene."
Lapham brought his fist down on the table between them.
"Look here, Persis! Once for all, now, don"t you ever let me hear you say anything like that again! I"m worth nigh on to a million, and I"ve made it every cent myself; and my girls are the equals of anybody, I don"t care who it is. He ain"t the fellow to take on any airs; but if he ever tries it with me, I"ll send him to the right about mighty quick. I"ll have a talk with him, if----"
"No, no; don"t do that!" implored his wife. "I didn"t mean anything.
I don"t know as I meant ANYthing. He"s just as una.s.suming as he can be, and I think Irene"s a match for anybody. You just let things go on. It"ll be all right. You never can tell how it is with young people. Perhaps SHE"S offish. Now you ain"t--you ain"t going to say anything?"
Lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the more easily, no doubt, because after his explosion he must have perceived that his pride itself stood in the way of what his pride had threatened. He contented himself with his wife"s promise that she would never again present that offensive view of the case, and she did not remain without a certain support in his st.u.r.dy self-a.s.sertion.
XII.
MRS. COREY returned with her daughters in the early days of October, having pa.s.sed three or four weeks at Intervale after leaving Bar Harbour. They were somewhat browner than they were when they left town in June, but they were not otherwise changed. Lily, the elder of the girls, had brought back a number of studies of kelp and toadstools, with accessory rocks and rotten logs, which she would never finish up and never show any one, knowing the slightness of their merit. Nanny, the younger, had read a great many novels with a keen sense of their inaccuracy as representations of life, and had seen a great deal of life with a sad regret for its difference from fiction. They were both nice girls, accomplished, well-dressed of course, and well enough looking; but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains whom their taste would allow to influence their fate, and they had come home to the occupations they had left, with no hopes and no fears to distract them.
In the absence of these they were fitted to take the more vivid interest in their brother"s affairs, which they could see weighed upon their mother"s mind after the first hours of greeting.
"Oh, it seems to have been going on, and your father has never written a word about it," she said, shaking her head.
"What good would it have done?" asked Nanny, who was little and fair, with rings of light hair that filled a bonnet-front very prettily; she looked best in a bonnet. "It would only have worried you. He could not have stopped Tom; you couldn"t, when you came home to do it."
"I dare say papa didn"t know much about it," suggested Lily. She was a tall, lean, dark girl, who looked as if she were not quite warm enough, and whom you always a.s.sociated with wraps of different aesthetic effect after you had once seen her.
It is a serious matter always to the women of his family when a young man gives them cause to suspect that he is interested in some other woman. A son-in-law or brother-in-law does not enter the family; he need not be caressed or made anything of; but the son"s or brother"s wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they cannot deny.
Some convention of their s.e.x obliges them to show her affection, to like or to seem to like her, to take her to their intimacy, however odious she may be to them. With the Coreys it was something more than an affair of sentiment. They were by no means poor, and they were not dependent money-wise upon Tom Corey; but the mother had come, without knowing it, to rely upon his sense, his advice in everything, and the sisters, seeing him hitherto so indifferent to girls, had insensibly grown to regard him as altogether their own till he should be released, not by his marriage, but by theirs, an event which had not approached with the lapse of time. Some kinds of girls--they believed that they could readily have chosen a kind--might have taken him without taking him from them; but this generosity could not be hoped for in such a girl as Miss Lapham.
"Perhaps," urged their mother, "it would not be so bad. She seemed an affectionate little thing with her mother, without a great deal of character though she was so capable about some things."
"Oh, she"ll be an affectionate little thing with Tom too, you may be sure," said Nanny. "And that characterless capability becomes the most in tense narrow-mindedness. She"ll think we were against her from the beginning."
"She has no cause for that," Lily interposed, "and we shall not give her any."
"Yes, we shall," retorted Nanny. "We can"t help it; and if we can"t, her own ignorance would be cause enough."
"I can"t feel that she"s altogether ignorant," said Mrs. Corey justly.
"Of course she can read and write," admitted Nanny.
"I can"t imagine what he finds to talk about with her," said Lily.
"Oh, THAT"S very simple," returned her sister.
"They talk about themselves, with occasional references to each other.
I have heard people "going on" on the hotel piazzas. She"s embroidering, or knitting, or tatting, or something of that kind; and he says she seems quite devoted to needlework, and she says, yes, she has a perfect pa.s.sion for it, and everybody laughs at her for it; but she can"t help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she always shall be,--with remote and minute particulars. And she ends by saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or embroider, or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather better, or if you"re in the woods camping. Then she lets him take up one corner of her work, and perhaps touch her fingers; and that encourages him to say that he supposes nothing could induce her to drop her work long enough to go down on the rocks, or out among the huckleberry bushes; and she puts her head on one side, and says she doesn"t know really. And then they go, and he lies at her feet on the rocks, or picks huckleberries and drops them in her lap, and they go on talking about themselves, and comparing notes to see how they differ from each other. And----"
"That will do, Nanny," said her mother.
Lily smiled autumnally. "Oh, disgusting!"
"Disgusting? Not at all!" protested her sister. "It"s very amusing when you see it, and when you do it----"
"It"s always a mystery what people see in each other," observed Mrs.
Corey severely.
"Yes," Nanny admitted, "but I don"t know that there is much comfort for us in the application." "No, there isn"t," said her mother.
"The most that we can do is to hope for the best till we know the worst. Of course we shall make the best of the worst when it comes."
"Yes, and perhaps it would not be so very bad. I was saying to your father when I was here in July that those things can always be managed.
You must face them as if they were nothing out of the way, and try not to give any cause for bitterness among ourselves."