Chapter 24

by William Dean Howells

　　"It's hard to tell just where he stands. I suspect that a hopefultemperament and fondness for round numbers have always caused him toset his figures beyond his actual worth. I don't say that he's beendishonest about it, but he's had a loose way of estimating his assets;he's reckoned his wealth on the basis of his capital, and some of hiscapital is borrowed. He's lost heavily by some of the recent failures,and there's been a terrible shrinkage in his values. I don't meanmerely in the stock of paint on hand, but in a kind of competitionwhich has become very threatening. You know about that West Virginianpaint?"Corey nodded."Well, he tells me that they've struck a vein of natural gas out therewhich will enable them to make as good a paint as his own at a cost ofmanufacturing so low that they can undersell him everywhere. If thisproves to be the case, it will not only drive his paint out of themarket, but will reduce the value of his Works--the whole plant--atLapham to a merely nominal figure.""I see," said Corey dejectedly. "I've understood that he had put agreat deal of money into his Works.""Yes, and he estimated his mine there at a high figure. Of course itwill be worth little or nothing if the West Virginia paint drives hisout. Then, besides, Lapham has been into several things outside of hisown business, and, like a good many other men who try outside things,he's kept account of them himself; and he's all mixed up about them.He's asked me to look into his affairs with him, and I've promised todo so. Whether he can be tided over his difficulties remains to beseen. I'm afraid it will take a good deal of money to do it--a greatdeal more than he thinks, at least. He believes comparatively littlewould do it. I think differently. I think that anything less than agreat deal would be thrown away on him. If it were merely a questionof a certain sum--even a large sum--to keep him going, it might bemanaged; but it's much more complicated. And, as I say, it must havebeen a trial to him to refuse your offer."This did not seem to be the way in which Bellingham had meant toconclude. But he said no more; and Corey made him no response.He remained pondering the case, now hopefully, now doubtfully, andwondering, whatever his mood was, whether Penelope knew anything of thefact with which her mother went nearly at the same moment to acquainther."Of course, he's done it on your account," Mrs. Lapham could not helpsaying."Then he was very silly. Does he think I would let him give fathermoney? And if father lost it for him, does he suppose it would make itany easier for me? I think father acted twice as well. It was verysilly."In repeating the censure, her look was not so severe as her tone; sheeven smiled a little, and her mother reported to her father that sheacted more like herself than she had yet since Corey's offer."I think, if he was to repeat his offer, she would have him now," saidMrs. Lapham."Well, I'll let her know if he does," said the Colonel."I guess he won't do it to you!" she cried."Who else will he do it to?" he demanded.They perceived that they had each been talking of a different offer.After Lapham went to his business in the morning the postman broughtanother letter from Irene, which was full of pleasant things that werehappening to her; there was a great deal about her cousin Will, as shecalled him. At the end she had written, "Tell Pen I don't want sheshould be foolish." "There!" said Mrs. Lapham. "I guess it's going tocome out right, all round;" and it seemed as if even the Colonel'sdifficulties were past. "When your father gets through this, Pen," sheasked impulsively, "what shall you do?""What have you been telling Irene about me?""Nothing much. What should you do?""It would be a good deal easier to say what I should do if fatherdidn't," said the girl."I know you think it was nice in him to make your father that offer,"urged the mother."It was nice, yes; but it was silly," said the girl. "Most nice thingsare silly, I suppose," she added.She went to her room and wrote a letter. It was very long, and verycarefully written; and when she read it over, she tore it into smallpieces. She wrote another one, short and hurried, and tore that uptoo. Then she went back to her mother, in the family room, and askedto see Irene's letter, and read it over to herself. "Yes, she seems tobe having a good time," she sighed. "Mother, do you think I ought tolet Mr. Corey know that I know about it?""Well, I should think it would be a pleasure to him," said Mrs. Laphamjudicially."I'm not so sure of that the way I should have to tell him. I shouldbegin by giving him a scolding. Of course, he meant well by it, butcan't you see that it wasn't very flattering! How did he expect itwould change me?""I don't believe he ever thought of that.""Don't you? Why?""Because you can see that he isn't one of that kind. He might want toplease you without wanting to change you by what he did.""Yes. He must have known that nothing would change me,--at least,nothing that he could do. I thought of that. I shouldn't like him tofeel that I couldn't appreciate it, even if I did think it was silly.Should you write to him?""I don't see why not.""It would be too pointed. No, I shall just let it go. I wish hehadn't done it.""Well, he has done it." "And I've tried to write to him about it--twoletters: one so humble and grateful that it couldn't stand up on itsedge, and the other so pert and flippant. Mother, I wish you couldhave seen those two letters! I wish I had kept them to look at if Iever got to thinking I had any sense again. They would take theconceit out of me.""What's the reason he don't come here any more?""Doesn't he come?" asked Penelope in turn, as if it were something shehad not noticed particularly."You'd ought to know.""Yes." She sat silent a while. "If he doesn't come, I suppose it'sbecause he's offended at something I did.""What did you do?""Nothing. I--wrote to him--a little while ago. I suppose it was veryblunt, but I didn't believe he would be angry at it. But this--thisthat he's done shows he was angry, and that he wasn't just seizing thefirst chance to get out of it.""What have you done, Pen?" demanded her mother sharply."Oh, I don't know. All the mischief in the world, I suppose. I'lltell you. When you first told me that father was in trouble with hisbusiness, I wrote to him not to come any more till I let him. I said Icouldn't tell him why, and he hasn't been here since. I'm sure I don'tknow what it means."Her mother looked at her with angry severity. "Well, Penelope Lapham!For a sensible child, you ARE the greatest goose I ever saw. Did youthink he would come here and SEE if you wouldn't let him come?""He might have written," urged the girl.Her mother made that despairing "Tchk!" with her tongue, and fell backin her chair. "I should have DESPISED him if he had written. He'sacted just exactly right, and you--you've acted--I don't know HOWyou've acted. I'm ashamed of you. A girl that could be so sensiblefor her sister, and always say and do just the right thing, and thenwhen it comes to herself to be such a DISGUSTING simpleton!""I thought I ought to break with him at once, and not let him supposethat there was any hope for him or me if father was poor. It was myone chance, in this whole business, to do anything heroic, and I jumpedat it. You mustn't think, because I can laugh at it now, that I wasn'tin earnest, mother! I WAS--dead! But the Colonel has gone to ruin sogradually, that he's spoilt everything. I expected that he would bebankrupt the next day, and that then HE would understand what I meant.But to have it drag along for a fortnight seems to take all the heroismout of it, and leave it as flat!" She looked at her mother with a smilethat shone through her tears, and a pathos that quivered round herjesting lips. "It's easy enough to be sensible for other people. Butwhen it comes to myself, there I am! Especially, when I want to do whatI oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing what I didn't want to doMUST be doing what I ought! But it's been a great success one way,mother. It's helped me to keep up before the Colonel. If it hadn'tbeen for Mr. Corey's staying away, and my feeling so indignant with himfor having been badly treated by me, I shouldn't have been worthanything at all."The tears started down her cheeks, but her mother said, "Well, now, goalong, and write to him. It don't matter what you say, much; and don'tbe so very particular."Her third attempt at a letter pleased her scarcely better than therest, but she sent it, though it seemed so blunt and awkward. Shewrote:--DEAR FRIEND,--I expected when I sent you that note, that you wouldunderstand, almost the next day, why I could not see you any more. Youmust know now, and you must not think that if anything happened to myfather, I should wish you to help him. But that is no reason why Ishould not thank you, and I do thank you, for offering. It was likeyou, I will say that.Yours sincerely, PENELOPE LAPHAM.She posted her letter, and he sent his reply in the evening, by hand:--DEAREST,--What I did was nothing, till you praised it. Everything Ihave and am is yours. Won't you send a line by the bearer, to say thatI may come to see you? I know how you feel; but I am sure that I canmake you think differently. You must consider that I loved you withouta thought of your father's circumstances, and always shall.T. C.The generous words were blurred to her eyes by the tears that spranginto them. But she could only write in answer:--"Please do not come; I have made up my mind. As long as this troubleis hanging over us, I cannot see you. And if father is unfortunate,all is over between us."She brought his letter to her mother, and told her what she had writtenin reply. Her mother was thoughtful a while before she said, with asigh, "Well, I hope you've begun as you can carry out, Pen.""Oh, I shall not have to carry out at all. I shall not have to doanything. That's one comfort--the only comfort." She went away to herown room, and when Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the affair, he wassilent at first, as she had been. Then he said, "I don't know as Ishould have wanted her to done differently; I don't know as she could.If I ever come right again, she won't have anything to feel meechingabout; and if I don't, I don't want she should be beholden to anybody.And I guess that's the way she feels."The Coreys in their turn sat in judgment on the fact which their sonfelt bound to bring to their knowledge."She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Corey, to whom her son hadspoken."My dear," said her husband, with his laugh, "she has behaved TOO well.If she had studied the whole situation with the most artful eye to itsmastery, she could not possibly have behaved better."The process of Lapham's financial disintegration was like the course ofsome chronic disorder, which has fastened itself upon the constitution,but advances with continual reliefs, with apparent amelioration, and attimes seems not to advance at all, when it gives hope of final recoverynot only to the sufferer, but to the eye of science itself. There weremoments when James Bellingham, seeing Lapham pass this crisis and that,began to fancy that he might pull through altogether; and at thesemoments, when his adviser could not oppose anything but experience andprobability to the evidence of the fact, Lapham was buoyant withcourage, and imparted his hopefulness to his household. Our theory ofdisaster, of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets andnovelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage in our own livesand in the lives of others, so far as we have witnessed them, teachesus that this is false. The house of mourning is decorously darkened tothe world, but within itself it is also the house of laughing. Burstsof gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve the gloom, and thestricken survivors have their jests together, in which the thought ofthe dead is tenderly involved, and a fond sense, not crazier than manyothers, of sympathy and enjoyment beyond the silence, justifies thesunnier mood before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing, andmaking it all up again with the conventional fitness of things.Lapham's adversity had this quality in common with bereavement. It wasnot always like the adversity we figure in allegory; it had its momentsof being like prosperity, and if upon the whole it was continual, itwas not incessant. Sometimes there was a week of repeated reverses,when he had to keep his teeth set and to hold on hard to all hishopefulness; and then days came of negative result or slight success,when he was full of his jokes at the tea-table, and wanted to go to thetheatre, or to do something to cheer Penelope up. In some miraculousway, by some enormous stroke of success which should eclipse thebrightest of his past prosperity, he expected to do what wouldreconcile all difficulties, not only in his own affairs, but in herstoo. "You'll see," he said to his wife; "it's going to come out allright. Irene'll fix it up with Bill's boy, and then she'll be offPen's mind; and if things go on as they've been going for the last twodays, I'm going to be in a position to do the favours myself, and Pencan feel that SHE'S makin' a sacrifice, and then I guess may be she'lldo it. If things turn out as I expect now, and times ever do get anybetter generally, I can show Corey that I appreciate his offer. I canoffer him the partnership myself then."Even in the other moods, which came when everything had been goingwrong, and there seemed no way out of the net, there were points ofconsolation to Lapham and his wife. They rejoiced that Irene was safebeyond the range of their anxieties, and they had a proud satisfactionthat there had been no engagement between Corey and Penelope, and thatit was she who had forbidden it. In the closeness of interest andsympathy in which their troubles had reunited them, they confessed toeach other that nothing would have been more galling to their pridethan the idea that Lapham should not have been able to do everythingfor his daughter that the Coreys might have expected. Whateverhappened now, the Coreys could not have it to say that the Laphams hadtried to bring any such thing about.Bellingham had lately suggested an assignment to Lapham, as the bestway out of his difficulties. It was evident that he had not the moneyto meet his liabilities at present, and that he could not raise itwithout ruinous sacrifices, that might still end in ruin after all. Ifhe made the assignment, Bellingham argued, he could gain time and maketerms; the state of things generally would probably improve, since itcould not be worse, and the market, which he had glutted with hispaint, might recover and he could start again. Lapham had not agreedwith him. When his reverses first began it had seemed easy for him togive up everything, to let the people he owed take all, so only theywould let him go out with clean hands; and he had dramatised thisfeeling in his talk with his wife, when they spoke together of themills on the G. L. & P. But ever since then it had been growing harder,and he could not consent even to seem to do it now in the proposedassignment. He had not found other men so very liberal or faithfulwith him; a good many of them appeared to have combined to hunt himdown; a sense of enmity towards all his creditors asserted itself inhim; he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too. Aboveall, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment. It was openconfession that he had been a fool in some way; he could not bear tohave his family--his brother the judge, especially, to whom he hadalways appeared the soul of business wisdom--think him imprudent orstupid. He would make any sacrifice before it came to that. Hedetermined in parting with Bellingham to make the sacrifice which hehad oftenest in his mind, because it was the hardest, and to sell hisnew house. That would cause the least comment. Most people wouldsimply think that he had got a splendid offer, and with his usual luckhad made a very good thing of it; others who knew a little more abouthim would say that he was hauling in his horns, but they could notblame him; a great many other men were doing the same in those hardtimes--the shrewdest and safest men: it might even have a good effect.He went straight from Bellingham's office to the real-estate broker inwhose hands he meant to put his house, for he was not the sort of manto shilly-shally when he had once made up his mind. But he found ithard to get his voice up out of his throat, when he said he guessed hewould get the broker to sell that new house of his on the water side ofBeacon. The broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed ColonelLapham knew it was a pretty dull time in real estate? and Lapham saidyes, he knew that, but he should not sell at a sacrifice, and he didnot care to have the broker name him or describe the house definitelyunless parties meant business. Again the broker said yes; and headded, as a joke Lapham would appreciate, that he had half a dozenhouses on the water side of Beacon, on the same terms; that nobodywanted to be named or to have his property described.It did, in fact, comfort Lapham a little to find himself in the sameboat with so many others; he smiled grimly, and said in his turn, yes,he guessed that was about the size of it with a good many people. Buthe had not the heart to tell his wife what he had done, and he sattaciturn that whole evening, without even going over his accounts, andwent early to bed, where he lay tossing half the night before he fellasleep. He slept at last only upon the promise he made himself that hewould withdraw the house from the broker's hands; but he went heavilyto his own business in the morning without doing so. There was no suchrush, anyhow, he reflected bitterly; there would be time to do that amonth later, probably.It struck him with a sort of dismay when a boy came with a note from abroker, saying that a party who had been over the house in the fall hadcome to him to know whether it could be bought, and was willing to paythe cost of the house up to the time he had seen it. Lapham tookrefuge in trying to think who the party could be; he concluded that itmust have been somebody who had gone over it with the architect, and hedid not like that; but he was aware that this was not an answer to thebroker, and he wrote that he would give him an answer in the morning.Now that it had come to the point, it did not seem to him that he couldpart with the house. So much of his hope for himself and his childrenhad gone into it that the thought of selling it made him tremulous andsick. He could not keep about his work steadily, and with his nervesshaken by want of sleep, and the shock of this sudden and unexpectedquestion, he left his office early, and went over to look at the houseand try to bring himself to some conclusion here. The long processionof lamps on the beautiful street was flaring in the clear red of thesunset towards which it marched, and Lapham, with a lump in his throat,stopped in front of his house and looked at their multitude. They werenot merely a part of the landscape; they were a part of his pride andglory, his success, his triumphant life's work which was fading intofailure in his helpless hands. He ground his teeth to keep down thatlump, but the moisture in his eyes blurred the lamps, and the keen palecrimson against which it made them flicker. He turned and looked up,as he had so often done, at the window-spaces, neatly glazed for thewinter with white linen, and recalled the night when he had stoppedwith Irene before the house, and she had said that she should neverlive there, and he had tried to coax her into courage about it. Therewas no such facade as that on the whole street, to his thinking.Through his long talks with the architect, he had come to feel almostas intimately and fondly as the architect himself the satisfyingsimplicity of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail. Itappealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearnedear, and he recognised the difference between this fine work and theobstreperous pretentiousness of the many overloaded house-fronts whichSeymour had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere on the BackBay. Now, in the depths of his gloom, he tried to think what Italiancity it was where Seymour said he had first got the notion of treatingbrick-work in that way.He unlocked the temporary door with the key he always carried, so thathe could let himself in and out whenever he liked, and entered thehouse, dim and very cold with the accumulated frigidity of the wholewinter in it, and looking as if the arrest of work upon it had takenplace a thousand years before. It smelt of the unpainted woods and theclean, hard surfaces of the plaster, where the experiments indecoration had left it untouched; and mingled with these odours wasthat of some rank pigments and metallic compositions which Seymour hadused in trying to realise a certain daring novelty of finish, which hadnot proved successful. Above all, Lapham detected the peculiar odourof his own paint, with which the architect had been greatly interestedone day, when Lapham showed it to him at the office. He had askedLapham to let him try the Persis Brand in realising a little idea hehad for the finish of Mrs. Lapham's room. If it succeeded they couldtell her what it was, for a surprise.Lapham glanced at the bay-window in the reception-room, where he satwith his girls on the trestles when Corey first came by; and then heexplored the whole house to the attic, in the light faintly admittedthrough the linen sashes. The floors were strewn with shavings andchips which the carpenters had left, and in the music-room these hadbeen blown into long irregular windrows by the draughts through a widerent in the linen sash. Lapham tried to pin it up, but failed, andstood looking out of it over the water. The ice had left the river,and the low tide lay smooth and red in the light of the sunset. TheCambridge flats showed the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bareafter a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked trees, the spiresand roofs had a black outline, as if they were objects in a landscapeof the French school.The whim seized Lapham to test the chimney in the music-room; it hadbeen tried in the dining-room below, and in his girls' fireplacesabove, but here the hearth was still clean. He gathered some shavingsand blocks together, and kindled them, and as the flame mounted gailyfrom them, he pulled up a nail-keg which he found there and sat down towatch it. Nothing could have been better; the chimney was a perfectsuccess; and as Lapham glanced out of the torn linen sash he said tohimself that that party, whoever he was, who had offered to buy hishouse might go to the devil; he would never sell it as long as he had adollar. He said that he should pull through yet; and it suddenly cameinto his mind that, if he could raise the money to buy out those WestVirginia fellows, he should be all right, and would have the whole gamein his own hand. He slapped himself on the thigh, and wondered that hehad never thought of that before; and then, lighting a cigar with asplinter from the fire, he sat down again to work the scheme out in hisown mind. He did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the stairs, andcoming towards the room where he sat; and the policeman to whom thefeet belonged had to call out to him, smoking at his chimney-corner,with his back turned to the door, "Hello! what are you doing here?""What's that to you?" retorted Lapham, wheeling half round on hisnail-keg."I'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon him, and thenstopping short as he recognised him. "Why, Colonel Lapham! I thoughtit was some tramp got in here!""Have a cigar?" said Lapham hospitably. "Sorry there ain't anothernail-keg."The officer took the cigar. "I'll smoke it outside. I've just comeon, and I can't stop. Tryin' your chimney?""Yes, I thought I'd see how it would draw, in here. It seems to gofirst-rate."The policeman looked about him with an eye of inspection. "You want toget that linen window, there, mended up.""Yes, I'll speak to the builder about that. It can go for one night."The policeman went to the window and failed to pin the linen togetherwhere Lapham had failed before. "I can't fix it." He looked round oncemore, and saying, "Well, good night," went out and down the stairs.Lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked his cigar; then he roseand stamped upon the embers that still burned with his heavy boots, andwent home. He was very cheerful at supper. He told his wife that heguessed he had a sure thing of it now, and in another twenty-four hourshe should tell her just how. He made Penelope go to the theatre withhim, and when they came out, after the play, the night was so fine thathe said they must walk round by the new house and take a look at it inthe starlight. He said he had been there before he came home, andtried Seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like a charm.As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware of unwonted stir andtumult, and presently the still air transmitted a turmoil of sound,through which a powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt. Thesky had reddened above them, and turning the corner at the PublicGarden, they saw a black mass of people obstructing the perspective ofthe brightly-lighted street, and out of this mass a half-dozen engines,whose strong heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes offire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels. Ladders were plantedagainst the facade of a building, from the roof of which a mass offlame burnt smoothly upward, except where here and there it seemed topull contemptuously away from the heavy streams of water which thefiremen, clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in uponit.Lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing andgossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter, before theburning house, to make sure that it was his."I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said.Among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed to haverun out from dinner in some neighbouring house; the ladies werefantastically wrapped up, as if they had flung on the first things theycould seize."Isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl. "I wouldn'thave missed it on any account. Thank you so much, Mr. Symington, forbringing us out!""Ah, I thought you'd like it," said this Mr. Symington, who must havebeen the host; "and you can enjoy it without the least compunction,Miss Delano, for I happen to know that the house belongs to a man whocould afford to burn one up for you once a year.""Oh, do you think he would, if I came again?""I haven't the least doubt of it. We don't do things by halves inBoston.""He ought to have had a coat of his noncombustible paint on it," saidanother gentleman of the party.Penelope pulled her father away toward the first carriage she couldreach of a number that had driven up. "Here, father! get into this.""No, no; I couldn't ride," he answered heavily, and he walked home insilence. He greeted his wife with, "Well, Persis, our house is gone!And I guess I set it on fire myself;" and while he rummaged among thepapers in his desk, still with his coat and hat on, his wife got thefacts as she could from Penelope. She did not reproach him. Here wasa case in which his self-reproach must be sufficiently sharp withoutany edge from her. Besides, her mind was full of a terrible thought."O Silas," she faltered, "they'll think you set it on fire to get theinsurance!"Lapham was staring at a paper which he held in his hand. "I had abuilder's risk on it, but it expired last week. It's a dead loss.""Oh, thank the merciful Lord!" cried his wife."Merciful!" said Lapham. "Well, it's a queer way of showing it."He went to bed, and fell into the deep sleep which sometimes follows agreat moral shock. It was perhaps rather a torpor than a sleep.