Chapter 5

by William Dean Howells

　　"It's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," observedhis father. "All summer through, in weather that sends the sturdiestfemale flying to the sea-shore, you find the clubs filled with youngmen, who don't seem to mind the heat in the least.""Boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," said the son,declining to take up the matter in its ironical shape."I dare say it isn't, compared with Texas," returned the father,smoking tranquilly on. "But I don't suppose you find many of yourfriends in town outside of the club.""No; you're requested to ring at the rear door, all the way down BeaconStreet and up Commonwealth Avenue. It's rather a blank reception forthe returning prodigal.""Ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back out of season.But I'm glad to have you back, Tom, even as it is, and I hope you'renot going to hurry away. You must give your energies a rest.""I'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity,"suggested the son, taking his father's jokes in good part."No, I don't know that I have," admitted the elder. "You've alwaysshown a fair degree of moderation, after all. What do you think oftaking up next? I mean after you have embraced your mother and sistersat Mount Desert. Real estate? It seems to me that it is about time foryou to open out as a real-estate broker. Or did you ever think ofmatrimony?""Well, not just in that way, sir," said the young man. "I shouldn'tquite like to regard it as a career, you know.""No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you knowI've always contended that the affections could be made to combinepleasure and profit. I wouldn't have a man marry for money,--thatwould be rather bad,--but I don't see why, when it comes to falling inlove, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poorone. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should say that thechances of a quiet life with them were rather greater. They've alwayshad everything, and they wouldn't be so ambitious and uneasy. Don'tyou think so?""It would depend," said the son, "upon whether a girl's people had beenrich long enough to have given her position before she married. Ifthey hadn't, I don't see how she would be any better than a poor girlin that respect.""Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich are on a level withany of us nowadays. Money buys position at once. I don't say that itisn't all right. The world generally knows what it's about, and knowshow to drive a bargain. I dare say it makes the new rich pay too much.But there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. It is the romance,the poetry of our age. It's the thing that chiefly strikes theimagination. The Englishmen who come here are more curious about thegreat new millionaires than about any one else, and they respect themmore. It's all very well. I don't complain of it.""And you would like a rich daughter-in-law, quite regardless, then?""Oh, not quite so bad as that, Tom," said his father. "A little youth,a little beauty, a little good sense and pretty behaviour--one mustn'tobject to those things; and they go just as often with money as withoutit. And I suppose I should like her people to be rather grammatical.""It seems to me that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "How can youexpect people who have been strictly devoted to business to begrammatical? Isn't that rather too much?""Perhaps it is. Perhaps you're right. But I understood your mother tosay that those benefactors of hers, whom you met last summer, were verypassably grammatical.""The father isn't."The elder, who had been smoking with his profile toward his son, nowturned his face full upon him. "I didn't know you had seen him?""I hadn't until to-day," said young Corey, with a little heightening ofhis colour. "But I was walking down street this afternoon, andhappened to look round at a new house some one was putting up, and Isaw the whole family in the window. It appears that Mr. Lapham isbuilding the house."The elder Corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into the holder at hiselbow. "I am more and more convinced, the longer I know you, Tom, thatwe are descended from Giles Corey. The gift of holding one's tongueseems to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. I can't sayjust how you would behave under peine forte et dure, but under ordinarypressure you are certainly able to keep your own counsel. Why didn'tyou mention this encounter at dinner? You weren't asked to plead to anaccusation of witchcraft.""No, not exactly," said the young man. "But I didn't quite see my wayto speaking of it. We had a good many other things before us.""Yes, that's true. I suppose you wouldn't have mentioned it now if Ihadn't led up to it, would you?""I don't know, sir. It was rather on my mind to do so. Perhaps it wasI who led up to it."His father laughed. "Perhaps you did, Tom; perhaps you did. Yourmother would have known you were leading up to something, but I'llconfess that I didn't. What is it?""Nothing very definite. But do you know that in spite of his syntax Irather liked him?"The father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's fullconfidence was offered, Corey was not the man to ask it. "Well?" wasall that he said."I suppose that in a new country one gets to looking at people a littleout of our tradition; and I dare say that if I hadn't passed a winterin Texas I might have found Colonel Lapham rather too much.""You mean that there are worse things in Texas?""Not that exactly. I mean that I saw it wouldn't be quite fair to testhim by our standards.""This comes of the error which I have often deprecated," said the elderCorey. "In fact I am always saying that the Bostonian ought never toleave Boston. Then he knows--and then only--that there can BE nostandard but ours. But we are constantly going away, and coming backwith our convictions shaken to their foundations. One man goes toEngland, and returns with the conception of a grander social life;another comes home from Germany with the notion of a more searchingintellectual activity; a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdestideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the cowboys ofTexas, and tell us to our faces that we ought to try Papa Lapham by ajury of his peers. It ought to be stopped--it ought, really. TheBostonian who leaves Boston ought to be condemned to perpetual exile."The son suffered the father to reach his climax with smiling patience.When he asked finally, "What are the characteristics of Papa Laphamthat place him beyond our jurisdiction?" the younger Corey crossed hislong legs, and leaned forward to take one of his knees between hishands."Well, sir, he bragged, rather.""Oh, I don't know that bragging should exempt him from the ordinaryprocesses. I've heard other people brag in Boston.""Ah, not just in that personal way--not about money.""No, that was certainly different.""I don't mean," said the young fellow, with the scrupulosity whichpeople could not help observing and liking in him, "that it was morethan an indirect expression of satisfaction in the ability to spend.""No. I should be glad to express something of the kind myself, if thefacts would justify me."The son smiled tolerantly again. "But if he was enjoying his money inthat way, I didn't see why he shouldn't show his pleasure in it. Itmight have been vulgar, but it wasn't sordid. And I don't know that itwas vulgar. Perhaps his successful strokes of business were theromance of his life----"The father interrupted with a laugh. "The girl must be uncommonlypretty. What did she seem to think of her father's brag?""There were two of them," answered the son evasively."Oh, two! And is the sister pretty too?""Not pretty, but rather interesting. She is like her mother.""Then the pretty one isn't the father's pet?""I can't say, sir. I don't believe," added the young fellow, "that Ican make you see Colonel Lapham just as I did. He struck me as verysimple-hearted and rather wholesome. Of course he could be tiresome;we all can; and I suppose his range of ideas is limited. But he is aforce, and not a bad one. If he hasn't got over being surprised at theeffect of rubbing his lamp.""Oh, one could make out a case. I suppose you know what you are about,Tom. But remember that we are Essex County people, and that in savourwe are just a little beyond the salt of the earth. I will tell youplainly that I don't like the notion of a man who has rivalled the huesof nature in her wildest haunts with the tints of his mineral paint;but I don't say there are not worse men. He isn't to my taste, thoughhe might be ever so much to my conscience.""I suppose," said the son, "that there is nothing really to be ashamedof in mineral paint. People go into all sorts of things."His father took his cigarette from his mouth and once more looked hisson full in the face. "Oh, is THAT it?""It has crossed my mind," admitted the son. "I must do something.I've wasted time and money enough. I've seen much younger men allthrough the West and South-west taking care of themselves. I don'tthink I was particularly fit for anything out there, but I am ashamedto come back and live upon you, sir."His father shook his head with an ironical sigh. "Ah, we shall neverhave a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon aparent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. Itstrikes at the root of the whole feudal system. I really think you oweme an apology, Tom. I supposed you wished to marry the girl's money,and here you are, basely seeking to go into business with her father."Young Corey laughed again like a son who perceives that his father is alittle antiquated, but keeps a filial faith in his wit. "I don't knowthat it's quite so bad as that; but the thing had certainly crossed mymind. I don't know how it's to be approached, and I don't know thatit's at all possible. But I confess that I 'took to' Colonel Laphamfrom the moment I saw him. He looked as if he 'meant business,' and Imean business too."The father smoked thoughtfully. "Of course people do go into all sortsof things, as you say, and I don't know that one thing is more ignoblethan another, if it's decent and large enough. In my time you wouldhave gone into the China trade or the India trade--though I didn't; anda little later cotton would have been your manifest destiny--though itwasn't mine; but now a man may do almost anything. The real-estatebusiness is pretty full. Yes, if you have a deep inward vocation forit, I don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do. I fancy it's easyenough approaching the matter. We will invite Papa Lapham to dinner,and talk it over with him.""Oh, I don't think that would be exactly the way, sir," said the son,smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness."No? Why not?""I'm afraid it would be a bad start. I don't think it would strike himas business-like.""I don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not.""Ah, we might say that if he were making the advances.""Well, perhaps you are right, Tom. What is your idea?""I haven't a very clear one. It seems to me I ought to get somebusiness friend of ours, whose judgment he would respect, to speak agood word for me.""Give you a character?""Yes. And of course I must go to Colonel Lapham. My notion would be toinquire pretty thoroughly about him, and then, if I liked the look ofthings, to go right down to Republic Street and let him see what hecould do with me, if anything.""That sounds tremendously practical to me, Tom, though it may be justthe wrong way. When are you going down to Mount Desert?""To-morrow, I think, sir," said the young man. "I shall turn it overin my mind while I'm off."The father rose, showing something more than his son's height, with avery slight stoop, which the son's figure had not. "Well," he said,whimsically, "I admire your spirit, and I don't deny that it isjustified by necessity. It's a consolation to think that while I'vebeen spending and enjoying, I have been preparing the noblest futurefor you--a future of industry and self-reliance. You never could draw,but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint business shows that youhave inherited something of my feeling for colour."The son laughed once more, and waiting till his father was well on hisway upstairs, turned out the gas and then hurried after him andpreceded him into his chamber. He glanced over it to see thateverything was there, to his father's hand. Then he said, "Good night,sir," and the elder responded, "Good night, my son," and the son wentto his own room.Over the mantel in the elder Corey's room hung a portrait which he hadpainted of his own father, and now he stood a moment and looked at thisas if struck by something novel in it. The resemblance between his sonand the old India merchant, who had followed the trade from Salem toBoston when the larger city drew it away from the smaller, must havebeen what struck him. Grandfather and grandson had both the Roman nosewhich appears to have flourished chiefly at the formative period of therepublic, and which occurs more rarely in the descendants of theconscript fathers, though it still characterises the profiles of a goodmany Boston ladies. Bromfield Corey had not inherited it, and he hadmade his straight nose his defence when the old merchant accused him ofa want of energy. He said, "What could a man do whose unnatural fatherhad left his own nose away from him?" This amused but did not satisfythe merchant. "You must do something," he said; "and it's for you tochoose. If you don't like the India trade, go into something else.Or, take up law or medicine. No Corey yet ever proposed to donothing." "Ah, then, it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urgedthe man who was then young, and who was now old, looking into thesomewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait. He had inherited aslittle of the fierceness as of the nose, and there was nothingpredatory in his son either, though the aquiline beak had come down tohim in such force. Bromfield Corey liked his son Tom for thegentleness which tempered his energy."Well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his father'sportrait. "I will travel." "Travel? How long?" the keen eyes demanded."Oh, indefinitely. I won't be hard with you, father." He could see theeyes soften, and the smile of yielding come over his father's face; themerchant could not resist a son who was so much like his dead mother.There was some vague understanding between them that Bromfield Coreywas to come back and go into business after a time, but he never didso. He travelled about over Europe, and travelled handsomely,frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself presented atseveral courts, at a period when it was a distinction to do so. He hadalways sketched, and with his father's leave he fixed himself at Rome,where he remained studying art and rounding the being inherited fromhis Yankee progenitors, till there was very little left of theancestral angularities. After ten years he came home and painted thatportrait of his father. It was very good, if a little amateurish, andhe might have made himself a name as a painter of portraits if he hadnot had so much money. But he had plenty of money, though by this timehe was married and beginning to have a family. It was absurd for himto paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing;so he did not paint them at all. He continued a dilettante, neverquite abandoning his art, but working at it fitfully, and talking moreabout it than working at it. He had his theory of Titian's method; andnow and then a Bostonian insisted upon buying a picture of him. Aftera while he hung it more and more inconspicuously, and saidapologetically, "Oh yes! that's one of Bromfield Corey's things. Ithas nice qualities, but it's amateurish."In process of time the money seemed less abundant. There wereshrinkages of one kind and another, and living had grown much moreexpensive and luxurious. For many years he talked about going back toRome, but he never went, and his children grew up in the usual way.Before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day spread atHarvard, and then he had his son on his hands. The son made variousunsuccessful provisions for himself, and still continued upon hisfather's hands, to their common dissatisfaction, though it was chieflythe younger who repined. He had the Roman nose and the energy withoutthe opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father said to him,"You ought not to have that nose, Tom; then you would do very well.You would go and travel, as I did."LAPHAM and his wife continued talking after he had quelled thedisturbance in his daughters' room overhead; and their talk was notaltogether of the new house."I tell you," he said, "if I had that fellow in the business with me Iwould make a man of him.""Well, Silas Lapham," returned his wife, "I do believe you've gotmineral paint on the brain. Do you suppose a fellow like young Corey,brought up the way he's been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-footpole?""Why not?" haughtily asked the Colonel."Well, if you don't know already, there's no use trying to tell you."