He attempted once or twice to talk of his troubles to his wife, but she repulsed him sharply; she seemed to despise and hate him; but he set himself doggedly to make a confession to her, and he stopped her one night, as she came into the room where he sat--hastily upon some errand that was to take her directly away again.
"Persis, there's something I've got to tell you."She stood still, as if fixed against her will, to listen.
"I guess you know something about it already, and I guess it set you against me.""Oh, I guess not, Colonel Lapham.You go your way, and I go mine.That's all."She waited for him to speak, listening with a cold, hard smile on her face.
"I don't say it to make favour with you, because I don't want you to spare me, and I don't ask you; but I got into it through Milton K.Rogers.""Oh!" said Mrs.Lapham contemptuously.
"I always felt the way I said about it--that it wa'n't any better than gambling, and I say so now.It's like betting on the turn of a card; and I give you my word of honour, Persis, that I never was in it at all till that scoundrel began to load me up with those wild-cat securities of his.
Then it seemed to me as if I ought to try to do something to get somewhere even.I know it's no excuse; but watching the market to see what the infernal things were worth from day to day, and seeing it go up, and seeing it go down, was too much for me; and, to make a long story short, I began to buy and sell on a margin--just what I told you I never would do.I seemed to make something--Idid make something; and I'd have stopped, I do believe, if I could have reached the figure I'd set in my own mind to start with; but I couldn't fetch it.I began to lose, and then I began to throw good money after bad, just as I always did with everything that Rogers ever came within a mile of.Well, what's the use? I lost the money that would have carried me out of this, and I shouldn't have had to shut down the Works, or sell the house, or----"Lapham stopped.His wife, who at first had listened with mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity."Silas Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started to tell me?""Why, of course it is.What did you suppose I started to tell you?""And--look me in the eyes!--you haven't got anything else on your mind now?""No! There's trouble enough, the Lord knows;but there's nothing else to tell you.I suppose Pen gave you a hint about it.I dropped something to her.
I've been feeling bad about it, Persis, a good while, but I hain't had the heart to speak of it.I can't expect you to say you like it.I've been a fool, I'll allow, and I've been something worse, if you choose to say so;but that's all.I haven't hurt anybody but myself--and you and the children."Mrs.Lapham rose and said, with her face from him, as she turned towards the door, "It's all right, Silas.
I shan't ever bring it up against you."
She fled out of the room, but all that evening she was very sweet with him, and seemed to wish in all tacit ways to atone for her past unkindness.
She made him talk of his business, and he told her of Corey's offer, and what he had done about it.
She did not seem to care for his part in it, however;at which Lapham was silently disappointed a little, for he would have liked her to praise him.
"He did it on account of Pen!"
"Well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said Lapham, who must have obscurely expected that Corey would recognise his own magnanimity by repeating his offer.
If the doubt that follows a self-devoted action--the question whether it was not after all a needless folly--is mixed, as it was in Lapham's case, with the vague belief that we might have done ourselves a good turn without great risk of hurting any one else by being a little less unselfish, it becomes a regret that is hard to bear.Since Corey spoke to him, some things had happened that gave Lapham hope again.
"I'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and she showed herself impatient to make up for the time she had lost."Why didn't you tell me before, Silas?""I didn't know we were on speaking terms before,"said Lapham sadly.
"Yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious flush.
"I hope he won't think Pen's known about it all this while."
