"No.What's the use of blaming? We don't either of us want anything but the children's good.What's it all of it for, if it ain't for that? That's what we've both slaved for all our lives.""Yes, I know.Plenty of people LOSE their children,"she suggested.
"Yes, but that don't comfort me any.I never was one to feel good because another man felt bad.How would you have liked it if some one had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? No, I can't do it.And this is worse than death, someways.That comes and it goes; but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay.
The way I look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody.
Suppose we don't want Pen to have him; will that help Irene any, if he don't want her? Suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help either!""You talk," exclaimed Mrs.Lapham, "as if our say was going to settle it.Do you suppose that Penelope Lapham is a girl to take up with a fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him?
Don't you believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as I've heard Pen tease Irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing that she thought so herself? It's ridiculous!"Lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument.
His huge head hung forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the mare took her own way.
At last he lifted his face and shut his heavy jaws.
"Well?" quavered his wife.
"Well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, I don't see what that's got to do with it." He looked straight forward, and not at his wife.
She laid her hands on the reins."Now, you stop right here, Silas Lapham! If I thought that--if I really believed you could be willing to break that poor child's heart, and let Pen disgrace herself by marrying a man that had as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted Bromfield Corey's son for a son-in-law----"Lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look.
"You had better NOT believe that, Persis! Get up!"he called to the mare, without glancing at her, and she sprang forward."I see you've got past being any use to yourself on this subject.""Hello!" shouted a voice in front of him."Where the devil you goin' to?""Do you want to KILL somebody!" shrieked his wife.
There was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, and separated their wheels from those of the open buggy in front which Lapham had driven into.He made his excuses to the occupant; and the accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and left them far from the point of mutual injury which they had reached in their common trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good.
It was Lapham who resumed the talk."I'm afraid we can't either of us see this thing in the right light.
We're too near to it.I wish to the Lord there was somebody to talk to about it.""Yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody.""Well, I dunno," suggested Lapham, after a moment;"why not talk to the minister of your church? May be he could see some way out of it."Mrs.Lapham shook her head hopelessly."It wouldn't do.
I've never taken up my connection with the church, and Idon't feel as if I'd got any claim on him.""If he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, you HAVE got a claim on him," urged Lapham; and he spoiled his argument by adding, "I've contributed enough MONEYto his church."
"Oh, that's nothing," said Mrs.Lapham."I ain't well enough acquainted with Dr.Langworthy, or else I'm TOO well.No; if I was to ask any one, I should want to ask a total stranger.But what's the use, Si? Nobody could make us see it any different from what it is, and I don't know as I should want they should."It blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed down their hearts ever more heavily within them.
They ceased to talk of it a hundred times, and still came back to it.They drove on and on.It began to be late.
"I guess we better go back, Si," said his wife;and as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil down and began to cry softly behind it, with low little broken sobs.
Lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward.
At last his wife stopped crying and began trying to find her pocket."Here, take mine, Persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief, and she took it and dried her eyes with it."There was one of those fellows there the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned back against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that Iliked the looks of about as well as any man I ever saw.
I guess he was a pretty good man.It was that Mr.Sewell."He looked at his wife, but she did not say anything.
"Persis," he resumed, "I can't bear to go back with nothing settled in our minds.I can't bear to let you.""We must, Si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude.
Lapham groaned."Where does he live?" she asked.
"On Bolingbroke Street.He gave me his number.""Well, it wouldn't do any good.What could he say to us?""Oh, I don't know as he could say anything," said Lapham hopelessly;and neither of them said anything more till they crossed the Milldam and found themselves between the rows of city houses.""Don't drive past the new house, Si," pleaded his wife.
"I couldn't bear to see it.Drive--drive up Bolingbroke Street.
We might as well see where he DOES live.""Well," said Lapham.He drove along slowly.
"That's the place," he said finally, stopping the mare and pointing with his whip.
"It wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood as well as he understood her words.
He turned the mare up to the curbstone.
"You take the reins a minute," he said, handing them to his wife.
He got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened;then he came back and lifted his wife out."He's in,"he said.
