Their father did not like company, except such as came informally in their way; and their mother had remained too rustic to know how to attract it in the sophisticated city fashion. None of them had grasped the idea of European travel; but they had gone about to mountain and sea-side resorts, the mother and the two girls, where they witnessed the spectacle which such resorts present throughout New England, of multitudes of girls, lovely, accomplished, exquisitely dressed, humbly glad of the presence of any sort of young man; but the Laphams had no skill or courage to make themselves noticed, far less courted by the solitary invalid, or clergyman, or artist.
They lurked helplessly about in the hotel parlours, looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward.
Perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so.
They had not a conceit of themselves, but a sort of content in their own ways that one may notice in certain families.
The very strength of their mutual affection was a barrier to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one another;they equipped their house for their own satisfaction;they lived richly to themselves, not because they were selfish, but because they did not know how to do otherwise.
The elder daughter did not care for society, apparently.
The younger, who was but three years younger, was not yet quite old enough to be ambitious of it. With all her wonderful beauty, she had an innocence almost vegetable.
When her beauty, which in its immaturity was crude and harsh, suddenly ripened, she bloomed and glowed with the unconsciousness of a flower; she not merely did not feel herself admired, but hardly knew herself discovered. If she dressed well, perhaps too well, it was because she had the instinct of dress; but till she met this young man who was so nice to her at Baie St. Paul, she had scarcely lived a detached, individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother and her sister for her opinions, almost her sensations.
She took account of everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest movement or gesture. In this way she began for the first time to form ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the less her own because they were often mistaken.
Some of the things that he partly said, partly looked, she reported to her mother, and they talked them over, as they did everything relating to these new acquaintances, and wrought them into the novel point of view which they were acquiring. When Mrs. Lapham returned home, she submitted all the accumulated facts of the case, and all her own conjectures, to her husband, and canvassed them anew.
At first he was disposed to regard the whole affair as of small importance, and she had to insist a little beyond her own convictions in order to counteract his indifference.
"Well, I can tell you," she said, "that if you think they were not the nicest people you ever saw, you're mightily mistaken. They had about the best manners;and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. I declare it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods.
I don't know but the mother and the daughters would have let you feel so a little, if they'd showed out all they thought;but they never did; and the son--well, I can't express it, Silas! But that young man had about perfect ways.""Seem struck up on Irene?" asked the Colonel.
"How can I tell? He seemed just about as much struck up on me. Anyway, he paid me as much attention as he did her.
Perhaps it's more the way, now, to notice the mother than it used to be."Lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had asked already, who the people were.
Mrs. Lapham repeated their name. Lapham nodded his head.
"Do you know them? What business is he in?""I guess he ain't in anything," said Lapham.
"They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham impartially.
"Well, they'd ought to be," returned the Colonel.
"Never done anything else."
"They didn't seem stuck up," urged his wife.
"They'd no need to--with you. I could buy him and sell him, twice over."This answer satisfied Mrs. Lapham rather with the fact than with her husband. "Well, I guess I wouldn't brag, Silas," she said.
In the winter the ladies of this family, who returned to town very late, came to call on Mrs. Lapham.
They were again very polite. But the mother let drop, in apology for their calling almost at nightfall, that the coachman had not known the way exactly.
"Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill."There was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on comparing notes with her daughter, Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had been left to rankle in her mind also.
"They said they had never been in this part of the town before."Upon a strict search of her memory, Irene could not report that the fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, but it was that which gave it a more penetrating effect.
"Oh, well, of course," said Lapham, to whom these facts were referred. "Those sort of people haven't got much business up our way, and they don't come. It's a fair thing all round. We don't trouble the Hill or the New Land much.""We know where they are," suggested his wife thoughtfully.
"Yes," assented the Colonel. "I know where they are.
I've got a lot of land over on the Back Bay.""You have?" eagerly demanded his wife.
"Want me to build on it?" he asked in reply, with a quizzical smile.
"I guess we can get along here for a while."This was at night. In the morning Mrs. Lapham said--"I suppose we ought to do the best we can for the children, in every way.""I supposed we always had," replied her husband.
"Yes, we have, according to our light."
"Have you got some new light?"
"I don't know as it's light. But if the girls are going to keep on living in Boston and marry here, I presume we ought to try to get them into society, some way;or ought to do something."
