"The only answer I can give you now is, NO," said Lapham.
"If you want another, you must let me have time to think it over.""But 'ow much time?" said the other Englishman.
"We're pressed for time ourselves, and we hoped for an answer--'oped for a hanswer," he corrected himself, "at once.That was our understandin' with Mr.Rogers.""I can't let you know till morning, anyway," said Lapham, and he went out, as his custom often was, without any parting salutation.He thought Rogers might try to detain him; but Rogers had remained seated when the others got to their feet, and paid no attention to his departure.
He walked out into the night air, every pulse throbbing with the strong temptation.He knew very well those men would wait, and gladly wait, till the morning, and that the whole affair was in his hands.It made him groan in spirit to think that it was.If he had hoped that some chance might take the decision from him, there was no such chance, in the present or future, that he could see.It was for him alone to commit this rascality--if it was a rascality--or not.
He walked all the way home, letting one car after another pass him on the street, now so empty of other passing, and it was almost eleven o'clock when he reached home.
A carriage stood before his house, and when he let himself in with his key, he heard talking in the family-room.It came into his head that Irene had got back unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it harder for him; then he thought it might be Corey, come upon some desperate pretext to see Penelope;but when he opened the door he saw, with a certain absence of surprise, that it was Rogers.He was standing with his back to the fireplace, talking to Mrs.Lapham, and he had been shedding tears; dry tears they seemed, and they had left a sort of sandy, glistening trace on his cheeks.Apparently he was not ashamed of them, for the expression with which he met Lapham was that of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, which was identical with that of humanity, if not that of justice.
"I some expected," began Rogers, "to find you here----""No, you didn't," interrupted Lapham; "you wanted to come here and make a poor mouth to Mrs.Lapham before I got home.""I knew that Mrs.Lapham would know what was going on,"said Rogers more candidly, but not more virtuously, for that he could not, "and I wished her to understand a point that I hadn't put to you at the hotel, and that I want you should consider.And I want you should consider me a little in this business too;you're not the only one that's concerned, I tell you, and I've been telling Mrs.Lapham that it's my one chance;that if you don't meet me on it, my wife and children will be reduced to beggary.""So will mine," said Lapham, "or the next thing to it.""Well, then, I want you to give me this chance to get on my feet again.You've no right to deprive me of it;it's unchristian.In our dealings with each other we should be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying to Mrs.Lapham before you came in.I told her that if I knew myself, I should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obligations to me, and had patiently borne my undeserved suspicions.
I should consider that man's family, I told Mrs.Lapham.""Did you tell her that if I went in with you and those fellows, I should be robbing the people who trusted them?""I don't see what you've got to do with the people that sent them here.They are rich people, and could bear it if it came to the worst.But there's no likelihood, now, that it will come to the worst;you can see yourself that the Road has changed its mind about buying.And here am I without a cent in the world;and my wife is an invalid.She needs comforts, she needs little luxuries, and she hasn't even the necessaries;and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! You don't know in the first place that the Road will ever want to buy;and if it does, the probability is that with a colony like that planted on its line, it would make very different terms from what it would with you or me.These agents are not afraid, and their principals are rich people;and if there was any loss, it would be divided up amongst them so that they wouldn't any of them feel it."Lapham stole a troubled glance at his wife, and saw that there was no help in her.Whether she was daunted and confused in her own conscience by the outcome, so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to Rogers which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which Rogers had now used, it would be difficult to say.
Probably there was a mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and from which he turned, girding himself anew, to Rogers.
