THE Coreys were one of the few old families who lingered in Bellingham Place, the handsome, quiet old street which the sympathetic observer must grieve to see abandoned to boarding-houses.The dwellings are stately and tall, and the whole place wears an air of aristocratic seclusion, which Mrs.Corey's father might well have thought assured when he left her his house there at his death.It is one of two evidently designed by the same architect who built some houses in a characteristic taste on Beacon Street opposite the Common.It has a wooden portico, with slender fluted columns, which have always been painted white, and which, with the delicate mouldings of the cornice, form the sole and sufficient decoration of the street front;nothing could be simpler, and nothing could be better.
Within, the architect has again indulged his preference for the classic; the roof of the vestibule, wide and low, rests on marble columns, slim and fluted like the wooden columns without, and an ample staircase climbs in a graceful, easy curve from the tesselated pavement.
Some carved Venetian scrigni stretched along the wall;a rug lay at the foot of the stairs; but otherwise the simple adequacy of the architectural intention had been respected, and the place looked bare to the eyes of the Laphams when they entered.The Coreys had once kept a man, but when young Corey began his retrenchments the man had yielded to the neat maid who showed the Colonel into the reception-room and asked the ladies to walk up two flights.
He had his charges from Irene not to enter the drawing-room without her mother, and he spent five minutes in getting on his gloves, for he had desperately resolved to wear them at last.When he had them on, and let his large fists hang down on either side, they looked, in the saffron tint which the shop-girl said his gloves should be of, like canvased hams.He perspired with doubt as he climbed the stairs, and while he waited on the landing for Mrs.Lapham and Irene to come down from above before going into the drawing-room, he stood staring at his hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard.
He heard quiet talking beyond the portiere within, and presently Tom Corey came out.
"Ah, Colonel Lapham! Very glad to see you."Lapham shook hands with him and gasped, "Waiting for Mis' Lapham," to account for his presence.
He had not been able to button his right glove, and he now began, with as much indifference as he could assume, to pull them both off, for he saw that Corey wore none.
By the time he had stuffed them into the pocket of his coat-skirt his wife and daughter descended.
Corey welcomed them very cordially too, but looked a little mystified.Mrs.Lapham knew that he was silently inquiring for Penelope, and she did not know whether she ought to excuse her to him first or not.She said nothing, and after a glance toward the regions where Penelope might conjecturably be lingering, he held aside the portiere for the Laphams to pass, and entered the room with them.
Mrs.Lapham had decided against low-necks on her own responsibility, and had entrenched herself in the safety of a black silk, in which she looked very handsome.Irene wore a dress of one of those shades which only a woman or an artist can decide to be green or blue, and which to other eyes looks both or neither, according to their degrees of ignorance.
If it was more like a ball dress than a dinner dress, that might be excused to the exquisite effect.She trailed, a delicate splendour, across the carpet in her mother's sombre wake, and the consciousness of success brought a vivid smile to her face.Lapham, pallid with anxiety lest he should somehow disgrace himself, giving thanks to God that he should have been spared the shame of wearing gloves where no one else did, but at the same time despairing that Corey should have seen him in them, had an unwonted aspect of almost pathetic refinement.
Mrs.Corey exchanged a quick glance of surprise and relief with her husband as she started across the room to meet her guests, and in her gratitude to them for being so irreproachable, she threw into her manner a warmth that people did not always find there."General Lapham?"she said, shaking hands in quick succession with Mrs.Lapham and Irene, and now addressing herself to him.
"No, ma'am, only Colonel," said the honest man, but the lady did not hear him.She was introducing her husband to Lapham's wife and daughter, and Bromfield Corey was already shaking his hand and saying he was very glad to see him again, while he kept his artistic eye on Irene, and apparently could not take it off.Lily Corey gave the Lapham ladies a greeting which was physically rather than socially cold, and Nanny stood holding Irene's hand in both of hers a moment, and taking in her beauty and her style with a generous admiration which she could afford, for she was herself faultlessly dressed in the quiet taste of her city, and looking very pretty.
The interval was long enough to let every man present confide his sense of Irene's beauty to every other;and then, as the party was small, Mrs.Corey made everybody acquainted.When Lapham had not quite understood, he held the person's hand, and, leaning urbanely forward, inquired, "What name?" He did that because a great man to whom he had been presented on the platform at a public meeting had done so to him, and he knew it must be right.
A little lull ensued upon the introductions, and Mrs.Corey said quietly to Mrs.Lapham, "Can I send any one to be of use to Miss Lapham?" as if Penelope must be in the dressing-room.
Mrs.Lapham turned fire-red, and the graceful forms in which she had been intending to excuse her daughter's absence went out of her head."She isn't upstairs," she said, at her bluntest, as country people are when embarrassed.
