Lapham did not know about that kind of talking; but Miss Kingsbury seemed to enjoy the fun as much as anybody, and he laughed with the rest.
“You shall be asked to the very next debauch of the committee, Mr. Corey; then you won’t dare expose us,” said Miss Kingsbury.
“I wonder you haven’t been down upon Corey to go to the Chardon Street home and talk with your indigent Italians in their native tongue,” said Charles Bellingham. “I saw in the Transcript the other night that you wanted someone for the work.”
“We did think of Mr. Corey,” replied Miss Kingsbury; “but we reflected that he probably wouldn’t talk with them at all; he would make them keep still to be sketched, and forget all about their wants.”
Upon the theory that this was a fair return for Corey’s pleasantry, the others laughed again.
“There is one charity,” said Corey, pretending superiority to Miss Kingsbury’s point, “that is so difficult, I wonder it hasn’t occurred to a lady of your courageous invention.”
“Yes?” said Miss Kingsbury. “What is that?”
“The occupation, by deserving poor of neat habits, of all the beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand empty the whole summer long, while their owners are away in their lowly cots beside the sea.”
“Yes, that is terrible,” replied Miss Kingsbury, with quick earnestness, while her eyes grew moist. “I have often thought of our great, cool houses standing useless here, and the thousands of poor creatures stifling in their holes and dens, and the little children dying for wholesome shelter. How cruelly selfish we are!”
“That is a very comfortable sentiment, Miss Kingsbury,” said Corey, “and must make you feel almost as if you had thrown open No. 31 to the whole North End. But I am serious about this matter. I spend my summers in town, and I occupy my own house, so that I can speak impartially and intelligently; and I tell you that in some of my walks on the Hill and down on the Back Bay, nothing but the surveillance of the local policeman prevents my offering personal violence to those long rows of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensible houses. If I were a poor man, with a sick child pining in some garret or cellar at the North End, I should break into one of them, and camp out on the grand piano.”
“Surely, Bromfield,” said his wife, “you don’t consider what havoc such people would make with the furniture of a nice house!”
“That is true,” answered Corey, with meek conviction. “I never thought of that.”
“And if you were a poor man with a sick child, I doubt if you’d have so much heart for burglary as you have now,” said James Bellingham.
“It’s wonderful how patient they are,” said the minister. “The spectacle of the hopeless comfort the hardworking poor man sees must be hard to bear.”
Lapham wanted to speak up and say that he had been there himself, and knew how such a man felt. He wanted to tell them that generally a poor man was satisfied if he could make both ends meet; that he didn’t envy anyone his good luck, if he had earned it, so long as he wasn’t running under himself. But before he could get the courage to address the whole table, Sewell added, “I suppose he don’t always think of it.”
“But some day he will think about it,” said Corey. “In fact, we rather invite him to think about it, in this country.”
“My brother-in-law,” said Charles Bellingham, with the pride a man feels in a mentionably remarkable brother-in-law, “has no end of fellows at work under him out there at Omaha, and he says it’s the fellows from countries where they’ve been kept from thinking about it that are discontented. The Americans never make any trouble. They seem to understand that so long as we give unlimited opportunity, nobody has a right to complain.”
“What do you hear from Leslie?” asked Mrs. Corey, turning from these profitless abstractions to Mrs. Bellingham.
“You know,” said that lady in a lower tone, “that there is another baby?”
“No! I hadn’t heard of it!”
“Yes; a boy. They have named him after his uncle.”
“Yes,” said Charles Bellingham, joining in. “He is said to be a noble boy, and to resemble me.”
“All boys of that tender age are noble,” said Corey, “and look like anybody you wish them to resemble. Is Leslie still homesick for the bean-pots of her native Boston?”
“She is getting over it, I fancy,” replied Mrs. Bellingham. “She’s very much taken up with Mr. Blake’s enterprises, and leads a very exciting life. She says she’s like people who have been home from Europe three years; she’s past the most poignant stage of regret, and hasn’t reached the second, when they feel that they must go again.”
Lapham leaned a little toward Mrs. Corey, and said of a picture which he saw on the wall opposite, “Picture of your daughter, I presume?”
“No; my daughter’s grandmother. It’s a Stewart Newton; he painted a great many Salem beauties. She was a Miss Polly Burroughs. My daughter is like her, don’t you think?” They both looked at Nanny Corey and then at the portrait. “Those pretty old-fashioned dresses are coming in again. I’m not surprised you took it for her. The others”—she referred to the other portraits more or less darkling on the walls—“are my people; mostly Copleys.”
These names, unknown to Lapham, went to his head like the wine he was drinking; they seemed to carry light for the moment, but a film of deeper darkness followed. He heard Charles Bellingham telling funny stories to Irene and trying to amuse the girl; she was laughing, and seemed very happy. From time to time Bellingham took part in the general talk between the host and James Bellingham
