He started toward the door of the drawing-room to take leave of the ladies; but Tom Corey was at his elbow, saying, “I think Mrs. Lapham is waiting for you below, sir,” and in obeying the direction Corey gave him toward another door he forgot all about his purpose, and came away without saying good night to his hostess.
Mrs. Lapham had not known how soon she ought to go, and had no idea that in her quality of chief guest she was keeping the others. She stayed till eleven o’clock, and was a little frightened when she found what time it was; but Mrs. Corey, without pressing her to stay longer, had said it was not at all late. She and Irene had had a perfect time. Everybody had been very polite; on the way home they celebrated the amiability of both the Miss Coreys and of Miss Kingsbury. Mrs. Lapham thought that Mrs. Bellingham was about the pleasantest person she ever saw; she had told her all about her married daughter who had married an inventor and gone to live in Omaha—a Mrs. Blake.
“If it’s that car-wheel Blake,” said Lapham proudly, “I know all about him. I’ve sold him tons of the paint.”
“Pooh, papa! How you do smell of smoking!” cried Irene.
“Pretty strong, eh?” laughed Lapham, letting down a window of the carriage. His heart was throbbing wildly in the close air, and he was glad of the rush of cold that came in, though it stopped his tongue, and he listened more and more drowsily to the rejoicings that his wife and daughter exchanged. He meant to have them wake Penelope up and tell her what she had lost; but when he reached home he was too sleepy to suggest it. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, full of supreme triumph.
But in the morning his skull was sore with the unconscious, nightlong ache; and he rose cross and taciturn. They had a silent breakfast. In the cold grey light of the morning the glories of the night before showed poorer. Here and there a painful doubt obtruded itself and marred them with its awkward shadow. Penelope sent down word that she was not well, and was not coming to breakfast, and Lapham was glad to go to his office without seeing her.
He was severe and silent all day with his clerks, and peremptory with customers. Of Corey he was slyly observant, and as the day wore away he grew more restively conscious. He sent out word by his office-boy that he would like to see Mr. Corey for a few minutes after closing. The typewriter girl had lingered too, as if she wished to speak with him, and Corey stood in abeyance as she went toward Lapham’s door.
“Can’t see you tonight, Zerrilla,” he said bluffly, but not unkindly. “Perhaps I’ll call at the house, if it’s important.”
“It is,” said the girl, with a spoiled air of insistence.
“Well,” said Lapham, and, nodding to Corey to enter, he closed the door upon her. Then he turned to the young, man and demanded: “Was I drunk last night?”
XV
Lapham’s strenuous face was broken up with the emotions that had forced him to this question: shame, fear of the things that must have been thought of him, mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, which died out at the shocked and pitying look in Corey’s eyes.
“Was I drunk?” he repeated. “I ask you, because I was never touched by drink in my life before, and I don’t know.” He stood with his huge hands trembling on the back of his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he stared at Corey.
“That is what everyone understood, Colonel Lapham,” said the young man. “Everyone saw how it was. Don’t—”
“Did they talk it over after I left?” asked Lapham vulgarly.
“Excuse me,” said Corey, blushing, “my father doesn’t talk his guests over with one another.” He added, with youthful superfluity, “You were among gentlemen.”
“I was the only one that wasn’t a gentleman there!” lamented Lapham. “I disgraced you! I disgraced my family! I mortified your father before his friends!” His head dropped. “I showed that I wasn’t fit to go with you. I’m not fit for any decent place. What did I say? What did I do?” he asked, suddenly lifting his head and confronting Corey. “Out with it! If you could bear to see it and hear it, I had ought to bear to know it!”
“There was nothing—really nothing,” said Corey. “Beyond the fact that you were not quite yourself, there was nothing whatever. My father did speak of it to me,” he confessed, “when we were alone. He said that he was afraid we had not been thoughtful of you, if you were in the habit of taking only water; I told him I had not seen wine at your table. The others said nothing about you.”
“Ah, but what did they think?”
“Probably what we did: that it was purely a misfortune—an accident.”
“I wasn’t fit to be there,” persisted Lapham. “Do you want to leave?” he asked, with savage abruptness.
“Leave?” faltered the young man.
“Yes; quit the business? Cut the whole connection?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea of it!” cried Corey in amazement. “Why in the world should I?”
“Because you’re a gentleman, and I’m not, and it ain’t right I should be over you. If you want to go, I know some parties that would be glad to get you. I will give you up if you want to go before anything worse happens, and I shan’t blame you. I can help you to something better than I can offer you here, and I will.”
“There’s no question of my going, unless you wish it,” said Corey. “If you do—”
“Will you tell your father,” interrupted Lapham, “that I had a notion all the time that I was acting the drunken blackguard, and that
