She was spared from the first advance toward this by an accident or a misunderstanding.Irene came straight to her after Corey was gone, and demanded, "Penelope Lapham, have you been such a ninny as to send that man away on my account?"Penelope recoiled from this terrible courage; she did not answer directly, and Irene went on, "Because if you did, I'll thank you to bring him back again.
I'm not going to have him thinking that I'm dying for a man that never cared for me.It's insulting, and I'm not going to stand it.Now, you just send for him!""Oh, I will, 'Rene," gasped Penelope.And then she added, shamed out of her prevarication by Irene's haughty magnanimity, "I have.That is--he's coming back----"Irene looked at her a moment, and then, whatever thought was in her mind, said fiercely, "Well!" and left her to her dismay--her dismay and her relief, for they both knew that this was the last time they should ever speak of that again.
The marriage came after so much sorrow and trouble, and the fact was received with so much misgiving for the past and future, that it brought Lapham none of the triumph in which he had once exulted at the thought of an alliance with the Coreys.Adversity had so far been his friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly stolen from him.
Neither he nor his wife thought now that their daughter was marrying a Corey; they thought only that she was giving herself to the man who loved her, and their acquiescence was sobered still further by the presence of Irene.
Their hearts were far more with her.
Again and again Mrs.Lapham said she did not see how she could go through it."I can't make it seem right,"she said.
"It IS right," steadily answered the Colonel.
"Yes, I know.But it don't SEEM so."
It would be easy to point out traits in Penelope's character which finally reconciled all her husband's family and endeared her to them.These things continually happen in novels;and the Coreys, as they had always promised themselves to do, made the best, and not the worst of Tom's marriage.
They were people who could value Lapham's behaviour as Tom reported it to them.They were proud of him, and Bromfield Corey, who found a delicate, aesthetic pleasure in the heroism with which Lapham had withstood Rogers and his temptations--something finely dramatic and unconsciously effective,--wrote him a letter which would once have flattered the rough soul almost to ecstasy, though now he affected to slight it in showing it.
"It's all right if it makes it more comfortable for Pen,"he said to his wife.
But the differences remained uneffaced, if not uneffaceable, between the Coreys and Tom Corey's wife."If he had only married the Colonel!" subtly suggested Nanny Corey.
There was a brief season of civility and forbearance on both sides, when he brought her home before starting for Mexico, and her father-in-law made a sympathetic feint of liking Penelope's way of talking, but it is questionable if even he found it so delightful as her husband did.
Lily Corey made a little, ineffectual sketch of her, which she put by with other studies to finish up, sometime, and found her rather picturesque in some ways.
Nanny got on with her better than the rest, and saw possibilities for her in the country to which she was going.
"As she's quite unformed, socially," she explained to her mother, "there is a chance that she will form herself on the Spanish manner, if she stays there long enough, and that when she comes back she will have the charm of, not olives, perhaps, but tortillas, whatever they are:
something strange and foreign, even if it's borrowed.
I'm glad she's going to Mexico.At that distance we can--correspond."Her mother sighed, and said bravely that she was sure they all got on very pleasantly as it was, and that she was perfectly satisfied if Tom was.
There was, in fact, much truth in what she said of their harmony with Penelope.Having resolved, from the beginning, to make the best of the worst, it might almost be said that they were supported and consoled in their good intentions by a higher power.This marriage had not, thanks to an over-ruling Providence, brought the succession of Lapham teas upon Bromfield Corey which he had dreaded;the Laphams were far off in their native fastnesses, and neither Lily nor Nanny Corey was obliged to sacrifice herself to the conversation of Irene; they were not even called upon to make a social demonstration for Penelope at a time when, most people being still out of town, it would have been so easy; she and Tom had both begged that there might be nothing of that kind; and though none of the Coreys learned to know her very well in the week she spent with them, they did not find it hard to get on with her.There were even moments when Nanny Corey, like her father, had glimpses of what Tom had called her humour, but it was perhaps too unlike their own to be easily recognisable.
Whether Penelope, on her side, found it more difficult to harmonise, I cannot say.She had much more of the harmonising to do, since they were four to one; but then she had gone through so much greater trials before.
When the door of their carriage closed and it drove off with her and her husband to the station, she fetched a long sigh.
"What is it?" asked Corey, who ought to have known better.
"Oh, nothing.I don't think I shall feel strange amongst the Mexicans now."He looked at her with a puzzled smile, which grew a little graver, and then he put his arm round her and drew her closer to him.This made her cry on his shoulder.
"I only meant that I should have you all to myself."There is no proof that she meant more, but it is certain that our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities.The price that we pay for civilisation is the fine yet impassable differentiation of these.
