HAVING distinctly given up the project of asking the Laphams to dinner, Mrs.Corey was able to carry it out with the courage of sinners who have sacrificed to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to their intended transgression.
She did not question but the Laphams would come; and she only doubted as to the people whom she should invite to meet them.She opened the matter with some trepidation to her daughters, but neither of them opposed her;they rather looked at the scheme from her own point of view, and agreed with her that nothing had really yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the Laphams helplessly contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that ill-advised application to Mrs.Lapham for charity.
Not only the principal of their debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing interest.They said, What harm could giving the dinner possibly do them? They might ask any or all of their acquaintance without disadvantage to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give the dinner just the character they chose, and still flatter the ignorance of the Laphams.The trouble would be with Tom, if he were really interested in the girl;but he could not say anything if they made it a family dinner;he could not feel anything.They had each turned in her own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most comprehensive of those cousinships which form the admiration and terror of the adventurer in Boston society.He finds himself hemmed in and left out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all hope of safe personality in his comments on people; he is never less secure than when he hears some given Bostonian denouncing or ridiculing another.If he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring in these criticisms, however just they appear, for the probability is that their object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the censor.
When the alien hears a group of Boston ladies calling one another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, by the familiar abbreviations of their Christian names, he must feel keenly the exile to which he was born;but he is then, at least, in comparatively little danger;while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls at every step around him, in a society where Middlesexes have married Essexes and produced Suffolks for two hundred and fifty years.
These conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, are a source of strength and security to those native to them.An uncertain acquaintance may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such a cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it and tremendous stories are told of people who have spent a whole winter in Boston, in a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of the Suffolks, discover upon reflection that they have met no one but Essexes and Middlesexes.
Mrs.Corey's brother James came first into her mind, and she thought with uncommon toleration of the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of his wife.
James Bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout, and might be said to have actively promoted his connection with Lapham.She thought next of the widow of her cousin, Henry Bellingham, who had let her daughter marry that Western steamboat man, and was fond of her son-in-law;she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king and his family.The daughters insisted so strongly upon Mrs.Bellingham's son Charles, that Mrs.Corey put him down--if he were in town; he might be in Central America;he got on with all sorts of people.It seemed to her that she might stop at this: four Laphams, five Coreys, and four Bellinghams were enough.
"That makes thirteen," said Nanny."You can have Mr.and Mrs.Sewell.""Yes, that is a good idea," assented Mrs.Corey.
"He is our minister, and it is very proper.""I don't see why you don't have Robert Chase.
It is a pity he shouldn't see her--for the colour.""I don't quite like the idea of that," said Mrs.Corey;"but we can have him too, if it won't make too many."The painter had married into a poorer branch of the Coreys, and his wife was dead."Is there any one else?""There is Miss Kingsbury."
"We have had her so much.She will begin to think we are using her.""She won't mind; she's so good-natured."
"Well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four Laphams, five Coreys, four Bellinghams, one Chase, and one Kingsbury--fifteen.Oh! and two Sewells.Seventeen.Ten ladies and seven gentlemen.It doesn't balance very well, and it's too large.""Perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested Lily.
"Oh, the ladies always come," said Nanny.
Their mother reflected."Well, I will ask them.
The ladies will refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more artists.Why! we must have Mr.Seymour, the architect; he's a bachelor, and he's building their house, Tom says."Her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, and she told him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident misgiving.
"What are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his honest eyes.
She dropped her own in a little confusion."I won't do it at all, my dear," she said, "if you don't approve.
But I thought--You know we have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at Baie St.Paul.
