When Mrs.Corey asked him to meet Lapham, he accepted gladly.
"You know I go in for that sort of thing, Anna.
Since Leslie's affair we're rather bound to do it.
And I think we meet these practical fellows too little.
There's always something original about them." He might naturally have believed that the reward of his faith was coming.
"Thanks, I will take some of this wine," said Lapham, pouring himself a glass of Madeira from a black and dusty bottle caressed by a label bearing the date of the vintage.
He tossed off the wine, unconscious of its preciousness, and waited for the result.That cloudiness in his brain disappeared before it, but a mere blank remained.
He not only could not remember what he was going to say, but he could not recall what they had been talking about.
They waited, looking at him, and he stared at them in return.
After a while he heard the host saying, "Shall we join the ladies?"Lapham went, trying to think what had happened.
It seemed to him a long time since he had drunk that wine.
Miss Corey gave him a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from his wife, who was talking with Miss Kingsbury and Mrs.Sewell;Irene was with Miss Nanny Corey.He could not hear what they were talking about; but if Penelope had come, he knew that she would have done them all credit.He meant to let her know how he felt about her behaviour when he got home.It was a shame for her to miss such a chance.
Irene was looking beautiful, as pretty as all the rest of them put together, but she was not talking, and Lapham perceived that at a dinner-party you ought to talk.
He was himself conscious of having, talked very well.
He now wore an air of great dignity, and, in conversing with the other gentlemen, he used a grave and weighty deliberation.Some of them wanted him to go into the library.There he gave his ideas of books.
He said he had not much time for anything but the papers;but he was going to have a complete library in his new place.
He made an elaborate acknowledgment to Bromfield Corey of his son's kindness in suggesting books for his library;he said that he had ordered them all, and that he meant to have pictures.He asked Mr.Corey who was about the best American painter going now."I don't set up to be a judge of pictures, but I know what I like," he said.
He lost the reserve which he had maintained earlier, and began to boast.He himself introduced the subject of his paint, in a natural transition from pictures;he said Mr.Corey must take a run up to Lapham with him some day, and see the Works; they would interest him, and he would drive him round the country; he kept most of his horses up there, and he could show Mr.Corey some of the finest Jersey grades in the country.
He told about his brother William, the judge at Dubuque;and a farm he had out there that paid for itself every year in wheat.As he cast off all fear, his voice rose, and he hammered his arm-chair with the thick of his hand for emphasis.Mr.Corey seemed impressed; he sat perfectly quiet, listening, and Lapham saw the other gentlemen stop in their talk every now and then to listen.
After this proof of his ability to interest them, he would have liked to have Mrs.Lapham suggest again that he was unequal to their society, or to the society of anybody else.He surprised himself by his ease among men whose names had hitherto overawed him.
He got to calling Bromfield Corey by his surname alone.
He did not understand why young Corey seemed so preoccupied, and he took occasion to tell the company how he had said to his wife the first time he saw that fellow that he could make a man of him if he had him in the business;and he guessed he was not mistaken.He began to tell stories of the different young men he had had in his employ.At last he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, and he talked unceasingly.It was a great time; it was a triumph.
He was in this successful mood when word came to him that Mrs.Lapham was going; Tom Corey seemed to have brought it, but he was not sure.Anyway, he was not going to hurry.
He made cordial invitations to each of the gentlemen to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each.
