"But it's the affair, commonly, of very young people, who have not yet character and experience enough to make them interesting. In novels it's treated, not only as if it were the chief interest of life, but the sole interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons;and it is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow of a true passion lasts for ever; and that it is sacrilege to think or act otherwise." "Well, but isn't that true, Mr. Sewell?" pleaded Miss Kingsbury.
"I have known some most estimable people who had married a second time," said the minister, and then he had the applause with him. Lapham wanted to make some open recognition of his good sense, but could not.
"I suppose the passion itself has been a good deal changed,"said Bromfield Corey, "since the poets began to idealise it in the days of chivalry.""Yes; and it ought to be changed again," said Mr. Sewell.
"What! Back?"
"I don't say that. But it ought to be recognised as something natural and mortal, and divine honours, which belong to righteousness alone, ought not to be paid it.""Oh, you ask too much, parson," laughed his host, and the talk wandered away to something else.
It was not an elaborate dinner; but Lapham was used to having everything on the table at once, and this succession of dishes bewildered him; he was afraid perhaps he was eating too much. He now no longer made any pretence of not drinking his wine, for he was thirsty, and there was no more water, and he hated to ask for any. The ice-cream came, and then the fruit.
Suddenly Mrs. Corey rose, and said across the table to her husband, "I suppose you will want your coffee here."And he replied, "Yes; we'll join you at tea."The ladies all rose, and the gentlemen got up with them.
Lapham started to follow Mrs. Corey, but the other men merely stood in their places, except young Corey, who ran and opened the door for his mother. Lapham thought with shame that it was he who ought to have done that;but no one seemed to notice, and he sat down again gladly, after kicking out one of his legs which had gone to sleep.
They brought in cigars with coffee, and Bromfield Corey advised Lapham to take one that he chose for him.
Lapham confessed that he liked a good cigar about as well as anybody, and Corey said: "These are new.
I had an Englishman here the other day who was smoking old cigars in the superstition that tobacco improved with age, like wine.""Ah," said Lapham, "anybody who had ever lived off a tobacco country could tell him better than that."With the fuming cigar between his lips he felt more at home than he had before. He turned sidewise in his chair and, resting one arm on the back, intertwined the fingers of both hands, and smoked at large ease. James Bellingham came and sat down by him. "Colonel Lapham, weren't you with the 96th Vermont when they charged across the river in front of Pickensburg, and the rebel battery opened fire on them in the water?"Lapham slowly shut his eyes and slowly dropped his head for assent, letting out a white volume of smoke from the corner of his mouth.
"I thought so," said Bellingham. "I was with the 85th Massachusetts, and I sha'n't forget that slaughter.
We were all new to it still. Perhaps that's why it made such an impression.""I don't know," suggested Charles Bellingham. "Was there anything much more impressive afterward? I read of it out in Missouri, where I was stationed at the time, and I recollect the talk of some old army men about it.
They said that death-rate couldn't be beaten. I don't know that it ever was.""About one in five of us got out safe," said Lapham, breaking his cigar-ash off on the edge of a plate.
James Bellingham reached him a bottle of Apollinaris.
He drank a glass, and then went on smoking.
They all waited, as if expecting him to speak, and then Corey said: "How incredible those things seem already!
You gentlemen KNOW that they happened; but are you still able to believe it?""Ah, nobody FEELS that anything happened," said Charles Bellingham. "The past of one's experience doesn't differ a great deal from the past of one's knowledge.
It isn't much more probable; it's really a great deal less vivid than some scenes in a novel that one read when a boy.""I'm not sure of that," said James Bellingham.
"Well, James, neither am I," consented his cousin, helping himself from Lapham's Apollinaris bottle.
"There would be very little talking at dinner if one only said the things that one was sure of."The others laughed, and Bromfield Corey remarked thoughtfully, "What astonishes the craven civilian in all these things is the abundance--the superabundance--of heroism.
The cowards were the exception; the men that were ready to die, the rule.""The woods were full of them," said Lapham, without taking his cigar from his mouth.
"That's a nice little touch in School," interposed Charles Bellingham, "where the girl says to the fellow who was at Inkerman, 'I should think you would be so proud of it,'
and he reflects a while, and says, 'Well, the fact is, you know, there were so many of us.'""Yes, I remember that," said James Bellingham, smiling for pleasure in it. "But I don't see why you claim the credit of being a craven civilian, Bromfield,"he added, with a friendly glance at his brother-in-law, and with the willingness Boston men often show to turn one another's good points to the light in company;bred so intimately together at school and college and in society, they all know these points. "A man who was out with Garibaldi in '48," continued James Bellingham.
"Oh, a little ******* red-shirting," Corey interrupted in deprecation. "But even if you choose to dispute my claim, what has become of all the heroism? Tom, how many club men do you know who would think it sweet and fitting to die for their country?""I can't think of a great many at the moment, sir,"replied the son, with the modesty of his generation.
