“Yes. He's never opened on the subject yet. Do you know, I think

Fulkerson has his moments of delicacy.”

“Moments! He's all delicacy in regard to women.”

“Well, perhaps so. There is nothing in them to rouse his advertising

instincts.”

IV

The Dryfoos family stayed in town till August. Then the father went West

again to look after his interests; and Mrs. Mandel took the two girls

to one of the great hotels in Saratoga. Fulkerson said that he had never

seen anything like Saratoga for fashion, and Mrs. Mandel remembered that

in her own young ladyhood this was so for at least some weeks of the

year. She had been too far withdrawn from fashion since her marriage

to know whether it was still so or not. In this, as in so many other

matters, the Dryfoos family helplessly relied upon Fulkerson, in spite

of Dryfoos's angry determination that he should not run the family, and

in spite of Christine's doubt of his omniscience; if he did not know

everything, she was aware that he knew more than herself. She thought

that they had a right to have him go with them to Saratoga, or at least

go up and engage their rooms beforehand; but Fulkerson did not offer to

do either, and she did not quite see her way to commanding his services.

The young ladies took what Mela called splendid dresses with them;

they sat in the park of tall, slim trees which the hotel's quadrangle

enclosed, and listened to the music in the morning, or on the long

piazza in the afternoon and looked at the driving in the street, or in

the vast parlors by night, where all the other ladies were, and they

felt that they were of the best there. But they knew nobody, and Mrs.

Mandel was so particular that Mela was prevented from continuing the

acquaintance even of the few young men who danced with her at the

Saturday-night hops. They drove about, but they went to places without

knowing why, except that the carriage man took them, and they had all

the privileges of a proud exclusivism without desiring them. Once a

motherly matron seemed to perceive their isolation, and made overtures

to them, but then desisted, as if repelled by Christine's suspicion,

or by Mela's too instant and hilarious good-fellowship, which expressed

itself in hoarse laughter and in a flow of talk full of topical and

syntactical freedom. From time to time she offered to bet Christine

that if Mr. Fulkerson was only there they would have a good time; she

wondered what they were all doing in New York, where she wished herself;

she rallied her sister about Beaton, and asked her why she did not write

and tell him to come up there.

Mela knew that Christine had expected Beaton to follow them. Some banter

had passed between them to this effect; he said he should take them in

on his way home to Syracuse. Christine would not have hesitated to write

to him and remind him of his promise; but she had learned to distrust

her literature with Beaton since he had laughed at the spelling in a

scrap of writing which dropped out of her music-book one night. She

believed that he would not have laughed if he had known it was hers;

but she felt that she could hide better the deficiencies which were not

committed to paper; she could manage with him in talking; she was too

ignorant of her ignorance to recognize the mistakes she made then.

Through her own passion she perceived that she had some kind of

fascination for him; she was graceful, and she thought it must be that;

she did not understand that there was a kind of beauty in her small,

irregular features that piqued and haunted his artistic sense, and a

look in her black eyes beyond her intelligence and intention. Once he

sketched her as they sat together, and flattered the portrait without

getting what he wanted in it; he said he must try her some time in

color; and he said things which, when she made Mela repeat them, could

only mean that he admired her more than anybody else. He came fitfully,

but he came often, and she rested content in a girl's indefiniteness

concerning the affair; if her thought went beyond lovemaking to

marriage, she believed that she could have him if she wanted him. Her

father's money counted in this; she divined that Beaton was poor; but

that made no difference; she would have enough for both; the money would

have counted as an irresistible attraction if there had been no other.

The affair had gone on in spite of the sidelong looks of restless

dislike with which Dryfoos regarded it; but now when Beaton did not come

to Saratoga it necessarily dropped, and Christine's content with it.

She bore the trial as long as she could; she used pride and resentment

against it; but at last she could not bear it, and with Mela's help she

wrote a letter, bantering Beaton on his stay in New York, and playfully

boasting of Saratoga. It seemed to them both that it was a very bright

letter, and would be sure to bring him; they would have had no scruple

about sending it but for the doubt they had whether they had got some of

the words right. Mela offered to bet Christine anything she dared that

they were right, and she said, Send it anyway; it was no difference if

they were wrong. But Christine could not endure to think of that laugh

of Beaton's, and there remained only Mrs. Mandel as authority on the

spelling. Christine dreaded her authority on other points, but Mela said

she knew she would not interfere, and she undertook to get round her.

Mrs. Mandel pronounced the spelling bad, and the taste worse; she

forbade them to send the letter; and Mela failed to get round her,

though she threatened, if Mrs. Mandel would not tell her how to spell

the wrong words, that she would send the letter as it was; then Mrs.

Mandel said that if Mr. Beaton appeared in Saratoga she would instantly

take them both home. When Mela reported this result, Christine accused

her of having mismanaged the whole business; she quarrelled with her,

and they called each other names. Christine declared that she would not

stay in Saratoga, and that if Mrs. Mandel did not go back to New York

with her she should go alone. They returned the first week in September;

but by that time Beaton had gone to see his people in Syracuse.

Conrad Dryfoos remained at home with his mother after his father went

West. He had already taken such a vacation as he had been willing to

allow himself, and had spent it on a charity farm near the city, where

the fathers with whom he worked among the poor on the East Side in the

winter had sent some of their wards for the summer. It was not possible

to keep his recreation a secret at the office, and Fulkerson found a

pleasure in figuring the jolly time Brother Conrad must have teaching

farm work among those paupers and potential reprobates. He invented

details of his experience among them, and March could not always

help joining in the laugh at Conrad's humorless helplessness under

Fulkerson's burlesque denunciation of a summer outing spent in such

dissipation.

They had time for a great deal of joking at the office during the season

of leisure which penetrates in August to the very heart of business, and

they all got on terms of greater intimacy if not greater friendliness

than before. Fulkerson had not had so long to do with the advertising

side of human nature without developing a vein of cynicism, of no great

depth, perhaps, but broad, and underlying his whole point of view; he

made light of Beaton's solemnity, as he made light of Conrad's humanity.

The art editor, with abundant sarcasm, had no more humor than the

publisher, and was an easy prey in the manager's hands; but when he had

been led on by Fulkerson's flatteries to make some betrayal of egotism,

he brooded over it till he had thought how to revenge himself in

elaborate insult. For Beaton's talent Fulkerson never lost his

admiration; but his joke was to encourage him to give himself airs of

being the sole source of the magazine's prosperity. No bait of this sort

was too obvious for Beaton to swallow; he could be caught with it as

often as Fulkerson chose; though he was ordinarily suspicious as to the

motives of people in saying things. With March he got on no better than

at first. He seemed to be lying in wait for some encroachment of the

literary department on the art department, and he met it now and then

with anticipative reprisal. After these rebuffs, the editor delivered

him over to the manager, who could turn Beaton's contrary-mindedness to

account by asking the reverse of what he really wanted done. This was

what Fulkerson said; the fact was that he did get on with Beaton

and March contented himself with musing upon the contradictions of a

character at once so vain and so offensive, so fickle and so sullen, so

conscious and so simple.

After the first jarring contact with Dryfoos, the editor ceased to

feel the disagreeable fact of the old man's mastery of the financial

situation. None of the chances which might have made it painful

occurred; the control of the whole affair remained in Fulkerson's hands;

before he went West again, Dryfoos had ceased to come about the office,

as if, having once worn off the novelty of the sense of owning a

literary periodical, he was no longer interested in it.

Yet it was a relief, somehow, when he left town, which he did not do

without coming to take a formal leave of the editor at his office.

He seemed willing to leave March with a better impression than he had

hitherto troubled himself to make; he even said some civil things about

the magazine, as if its success pleased him; and he spoke openly to

March of his hope that his son would finally become interested in it to

the exclusion of the hopes and purposes which divided them. It seemed

to March that in the old man's warped and toughened heart he perceived

a disappointed love for his son greater than for his other children; but

this might have been fancy. Lindau came in with some copy while Dryfoos

was there, and March introduced them. When Lindau went out, March

explained to Dryfoos that he had lost his hand in the war; and he told

him something of Lindau's career as he had known it. Dryfoos appeared

greatly pleased that 'Every Other Week' was giving Lindau work. He said

that he had helped to enlist a good many fellows for the war, and had

paid money to fill up the Moffitt County quota under the later calls

for troops. He had never been an Abolitionist, but he had joined the

Anti-Nebraska party in '55, and he had voted for Fremont and for every

Republican President since then.

At his own house March saw more of Lindau than of any other contributor,

but the old man seemed to think that he must transact all his

business with March at his place of business. The transaction had some

peculiarities which perhaps made this necessary. Lindau always expected

to receive his money when he brought his copy, as an acknowledgment of

the immediate right of the laborer to his hire; and he would not take it

in a check because he did not approve of banks, and regarded the whole

system of banking as the capitalistic manipulation of the people's

money. He would receive his pay only from March's hand, because he

wished to be understood as working for him, and honestly earning money

honestly earned; and sometimes March inwardly winced a little at letting

the old man share the increase of capital won by such speculation as

Dryfoos's, but he shook off the feeling. As the summer advanced, and the

artists and classes that employed Lindau as a model left town one after

another, he gave largely of his increasing leisure to the people in

the office of 'Every Other Week.' It was pleasant for March to see the

respect with which Conrad Dryfoos always used him, for the sake of his

hurt and his gray beard. There was something delicate and fine in it,

and there was nothing unkindly on Fulkerson's part in the hostilities

which usually passed between himself and Lindau. Fulkerson bore himself

reverently at times, too, but it was not in him to keep that up,

especially when Lindau appeared with more beer aboard than, as Fulkerson

said, he could manage shipshape. On these occasions Fulkerson always

tried to start him on the theme of the unduly rich; he made himself the

champion of monopolies, and enjoyed the invectives which Lindau heaped

upon him as a slave of capital; he said that it did him good.

One day, with the usual show of writhing under Lindau's scorn, he said,

“Well, I understand that although you despise me now, Lindau--”

“I ton't desbise you,” the old man broke in, his nostrils swelling and

his eyes flaming with excitement, “I bity you.”

“Well, it seems to come to the same thing in the end,” said Fulkerson.

“What I understand is that you pity me now as the slave of capital, but

you would pity me a great deal more if I was the master of it.”

“How you mean?”

“If I was rich.”

“That would tebendt,” said Lindau, trying to control himself. “If you

hat inheritedt your money, you might pe innocent; but if you hat mate

it, efery man that resbectedt himself would haf to ask how you mate it,

and if you hat mate moch, he would know--”

“Hold on; hold on, now, Lindau! Ain't that rather un-American doctrine?

We're all brought up, ain't we, to honor the man that made his money,

and look down--or try to look down; sometimes it's difficult on the

fellow that his father left it to?”

The old man rose and struck his breast. “On Amerigan!” he roared,

and, as he went on, his accent grew more and more uncertain. “What iss

Amerigan? Dere iss no Ameriga any more! You start here free and brafe,

and you glaim for efery man de right to life, liperty, and de bursuit of

habbiness. And where haf you entedt? No man that vorks vith his handts

among you has the liperty to bursue his habbiness. He iss the slafe of

some richer man, some gompany, some gorporation, dat crindt him down

to the least he can lif on, and that rops him of the marchin of his

earnings that he knight pe habby on. Oh, you Amerigans, you haf cot it

down goldt, as you say! You ton't puy foters; you puy lechislatures and

goncressmen; you puy gourts; you puy gombetitors; you pay infentors

not to infent; you atfertise, and the gounting-room sees dat de

etitorial-room toesn't tink.”

“Yes, we've got a little arrangement of that sort with March here,” said

Fulkerson.

“Oh, I am sawry,” said the old man, contritely, “I meant noting

bersonal. I ton't tink we are all cuilty or gorrubt, and efen among the

rich there are goodt men. But gabidal”--his passion rose again--“where

you find gabidal, millions of money that a man hass cot togeder in fife,

ten, twenty years, you findt the smell of tears and ploodt! Dat iss what

I say. And you cot to loog oudt for yourself when you meet a rich man

whether you meet an honest man.”

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “I wish I was a subject of suspicion with you,

Lindau. By-the-way,” he added, “I understand that you think capital was

at the bottom of the veto of that pension of yours.”

“What bension? What feto?”--The old man flamed up again. “No bension of

mine was efer fetoedt. I renounce my bension, begause I would sgorn to

dake money from a gofernment that I ton't peliefe in any more. Where you

hear that story?”

“Well, I don't know,” said Fulkerson, rather embarrassed. “It's common

talk.”

“It's a gommon lie, then! When the time gome dat dis iss a free gountry

again, then I dake a bension again for my woundts; but I would sdarfe

before I dake a bension now from a rebublic dat iss bought oap by

monobolies, and ron by drusts and gompines, and railroadts andt oil

gompanies.”

“Look out, Lindau,” said Fulkerson. “You bite yourself mit dat dog some

day.” But when the old man, with a ferocious gesture of renunciation,

whirled out of the place, he added: “I guess I went a little too far

that time. I touched him on a sore place; I didn't mean to; I heard some

talk about his pension being vetoed from Miss Leighton.” He addressed

these exculpations to March's grave face, and to the pitying deprecation

in the eyes of Conrad Dryfoos, whom Lindau's roaring wrath had summoned

to the door. “But I'll make it all right with him the next time he

comes. I didn't know he was loaded, or I wouldn't have monkeyed with

him.”

“Lindau does himself injustice when he gets to talking in that way,”

said March. “I hate to hear him. He's as good an American as any of us;

and it's only because he has too high an ideal of us--”

“Oh, go on! Rub it in--rub it in!” cried Fulkerson, clutching his hair

in suffering, which was not altogether burlesque. “How did I know he had

renounced his 'bension'? Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't know it myself. I only knew that he had none, and I didn't

ask, for I had a notion that it might be a painful subject.”

Fulkerson tried to turn it off lightly. “Well, he's a noble old fellow;

pity he drinks.” March would not smile, and Fulkerson broke out: “Dog on

it! I'll make it up to the old fool the next time he comes. I don't

like that dynamite talk of his; but any man that's given his hand to the

country has got mine in his grip for good. Why, March! You don't suppose

I wanted to hurt his feelings, do you?”

“Why, of course not, Fulkerson.”

But they could not get away from a certain ruefulness for that time, and

in the evening Fulkerson came round to March's to say that he had got

Lindau's address from Conrad, and had looked him up at his lodgings.

“Well, there isn't so much bric-a-brac there, quite, as Mrs. Green left

you; but I've made it all right with Lindau, as far as I'm concerned.

I told him I didn't know when I spoke that way, and I honored him for

sticking to his 'brinciples'; I don't believe in his 'brincibles'; and

we wept on each other's necks--at least, he did. Dogged if he didn't

kiss me before I knew what he was up to. He said I was his chenerous

gong friendt, and he begged my barton if he had said anything to wound

me. I tell you it was an affecting scene, March; and rats enough round

in that old barracks where he lives to fit out a first-class case of

delirium tremens. What does he stay there for? He's not obliged to?”

Lindau's reasons, as March repeated them, affected Fulkerson as

deliciously comical; but after that he confined his pleasantries at the

office to Beaton and Conrad Dryfoos, or, as he said, he spent the rest

of the summer in keeping Lindau smoothed up.

It is doubtful if Lindau altogether liked this as well. Perhaps he

missed the occasions Fulkerson used to give him of bursting out against

the millionaires; and he could not well go on denouncing as the slafe

of gabidal a man who had behaved to him as Fulkerson had done, though

Fulkerson's servile relations to capital had been in nowise changed by

his nople gonduct.

Their relations continued to wear this irksome character of mutual

forbearance; and when Dryfoos returned in October and Fulkerson revived

the question of that dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every

Other Week,' he carried his complaisance to an extreme that alarmed

March for the consequences.

V.

“You see,” Fulkerson explained, “I find that the old man has got an idea

of his own about that banquet, and I guess there's some sense in it. He

wants to have a preliminary little dinner, where we can talk the thing

up first--half a dozen of us; and he wants to give us the dinner at his

house. Well, that's no harm. I don't believe the old man ever gave a

dinner, and he'd like to show off a little; there's a good deal of human

nature in the old man, after all. He thought of you, of course, and

Colonel Woodburn, and Beaton, and me at the foot of the table; and

Conrad; and I suggested Kendricks: he's such a nice little chap; and

the old man himself brought up the idea of Lindau. He said you told him

something about him, and he asked why couldn't we have him, too; and I

jumped at it.”

“Have Lindau to dinner?” asked March.

“Certainly; why not? Father Dryfoos has a notion of paying the old

fellow a compliment for what he done for the country. There won't be any

trouble about it. You can sit alongside of him, and cut up his meat for

him, and help him to things--”

“Yes, but it won't do, Fulkerson! I don't believe Lindau ever had on a

dress-coat in his life, and I don't believe his 'brincibles' would let

him wear one.”

“Well, neither had Dryfoos, for the matter of that. He's as

high-principled as old Pan-Electric himself, when it comes to a

dress-coat,” said Fulkerson. “We're all going to go in business dress;

the old man stipulated for that.

“It isn't the dress-coat alone,” March resumed. “Lindau and Dryfoos

wouldn't get on. You know they're opposite poles in everything. You

mustn't do it. Dryfoos will be sure to say something to outrage Lindau's

'brincibles,' and there'll be an explosion. It's all well enough for

Dryfoos to feel grateful to Lindau, and his wish to honor him does him

credit; but to have Lindau to dinner isn't the way. At the best, the

old fellow would be very unhappy in such a house; he would have a

bad conscience; and I should be sorry to have him feel that he'd been

recreant to his 'brincibles'; they're about all he's got, and whatever

we think of them, we're bound to respect his fidelity to them.” March

warmed toward Lindau in taking this view of him. “I should feel ashamed

if I didn't protest against his being put in a false position. After

all, he's my old friend, and I shouldn't like to have him do himself

injustice if he is a crank.”

“Of course,” said Fulkerson, with some trouble in his face. “I

appreciate your feeling. But there ain't any danger,” he added,

buoyantly. “Anyhow, you spoke too late, as the Irishman said to the

chicken when he swallowed him in a fresh egg. I've asked Lindau, and

he's accepted with blayzure; that's what he says.”

March made no other comment than a shrug.

“You'll see,” Fulkerson continued, “it 'll go off all right. I'll engage

to make it, and I won't hold anybody else responsible.”

In the course of his married life March had learned not to censure the

irretrievable; but this was just what his wife had not learned; and she

poured out so much astonishment at what Fulkerson had done, and so much

disapproval, that March began to palliate the situation a little.

“After all, it isn't a question of life and death; and, if it were, I

don't see how it's to be helped now.”

“Oh, it's not to be helped now. But I am surprised at Mr. Fulkerson.”

“Well, Fulkerson has his moments of being merely human, too.”

Mrs. March would not deign a direct defence of her favorite. “Well, I'm

glad there are not to be ladies.”

“I don't know. Dryfoos thought of having ladies, but it seems your

infallible Fulkerson overruled him. Their presence might have kept

Lindau and our host in bounds.”

It had become part of the Marches' conjugal joke for him to pretend that

she could allow nothing wrong in Fulkerson, and he now laughed with a

mocking air of having expected it when she said: “Well, then, if Mr.

Fulkerson says he will see that it all comes out right, I suppose you

must trust his tact. I wouldn't trust yours, Basil. The first wrong step

was taken when Mr. Lindau was asked to help on the magazine.”

“Well, it was your infallible Fulkerson that took the step, or at least

suggested it. I'm happy to say I had totally forgotten my early friend.”

Mrs. March was daunted and silenced for a moment. Then she said: “Oh,

pshaw! You know well enough he did it to please you.”

“I'm very glad he didn't do it to please you, Isabel,” said her husband,

with affected seriousness. “Though perhaps he did.”

He began to look at the humorous aspect of the affair, which it

certainly had, and to comment on the singular incongruities which 'Every

Other Week' was destined to involve at every moment of its career. “I

wonder if I'm mistaken in supposing that no other periodical was ever

like it. Perhaps all periodicals are like it. But I don't believe

there's another publication in New York that could bring together, in

honor of itself, a fraternity and equality crank like poor old Lindau,

and a belated sociological crank like Woodburn, and a truculent

speculator like old Dryfoos, and a humanitarian dreamer like young

Dryfoos, and a sentimentalist like me, and a nondescript like Beaton,

and a pure advertising essence like Fulkerson, and a society spirit like

Kendricks. If we could only allow one another to talk uninterruptedly

all the time, the dinner would be the greatest success in the world, and

we should come home full of the highest mutual respect. But I suspect we

can't manage that--even your infallible Fulkerson couldn't work it--and

I'm afraid that there'll be some listening that 'll spoil the pleasure

of the time.”

March was so well pleased with this view of the case that he suggested

the idea involved to Fulkerson. Fulkerson was too good a fellow not to

laugh at another man's joke, but he laughed a little ruefully, and he

seemed worn with more than one kind of care in the interval that passed

between the present time and the night of the dinner.

Dryfoos necessarily depended upon him for advice concerning the scope

and nature of the dinner, but he received the advice suspiciously,

and contested points of obvious propriety with pertinacious stupidity.

Fulkerson said that when it came to the point he would rather have had

the thing, as he called it, at Delmonico's or some other restaurant; but

when he found that Dryfoos's pride was bound up in having it at his own

house, he gave way to him. Dryfoos also wanted his woman-cook to prepare

the dinner, but Fulkerson persuaded him that this would not do; he must

have it from a caterer. Then Dryfoos wanted his maids to wait at table,

but Fulkerson convinced him that this would be incongruous at a

man's dinner. It was decided that the dinner should be sent in from

Frescobaldi's, and Dryfoos went with Fulkerson to discuss it with the

caterer. He insisted upon having everything explained to him, and

the reason for having it, and not something else in its place; and he

treated Fulkerson and Frescobaldi as if they were in league to

impose upon him. There were moments when Fulkerson saw the varnish of

professional politeness cracking on the Neapolitan's volcanic surface,

and caught a glimpse of the lava fires of the cook's nature beneath;

he trembled for Dryfoos, who was walking rough-shod over him in the

security of an American who had known how to make his money, and must

know how to spend it; but he got him safely away at last, and gave

Frescobaldi a wink of sympathy for his shrug of exhaustion as they

turned to leave him.

It was at first a relief and then an anxiety with Fulkerson that Lindau

did not come about after accepting the invitation to dinner, until he

appeared at Dryfoos's house, prompt to the hour. There was, to be sure,

nothing to bring him; but Fulkerson was uneasily aware that Dryfoos

expected to meet him at the office, and perhaps receive some verbal

acknowledgment of the honor done him. Dryfoos, he could see, thought

he was doing all his invited guests a favor; and while he stood in a

certain awe of them as people of much greater social experience than

himself, regarded them with a kind of contempt, as people who were going

to have a better dinner at his house than they could ever afford to have

at their own. He had finally not spared expense upon it; after pushing

Frescobaldi to the point of eruption with his misgivings and suspicions

at the first interview, he had gone to him a second time alone, and told

him not to let the money stand between him and anything he would like

to do. In the absence of Frescobaldi's fellow-conspirator he restored

himself in the caterer's esteem by adding whatever he suggested; and

Fulkerson, after trembling for the old man's niggardliness, was now

afraid of a fantastic profusion in the feast. Dryfoos had reduced the

scale of the banquet as regarded the number of guests, but a confusing

remembrance of what Fulkerson had wished to do remained with him in

part, and up to the day of the dinner he dropped in at Frescobaldi's

and ordered more dishes and more of them. He impressed the Italian as

an American original of a novel kind; and when he asked Fulkerson how

Dryfoos had made his money, and learned that it was primarily in natural

gas, he made note of some of his eccentric tastes as peculiarities that

were to be caressed in any future natural-gas millionaire who might

fall into his hands. He did not begrudge the time he had to give

in explaining to Dryfoos the relation of the different wines to the

different dishes; Dryfoos was apt to substitute a costlier wine where he

could for a cheaper one, and he gave Frescobaldi carte blanche for the

decoration of the table with pieces of artistic confectionery. Among

these the caterer designed one for a surprise to his patron and a

delicate recognition of the source of his wealth, which he found Dryfoos

very willing to talk about, when he intimated that he knew what it was.

Dryfoos left it to Fulkerson to invite the guests, and he found ready

acceptance of his politeness from Kendricks, who rightly regarded the

dinner as a part of the 'Every Other Week' business, and was too sweet

and kind-hearted, anyway, not to seem very glad to come. March was

a matter of course; but in Colonel Woodburn, Fulkerson encountered a

reluctance which embarrassed him the more because he was conscious of

having, for motives of his own, rather strained a point in suggesting

the colonel to Dryfoos as a fit subject for invitation. There had been

only one of the colonel's articles printed as yet, and though it had

made a sensation in its way, and started the talk about that number,

still it did not fairly constitute him a member of the staff, or even

entitle him to recognition as a regular contributor. Fulkerson felt so

sure of pleasing him with Dryfoos's message that he delivered it in full

family council at the widow's. His daughter received it with all the

enthusiasm that Fulkerson had hoped for, but the colonel said, stiffly,

“I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dryfoos.” Miss Woodburn appeared

ready to fall upon him at this, but controlled herself, as if aware that

filial authority had its limits, and pressed her lips together without

saying anything.

“Yes, I know,” Fulkerson admitted. “But it isn't a usual case. Mr.

Dryfoos don't go in much for the conventionalities; I reckon he don't

know much about 'em, come to boil it down; and he hoped”--here Fulkerson

felt the necessity of inventing a little--“that you would excuse any

want of ceremony; it's to be such an informal affair, anyway; we're all

going in business dress, and there ain't going to be any ladies. He'd

have come himself to ask you, but he's a kind of a bashful old fellow.

It's all right, Colonel Woodburn.”

“I take it that it is, sir,” said the colonel, courteously, but with

unabated state, “coming from you. But in these matters we have no right

to burden our friends with our decisions.”

“Of course, of course,” said Fulkerson, feeling that he had been

delicately told to mind his own business.

“I understand,” the colonel went on, “the relation that Mr. Dryfoos

bears to the periodical in which you have done me the honor to print my

papah, but this is a question of passing the bounds of a purely business

connection, and of eating the salt of a man whom you do not definitely

know to be a gentleman.”

“Mah goodness!” his daughter broke in. “If you bah your own salt with

his money--”

“It is supposed that I earn his money before I buy my salt with it,”

returned her father, severely. “And in these times, when money is got

in heaps, through the natural decay of our nefarious commercialism, it

behooves a gentleman to be scrupulous that the hospitality offered him

is not the profusion of a thief with his booty. I don't say that Mr.

Dryfoos's good-fortune is not honest. I simply say that I know nothing

about it, and that I should prefer to know something before I sat down

at his board.”

“You're all right, colonel,” said Fulkerson, “and so is Mr. Dryfoos. I

give you my word that there are no flies on his personal integrity, if

that's what you mean. He's hard, and he'd push an advantage, but I don't

believe he would take an unfair one. He's speculated and made money

every time, but I never heard of his wrecking a railroad or belonging

to any swindling company or any grinding monopoly. He does chance it

in stocks, but he's always played on the square, if you call stocks

gambling.”

“May I think this over till morning?” asked the colonel.

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Fulkerson, eagerly. “I don't know as

there's any hurry.”

Miss Woodburn found a chance to murmur to him before he went: “He'll

come. And Ah'm so much oblahged, Mr. Fulkerson. Ah jost know it's all

you' doing, and it will give papa a chance to toak to some new people,

and get away from us evahlastin' women for once.”

“I don't see why any one should want to do that,” said Fulkerson, with

grateful gallantry. “But I'll be dogged,” he said to March when he

told him about this odd experience, “if I ever expected to find Colonel

Woodburn on old Lindau's ground. He did come round handsomely this

morning at breakfast and apologized for taking time to think the

invitation over before he accepted. 'You understand,' he says, 'that

if it had been to the table of some friend not so prosperous as Mr.

Dryfoos--your friend Mr. March, for instance--it would have been

sufficient to know that he was your friend. But in these days it is a

duty that a gentleman owes himself to consider whether he wishes to know

a rich man or not. The chances of making money disreputably are so great

that the chances are against a man who has made money if he's made a

great deal of it.'”

March listened with a face of ironical insinuation. “That was very good;

and he seems to have had a good deal of confidence in your patience and

in your sense of his importance to the occasion--”

“No, no,” Fulkerson protested, “there's none of that kind of thing

about the colonel. I told him to take time to think it over; he's the

simplest-hearted old fellow in the world.”

“I should say so. After all, he didn't give any reason he had for

accepting. But perhaps the young lady had the reason.”

“Pshaw, March!” said Fulkerson.

VI.

So far as the Dryfoos family was concerned, the dinner might as well

have been given at Frescobaldi's rooms. None of the ladies appeared.

Mrs. Dryfoos was glad to escape to her own chamber, where she sat before

an autumnal fire, shaking her head and talking to herself at times,

with the foreboding of evil which old women like her make part of their

religion. The girls stood just out of sight at the head of the stairs,

and disputed which guest it was at each arrival; Mrs. Mandel had gone

to her room to write letters, after beseeching them not to stand there.

When Kendricks came, Christine gave Mela a little pinch, equivalent to a

little mocking shriek; for, on the ground of his long talk with Mela

at Mrs. Horn's, in the absence of any other admirer, they based a

superstition of his interest in her; when Beaton came, Mela returned the

pinch, but awkwardly, so that it hurt, and then Christine involuntarily

struck her.

Frescobaldi's men were in possession everywhere they had turned the cook

out of her kitchen and the waitress out of her pantry; the reluctant

Irishman at the door was supplemented by a vivid Italian, who spoke

French with the guests, and said, “Bien, Monsieur,” and “toute suite,”

and “Merci!” to all, as he took their hats and coats, and effused a

hospitality that needed no language but the gleam of his eyes and teeth

and the play of his eloquent hands. From his professional dress-coat,

lustrous with the grease spotted on it at former dinners and parties,

they passed to the frocks of the elder and younger Dryfoos in the

drawing-room, which assumed informality for the affair, but did not

put their wearers wholly at their ease. The father's coat was of black

broadcloth, and he wore it unbuttoned; the skirts were long, and the

sleeves came down to his knuckles; he shook hands with his guests, and

the same dryness seemed to be in his palm and throat, as he huskily

asked each to take a chair. Conrad's coat was of modern texture and cut,

and was buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience within

its lapels; he met March with his entreating smile, and he seemed no

more capable of coping with the situation than his father. They both

waited for Fulkerson, who went about and did his best to keep life

in the party during the half-hour that passed before they sat down at

dinner. Beaton stood gloomily aloof, as if waiting to be approached on

the right basis before yielding an inch of his ground; Colonel Woodburn,

awaiting the moment when he could sally out on his hobby, kept himself

intrenched within the dignity of a gentleman, and examined askance the

figure of old Lindau as he stared about the room, with his fine head up,

and his empty sleeve dangling over his wrist. March felt obliged to him

for wearing a new coat in the midst of that hostile luxury, and he was

glad to see Dryfoos make up to him and begin to talk with him, as if he

wished to show him particular respect, though it might have been because

he was less afraid of him than of the others. He heard Lindau saying,

“Boat, the name is Choarman?” and Dryfoos beginning to explain his

Pennsylvania Dutch origin, and he suffered himself, with a sigh of

relief, to fall into talk with Kendricks, who was always pleasant; he

was willing to talk about something besides himself, and had no opinions

that he was not ready to hold in abeyance for the time being out of

kindness to others. In that group of impassioned individualities, March

felt him a refuge and comfort--with his harmless dilettante intention of

some day writing a novel, and his belief that he was meantime collecting

material for it.

Fulkerson, while breaking the ice for the whole company, was mainly

engaged in keeping Colonel Woodburn thawed out. He took Kendricks

away from March and presented him to the colonel as a person who,

like himself, was looking into social conditions; he put one hand on

Kendricks's shoulder, and one on the colonel's, and made some flattering

joke, apparently at the expense of the young fellow, and then left them.

March heard Kendricks protest in vain, and the colonel say, gravely: “I

do not wonder, sir, that these things interest you. They constitute a

problem which society must solve or which will dissolve society,” and he

knew from that formula, which the colonel had, once used with him, that

he was laying out a road for the exhibition of the hobby's paces later.

Fulkerson came back to March, who had turned toward Conrad Dryfoos, and

said, “If we don't get this thing going pretty soon, it 'll be the death

of me,” and just then Frescobaldi's butler came in and announced to

Dryfoos that dinner was served. The old man looked toward Fulkerson with

a troubled glance, as if he did not know what to do; he made a gesture

to touch Lindau's elbow. Fulkerson called out, “Here's Colonel Woodburn,

Mr. Dryfoos,” as if Dryfoos were looking for him; and he set the example

of what he was to do by taking Lindau's arm himself. “Mr. Lindau is

going to sit at my end of the table, alongside of March. Stand not upon

the order of your going, gentlemen, but fall in at once.” He contrived

to get Dryfoos and the colonel before him, and he let March follow with

Kendricks. Conrad came last with Beaton, who had been turning over the

music at the piano, and chafing inwardly at the whole affair. At the

table Colonel Woodburn was placed on Dryfoos's right, and March on his

left. March sat on Fulkerson's right, with Lindau next him; and the

young men occupied the other seats.

“Put you next to March, Mr. Lindau,” said Fulkerson, “so you can begin

to put Apollinaris in his champagne-glass at the right moment; you know

his little weakness of old; sorry to say it's grown on him.”

March laughed with kindly acquiescence in Fulkerson's wish to start the

gayety, and Lindau patted him on the shoulder. “I know hiss veakness.

If he liges a class of vine, it iss begause his loaf ingludes efen hiss

enemy, as Shakespeare galled it.”

“Ah, but Shakespeare couldn't have been thinking of champagne,” said

Kendricks.

“I suppose, sir,” Colonel Woodburn interposed, with lofty courtesy,

“champagne could hardly have been known in his day.”

“I suppose not, colonel,” returned the younger man, deferentially. “He

seemed to think that sack and sugar might be a fault; but he didn't

mention champagne.”

“Perhaps he felt there was no question about that,” suggested Beaton,

who then felt that he had not done himself justice in the sally.

“I wonder just when champagne did come in,” said March.

“I know when it ought to come in,” said Fulkerson. “Before the soup!”

They all laughed, and gave themselves the air of drinking champagne out

of tumblers every day, as men like to do. Dryfoos listened uneasily; he

did not quite understand the allusions, though he knew what Shakespeare

was, well enough; Conrad's face expressed a gentle deprecation of joking

on such a subject, but he said nothing.

The talk ran on briskly through the dinner. The young men tossed the

ball back and forth; they made some wild shots, but they kept it going,

and they laughed when they were hit. The wine loosed Colonel Woodburn's

tongue; he became very companionable with the young fellows; with

the feeling that a literary dinner ought to have a didactic scope, he

praised Scott and Addison as the only authors fit to form the minds of

gentlemen.

Kendricks agreed with him, but wished to add the name of Flaubert as a

master of style. “Style, you know,” he added, “is the man.”

“Very true, sir; you are quite right, sir,” the colonel assented; he

wondered who Flaubert was.

Beaton praised Baudelaire and Maupassant; he said these were the

masters. He recited some lurid verses from Baudelaire; Lindau pronounced

them a disgrace to human nature, and gave a passage from Victor Hugo

on Louis Napoleon, with his heavy German accent, and then he quoted

Schiller. “Ach, boat that is a peaudifool! Not zo?” he demanded of

March.

“Yes, beautiful; but, of course, you know I think there's nobody like

Heine!”

Lindau threw back his great old head and laughed, showing a want of

teeth under his mustache. He put his hand on March's back. “This poy--he

was a poy den--wars so gracy to pekin reading Heine that he gommence

with the tictionary bevore he knows any Grammar, and ve bick it out vort

by vort togeder.”

“He was a pretty cay poy in those days, heigh, Lindau?” asked Fulkerson,

burlesquing the old man's accent, with an impudent wink that made Lindau

himself laugh. “But in the dark ages, I mean, there in Indianapolis.

Just how long ago did you old codgers meet there, anyway?” Fulkerson saw

the restiveness in Dryfoos's eye at the purely literary course the talk

had taken; he had intended it to lead up that way to business, to 'Every

Other Week;' but he saw that it was leaving Dryfoos too far out, and he

wished to get it on the personal ground, where everybody is at home.

“Ledt me zee,” mused Lindau. “Wass it in fifty-nine or zixty, Passil?

Idt wass a year or dwo pefore the war proke oudt, anyway.”

“Those were exciting times,” said Dryfoos, making his first entry into

the general talk. “I went down to Indianapolis with the first company

from our place, and I saw the red-shirts pouring in everywhere. They had

a song,

“Oh, never mind the weather, but git over double trouble,

For we're bound for the land of Canaan.”

The fellows locked arms and went singin' it up and down four or five

abreast in the moonlight; crowded everybody else off the sidewalk.

“I remember, I remember,” said Lindau, nodding his head slowly up and

down. “A coodt many off them nefer gome pack from that landt of Ganaan,

Mr. Dryfoos?”

“You're right, Mr. Lindau. But I reckon it was worth it--the country

we've got now. Here, young man!” He caught the arm of the waiter who

was going round with the champagne bottle. “Fill up Mr. Lindau's glass,

there. I want to drink the health of those old times with him. Here's to

your empty sleeve, Mr. Lindau. God bless it! No offence to you, Colonel

Woodburn,” said Dryfoos, turning to him before he drank.

“Not at all, sir, not at all,” said the colonel. “I will drink with you,

if you will permit me.”

“We'll all drink--standing!” cried Fulkerson. “Help March to get up,

somebody! Fill high the bowl with Samian Apollinaris for Coonrod! Now,

then, hurrah for Lindau!”

They cheered, and hammered on the table with the butts of their

knife-handles. Lindau remained seated. The tears came into his eyes; he

said, “I thank you, chendlemen,” and hiccoughed.

“I'd 'a' went into the war myself,” said Dryfoos, “but I was raisin' a

family of young children, and I didn't see how I could leave my

farm. But I helped to fill up the quota at every call, and when the

volunteering stopped I went round with the subscription paper myself;

and we offered as good bounties as any in the State. My substitute

was killed in one of the last skirmishes--in fact, after Lee's

surrender--and I've took care of his family, more or less, ever since.”

“By-the-way, March,” said Fulkerson, “what sort of an idea would it be

to have a good war story--might be a serial--in the magazine? The war

has never fully panned out in fiction yet. It was used a good deal just

after it was over, and then it was dropped. I think it's time to take it

up again. I believe it would be a card.”

It was running in March's mind that Dryfoos had an old rankling shame in

his heart for not having gone into the war, and that he had often made

that explanation of his course without having ever been satisfied with

it. He felt sorry for him; the fact seemed pathetic; it suggested a

dormant nobleness in the man.

Beaton was saying to Fulkerson: “You might get a series of sketches by

substitutes; the substitutes haven't been much heard from in the war

literature. How would 'The Autobiography of a Substitute' do? You might

follow him up to the moment he was killed in the other man's place, and

inquire whether he had any right to the feelings of a hero when he was

only hired in the place of one. Might call it 'The Career of a Deputy

Hero.'”

“I fancy,” said March, “that there was a great deal of mixed motive in

the men who went into the war as well as in those who kept out of it.

We canonized all that died or suffered in it, but some of them must have

been self-seeking and low-minded, like men in other vocations.” He

found himself saying this in Dryfoos's behalf; the old man looked at him

gratefully at first, he thought, and then suspiciously.

Lindau turned his head toward him and said: “You are righdt, Passil; you

are righdt. I haf zeen on the fieldt of pattle the voarst eggsipitions

of human paseness--chelousy, fanity, ecodistic bridte. I haf zeen men

in the face off death itself gofferned by motifes as low as--as pusiness

motifes.”

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “it would be a grand thing for 'Every Other

Week' if we could get some of those ideas worked up into a series. It

would make a lot of talk.”

Colonel Woodburn ignored him in saying, “I think, Major Lindau--”

“High brifate; prefet gorporal,” the old man interrupted, in rejection

of the title.

Hendricks laughed and said, with a glance of appreciation at Lindau,

“Brevet corporal is good.”

Colonel Woodburn frowned a little, and passed over the joke. “I think

Mr. Lindau is right. Such exhibitions were common to both sides, though

if you gentlemen will pardon me for saying so, I think they were less

frequent on ours. We were fighting more immediately for existence. We

were fewer than you were, and we knew it; we felt more intensely that if

each were not for all, then none was for any.”

The colonel's words made their impression. Dryfoos said, with authority,

“That is so.”

“Colonel Woodburn,” Fulkerson called out, “if you'll work up those ideas

into a short paper--say, three thousand words--I'll engage to make March

take it.”

The colonel went on without replying: “But Mr. Lindau is right in

characterizing some of the motives that led men to the cannon's mouth as

no higher than business motives, and his comparison is the most forcible

that he could have used. I was very much struck by it.”

The hobby was out, the colonel was in the saddle with so firm a seat

that no effort sufficed to dislodge him. The dinner went on from course

to course with barbaric profusion, and from time to time Fulkerson tried

to bring the talk back to 'Every Other Week.' But perhaps because that

was only the ostensible and not the real object of the dinner, which was

to bring a number of men together under Dryfoos's roof, and make them

the witnesses of his splendor, make them feel the power of his wealth,

Fulkerson's attempts failed. The colonel showed how commercialism was

the poison at the heart of our national life; how we began as a simple,

agricultural people, who had fled to these shores with the instinct,

divinely implanted, of building a state such as the sun never shone upon

before; how we had conquered the wilderness and the savage; how we had

flung off, in our struggle with the mother-country, the trammels of

tradition and precedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to the

practice of the arts of peace; how the spirit of commercialism had

stolen insidiously upon us, and the infernal impulse of competition had

embroiled us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing the worst

passions of our nature, and teaching us to trick and betray and destroy

one another in the strife for money, till now that impulse had exhausted

itself, and we found competition gone and the whole economic problem in

the hands of monopolies--the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the

Rubber Trust, and what not. And now what was the next thing? Affairs

could not remain as they were; it was impossible; and what was the next

thing?

The company listened for the main part silently. Dryfoos tried to grasp

the idea of commercialism as the colonel seemed to hold it; he conceived

of it as something like the dry-goods business on a vast scale, and

he knew he had never been in that. He did not like to hear competition

called infernal; he had always supposed it was something sacred; but he

approved of what Colonel Woodburn said of the Standard Oil Company; it

was all true; the Standard Oil has squeezed Dryfoos once, and made him

sell it a lot of oil-wells by putting down the price of oil so low in

that region that he lost money on every barrel he pumped.

All the rest listened silently, except Lindau; at every point the

colonel made against the present condition of things he said more and

more fiercely, “You are righdt, you are righdt.” His eyes glowed, his

hand played with his knife-hilt. When the colonel demanded, “And what is

the next thing?” he threw himself forward, and repeated: “Yes, sir! What

is the next thing?”

“Natural gas, by thunder!” shouted Fulkerson.

One of the waiters had profited by Lindau's posture to lean over him

and put down in the middle of the table a structure in white sugar. It

expressed Frescobaldi's conception of a derrick, and a touch of nature

had been added in the flame of brandy, which burned luridly up from

a small pit in the centre of the base, and represented the gas in

combustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson burst into a roar of

laughter with the words that recognized Frescobaldi's personal tribute

to Dryfoos. Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, while he

explained the work of sinking a gas-well, as he had already explained

it to Frescobaldi. In the midst of his lecture he caught sight of the

caterer himself, where he stood in the pantry doorway, smiling with an

artist's anxiety for the effect of his masterpiece.

“Come in, come in, Frescobaldi! We want to congratulate you,” Fulkerson

called to him. “Here, gentlemen! Here's Frescobaldi's health.”

They all drank; and Frescobaldi, smiling brilliantly and rubbing his

hands as he bowed right and left, permitted himself to say to Dryfoos:

“You are please; no? You like?”

“First-rate, first-rate!” said the old man; but when the Italian had

bowed himself out and his guests had sunk into their seats again, he

said dryly to Fulkerson, “I reckon they didn't have to torpedo that

well, or the derrick wouldn't look quite so nice and clean.”

“Yes,” Fulkerson answered, “and that ain't quite the style--that little

wiggly-waggly blue flame--that the gas acts when you touch off a good

vein of it. This might do for weak gas”; and he went on to explain:

“They call it weak gas when they tap it two or three hundred feet down;

and anybody can sink a well in his back yard and get enough gas to light

and heat his house. I remember one fellow that had it blazing up from a

pipe through a flower-bed, just like a jet of water from a fountain. My,

my, my! You fel--you gentlemen--ought to go out and see that country,

all of you. Wish we could torpedo this well, Mr. Dryfoos, and let 'em

see how it works! Mind that one you torpedoed for me? You know, when

they sink a well,” he went on to the company, “they can't always most

generally sometimes tell whether they're goin' to get gas or oil or

salt water. Why, when they first began to bore for salt water out on the

Kanawha, back about the beginning of the century, they used to get

gas now and then, and then they considered it a failure; they called a

gas-well a blower, and give it up in disgust; the time wasn't ripe for

gas yet. Now they bore away sometimes till they get half-way to China,

and don't seem to strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put a

dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode it. They have a little

bar of iron that they call a Go-devil, and they just drop it down on the

business end of the torpedo, and then stand from under, if you please!

You hear a noise, and in about half a minute you begin to see one, and

it begins to rain oil and mud and salt water and rocks and pitchforks

and adoptive citizens; and when it clears up the derrick's painted--got

a coat on that 'll wear in any climate. That's what our honored host

meant. Generally get some visiting lady, when there's one round, to

drop the Go-devil. But that day we had to put up with Conrad here. They

offered to let me drop it, but I declined. I told 'em I hadn't much

practice with Go-devils in the newspaper syndicate business, and I

wasn't very well myself, anyway. Astonishing,” Fulkerson continued, with

the air of relieving his explanation by an anecdote, “how reckless they

get using dynamite when they're torpedoing wells. We stopped at one

place where a fellow was handling the cartridges pretty freely, and Mr.

Dryfoos happened to caution him a little, and that ass came up with one

of 'em in his hand, and began to pound it on the buggy-wheel to show us

how safe it was. I turned green, I was so scared; but Mr. Dryfoos kept

his color, and kind of coaxed the fellow till he quit. You could see he

was the fool kind, that if you tried to stop him he'd keep on hammering

that cartridge, just to show that it wouldn't explode, till he blew you

into Kingdom Come. When we got him to go away, Mr. Dryfoos drove up to

his foreman. 'Pay Sheney off, and discharge him on the spot,' says he.

'He's too safe a man to have round; he knows too much about dynamite.' I

never saw anybody so cool.”

Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Fulkerson's flattery and,

without lifting it, turned his eyes toward Colonel Woodburn. “I had all

sorts of men to deal with in developing my property out there, but I had

very little trouble with them, generally speaking.”

“Ah, ah! you foundt the laboring-man reasonable--dractable--tocile?”

Lindau put in.

“Yes, generally speaking,” Dryfoos answered. “They mostly knew which

side of their bread was buttered. I did have one little difficulty at

one time. It happened to be when Mr. Fulkerson was out there. Some of

the men tried to form a union--”

“No, no!” cried Fulkerson. “Let me tell that! I know you wouldn't do

yourself justice, Mr. Dryfoos, and I want 'em to know how a strike can

be managed, if you take it in time. You see, some of those fellows got

a notion that there ought to be a union among the working-men to keep up

wages, and dictate to the employers, and Mr. Dryfoos's foreman was the

ringleader in the business. They understood pretty well that as soon as

he found it out that foreman would walk the plank, and so they watched

out till they thought they had Mr. Dryfoos just where they wanted

him--everything on the keen jump, and every man worth his weight in

diamonds--and then they came to him, and--told him to sign a promise to

keep that foreman to the end of the season, or till he was through with

the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under penalty of having

them all knock off. Mr. Dryfoos smelled a mouse, but he couldn't tell

where the mouse was; he saw that they did have him, and he signed, of

course. There wasn't anything really against the fellow, anyway; he was

a first-rate man, and he did his duty every time; only he'd got some of

those ideas into his head, and they turned it. Mr. Dryfoos signed, and

then he laid low.”

March saw Lindau listening with a mounting intensity, and heard him

murmur in German, “Shameful! shameful!”

Fulkerson went on: “Well, it wasn't long before they began to show their

hand, but Mr. Dryfoos kept dark. He agreed to everything; there never

was such an obliging capitalist before; there wasn't a thing they asked

of him that he didn't do, with the greatest of pleasure, and all went

merry as a marriage-bell till one morning a whole gang of fresh men

marched into the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under the escort of a

dozen Pinkertons with repeating rifles at half-cock, and about fifty

fellows found themselves out of a job. You never saw such a mad set.”

“Pretty neat,” said Kendricks, who looked at the affair purely from an

aesthetic point of view. “Such a coup as that would tell tremendously in

a play.”

“That was vile treason,” said Lindau in German to March. “He's an

infamous traitor! I cannot stay here. I must go.”

He struggled to rise, while March held him by the coat, and implored

him under his voice: “For Heaven's sake, don't, Lindau! You owe it to

yourself not to make a scene, if you come here.” Something in it all

affected him comically; he could not help laughing.

The others were discussing the matter, and seemed not to have noticed

Lindau, who controlled himself and sighed: “You are right. I must have

patience.”

Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, “Pity your Pinkertons couldn't have given

them a few shots before they left.”

“No, that wasn't necessary,” said Dryfoos. “I succeeded in breaking up

the union. I entered into an agreement with other parties not to employ

any man who would not swear that he was non-union. If they had attempted

violence, of course they could have been shot. But there was no fear

of that. Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut one another's

throats in the long run.”

“But sometimes,” said Colonel Woodburn, who had been watching

throughout for a chance to mount his hobby again, “they make a good

deal of trouble first. How was it in the great railroad strike of '77?”

“Well, I guess there was a little trouble that time, colonel,” said

Fulkerson. “But the men that undertake to override the laws and paralyze

the industries of a country like this generally get left in the end.”

“Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, always. But it's the

exceptional that is apt to happen, as well as the unexpected. And a

little reflection will convince any gentleman here that there is always

a danger of the exceptional in your system. The fact is, those fellows

have the game in their own hands already. A strike of the whole body of

the Brotherhood of Engineers alone would starve out the entire Atlantic

seaboard in a week; labor insurrection could make head at a dozen given

points, and your government couldn't move a man over the roads without

the help of the engineers.”

“That is so,” said Kendrick, struck by the dramatic character of

the conjecture. He imagined a fiction dealing with the situation as

something already accomplished.

“Why don't some fellow do the Battle of Dorking act with that thing?”

said Fulkerson. “It would be a card.”

“Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson,” said Kendricks.

Fulkerson laughed. “Telepathy--clear case of mind transference. Better

see March, here, about it. I'd like to have it in 'Every Other Week.' It

would make talk.”

“Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as well as talking,” said

the colonel.

“Well, sir,” said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tightly together that his

imperial stuck straight outward, “if I had my way, there wouldn't be any

Brotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor union in the whole

country.”

“What!” shouted Lindau. “You would sobbress the unionss of the

voarking-men?”

“Yes, I would.”

“And what would you do with the unionss of the gabidalists--the

drosts--and gompines, and boolss? Would you dake the righdt from one and

gif it to the odder?”

“Yes, sir, I would,” said Dryfoos, with a wicked look at him.

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some furious protest, but

March put his hand on his shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to

him to say in German: “But it is infamous--infamous! What kind of man is

this? Who is he? He has the heart of a tyrant.”

Colonel Woodburn cut in. “You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your

system. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that

kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Your

commercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have to

go. But I should be sorry if it went before its time.”

“You are righdt, sir,” said Lindau. “It would be a bity. I hobe it will

last till it feelss its rottenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its

hour gomes, when it trope to bieces with the veight off its own

gorrubtion--what then?”

“It's not to be supposed that a system of things like this can drop to

pieces of its own accord, like the old Republic of Venice,” said the

colonel. “But when the last vestige of commercial society is gone,

then we can begin to build anew; and we shall build upon the

central idea, not of the false liberty you now worship, but of

responsibility--responsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the

cultivated class shall be responsible to the central authority--emperor,

duke, president; the name does not matter--for the national expense and

the national defence, and it shall be responsible to the working-classes

of all kinds for homes and lands and implements, and the opportunity to

labor at all times.

“The working-classes shall be responsible to the leisure class for the

support of its dignity in peace, and shall be subject to its command in

war. The rich shall warrant the poor against planless production and

the ruin that now follows, against danger from without and famine from

within, and the poor--”

“No, no, no!” shouted Lindau. “The State shall do that--the whole

beople. The men who voark shall have and shall eat; and the men that

will not voark, they shall sdarfe. But no man need sdarfe. He will go

to the State, and the State will see that he haf voark, and that he

haf foodt. All the roadts and mills and mines and landts shall be the

beople's and be ron by the beople for the beople. There shall be no rich

and no boor; and there shall not be war any more, for what bower wouldt

dare to addack a beople bound togeder in a broderhood like that?”

“Lion and lamb act,” said Fulkerson, not well knowing, after so much

champagne, what words he was using.

No one noticed him, and Colonel Woodburn said coldly to Lindau, “You are

talking paternalism, sir.”

“And you are dalking feutalism!” retorted the old man.

The colonel did not reply. A silence ensued, which no one broke

till Fulkerson said: “Well, now, look here. If either one of these

millenniums was brought about, by force of arms, or otherwise, what

would become of 'Every Other Week'? Who would want March for an editor?

How would Beaton sell his pictures? Who would print Mr. Kendricks's

little society verses and short stories? What would become of Conrad

and his good works?” Those named grinned in support of Fulkerson's

diversion, but Lindau and the colonel did not speak; Dryfoos looked down

at his plate, frowning.

A waiter came round with cigars, and Fulkerson took one. “Ah,” he said,

as he bit off the end, and leaned over to the emblematic masterpiece,

where the brandy was still feebly flickering, “I wonder if there's

enough natural gas left to light my cigar.” His effort put the flame

out and knocked the derrick over; it broke in fragments on the table.

Fulkerson cackled over the ruin: “I wonder if all Moffitt will look that

way after labor and capital have fought it out together. I hope this

ain't ominous of anything personal, Dryfoos?”

“I'll take the risk of it,” said the old man, harshly.

He rose mechanically, and Fulkerson said to Frescobaldi's man, “You can

bring us the coffee in the library.”

The talk did not recover itself there. Landau would not sit down; he

refused coffee, and dismissed himself with a haughty bow to the company;

Colonel Woodburn shook hands elaborately all round, when he had smoked

his cigar; the others followed him. It seemed to March that his own

good-night from Dryfoos was dry and cold.

VII.

March met Fulkerson on the steps of the office next morning, when he

arrived rather later than his wont. Fulkerson did not show any of

the signs of suffering from the last night's pleasure which painted

themselves in March's face. He flirted his hand gayly in the air, and

said, “How's your poor head?” and broke into a knowing laugh. “You don't

seem to have got up with the lark this morning. The old gentleman is in

there with Conrad, as bright as a biscuit; he's beat you down. Well, we

did have a good time, didn't we? And old Lindau and the colonel, didn't

they have a good time? I don't suppose they ever had a chance before to

give their theories quite so much air. Oh, my! how they did ride over

us! I'm just going down to see Beaton about the cover of the Christmas

number. I think we ought to try it in three or four colors, if we are

going to observe the day at all.” He was off before March could pull

himself together to ask what Dryfoos wanted at the office at that hour

of the morning; he always came in the afternoon on his way up-town.

The fact of his presence renewed the sinister misgivings with which

March had parted from him the night before, but Fulkerson's cheerfulness

seemed to gainsay them; afterward March did not know whether to

attribute this mood to the slipperiness that he was aware of at times in

Fulkerson, or to a cynical amusement he might have felt at leaving him

alone to the old man, who mounted to his room shortly after March had

reached it.

A sort of dumb anger showed itself in his face; his jaw was set so

firmly that he did not seem able at once to open it. He asked, without

the ceremonies of greeting, “What does that one-armed Dutchman do on

this book?”

“What does he do?” March echoed, as people are apt to do with a question

that is mandatory and offensive.

“Yes, sir, what does he do? Does he write for it?”

“I suppose you mean Lindau,” said March. He saw no reason for refusing

to answer Dryfoos's demand, and he decided to ignore its terms. “No, he

doesn't write for it in the usual way. He translates for it; he examines

the foreign magazines, and draws my attention to anything he thinks of

interest. But I told you about this before--”

“I know what you told me, well enough. And I know what he is. He is a

red-mouthed labor agitator. He's one of those foreigners that come here

from places where they've never had a decent meal's victuals in their

lives, and as soon as they get their stomachs full, they begin to make

trouble between our people and their hands. There's where the strikes

come from, and the unions and the secret societies. They come here and

break our Sabbath, and teach their atheism. They ought to be hung!

Let 'em go back if they don't like it over here. They want to ruin the

country.”

March could not help smiling a little at the words, which came fast

enough now in the hoarse staccato of Dryfoos's passion. “I don't know

whom you mean by they, generally speaking; but I had the impression

that poor old Lindau had once done his best to save the country. I don't

always like his way of talking, but I know that he is one of the truest

and kindest souls in the world; and he is no more an atheist than I am.

He is my friend, and I can't allow him to be misunderstood.”

“I don't care what he is,” Dryfoos broke out, “I won't have him round.

He can't have any more work from this office. I want you to stop it. I

want you to turn him off.”

March was standing at his desk, as he had risen to receive Dryfoos when

he entered. He now sat down, and began to open his letters.

“Do you hear?” the old man roared at him. “I want you to turn him off.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Dryfoos,” said March, succeeding in an effort to speak

calmly, “I don't know you, in such a matter as this. My arrangements as

editor of 'Every Other Week' were made with Mr. Fulkerson. I have always

listened to any suggestion he has had to make.”

“I don't care for Mr. Fulkerson! He has nothing to do with it,” retorted

Dryfoos; but he seemed a little daunted by March's position.

“He has everything to do with it as far as I am concerned,” March

answered, with a steadiness that he did not feel. “I know that you are

the owner of the periodical, but I can't receive any suggestion from

you, for the reason that I have given. Nobody but Mr. Fulkerson has any

right to talk with me about its management.”

Dryfoos glared at him for a moment, and demanded, threateningly: “Then

you say you won't turn that old loafer off? You say that I have got

to keep on paying my money out to buy beer for a man that would cut my

throat if he got the chance?”

“I say nothing at all, Mr. Dryfoos,” March answered. The blood came into

his face, and he added: “But I will say that if you speak again of Mr.

Lindau in those terms, one of us must leave this room. I will not hear

you.”

Dryfoos looked at him with astonishment; then he struck his hat down on

his head, and stamped out of the room and down the stairs; and a vague

pity came into March's heart that was not altogether for himself. He

might be the greater sufferer in the end, but he was sorry to have got

the better of that old man for the moment; and he felt ashamed of the

anger into which Dryfoos's anger had surprised him. He knew he could not

say too much in defence of Lindau's generosity and unselfishness, and he

had not attempted to defend him as a political economist. He could not

have taken any ground in relation to Dryfoos but that which he held, and

he felt satisfied that he was right in refusing to receive instructions

or commands from him. Yet somehow he was not satisfied with the whole

affair, and not merely because his present triumph threatened his final

advantage, but because he felt that in his heart he had hardly done

justice to Dryfoos's rights in the matter; it did not quite console him

to reflect that Dryfoos had himself made it impossible. He was

tempted to go home and tell his wife what had happened, and begin his

preparations for the future at once. But he resisted this weakness

and kept mechanically about his work, opening the letters and the

manuscripts before him with that curious double action of the mind

common in men of vivid imaginations. It was a relief when Conrad

Dryfoos, having apparently waited to make sure that his father would

not return, came up from the counting-room and looked in on March with a

troubled face.

“Mr. March,” he began, “I hope father hasn't been saying anything to you

that you can't overlook. I know he was very much excited, and when he is

excited he is apt to say things that he is sorry for.”

The apologetic attitude taken for Dryfoos, so different from any

attitude the peremptory old man would have conceivably taken for

himself, made March smile. “Oh no. I fancy the boot is on the other leg.

I suspect I've said some things your father can't overlook, Conrad.”

He called the young man by his Christian name partly to distinguish him

from his father, partly from the infection of Fulkerson's habit, and

partly from a kindness for him that seemed naturally to express itself

in that way.

“I know he didn't sleep last night, after you all went away,” Conrad

pursued, “and of course that made him more irritable; and he was tried a

good deal by some of the things that Mr. Lindau said.”

“I was tried a good deal myself,” said March. “Lindau ought never to

have been there.”

“No.” Conrad seemed only partially to assent.

“I told Mr. Fulkerson so. I warned him that Lindau would be apt to

break out in some way. It wasn't just to him, and it wasn't just to your

father, to ask him.”

“Mr. Fulkerson had a good motive,” Conrad gently urged. “He did it

because he hurt his feelings that day about the pension.”

“Yes, but it was a mistake. He knew that Lindau was inflexible about his

principles, as he calls them, and that one of his first principles is

to denounce the rich in season and out of season. I don't remember just

what he said last night; and I really thought I'd kept him from

breaking out in the most offensive way. But your father seems very much

incensed.”

“Yes, I know,” said Conrad.

“Of course, I don't agree with Lindau. I think there are as many good,

kind, just people among the rich as there are among the poor, and that

they are as generous and helpful. But Lindau has got hold of one of

those partial truths that hurt worse than the whole truth, and--”

“Partial truth!” the young man interrupted. “Didn't the Saviour himself

say, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of

God?'”

“Why, bless my soul!” cried March. “Do you agree with Lindau?”

“I agree with the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the young man, solemnly, and

a strange light of fanaticism, of exaltation, came into his wide blue

eyes. “And I believe He meant the kingdom of heaven upon this earth, as

well as in the skies.”

March threw himself back in his chair and looked at him with a kind of

stupefaction, in which his eye wandered to the doorway, where he saw

Fulkerson standing, it seemed to him a long time, before he heard him

saying: “Hello, hello! What's the row? Conrad pitching into you on old

Lindau's account, too?”

The young man turned, and, after a glance at Fulkerson's light, smiling

face, went out, as if in his present mood he could not bear the contact

of that persiflant spirit.

March felt himself getting provisionally very angry again. “Excuse me,

Fulkerson, but did you know when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted to

see me for?”

“Well, no, I didn't exactly,” said Fulkerson, taking his usual seat on a

chair and looking over the back of it at March. “I saw he was on his car

about something, and I thought I'd better not monkey with him much. I

supposed he was going to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow.”

Fulkerson broke into a laugh.

March remained serious. “Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, willing to let the

simple statement have its own weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more,

“came in here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from his employment on

the magazine--to turn him off, as he put it.”

“Did he?” asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheerfulness. “The old man is

business, every time. Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody

else to do Lindau's work for you. This town is just running over with

half-starved linguists. What did you say?”

“What did I say?” March echoed. “Look here, Fulkerson; you may regard

this as a joke, but I don't. I'm not used to being spoken to as if

I were the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sensitive and

cultivated man like Lindau, as if he were a drunken mechanic; and if

that's your idea of me--”

“Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn't mind the old man's way. He don't

mean anything by it--he don't know any better, if you come to that.”

“Then I know better,” said March. “I refused to receive any instructions

from Mr. Dryfoos, whom I don't know in my relations with 'Every Other

Week,' and I referred him to you.”

“You did?” Fulkerson whistled. “He owns the thing!”

“I don't care who owns the thing,” said March. “My negotiations were

with you alone from the beginning, and I leave this matter with you.

What do you wish done about Lindau?”

“Oh, better let the old fool drop,” said Fulkerson. “He'll light on his

feet somehow, and it will save a lot of rumpus.”

“And if I decline to let him drop?”

“Oh, come, now, March; don't do that,” Fulkerson began.

“If I decline to let him drop,” March repeated, “what will you do?”

“I'll be dogged if I know what I'll do,” said Fulkerson. “I hope you

won't take that stand. If the old man went so far as to speak to you

about it, his mind is made up, and we might as well knock under first as

last.”

“And do you mean to say that you would not stand by me in what I

considered my duty--in a matter of principle?”

“Why, of course, March,” said Fulkerson, coaxingly, “I mean to do the

right thing. But Dryfoos owns the magazine--”

“He doesn't own me,” said March, rising. “He has made the little mistake

of speaking to me as if he did; and when”--March put on his hat and took

his overcoat down from its nail--“when you bring me his apologies,

or come to say that, having failed to make him understand they were

necessary, you are prepared to stand by me, I will come back to this

desk. Otherwise my resignation is at your service.”

He started toward the door, and Fulkerson intercepted him. “Ah, now,

look here, March! Don't do that! Hang it all, don't you see where it

leaves me? Now, you just sit down a minute and talk it over. I can make

you see--I can show you--Why, confound the old Dutch beer-buzzer! Twenty

of him wouldn't be worth the trouble he's makin'. Let him go, and the

old man 'll come round in time.”

“I don't think we've understood each other exactly, Mr. Fulkerson,”

said March, very haughtily. “Perhaps we never can; but I'll leave you to

think it out.”

He pushed on, and Fulkerson stood aside to let him pass, with a dazed

look and a mechanical movement. There was something comic in his rueful

bewilderment to March, who was tempted to smile, but he said to himself

that he had as much reason to be unhappy as Fulkerson, and he did

not smile. His indignation kept him hot in his purpose to suffer any

consequence rather than submit to the dictation of a man like Dryfoos;

he felt keenly the degradation of his connection with him, and all his

resentment of Fulkerson's original uncandor returned; at the same time

his heart ached with foreboding. It was not merely the work in which he

had constantly grown happier that he saw taken from him; but he felt the

misery of the man who stakes the security and plenty and peace of home

upon some cast, and knows that losing will sweep from him most that most

men find sweet and pleasant in life. He faced the fact, which no good

man can front without terror, that he was risking the support of his

family, and for a point of pride, of honor, which perhaps he had no

right to consider in view of the possible adversity. He realized, as

every hireling must, no matter how skillfully or gracefully the tie is

contrived for his wearing, that he belongs to another, whose will is his

law. His indignation was shot with abject impulses to go back and tell

Fulkerson that it was all right, and that he gave up. To end the anguish

of his struggle he quickened his steps, so that he found he was reaching

home almost at a run.

VIII.

He must have made more clatter than he supposed with his key at the

apartment door, for his wife had come to let him in when he flung it

open. “Why, Basil,” she said, “what's brought you back? Are you sick?

You're all pale. Well, no wonder! This is the last of Mr. Fulkerson's

dinners you shall go to. You're not strong enough for it, and your

stomach will be all out of order for a week. How hot you are! and in a

drip of perspiration! Now you'll be sick.” She took his hat away, which

hung dangling in his hand, and pushed him into a chair with tender

impatience. “What is the matter? Has anything happened?”

“Everything has happened,” he said, getting his voice after one or two

husky endeavors for it; and then he poured out a confused and huddled

statement of the case, from which she only got at the situation by

prolonged cross-questioning.

At the end she said, “I knew Lindau would get you into trouble.”

This cut March to the heart. “Isabel!” he cried, reproachfully.

“Oh, I know,” she retorted, and the tears began to come. “I don't wonder

you didn't want to say much to me about that dinner at breakfast. I

noticed it; but I thought you were just dull, and so I didn't insist. I

wish I had, now. If you had told me what Lindau had said, I should have

known what would have come of it, and I could have advised you--”

“Would you have advised me,” March demanded, curiously, “to submit

to bullying like that, and meekly consent to commit an act of cruelty

against a man who had once been such a friend to me?”

“It was an unlucky day when you met him. I suppose we shall have to go.

And just when we had got used to New York, and begun to like it. I don't

know where we shall go now; Boston isn't like home any more; and we

couldn't live on two thousand there; I should be ashamed to try. I'm

sure I don't know where we can live on it. I suppose in some country

village, where there are no schools, or anything for the children. I

don't know what they'll say when we tell them, poor things.”

Every word was a stab in March's heart, so weakly tender to his own; his

wife's tears, after so much experience of the comparative lightness of

the griefs that weep themselves out in women, always seemed wrung from

his own soul; if his children suffered in the least through him, he felt

like a murderer. It was far worse than he could have imagined, the

way his wife took the affair, though he had imagined certain words, or

perhaps only looks, from her that were bad enough. He had allowed for

trouble, but trouble on his account: a svmpathy that might burden and

embarrass him; but he had not dreamed of this merely domestic, this

petty, this sordid view of their potential calamity, which left him

wholly out of the question, and embraced only what was most crushing and

desolating in the prospect. He could not bear it. He caught up his hat

again, and, with some hope that his wife would try to keep him, rushed

out of the house. He wandered aimlessly about, thinking the same

exhausting thoughts over and over, till he found himself horribly

hungry; then he went into a restaurant for his lunch, and when he paid

he tried to imagine how he should feel if that were really his last

dollar.

He went home toward the middle of the afternoon, basely hoping that

Fulkerson had sent him some conciliatory message, or perhaps was waiting

there for him to talk it over; March was quite willing to talk it over

now. But it was his wife who again met him at the door, though it seemed

another woman than the one he had left weeping in the morning.

“I told the children,” she said, in smiling explanation of his absence

from lunch, “that perhaps you were detained by business. I didn't know

but you had gone back to the office.”

“Did you think I would go back there, Isabel?” asked March, with a

haggard look. “Well, if you say so, I will go back, and do what Dryfoos

ordered me to do. I'm sufficiently cowed between him and you, I can

assure you.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I approve of everything you did. But sit down,

now, and don't keep walking that way, and let me see if I understand it

perfectly. Of course, I had to have my say out.”

She made him go all over his talk with Dryfoos again, and report his own

language precisely. From time to time, as she got his points, she said,

“That was splendid,” “Good enough for him!” and “Oh, I'm so glad you

said that to him!” At the end she said:

“Well, now, let's look at it from his point of view. Let's be perfectly

just to him before we take another step forward.”

“Or backward,” March suggested, ruefully. “The case is simply this: he

owns the magazine.”

“Of course.”

“And he has a right to expect that I will consider his pecuniary

interests--”

“Oh, those detestable pecuniary interests! Don't you wish there wasn't

any money in the world?”

“Yes; or else that there was a great deal more of it. And I was

perfectly willing to do that. I have always kept that in mind as one

of my duties to him, ever since I understood what his relation to the

magazine was.”

“Yes, I can bear witness to that in any court of justice. You've done it

a great deal more than I could, Basil. And it was just the same way with

those horrible insurance people.”

“I know,” March went on, trying to be proof against her flatteries,

or at least to look as if he did not deserve praise; “I know that what

Lindau said was offensive to him, and I can understand how he felt that

he had a right to punish it. All I say is that he had no right to punish

it through me.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. March, askingly.

“If it had been a question of making 'Every Other Week' the vehicle

of Lindau's peculiar opinions--though they're not so very peculiar; he

might have got the most of them out of Ruskin--I shouldn't have had any

ground to stand on, or at least then I should have had to ask myself

whether his opinions would be injurious to the magazine or not.”

“I don't see,” Mrs. March interpolated, “how they could hurt it much

worse than Colonel Woodburn's article crying up slavery.”

“Well,” said March, impartially, “we could print a dozen articles

praising the slavery it's impossible to have back, and it wouldn't hurt

us. But if we printed one paper against the slavery which Lindau claims

still exists, some people would call us bad names, and the counting-room

would begin to feel it. But that isn't the point. Lindau's connection

with 'Every Other Week' is almost purely mechanical; he's merely a

translator of such stories and sketches as he first submits to me,

and it isn't at all a question of his opinions hurting us, but of

my becoming an agent to punish him for his opinions. That is what I

wouldn't do; that's what I never will do.”

“If you did,” said his wife, “I should perfectly despise you. I didn't

understand how it was before. I thought you were just holding out

against Dryfoos because he took a dictatorial tone with you, and because

you wouldn't recognize his authority. But now I'm with you, Basil, every

time, as that horrid little Fulkerson says. But who would ever have

supposed he would be so base as to side against you?”

“I don't know,” said March, thoughtfully, “that we had a right to expect

anything else. Fulkerson's standards are low; they're merely business

standards, and the good that's in him is incidental and something

quite apart from his morals and methods. He's naturally a generous and

right-minded creature, but life has taught him to truckle and trick,

like the rest of us.”

“It hasn't taught you that, Basil.”

“Don't be so sure. Perhaps it's only that I'm a poor scholar. But I

don't know, really, that I despise Fulkerson so much for his course this

morning as for his gross and fulsome flatteries of Dryfoos last night. I

could hardly stomach it.”

His wife made him tell her what they were, and then she said, “Yes, that

was loathsome; I couldn't have believed it of Mr. Fulkerson.”

“Perhaps he only did it to keep the talk going, and to give the old man

a chance to say something,” March leniently suggested. “It was a worse

effect because he didn't or couldn't follow up Fulkerson's lead.”

“It was loathsome, all the same,” his wife insisted. “It's the end of

Mr. Fulkerson, as far as I'm concerned.”

“I didn't tell you before,” March resumed, after a moment, “of my little

interview with Conrad Dryfoos after his father left,” and now he went on

to repeat what had passed between him and the young man.

“I suspect that he and his father had been having some words before

the old man came up to talk with me, and that it was that made him so

furious.”

“Yes, but what a strange position for the son of such a man to take! Do

you suppose he says such things to his father?”

“I don't know; but I suspect that in his meek way Conrad would say

what he believed to anybody. I suppose we must regard him as a kind of

crank.”

“Poor young fellow! He always makes me feel sad, somehow. He has such a

pathetic face. I don't believe I ever saw him look quite happy, except

that night at Mrs. Horn's, when he was talking with Miss Vance; and then

he made me feel sadder than ever.”

“I don't envy him the life he leads at home, with those convictions of

his. I don't see why it wouldn't be as tolerable there for old Lindau

himself.”

“Well, now,” said Mrs. March, “let us put them all out of our minds and

see what we are going to do ourselves.”

They began to consider their ways and means, and how and where they

should live, in view of March's severance of his relations with 'Every

Other Week.' They had not saved anything from the first year's salary;

they had only prepared to save; and they had nothing solid but their

two thousand to count upon. But they built a future in which they easily

lived on that and on what March earned with his pen. He became a free

lance, and fought in whatever cause he thought just; he had no ties,

no chains. They went back to Boston with the heroic will to do what was

most distasteful; they would have returned to their own house if they

had not rented it again; but, any rate, Mrs. March helped out by taking

boarders, or perhaps only letting rooms to lodgers. They had some hard

struggles, but they succeeded.

“The great thing,” she said, “is to be right. I'm ten times as happy

as if you had come home and told me that you had consented to do what

Dryfoos asked and he had doubled your salary.”

“I don't think that would have happened in any event,” said March,

dryly.

“Well, no matter. I just used it for an example.”

They both experienced a buoyant relief, such as seems to come to people

who begin life anew on whatever terms. “I hope we are young enough yet,

Basil,” she said, and she would not have it when he said they had once

been younger.

They heard the children's knock on the door; they knocked when they came

home from school so that their mother might let them in. “Shall we tell

them at once?” she asked, and ran to open for them before March could

answer.

They were not alone. Fulkerson, smiling from ear to ear, was with them.

“Is March in?” he asked.

“Mr. March is at home, yes,” she said very haughtily. “He's in his

study,” and she led the way there, while the children went to their

rooms.

“Well, March,” Fulkerson called out at sight of him, “it's all right!

The old man has come down.”

“I suppose if you gentlemen are going to talk business--” Mrs. March

began.

“Oh, we don't want you to go away,” said Fulkerson. “I reckon March has

told you, anyway.”

“Yes, I've told her,” said March. “Don't go, Isabel. What do you mean,

Fulkerson?”

“He's just gone on up home, and he sent me round with his apologies.

He sees now that he had no business to speak to you as he did, and he

withdraws everything. He'd 'a' come round himself if I'd said so, but I

told him I could make it all right.”

Fulkerson looked so happy in having the whole affair put right, and the

Marches knew him to be so kindly affected toward them, that they could

not refuse for the moment to share his mood. They felt themselves

slipping down from the moral height which they had gained, and March

made a clutch to stay himself with the question, “And Lindau?”

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “he's going to leave Lindau to me. You won't

have anything to do with it. I'll let the old fellow down easy.”

“Do you mean,” asked March, “that Mr. Dryfoos insists on his being

dismissed?”

“Why, there isn't any dismissing about it,” Fulkerson argued. “If you

don't send him any more work, he won't do any more, that's all. Or if he

comes round, you can--He's to be referred to me.”

March shook his head, and his wife, with a sigh, felt herself plucked up

from the soft circumstance of their lives, which she had sunk back into

so quickly, and set beside him on that cold peak of principle again. “It

won't do, Fulkerson. It's very good of you, and all that, but it comes

to the same thing in the end. I could have gone on without any apology

from Mr. Dryfoos; he transcended his authority, but that's a minor

matter. I could have excused it to his ignorance of life among

gentlemen; but I can't consent to Lindau's dismissal--it comes to that,

whether you do it or I do it, and whether it's a positive or a negative

thing--because he holds this opinion or that.”

“But don't you see,” said Fulkerson, “that it's just Lindau's opinions

the old man can't stand? He hasn't got anything against him personally.

I don't suppose there's anybody that appreciates Lindau in some ways

more than the old man does.”

“I understand. He wants to punish him for his opinions. Well, I can't

consent to that, directly or indirectly. We don't print his opinions,

and he has a perfect right to hold them, whether Mr. Dryfoos agrees with

them or not.”

Mrs. March had judged it decorous for her to say nothing, but she now

went and sat down in the chair next her husband.

“Ah, dog on it!” cried Fulkerson, rumpling his hair with both his hands.

“What am I to do? The old man says he's got to go.”

“And I don't consent to his going,” said March.

“And you won't stay if he goes.”

Fulkerson rose. “Well, well! I've got to see about it. I'm afraid the

old man won't stand it, March; I am, indeed. I wish you'd reconsider.

I--I'd take it as a personal favor if you would. It leaves me in a fix.

You see I've got to side with one or the other.”

March made no reply to this, except to say, “Yes, you must stand by him,

or you must stand by me.”

“Well, well! Hold on awhile! I'll see you in the morning. Don't take any

steps--”

“Oh, there are no steps to take,” said March, with a melancholy smile.

“The steps are stopped; that's all.” He sank back into his chair when

Fulkerson was gone and drew a long breath. “This is pretty rough. I

thought we had got through it.”

“No,” said his wife. “It seems as if I had to make the fight all over

again.”

“Well, it's a good thing it's a holy war.”

“I can't bear the suspense. Why didn't you tell him outright you

wouldn't go back on any terms?”

“I might as well, and got the glory. He'll never move Dryfoos. I suppose

we both would like to go back, if we could.”

“Oh, I suppose so.”

They could not regain their lost exaltation, their lost dignity. At

dinner Mrs. March asked the children how they would like to go back to

Boston to live.

“Why, we're not going, are we?” asked Tom, without enthusiasm.

“I was just wondering how you felt about it, now,” she said, with an

underlook at her husband.

“Well, if we go back,” said Bella, “I want to live on the Back Bay. It's

awfully Micky at the South End.”

“I suppose I should go to Harvard,” said Tom, “and I'd room out at

Cambridge. It would be easier to get at you on the Back Bay.”

The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and, in view of these grand

expectations of his children, March resolved to go as far as he could in

meeting Dryfoos's wishes. He proposed the theatre as a distraction from

the anxieties that he knew were pressing equally on his wife. “We might

go to the 'Old Homestead,'” he suggested, with a sad irony, which only

his wife felt.

“Oh yes, let's!” cried Bella.

While they were getting ready, someone rang, and Bella went to the

door, and then came to tell her father that it was Mr. Lindau. “He says

he wants to see you just a moment. He's in the parlor, and he won't sit

down, or anything.”

“What can he want?” groaned Mrs. March, from their common dismay.

March apprehended a storm in the old man's face. But he only stood

in the middle of the room, looking very sad and grave. “You are Going

oudt,” he said. “I won't geep you long. I haf gome to pring pack dose

macassines and dis mawney. I can't do any more voark for you; and

I can't geep the mawney you haf baid me a'ready. It iss not hawnest

mawney--that hass been oarned py voark; it iss mawney that hass peen

mate py sbeculation, and the obbression off lapor, and the necessity

of the boor, py a man--Here it is, efery tollar, efery zent. Dake it; I

feel as if dere vas ploodt on it.”

“Why, Lindau,” March began, but the old man interrupted him.

“Ton't dalk to me, Passil! I could not haf believedt it of you. When you

know how I feel about dose tings, why tidn't you dell me whose mawney

you bay oudt to me? Ach, I ton't plame you--I ton't rebroach you. You

haf nefer thought of it; boat I have thought, and I should be Guilty, I

must share that man's Guilt, if I gept hiss mawney. If you hat toldt me

at the peginning--if you hat peen frank with me boat it iss all righdt;

you can go on; you ton't see dese tings as I see them; and you haf cot a

family, and I am a free man. I voark to myself, and when I ton't voark,

I sdarfe to myself. But, I geep my handts glean, voark or sdarfe.

Gif him hiss mawney pack! I am sawry for him; I would not hoart hiss

feelings, boat I could not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss like

boison!”

March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him the folly, the injustice,

the absurdity of his course; it ended in their both getting angry, and

in Lindau's going away in a whirl of German that included Basil in the

guilt of the man whom Lindau called his master.

“Well,” said Mrs. March. “He is a crank, and I think you're well rid of

him. Now you have no quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can

keep right on.”

“Yes,” said March, “I wish it didn't make me feel so sneaking. What a

long day it's been! It seems like a century since I got up.”

“Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else left to happen?”

“I hope not. I'd like to go to bed.”

“Why, aren't you going to the theatre?” wailed Bella, coming in upon her

father's desperate expression.

“The theatre? Oh yes, certainly! I meant after we got home,” and March

amused himself at the puzzled countenance of the child. “Come on! Is Tom

ready?”

IX.

Fulkerson parted with the Marches in such trouble of mind that he did

not feel able to meet that night the people whom he usually kept so gay

at Mrs. Leighton's table. He went to Maroni's for his dinner, for this

reason and for others more obscure. He could not expect to do anything

more with Dryfoos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that he had

already made an extreme concession to March, and he believed that if he

was to get anything more from him it must be after Dryfoos had dined.

But he was not without the hope, vague and indefinite as it might be,

that he should find Lindau at Maroni's, and perhaps should get some

concession from him, some word of regret or apology which he could

report to Dryfoos, and at lest make the means of reopening the affair

with him; perhaps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would back

down altogether, and for March's sake would withdraw from all connection

with 'Every Other Week' himself, and so leave everything serene.

Fulkerson felt capable, in his desperation, of delicately suggesting

such a course to Lindau, or even of plainly advising it: he did not care

for Lindau a great deal, and he did care a great deal for the magazine.

But he did not find Lindau at Maroni's; he only found Beaton. He sat

looking at the doorway as Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally

came and took a place at his table. Something in Beaton's large-eyed

solemnity of aspect invited Fulkerson to confidence, and he said, as

he pulled his napkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the

scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni's was apt to be), across his

knees, “I was looking for you this morning, to talk with you about the

Christmas number, and I was a good deal worked up because I couldn't

find you; but I guess I might as well have spared myself my emotions.”

“Why?” asked Beaton, briefly.

“Well, I don't know as there's going to be any Christmas number.”

“Why?” Beaton asked again.

“Row between the financial angel and the literary editor about the chief

translator and polyglot smeller.”

“Lindau?”

“Lindau is his name.”

“What does the literary editor expect after Lindau's expression of his

views last night?”

“I don't know what he expected, but the ground he took with the old

man was that, as Lindau's opinions didn't characterize his work on the

magazine, he would not be made the instrument of punishing him for them

the old man wanted him turned off, as he calls it.”

“Seems to be pretty good ground,” said Beaton, impartially, while he

speculated, with a dull trouble at heart, on the effect the row would

have on his own fortunes. His late visit home had made him feel that the

claim of his family upon him for some repayment of help given could not

be much longer delayed; with his mother sick and his father growing old,

he must begin to do something for them, but up to this time he had spent

his salary even faster than he had earned it. When Fulkerson came in he

was wondering whether he could get him to increase it, if he threatened

to give up his work, and he wished that he was enough in love with

Margaret Vance, or even Christine Dryfoos, to marry her, only to end in

the sorrowful conviction that he was really in love with Alma Leighton,

who had no money, and who had apparently no wish to be married for love,

even. “And what are you going to do about it?” he asked, listlessly.

“Be dogged if I know what I'm going to do about it,” said Fulkerson.

“I've been round all day, trying to pick up the pieces--row began right

after breakfast this morning--and one time I thought I'd got the thing

all put together again. I got the old man to say that he had spoken to

March a little too authoritatively about Lindau; that, in fact, he ought

to have communicated his wishes through me; and that he was willing to

have me get rid of Lindau, and March needn't have anything to do with

it. I thought that was pretty white, but March says the apologies

and regrets are all well enough in their way, but they leave the main

question where they found it.”

“What is the main question?” Beaton asked, pouring himself out some

Chianti. As he set the flask down he made the reflection that if he

would drink water instead of Chianti he could send his father three

dollars a week, on his back debts, and he resolved to do it.

“The main question, as March looks at it, is the question of punishing

Lindau for his private opinions; he says that if he consents to my

bouncing the old fellow it's the same as if he bounced him.”

“It might have that complexion in some lights,” said Beaton. He drank

off his Chianti, and thought he would have it twice a week, or make

Maroni keep the half-bottles over for him, and send his father two

dollars. “And what are you going to do now?”

“That's what I don't know,” said Fulkerson, ruefully. After a moment he

said, desperately, “Beaton, you've got a pretty good head; why don't you

suggest something?”

“Why don't you let March go?” Beaton suggested.

“Ah, I couldn't,” said Fulkerson. “I got him to break up in Boston and

come here; I like him; nobody else could get the hang of the thing like

he has; he's--a friend.” Fulkerson said this with the nearest approach

he could make to seriousness, which was a kind of unhappiness.

Beaton shrugged. “Oh, if you can afford to have ideals, I congratulate

you. They're too expensive for me. Then, suppose you get rid of

Dryfoos?”

Fulkerson laughed forlornly. “Go on, Bildad. Like to sprinkle a few

ashes over my boils? Don't mind me!”

They both sat silent a little while, and then Beaton said, “I suppose

you haven't seen Dryfoos the second time?”

“No. I came in here to gird up my loins with a little dinner before I

tackled him. But something seems to be the matter with Maroni's cook. I

don't want anything to eat.”

“The cooking's about as bad as usual,” said Beaton. After a moment he

added, ironically, for he found Fulkerson's misery a kind of relief from

his own, and was willing to protract it as long as it was amusing, “Why

not try an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary?”

“What do you mean?”

“Get that other old fool to go to Dryfoos for you!”

“Which other old fool? The old fools seem to be as thick as flies.”

“That Southern one.”

“Colonel Woodburn?”

“Mmmmm.”

“He did seem to rather take to the colonel!” Fulkerson mused aloud.

“Of course he did. Woodburn, with his idiotic talk about patriarchal

slavery, is the man on horseback to Dryfoos's muddy imagination. He'd

listen to him abjectly, and he'd do whatever Woodburn told him to do.”

Beaton smiled cynically.

Fulkerson got up and reached for his coat and hat. “You've struck it,

old man.” The waiter came up to help him on with his coat; Fulkerson

slipped a dollar in his hand. “Never mind the coat; you can give the

rest of my dinner to the poor, Paolo. Beaton, shake! You've saved my

life, little boy, though I don't think you meant it.” He took Beaton's

hand and solemnly pressed it, and then almost ran out of the door.

They had just reached coffee at Mrs. Leighton's when he arrived and sat

down with them and began to put some of the life of his new hope into

them. His appetite revived, and, after protesting that he would not take

anything but coffee, he went back and ate some of the earlier courses.

But with the pressure of his purpose driving him forward, he did not

conceal from Miss Woodburn, at least, that he was eager to get her apart

from the rest for some reason. When he accomplished this, it seemed

as if he had contrived it all himself, but perhaps he had not wholly

contrived it.

“I'm so glad to get a chance to speak to you alone,” he said at once;

and while she waited for the next word he made a pause, and then said,

desperately, “I want you to help me; and if you can't help me, there's

no help for me.”

“Mah goodness,” she said, “is the case so bad as that? What in the woald

is the trouble?”

“Yes, it's a bad case,” said Fulkerson. “I want your father to help me.”

“Oh, I thoat you said me!”

“Yes; I want you to help me with your father. I suppose I ought to go to

him at once, but I'm a little afraid of him.”

“And you awe not afraid of me? I don't think that's very flattering, Mr.

Fulkerson. You ought to think Ah'm twahce as awful as papa.”

“Oh, I do! You see, I'm quite paralyzed before you, and so I don't feel

anything.”

“Well, it's a pretty lahvely kyand of paralysis. But--go on.”

“I will--I will. If I can only begin.”

“Pohaps Ah maght begin fo' you.”

“No, you can't. Lord knows, I'd like to let you. Well, it's like this.”

Fulkerson made a clutch at his hair, and then, after another hesitation,

he abruptly laid the whole affair before her. He did not think it

necessary to state the exact nature of the offence Lindau had given

Dryfoos, for he doubted if she could grasp it, and he was profuse of his

excuses for troubling her with the matter, and of wonder at himself for

having done so. In the rapture of his concern at having perhaps made a

fool of himself, he forgot why he had told her; but she seemed to like

having been confided in, and she said, “Well, Ah don't see what you can

do with you' ahdeals of friendship except stand bah Mr. Mawch.”

“My ideals of friendship? What do you mean?”

“Oh, don't you suppose we know? Mr. Beaton said you we' a pofect Bahyard

in friendship, and you would sacrifice anything to it.”

“Is that so?” said Fulkerson, thinking how easily he could sacrifice

Lindau in this case. He had never supposed before that he was chivalrous

in such matters, but he now began to see it in that light, and he

wondered that he could ever have entertained for a moment the idea of

throwing March over.

“But Ah most say,” Miss Woodburn went on, “Ah don't envy you you' next

interview with Mr. Dryfoos. Ah suppose you'll have to see him at once

aboat it.”

The conjecture recalled Fulkerson to the object of his confidences. “Ah,

there's where your help comes in. I've exhausted all the influence I

have with Dryfoos--”

“Good gracious, you don't expect Ah could have any!”

They both laughed at the comic dismay with which she conveyed the

preposterous notion; and Fulkerson said, “If I judged from myself, I

should expect you to bring him round instantly.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, with mock meekness.

“Not at all. But it isn't Dryfoos I want you to help me with; it's your

father. I want your father to interview Dryfoos for me, and I--I'm afraid

to ask him.”

“Poo' Mr. Fulkerson!” she said, and she insinuated something through her

burlesque compassion that lifted him to the skies. He swore in his heart

that the woman never lived who was so witty, so wise, so beautiful, and

so good. “Come raght with me this minute, if the cyoast's clea'.” She

went to the door of the diningroom and looked in across its gloom to the

little gallery where her father sat beside a lamp reading his evening

paper; Mrs. Leighton could be heard in colloquy with the cook below,

and Alma had gone to her room. She beckoned Fulkerson with the hand

outstretched behind her, and said, “Go and ask him.”

“Alone!” he palpitated.

“Oh, what a cyowahd!” she cried, and went with him. “Ah suppose you'll

want me to tell him aboat it.”

“Well, I wish you'd begin, Miss Woodburn,” he said. “The fact is, you

know, I've been over it so much I'm kind of sick of the thing.”

Miss Woodburn advanced and put her hand on her father's shoulder. “Look

heah, papa! Mr. Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he wants me to

do it fo' him.”

The colonel looked up through his glasses with the sort of ferocity

elderly men sometimes have to put on in order to keep their glasses from

falling off. His daughter continued: “He's got into an awful difficulty

with his edito' and his proprieto', and he wants you to pacify them.”

“I do not know whethah I understand the case exactly,” said the colonel,

“but Mr. Fulkerson may command me to the extent of my ability.”

“You don't understand it aftah what Ah've said?” cried the girl.

“Then Ah don't see but what you'll have to explain it you'self, Mr.

Fulkerson.”

“Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous about it, colonel,” said

Fulkerson, glad of the joking shape she had given the affair, “that I

can only throw in a little side-light here and there.”

The colonel listened as Fulkerson went on, with a grave diplomatic

satisfaction. He felt gratified, honored, even, he said, by Mr.

Fulkerson's appeal to him; and probably it gave him something of the

high joy that an affair of honor would have brought him in the days

when he had arranged for meetings between gentlemen. Next to bearing a

challenge, this work of composing a difficulty must have been grateful.

But he gave no outward sign of his satisfaction in making a resume of

the case so as to get the points clearly in his mind.

“I was afraid, sir,” he said, with the state due to the serious nature

of the facts, “that Mr. Lindau had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of

his questions at the dinner-table last night.”

“Perfect red rag to a bull,” Fulkerson put in; and then he wanted to

withdraw his words at the colonel's look of displeasure.

“I have no reflections to make upon Mr. Landau,” Colonel Woodburn

continued, and Fulkerson felt grateful to him for going on; “I do not

agree with Mr. Lindau; I totally disagree with him on sociological

points; but the course of the conversation had invited him to the

expression of his convictions, and he had a right to express them, so

far as they had no personal bearing.”

“Of course,” said Fulkerson, while Miss Woodburn perched on the arm of

her father's chair.

“At the same time, sir, I think that if Mr. Dryfoos felt a personal

censure in Mr. Lindau's questions concerning his suppression of the

strike among his workmen, he had a right to resent it.”

“Exactly,” Fulkerson assented.

“But it must be evident to you, sir, that a high-spirited gentleman like

Mr. March--I confess that my feelings are with him very warmly in the

matter--could not submit to dictation of the nature you describe.”

“Yes, I see,” said Fulkerson; and, with that strange duplex action of

the human mind, he wished that it was his hair, and not her father's,

that Miss Woodburn was poking apart with the corner of her fan.

“Mr. Lindau,” the colonel concluded, “was right from his point of

view, and Mr. Dryfoos was equally right. The position of Mr. March is

perfectly correct--”

His daughter dropped to her feet from his chair-arm. “Mah goodness!

If nobody's in the wrong, ho' awe you evah going to get the mattah

straight?”

“Yes, you see,” Fulkerson added, “nobody can give in.”

“Pardon me,” said the colonel, “the case is one in which all can give

in.”

“I don't know which 'll begin,” said Fulkerson.

The colonel rose. “Mr. Lindau must begin, sir. We must begin by seeing

Mr. Lindau, and securing from him the assurance that in the expression

of his peculiar views he had no intention of offering any personal

offence to Mr. Dryfoos. If I have formed a correct estimate of Mr.

Lindau, this will be perfectly simple.”

Fulkerson shook his head. “But it wouldn't help. Dryfoos don't care a

rap whether Lindau meant any personal offence or not. As far as that

is concerned, he's got a hide like a hippopotamus. But what he hates

is Lindau's opinions, and what he says is that no man who holds such

opinions shall have any work from him. And what March says is that no

man shall be punished through him for his opinions, he don't care what

they are.”

The colonel stood a moment in silence. “And what do you expect me to do

under the circumstances?”

“I came to you for advice--I thought you might suggest----?”

“Do you wish me to see Mr. Dryfoos?”

“Well, that's about the size of it,” Fulkerson admitted. “You see,

colonel,” he hastened on, “I know that you have a great deal of

influence with him; that article of yours is about the only thing he's

ever read in 'Every Other Week,' and he's proud of your acquaintance.

Well, you know”--and here Fulkerson brought in the figure that

struck him so much in Beaton's phrase and had been on his tongue ever

since--“you're the man on horseback to him; and he'd be more apt to do

what you say than if anybody else said it.”

“You are very good, sir,” said the colonel, trying to be proof against

the flattery, “but I am afraid you overrate my influence.” Fulkerson

let him ponder it silently, and his daughter governed her impatience

by holding her fan against her lips. Whatever the process was in the

colonel's mind, he said at last: “I see no good reason for declining

to act for you, Mr. Fulkerson, and I shall be very happy if I can be

of service to you. But”--he stopped Fulkerson from cutting in with

precipitate thanks--“I think I have a right, sir, to ask what your

course will be in the event of failure?”

“Failure?” Fulkerson repeated, in dismay.

“Yes, sir. I will not conceal from you that this mission is one not

wholly agreeable to my feelings.”

“Oh, I understand that, colonel, and I assure you that I appreciate,

I--”