She seemed insensible of his jest. “Of course, he was in love with her.

That was the light that came into his face when he was going to do what

he thought she wanted him to do.”

“And she--do you think that she was--”

“What an idea! It would have been perfectly grotesque!”

VIII.

Their affliction brought the Dryfooses into humaner relations with the

Marches, who had hitherto regarded them as a necessary evil, as the

odious means of their own prosperity. Mrs. March found that the women of

the family seemed glad of her coming, and in the sense of her usefulness

to them all she began to feel a kindness even for Christine. But she

could not help seeing that between the girl and her father there was an

unsettled account, somehow, and that it was Christine and not the old

man who was holding out. She thought that their sorrow had tended to

refine the others. Mela was much more subdued, and, except when she

abandoned herself to a childish interest in her mourning, she did

nothing to shock Mrs. March's taste or to seem unworthy of her grief.

She was very good to her mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and

to her father, whom it had apparently fallen upon with crushing weight.

Once, after visiting their house, Mrs. March described to March a little

scene between Dryfoos and Mela, when he came home from Wall Street, and

the girl met him at the door with a kind of country simpleness, and took

his hat and stick, and brought him into the room where Mrs. March sat,

looking tired and broken. She found this look of Dryfoos's pathetic, and

dwelt on the sort of stupefaction there was in it; he must have loved

his son more than they ever realized. “Yes,” said March, “I suspect

he did. He's never been about the place since that day; he was always

dropping in before, on his way up-town. He seems to go down to Wall

Street every day, just as before, but I suppose that's mechanical;

he wouldn't know what else to do; I dare say it's best for him. The

sanguine Fulkerson is getting a little anxious about the future of

'Every Other Week.' Now Conrad's gone, he isn't sure the old man will

want to keep on with it, or whether he'll have to look up another Angel.

He wants to get married, I imagine, and he can't venture till this point

is settled.”

“It's a very material point to us too, Basil,” said Mrs. March.

“Well, of course. I hadn't overlooked that, you may be sure. One of the

things that Fulkerson and I have discussed is a scheme for buying the

magazine. Its success is pretty well assured now, and I shouldn't be

afraid to put money into it--if I had the money.”

“I couldn't let you sell the house in Boston, Basil!”

“And I don't want to. I wish we could go back and live in it and get the

rent, too! It would be quite a support. But I suppose if Dryfoos won't

keep on, it must come to another Angel. I hope it won't be a literary

one, with a fancy for running my department.”

“Oh, I guess whoever takes the magazine will be glad enough to keep

you!”

“Do you think so? Well, perhaps. But I don't believe Fulkerson would let

me stand long between him and an Angel of the right description.”

“Well, then, I believe he would. And you've never seen anything, Basil,

to make you really think that Mr. Fulkerson didn't appreciate you to the

utmost.”

“I think I came pretty near an undervaluation in that Lindau trouble.

I shall always wonder what put a backbone into Fulkerson just at that

crisis. Fulkerson doesn't strike me as the stuff of a moral hero.”

“At any rate, he was one,” said Mrs. March, “and that's quite enough for

me.”

March did not answer. “What a noble thing life is, anyway! Here I am,

well on the way to fifty, after twenty-five years of hard work, looking

forward to the potential poor-house as confidently as I did in youth. We

might have saved a little more than we have saved; but the little more

wouldn't avail if I were turned out of my place now; and we should have

lived sordidly to no purpose. Some one always has you by the throat,

unless you have some one else in your grip. I wonder if that's the

attitude the Almighty intended His respectable creatures to take toward

one another! I wonder if He meant our civilization, the battle we fight

in, the game we trick in! I wonder if He considers it final, and if the

kingdom of heaven on earth, which we pray for--”

“Have you seen Lindau to-day?” Mrs. March asked.

“You inferred it from the quality of my piety?” March laughed, and then

suddenly sobered. “Yes, I saw him. It's going rather hard with him, I'm

afraid. The amputation doesn't heal very well; the shock was very great,

and he's old. It 'll take time. There's so much pain that they have to

keep him under opiates, and I don't think he fully knew me. At any rate,

I didn't get my piety from him to-day.”

“It's horrible! Horrible!” said Mrs. March. “I can't get over it! After

losing his hand in the war, to lose his whole arm now in this way! It

does seem too cruel! Of course he oughtn't to have been there; we can

say that. But you oughtn't to have been there, either, Basil.”

“Well, I wasn't exactly advising the police to go and club the railroad

presidents.”

“Neither was poor Conrad Dryfoos.”

“I don't deny it. All that was distinctly the chance of life and death.

That belonged to God; and no doubt it was law, though it seems chance.

But what I object to is this economic chance-world in which we live, and

which we men seem to have created. It ought to be law as inflexible in

human affairs as the order of day and night in the physical world that

if a man will work he shall both rest and eat, and shall not be harassed

with any question as to how his repose and his provision shall come.

Nothing less ideal than this satisfies the reason. But in our state of

things no one is secure of this. No one is sure of finding work; no one

is sure of not losing it. I may have my work taken away from me at any

moment by the caprice, the mood, the indigestion of a man who has not

the qualification for knowing whether I do it well, or ill. At my time

of life--at every time of life--a man ought to feel that if he will keep

on doing his duty he shall not suffer in himself or in those who are

dear to him, except through natural causes. But no man can feel this

as things are now; and so we go on, pushing and pulling, climbing and

crawling, thrusting aside and trampling underfoot; lying, cheating,

stealing; and then we get to the end, covered with blood and dirt and

sin and shame, and look back over the way we've come to a palace of our

own, or the poor-house, which is about the only possession we can claim

in common with our brother-men, I don't think the retrospect can be

pleasing.”

“I know, I know!” said his wife. “I think of those things, too, Basil.

Life isn't what it seems when you look forward to it. But I think people

would suffer less, and wouldn't have to work so hard, and could make all

reasonable provision for the future, if they were not so greedy and so

foolish.”

“Oh, without doubt! We can't put it all on the conditions; we must

put some of the blame on character. But conditions make character; and

people are greedy and foolish, and wish to have and to shine, because

having and shining are held up to them by civilization as the chief good

of life. We all know they are not the chief good, perhaps not good at

all; but if some one ventures to say so, all the rest of us call him a

fraud and a crank, and go moiling and toiling on to the palace or the

poor-house. We can't help it. If one were less greedy or less foolish,

some one else would have and would shine at his expense. We don't moil

and toil to ourselves alone; the palace or the poor-house is not merely

for ourselves, but for our children, whom we've brought up in the

superstition that having and shining is the chief good. We dare not

teach them otherwise, for fear they may falter in the fight when it

comes their turn, and the children of others will crowd them out of the

palace into the poor-house. If we felt sure that honest work shared by

all would bring them honest food shared by all, some heroic few of us,

who did not wish our children to rise above their fellows--though we

could not bear to have them fall below--might trust them with the

truth. But we have no such assurance, and so we go on trembling before

Dryfooses and living in gimcrackeries.”

“Basil, Basil! I was always willing to live more simply than you. You

know I was!”

“I know you always said so, my dear. But how many bell-ratchets and

speaking-tubes would you be willing to have at the street door below?

I remember that when we were looking for a flat you rejected every

building that had a bell-ratchet or a speaking-tube, and would have

nothing to do with any that had more than an electric button; you wanted

a hall-boy, with electric buttons all over him. I don't blame you. I

find such things quite as necessary as you do.”

“And do you mean to say, Basil,” she asked, abandoning this unprofitable

branch of the inquiry, “that you are really uneasy about your place?

that you are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an Angel, and Mr.

Fulkerson may play you false?”

“Play me false? Oh, it wouldn't be playing me false. It would be merely

looking out for himself, if the new Angel had editorial tastes and

wanted my place. It's what any one would do.”

“You wouldn't do it, Basil!”

“Wouldn't I? Well, if any one offered me more salary than 'Every

Other Week' pays--say, twice as much--what do you think my duty to my

suffering family would be? It's give and take in the business world,

Isabel; especially take. But as to being uneasy, I'm not, in the least.

I've the spirit of a lion, when it comes to such a chance as that.

When I see how readily the sensibilities of the passing stranger can be

worked in New York, I think of taking up the role of that desperate man

on Third Avenue who went along looking for garbage in the gutter to eat.

I think I could pick up at least twenty or thirty cents a day by

that little game, and maintain my family in the affluence it's been

accustomed to.”

“Basil!” cried his wife. “You don't mean to say that man was an

impostor! And I've gone about, ever since, feeling that one such case

in a million, the bare possibility of it, was enough to justify all that

Lindau said about the rich and the poor!”

March laughed teasingly. “Oh, I don't say he was an impostor. Perhaps

he really was hungry; but, if he wasn't, what do you think of a

civilization that makes the opportunity of such a fraud? that gives us

all such a bad conscience for the need which is that we weaken to the

need that isn't? Suppose that poor fellow wasn't personally founded on

fact: nevertheless, he represented the truth; he was the ideal of the

suffering which would be less effective if realistically treated.

That man is a great comfort to me. He probably rioted for days on that

quarter I gave him; made a dinner very likely, or a champagne supper;

and if 'Every Other Week' wants to get rid of me, I intend to work that

racket. You can hang round the corner with Bella, and Tom can come up to

me in tears, at stated intervals, and ask me if I've found anything yet.

To be sure, we might be arrested and sent up somewhere. But even in that

extreme case we should be provided for. Oh no, I'm not afraid of losing

my place! I've merely a sort of psychological curiosity to know how men

like Dryfoos and Fulkerson will work out the problem before them.”

IX.

It was a curiosity which Fulkerson himself shared, at least concerning

Dryfoos. “I don't know what the old man's going to do,” he said to March

the day after the Marches had talked their future over. “Said anything

to you yet?”

“No, not a word.”

“You're anxious, I suppose, same as I am. Fact is,” said Fulkerson,

blushing a little, “I can't ask to have a day named till I know where I

am in connection with the old man. I can't tell whether I've got to look

out for something else or somebody else. Of course, it's full soon yet.”

“Yes,” March said, “much sooner than it seems to us. We're so anxious

about the future that we don't remember how very recent the past is.”

“That's something so. The old man's hardly had time yet to pull himself

together. Well, I'm glad you feel that way about it, March. I guess it's

more of a blow to him than we realize. He was a good deal bound up in

Coonrod, though he didn't always use him very well. Well, I reckon it's

apt to happen so oftentimes; curious how cruel love can be. Heigh? We're

an awful mixture, March!”

“Yes, that's the marvel and the curse, as Browning says.”

“Why, that poor boy himself,” pursued Fulkerson, “had streaks of the

mule in him that could give odds to Beaton, and he must have tried the

old man by the way he would give in to his will and hold out against

his judgment. I don't believe he ever budged a hairs-breadth from his

original position about wanting to be a preacher and not wanting to be a

business man. Well, of course! I don't think business is all in all; but

it must have made the old man mad to find that without saying anything,

or doing anything to show it, and after seeming to come over to his

ground, and really coming, practically, Coonrod was just exactly where

he first planted himself, every time.”

“Yes, people that have convictions are difficult. Fortunately, they're

rare.”

“Do you think so? It seems to me that everybody's got convictions.

Beaton himself, who hasn't a principle to throw at a dog, has got

convictions the size of a barn. They ain't always the same ones, I know,

but they're always to the same effect, as far as Beaton's being Number

One is concerned. The old man's got convictions or did have, unless this

thing lately has shaken him all up--and he believes that money will do

everything. Colonel Woodburn's got convictions that he wouldn't part

with for untold millions. Why, March, you got convictions yourself!”

“Have I?” said March. “I don't know what they are.”

“Well, neither do I; but I know you were ready to kick the trough over

for them when the old man wanted us to bounce Lindau that time.”

“Oh yes,” said March; he remembered the fact; but he was still uncertain

just what the convictions were that he had been so stanch for.

“I suppose we could have got along without you,” Fulkerson mused aloud.

“It's astonishing how you always can get along in this world without the

man that is simply indispensable. Makes a fellow realize that he could

take a day off now and then without deranging the solar system a great

deal. Now here's Coonrod--or, rather, he isn't. But that boy managed his

part of the schooner so well that I used to tremble when I thought

of his getting the better of the old man and going into a convent

or something of that kind; and now here he is, snuffed out in half a

second, and I don't believe but what we shall be sailing along just as

chipper as usual inside of thirty days. I reckon it will bring the old

man to the point when I come to talk with him about who's to be put in

Coonrod's place. I don't like very well to start the subject with him;

but it's got to be done some time.”

“Yes,” March admitted. “It's terrible to think how unnecessary even the

best and wisest of us is to the purposes of Providence. When I looked at

that poor young fellow's face sometimes--so gentle and true and pure--I

used to think the world was appreciably richer for his being in it. But

are we appreciably poorer for his being out of it now?”

“No, I don't reckon we are,” said Fulkerson. “And what a lot of the raw

material of all kinds the Almighty must have, to waste us the way He

seems to do. Think of throwing away a precious creature like Coonrod

Dryfoos on one chance in a thousand of getting that old fool of a Lindau

out of the way of being clubbed! For I suppose that was what Coonrod was

up to. Say! Have you been round to see Lindau to-day?”

Something in the tone or the manner of Fulkerson startled March. “No! I

haven't seen him since yesterday.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Fulkerson. “I guess I saw him a little

while after you did, and that young doctor there seemed to feel kind of

worried about him.

“Or not worried, exactly; they can't afford to let such things worry

them, I suppose; but--”

“He's worse?” asked March.

“Oh, he didn't say so. But I just wondered if you'd seen him to-day.”

“I think I'll go now,” said March, with a pang at heart. He had gone

every day to see Lindau, but this day he had thought he would not

go, and that was why his heart smote him. He knew that if he were in

Lindau's place Lindau would never have left his side if he could have

helped it. March tried to believe that the case was the same, as it

stood now; it seemed to him that he was always going to or from the

hospital; he said to himself that it must do Lindau harm to be visited

so much. But he knew that this was not true when he was met at the door

of the ward where Lindau lay by the young doctor, who had come to feel a

personal interest in March's interest in Lindau.

He smiled without gayety, and said, “He's just going.”

“What! Discharged?”

“Oh no. He has been failing very fast since you saw him yesterday, and

now--” They had been walking softly and talking softly down the aisle

between the long rows of beds. “Would you care to see him?”

The doctor made a slight gesture toward the white canvas screen which

in such places forms the death-chamber of the poor and friendless. “Come

round this way--he won't know you! I've got rather fond of the poor old

fellow. He wouldn't have a clergyman--sort of agnostic, isn't he? A good

many of these Germans are--but the young lady who's been coming to see

him--”

They both stopped. Lindau's grand, patriarchal head, foreshortened to

their view, lay white upon the pillow, and his broad, white beard flowed

upon the sheet, which heaved with those long last breaths. Beside his

bed Margaret Vance was kneeling; her veil was thrown back, and her face

was lifted; she held clasped between her hands the hand of the dying

man; she moved her lips inaudibly.

X.

In spite of the experience of the whole race from time immemorial, when

death comes to any one we know we helplessly regard it as an incident

of life, which will presently go on as before. Perhaps this is an

instinctive perception of the truth that it does go on somewhere; but

we have a sense of death as absolutely the end even for earth only if it

relates to some one remote or indifferent to us. March tried to project

Lindau to the necessary distance from himself in order to realize the

fact in his case, but he could not, though the man with whom his youth

had been associated in a poetic friendship had not actually reentered

the region of his affection to the same degree, or in any like degree.

The changed conditions forbade that. He had a soreness of heart

concerning him; but he could not make sure whether this soreness was

grief for his death, or remorse for his own uncandor with him about

Dryfoos, or a foreboding of that accounting with his conscience which

he knew his wife would now exact of him down to the last minutest

particular of their joint and several behavior toward Lindau ever since

they had met him in New York.

He felt something knock against his shoulder, and he looked up to have

his hat struck from his head by a horse's nose. He saw the horse put

his foot on the hat, and he reflected, “Now it will always look like an

accordion,” and he heard the horse's driver address him some sarcasms

before he could fully awaken to the situation. He was standing

bareheaded in the middle of Fifth Avenue and blocking the tide of

carriages flowing in either direction. Among the faces put out of the

carriage windows he saw that of Dryfoos looking from a coupe. The old

man knew him, and said, “Jump in here, Mr. March”; and March, who had

mechanically picked up his hat, and was thinking, “Now I shall have

to tell Isabel about this at once, and she will never trust me on the

street again without her,” mechanically obeyed. Her confidence in him

had been undermined by his being so near Conrad when he was shot; and

it went through his mind that he would get Dryfoos to drive him to a

hatter's, where he could buy a new hat, and not be obliged to confess

his narrow escape to his wife till the incident was some days old and

she could bear it better. It quite drove Lindau's death out of his mind

for the moment; and when Dryfoos said if he was going home he would

drive up to the first cross-street and turn back with him, March said he

would be glad if he would take him to a hat-store. The old man put his

head out again and told the driver to take them to the Fifth Avenue

Hotel. “There's a hat-store around there somewhere, seems to me,” he

said; and they talked of March's accident as well as they could in the

rattle and clatter of the street till they reached the place. March

got his hat, passing a joke with the hatter about the impossibility of

pressing his old hat over again, and came out to thank Dryfoos and take

leave of him.

“If you ain't in any great hurry,” the old man said, “I wish you'd get

in here a minute. I'd like to have a little talk with you.”

“Oh, certainly,” said March, and he thought: “It's coming now about what

he intends to do with 'Every Other Week.' Well, I might as well have all

the misery at once and have it over.”

Dryfoos called up to his driver, who bent his head down sidewise to

listen: “Go over there on Madison Avenue, onto that asphalt, and keep

drivin' up and down till I stop you. I can't hear myself think on these

pavements,” he said to March. But after they got upon the asphalt, and

began smoothly rolling over it, he seemed in no haste to begin. At last

he said, “I wanted to talk with you about that--that Dutchman that was

at my dinner--Lindau,” and March's heart gave a jump with wonder whether

he could already have heard of Lindau's death; but in an instant he

perceived that this was impossible. “I been talkin' with Fulkerson about

him, and he says they had to take the balance of his arm off.”

March nodded; it seemed to him he could not speak. He could not make out

from the close face of the old man anything of his motive. It was set,

but set as a piece of broken mechanism is when it has lost the power

to relax itself. There was no other history in it of what the man had

passed through in his son's death.

“I don't know,” Dryfoos resumed, looking aside at the cloth

window-strap, which he kept fingering, “as you quite understood what

made me the maddest. I didn't tell him I could talk Dutch, because I

can't keep it up with a regular German; but my father was Pennsylvany

Dutch, and I could understand what he was saying to you about me. I know

I had no business to understood it, after I let him think I couldn't but

I did, and I didn't like very well to have a man callin' me a traitor

and a tyrant at my own table. Well, I look at it differently now, and

I reckon I had better have tried to put up with it; and I would, if I

could have known--” He stopped with a quivering lip, and then went

on: “Then, again, I didn't like his talkin' that paternalism of his.

I always heard it was the worst kind of thing for the country; I was

brought up to think the best government was the one that governs the

least; and I didn't want to hear that kind of talk from a man that was

livin' on my money. I couldn't bear it from him. Or I thought I couldn't

before--before--” He stopped again, and gulped. “I reckon now there

ain't anything I couldn't bear.” March was moved by the blunt words and

the mute stare forward with which they ended. “Mr. Dryfoos, I didn't

know that you understood Lindau's German, or I shouldn't have allowed

him he wouldn't have allowed himself--to go on. He wouldn't have

knowingly abused his position of guest to censure you, no matter how

much he condemned you.” “I don't care for it now,” said Dryfoos. “It's

all past and gone, as far as I'm concerned; but I wanted you to see that

I wasn't tryin' to punish him for his opinions, as you said.”

“No; I see now,” March assented, though he thought his position still

justified. “I wish--”

“I don't know as I understand much about his opinions, anyway; but I

ain't ready to say I want the men dependent on me to manage my business

for me. I always tried to do the square thing by my hands; and in that

particular case out there I took on all the old hands just as fast as

they left their Union. As for the game I came on them, it was dog eat

dog, anyway.”

March could have laughed to think how far this old man was from even

conceiving of Lindau's point of view, and how he was saying the worst

of himself that Lindau could have said of him. No one could have

characterized the kind of thing he had done more severely than he when

he called it dog eat dog.

“There's a great deal to be said on both sides,” March began, hoping to

lead up through this generality to the fact of Lindau's death; but the

old man went on:

“Well, all I wanted him to know is that I wasn't trying to punish him

for what he said about things in general. You naturally got that idea, I

reckon; but I always went in for lettin' people say what they please and

think what they please; it's the only way in a free country.”

“I'm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos, that it would make little difference to Lindau

now--”

“I don't suppose he bears malice for it,” said Dryfoos, “but what I want

to do is to have him told so. He could understand just why I didn't

want to be called hard names, and yet I didn't object to his thinkin'

whatever he pleased. I'd like him to know--”

“No one can speak to him, no one can tell him,” March began again, but

again Dryfoos prevented him from going on.

“I understand it's a delicate thing; and I'm not askin' you to do it.

What I would really like to do--if you think he could be prepared for

it, some way, and could stand it--would be to go to him myself, and tell

him just what the trouble was. I'm in hopes, if I done that, he could

see how I felt about it.”

A picture of Dryfoos going to the dead Lindau with his vain regrets

presented itself to March, and he tried once more to make the old man

understand. “Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, “Lindau is past all that forever,”

and he felt the ghastly comedy of it when Dryfoos continued, without

heeding him.

“I got a particular reason why I want him to believe it wasn't his

ideas I objected to--them ideas of his about the government carryin'

everything on and givin' work. I don't understand 'em exactly, but I

found a writin'--among--my son's--things” (he seemed to force the words

through his teeth), “and I reckon he--thought--that way. Kind of a

diary--where he--put down--his thoughts. My son and me--we differed

about a good--many things.” His chin shook, and from time to time he

stopped. “I wasn't very good to him, I reckon; I crossed him where

I guess I got no business to cross him; but I thought everything

of--Coonrod. He was the best boy, from a baby, that ever was; just so

patient and mild, and done whatever he was told. I ought to 'a' let him

been a preacher! Oh, my son! my son!” The sobs could not be kept back

any longer; they shook the old man with a violence that made March

afraid for him; but he controlled himself at last with a series of

hoarse sounds like barks. “Well, it's all past and gone! But as I

understand you from what you saw, when Coonrod was--killed, he was

tryin' to save that old man from trouble?”

“Yes, yes! It seemed so to me.”

“That 'll do, then! I want you to have him come back and write for

the book when he gets well. I want you to find out and let me know

if there's anything I can do for him. I'll feel as if I done it--for

my--son. I'll take him into my own house, and do for him there, if you

say so, when he gets so he can be moved. I'll wait on him myself. It's

what Coonrod 'd do, if he was here. I don't feel any hardness to him

because it was him that got Coonrod killed, as you might say, in one

sense of the term; but I've tried to think it out, and I feel like I

was all the more beholden to him because my son died tryin' to save him.

Whatever I do, I'll be doin' it for Coonrod, and that's enough for me.”

He seemed to have finished, and he turned to March as if to hear what he

had to say.

March hesitated. “I'm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos--Didn't Fulkerson tell you

that Lindau was very sick?”

“Yes, of course. But he's all right, he said.”

Now it had to come, though the fact had been latterly playing fast and

loose with March's consciousness. Something almost made him smile; the

willingness he had once felt to give this old man pain; then he consoled

himself by thinking that at least he was not obliged to meet Dryfoos's

wish to make atonement with the fact that Lindau had renounced him, and

would on no terms work for such a man as he, or suffer any kindness from

him. In this light Lindau seemed the harder of the two, and March had

the momentary force to say--

“Mr. Dryfoos--it can't be. Lindau--I have just come from him--is dead.”

XI.

“How did he take it? How could he bear it? Oh, Basil! I wonder you could

have the heart to say it to him. It was cruel!”

“Yes, cruel enough, my dear,” March owned to his wife, when they talked

the matter over on his return home. He could not wait till the children

were out of the way, and afterward neither he nor his wife was sorry

that he had spoken of it before them. The girl cried plentifully for her

old friend who was dead, and said she hated Mr. Dryfoos, and then

was sorry for him, too; and the boy listened to all, and spoke with a

serious sense that pleased his father. “But as to how he took it,” March

went on to answer his wife's question about Dryfoos--“how do any of

us take a thing that hurts? Some of us cry out, and some of us don't.

Dryfoos drew a kind of long, quivering breath, as a child does when it

grieves--there's something curiously simple and primitive about him--and

didn't say anything. After a while he asked me how he could see the

people at the hospital about the remains; I gave him my card to the

young doctor there that had charge of Lindau. I suppose he was still

carrying forward his plan of reparation in his mind--to the dead for

the dead. But how useless! If he could have taken the living Lindau home

with him, and cared for him all his days, what would it have profited

the gentle creature whose life his worldly ambition vexed and thwarted

here? He might as well offer a sacrifice at Conrad's grave. Children,”

said March, turning to them, “death is an exile that no remorse and no

love can reach. Remember that, and be good to every one here on earth,

for your longing to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to the dead

will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you. I wonder,” he mused, “if

one of the reasons why we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be

hereafter isn't because if we were sure of another world we might be

still more brutal to one another here, in the hope of making reparation

somewhere else. Perhaps, if we ever come to obey the law of love on

earth, the mystery of death will be taken away.”

“Well”--the ancestral Puritanism spoke in Mrs. March--“these two old men

have been terribly punished. They have both been violent and wilful, and

they have both been punished. No one need ever tell me there is not a

moral government of the universe!”

March always disliked to hear her talk in this way, which did both her

head and heart injustice. “And Conrad,” he said, “what was he punished

for?”

“He?”--she answered, in an exaltation--“he suffered for the sins of

others.”

“Ah, well, if you put it in that way, yes. That goes on continually.

That's another mystery.”

He fell to brooding on it, and presently he heard his son saying, “I

suppose, papa, that Mr. Lindau died in a bad cause?”

March was startled. He had always been so sorry for Lindau, and admired

his courage and generosity so much, that he had never fairly considered

this question. “Why, yes,” he answered; “he died in the cause of

disorder; he was trying to obstruct the law. No doubt there was a wrong

there, an inconsistency and an injustice that he felt keenly; but it

could not be reached in his way without greater wrong.”

“Yes; that's what I thought,” said the boy. “And what's the use of our

ever fighting about anything in America? I always thought we could vote

anything we wanted.”

“We can, if we're honest, and don't buy and sell one another's votes,”

said his father. “And men like Lindau, who renounce the American means

as hopeless, and let their love of justice hurry them into sympathy with

violence--yes, they are wrong; and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause,

as you say, Tom.”

“I think Conrad had no business there, or you, either, Basil,” said his

wife.

“Oh, I don't defend myself,” said March. “I was there in the cause of

literary curiosity and of conjugal disobedience. But Conrad--yes, he had

some business there: it was his business to suffer there for the sins of

others. Isabel, we can't throw aside that old doctrine of the Atonement

yet. The life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and going

about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as

great a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a

principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly,

blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them,

we even wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religious

orders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our

day as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl like

Margaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her young

beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the

dying.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Mrs. March. “How--how did she look there, Basil?” She

had her feminine misgivings; she was not sure but the girl was something

of a poseuse, and enjoyed the picturesqueness, as well as the pain; and

she wished to be convinced that it was not so.

“Well,” she said, when March had told again the little there was to

tell, “I suppose it must be a great trial to a woman like Mrs. Horn to

have her niece going that way.”

“The way of Christ?” asked March, with a smile.

“Oh, Christ came into the world to teach us how to live rightly in it,

too. If we were all to spend our time in hospitals, it would be rather

dismal for the homes. But perhaps you don't think the homes are worth

minding?” she suggested, with a certain note in her voice that he knew.

He got up and kissed her. “I think the gimcrackeries are.” He took the

hat he had set down on the parlor table on coming in, and started to put

it in the hall, and that made her notice it.

“You've been getting a new hat!”

“Yes,” he hesitated; “the old one had got--was decidedly shabby.”

“Well, that's right. I don't like you to wear them too long. Did you

leave the old one to be pressed?”

“Well, the hatter seemed to think it was hardly worth pressing,” said

March. He decided that for the present his wife's nerves had quite all

they could bear.

XII.

It was in a manner grotesque, but to March it was all the more natural

for that reason, that Dryfoos should have Lindau's funeral from his

house. He knew the old man to be darkly groping, through the payment

of these vain honors to the dead, for some atonement to his son, and he

imagined him finding in them such comfort as comes from doing all one

can, even when all is useless.

No one knew what Lindau's religion was, and in default they had had the

Anglican burial service read over him; it seems so often the refuge

of the homeless dead. Mrs. Dryfoos came down for the ceremony. She

understood that it was for Coonrod's sake that his father wished the

funeral to be there; and she confided to Mrs. March that she believed

Coonrod would have been pleased. “Coonrod was a member of the 'Piscopal

Church; and fawther's doin' the whole thing for Coonrod as much as for

anybody. He thought the world of Coonrod, fawther did. Mela, she kind

of thought it would look queer to have two funerals from the same house,

hand-runnin', as you might call it, and one of 'em no relation, either;

but when she saw how fawther was bent on it, she give in. Seems as if

she was tryin' to make up to fawther for Coonrod as much as she could.

Mela always was a good child, but nobody can ever come up to Coonrod.”

March felt all the grotesqueness, the hopeless absurdity of Dryfoos's

endeavor at atonement in these vain obsequies to the man for whom he

believed his son to have died; but the effort had its magnanimity,

its pathos, and there was a poetry that appealed to him in the

reconciliation through death of men, of ideas, of conditions, that could

only have gone warring on in life. He thought, as the priest went on

with the solemn liturgy, how all the world must come together in that

peace which, struggle and strive as we may, shall claim us at last. He

looked at Dryfoos, and wondered whether he would consider these rites

a sufficient tribute, or whether there was enough in him to make him

realize their futility, except as a mere sign of his wish to retrieve

the past. He thought how we never can atone for the wrong we do; the

heart we have grieved and wounded cannot kindle with pity for us when

once it is stilled; and yet we can put our evil from us with penitence,

and somehow, somewhere, the order of loving kindness, which our passion

or our wilfulness has disturbed, will be restored.

Dryfoos, through Fulkerson, had asked all the more intimate contributors

of 'Every Other Week' to come. Beaton was absent, but Fulkerson had

brought Miss Woodburn, with her father, and Mrs. Leighton and Alma, to

fill up, as he said. Mela was much present, and was official with the

arrangement of the flowers and the welcome of the guests. She imparted

this impersonality to her reception of Kendricks, whom Fulkerson met in

the outer hall with his party, and whom he presented in whisper to them

all. Kendricks smiled under his breath, as it were, and was then mutely

and seriously polite to the Leightons. Alma brought a little bunch

of flowers, which were lost in those which Dryfoos had ordered to be

unsparingly provided.

It was a kind of satisfaction to Mela to have Miss Vance come, and

reassuring as to how it would look to have the funeral there; Miss Vance

would certainly not have come unless it had been all right; she had

come, and had sent some Easter lilies.

“Ain't Christine coming down?” Fulkerson asked Mela.

“No, she ain't a bit well, and she ain't been, ever since Coonrod died.

I don't know, what's got over her,” said Mela. She added, “Well, I

should 'a' thought Mr. Beaton would 'a' made out to 'a' come!”

“Beaton's peculiar,” said Fulkerson. “If he thinks you want him he takes

a pleasure in not letting you have him.”

“Well, goodness knows, I don't want him,” said the girl.

Christine kept her room, and for the most part kept her bed; but there

seemed nothing definitely the matter with her, and she would not let

them call a doctor. Her mother said she reckoned she was beginning to

feel the spring weather, that always perfectly pulled a body down in

New York; and Mela said if being as cross as two sticks was any sign of

spring-fever, Christine had it bad. She was faithfully kind to her, and

submitted to all her humors, but she recompensed herself by the freest

criticism of Christine when not in actual attendance on her. Christine

would not suffer Mrs. Mandel to approach her, and she had with

her father a sullen submission which was not resignation. For her,

apparently, Conrad had not died, or had died in vain.

“Pshaw!” said Mela, one morning when she came to breakfast, “I reckon if

we was to send up an old card of Mr. Beaton's she'd rattle down-stairs

fast enough. If she's sick, she's love-sick. It makes me sick to see

her.”

Mela was talking to Mrs. Mandel, but her father looked up from his plate

and listened. Mela went on: “I don't know what's made the fellow quit

comun'. But he was an aggravatun' thing, and no more dependable than

water. It's just like Air. Fulkerson said, if he thinks you want him

he'll take a pleasure in not lettun' you have him. I reckon that's

what's the matter with Christine. I believe in my heart the girl 'll die

if she don't git him.”

Mela went on to eat her breakfast with her own good appetite. She now

always came down to keep her father company, as she said, and she did

her best to cheer and comfort him. At least she kept the talk going, and

she had it nearly all to herself, for Mrs. Mandel was now merely staying

on provisionally, and, in the absence of any regrets or excuses from

Christine, was looking ruefully forward to the moment when she must

leave even this ungentle home for the chances of the ruder world

outside.

The old man said nothing at table, but, when Mela went up to see if she

could do anything for Christine, he asked Mrs. Mandel again about all

the facts of her last interview with Beaton.

She gave them as fully as she could remember them, and the old man made

no comment on them. But he went out directly after, and at the 'Every

Other Week' office he climbed the stairs to Fulkerson's room and asked

for Beaton's address. No one yet had taken charge of Conrad's work, and

Fulkerson was running the thing himself, as he said, till he could talk

with Dryfoos about it. The old man would not look into the empty room

where he had last seen his son alive; he turned his face away and

hurried by the door.

XIII.

The course of public events carried Beaton's private affairs beyond

the reach of his simple first intention to renounce his connection

with 'Every Other Week.' In fact, this was not perhaps so simple as

it seemed, and long before it could be put in effect it appeared still

simpler to do nothing about the matter--to remain passive and leave the

initiative to Dryfoos, to maintain the dignity of unconsciousness and

let recognition of any change in the situation come from those who had

caused the change. After all, it was rather absurd to propose making a

purely personal question the pivot on which his relations with 'Every

Other Week' turned. He took a hint from March's position and decided

that he did not know Dryfoos in these relations; he knew only Fulkerson,

who had certainly had nothing to do with Mrs. Mandel's asking his

intentions. As he reflected upon this he became less eager to look

Fulkerson up and make the magazine a partner of his own sufferings. This

was the soberer mood to which Beaton trusted that night even before he

slept, and he awoke fully confirmed in it. As he examined the offence

done him in the cold light of day, he perceived that it had not come

either from Mrs. Mandel, who was visibly the faltering and unwilling

instrument of it, or from Christine, who was altogether ignorant of

it, but from Dryfoos, whom he could not hurt by giving up his place. He

could only punish Fulkerson by that, and Fulkerson was innocent. Justice

and interest alike dictated the passive course to which Beaton inclined;

and he reflected that he might safely leave the punishment of Dryfoos

to Christine, who would find out what had happened, and would be able to

take care of herself in any encounter of tempers with her father.

Beaton did not go to the office during the week that followed upon this

conclusion; but they were used there to these sudden absences of his,

and, as his work for the time was in train, nothing was made of his

staying away, except the sarcastic comment which the thought of him was

apt to excite in the literary department. He no longer came so much to

the Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no state of mind to miss any one

there except Miss Woodburn, whom he never missed. Beaton was left, then,

unmolestedly awaiting the course of destiny, when he read in the morning

paper, over his coffee at Maroni's, the deeply scare-headed story of

Conrad's death and the clubbing of Lindau. He probably cared as little

for either of them as any man that ever saw them; but he felt a shock,

if not a pang, at Conrad's fate, so out of keeping with his life and

character. He did not know what to do; and he did nothing. He was not

asked to the funeral, but he had not expected that, and, when Fulkerson

brought him notice that Lindau was also to be buried from Dryfoos's

house, it was without his usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away.

In his sort, and as much as a man could who was necessarily so much

taken up with himself, he was sorry for Conrad's father; Beaton had a

peculiar tenderness for his own father, and he imagined how his father

would feel if it were he who had been killed in Conrad's place, as it

might very well have been; he sympathized with himself in view of the

possibility; and for once they were mistaken who thought him indifferent

and merely brutal in his failure to appear at Lindau's obsequies.

He would really have gone if he had known how to reconcile his presence

in that house with the terms of his effective banishment from it; and

he was rather forgivingly finding himself wronged in the situation, when

Dryfoos knocked at the studio door the morning after Lindau's funeral.

Beaton roared out, “Come in!” as he always did to a knock if he had not

a model; if he had a model he set the door slightly ajar, and with his

palette on his thumb frowned at his visitor and told him he could

not come in. Dryfoos fumbled about for the knob in the dim passageway

outside, and Beaton, who had experience of people's difficulties with

it, suddenly jerked the door open. The two men stood confronted, and at

first sight of each other their quiescent dislike revived. Each

would have been willing to turn away from the other, but that was not

possible. Beaton snorted some sort of inarticulate salutation, which

Dryfoos did not try to return; he asked if he could see him alone for

a minute or two, and Beaton bade him come in, and swept some

paint-blotched rags from the chair which he told him to take. He

noticed, as the old man sank tremulously into it, that his movement

was like that of his own father, and also that he looked very much

like Christine. Dryfoos folded his hands tremulously on the top of his

horn-handled stick, and he was rather finely haggard, with the dark

hollows round his black eyes and the fall of the muscles on either side

of his chin. He had forgotten to take his soft, wide-brimmed hat off;

and Beaton felt a desire to sketch him just as he sat.

Dryfoos suddenly pulled himself together from the dreary absence into

which he fell at first. “Young man,” he began, “maybe I've come here on

a fool's errand,” and Beaton rather fancied that beginning.

But it embarrassed him a little, and he said, with a shy glance aside,

“I don't know what you mean.” “I reckon,” Dryfoos answered, quietly,

“you got your notion, though. I set that woman on to speak to you the

way she done. But if there was anything wrong in the way she spoke, or

if you didn't feel like she had any right to question you up as if we

suspected you of anything mean, I want you to say so.”

Beaton said nothing, and the old man went on.

“I ain't very well up in the ways of the world, and I don't pretend

to be. All I want is to be fair and square with everybody. I've made

mistakes, though, in my time--” He stopped, and Beaton was not proof

against the misery of his face, which was twisted as with some strong

physical ache. “I don't know as I want to make any more, if I can help

it. I don't know but what you had a right to keep on comin', and if you

had I want you to say so. Don't you be afraid but what I'll take it in

the right way. I don't want to take advantage of anybody, and I don't

ask you to say any more than that.”

Beaton did not find the humiliation of the man who had humiliated him

so sweet as he could have fancied it might be. He knew how it had come

about, and that it was an effect of love for his child; it did not

matter by what ungracious means she had brought him to know that he

loved her better than his own will, that his wish for her happiness was

stronger than his pride; it was enough that he was now somehow brought

to give proof of it. Beaton could not be aware of all that dark coil of

circumstance through which Dryfoos's present action evolved itself; the

worst of this was buried in the secret of the old man's heart, a worm of

perpetual torment. What was apparent to another was that he was broken

by the sorrow that had fallen upon him, and it was this that Beaton

respected and pitied in his impulse to be frank and kind in his answer.

“No, I had no right to keep coming to your house in the way I did,

unless--unless I meant more than I ever said.” Beaton added: “I don't

say that what you did was usual--in this country, at any rate; but I

can't say you were wrong. Since you speak to me about the matter, it's

only fair to myself to say that a good deal goes on in life without much

thinking of consequences. That's the way I excuse myself.”

“And you say Mrs. Mandel done right?” asked Dryfoos, as if he wished

simply to be assured of a point of etiquette.

“Yes, she did right. I've nothing to complain of.”

“That's all I wanted to know,” said Dryfoos; but apparently he had not

finished, and he did not go, though the silence that Beaton now kept

gave him a chance to do so. He began a series of questions which had no

relation to the matter in hand, though they were strictly personal to

Beaton. “What countryman are you?” he asked, after a moment.

“What countryman?” Beaton frowned back at him.

“Yes, are you an American by birth?”

“Yes; I was born in Syracuse.”

“Protestant?”

“My father is a Scotch Seceder.”

“What business is your father in?”

Beaton faltered and blushed; then he answered:

“He's in the monument business, as he calls it. He's a tombstone

cutter.” Now that he was launched, Beaton saw no reason for not

declaring, “My father's always been a poor man, and worked with his own

hands for his living.” He had too slight esteem socially for Dryfoos to

conceal a fact from him that he might have wished to blink with others.

“Well, that's right,” said Dryfoos. “I used to farm it myself. I've got

a good pile of money together, now. At first it didn't come easy; but

now it's got started it pours in and pours in; it seems like there was

no end to it. I've got well on to three million; but it couldn't keep me

from losin' my son. It can't buy me back a minute of his life; not all

the money in the world can do it!”

He grieved this out as if to himself rather than to Beaton, who,

scarcely ventured to say, “I know--I am very sorry--”

“How did you come,” Dryfoos interrupted, “to take up paintin'?”

“Well, I don't know,” said Beaton, a little scornfully. “You don't take

a thing of that kind up, I fancy. I always wanted to paint.”

“Father try to stop you?”

“No. It wouldn't have been of any use. Why--”

“My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did stop him or I thought I

did. But I reckon he was a preacher, all the same, every minute of his

life. As you say, it ain't any use to try to stop a thing like that. I

reckon if a child has got any particular bent, it was given to it; and

it's goin' against the grain, it's goin' against the law, to try to bend

it some other way. There's lots of good business men, Mr. Beaton, twenty

of 'em to every good preacher?”

“I imagine more than twenty,” said Beaton, amused and touched through

his curiosity as to what the old man was driving at by the quaint

simplicity of his speculations.

“Father ever come to the city?”

“No; he never has the time; and my mother's an invalid.”

“Oh! Brothers and sisters?”

“Yes; we're a large family.”

“I lost two little fellers--twins,” said Dryfoos, sadly. “But we hain't

ever had but just the five. Ever take portraits?”

“Yes,” said Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the queries as seriously as

the rest. “I don't think I am good at it.”

Dryfoos got to his feet. “I wish you'd paint a likeness of my son.

You've seen him plenty of times. We won't fight about the price, don't

you be afraid of that.”

Beaton was astonished, and in a mistaken way he was disgusted. He saw

that Dryfoos was trying to undo Mrs. Mandel's work practically, and get

him to come again to his house; that he now conceived of the offence

given him as condoned, and wished to restore the former situation. He

knew that he was attempting this for Christine's sake, but he was not

the man to imagine that Dryfoos was trying not only to tolerate him, but

to like him; and, in fact, Dryfoos was not wholly conscious himself of

this end. What they both understood was that Dryfoos was endeavoring

to get at Beaton through Conrad's memory; but with one this was its

dedication to a purpose of self sacrifice, and with the other a vulgar

and shameless use of it.

“I couldn't do it,” said Beaton. “I couldn't think of attempting it.”

“Why not?” Dryfoos persisted. “We got some photographs of him; he didn't

like to sit very well; but his mother got him to; and you know how he

looked.”

“I couldn't do it--I couldn't. I can't even consider it. I'm very sorry.

I would, if it were possible. But it isn't possible.”

“I reckon if you see the photographs once”

“It isn't that, Mr. Dryfoos. But I'm not in the way of that kind of

thing any more.”

“I'd give any price you've a mind to name--”

“Oh, it isn't the money!” cried Beaton, beginning to lose control of

himself.

The old man did not notice him. He sat with his head fallen forward, and

his chin resting on his folded hands. Thinking of the portrait, he saw

Conrad's face before him, reproachful, astonished, but all gentle as

it looked when Conrad caught his hand that day after he struck him; he

heard him say, “Father!” and the sweat gathered on his forehead. “Oh, my

God!” he groaned. “No; there ain't anything I can do now.”

Beaton did not know whether Dryfoos was speaking to him or not. He

started toward him. “Are you ill?”

“No, there ain't anything the matter,” said the old man. “But I guess

I'll lay down on your settee a minute.” He tottered with Beaton's help

to the aesthetic couch covered with a tiger-skin, on which Beaton had

once thought of painting a Cleopatra; but he could never get the right

model. As the old man stretched himself out on it, pale and suffering,

he did not look much like a Cleopatra, but Beaton was struck with his

effectiveness, and the likeness between him and his daughter; she would

make a very good Cleopatra in some ways. All the time, while these

thoughts passed through his mind, he was afraid Dryfoos would die.

The old man fetched his breath in gasps, which presently smoothed and

lengthened into his normal breathing. Beaton got him a glass of wine,

and after tasting it he sat up.

“You've got to excuse me,” he said, getting back to his characteristic

grimness with surprising suddenness, when once he began to recover

himself. “I've been through a good deal lately; and sometimes it ketches

me round the heart like a pain.”

In his life of selfish immunity from grief, Beaton could not understand

this experience that poignant sorrow brings; he said to himself that

Dryfoos was going the way of angina pectoris; as he began shuffling off

the tiger-skin he said: “Had you better get up? Wouldn't you like me to

call a doctor?”

“I'm all right, young man.” Dryfoos took his hat and stick from him, but

he made for the door so uncertainly that Beaton put his hand under his

elbow and helped him out, and down the stairs, to his coupe.

“Hadn't you better let me drive home with you?” he asked.

“What?” said Dryfoos, suspiciously.

Beaton repeated his question.

“I guess I'm able to go home alone,” said Dryfoos, in a surly tone, and

he put his head out of the window and called up “Home!” to the driver,

who immediately started off and left Beaton standing beside the

curbstone.

XIV.

Beaton wasted the rest of the day in the emotions and speculations which

Dryfoos's call inspired. It was not that they continuously occupied him,

but they broke up the train of other thoughts, and spoiled him for work;

a very little spoiled Beaton for work; he required just the right mood

for work. He comprehended perfectly well that Dryfoos had made him that

extraordinary embassy because he wished him to renew his visits, and he

easily imagined the means that had brought him to this pass. From what

he knew of that girl he did not envy her father his meeting with her

when he must tell her his mission had failed. But had it failed? When

Beaton came to ask himself this question, he could only perceive that he

and Dryfoos had failed to find any ground of sympathy, and had parted in

the same dislike with which they had met. But as to any other failure,

it was certainly tacit, and it still rested with him to give it effect.

He could go back to Dryfoos's house, as freely as before, and it was

clear that he was very much desired to come back. But if he went back it

was also clear that he must go back with intentions more explicit than

before, and now he had to ask himself just how much or how little he

had meant by going there. His liking for Christine had certainly not

increased, but the charm, on the other hand, of holding a leopardess in

leash had not yet palled upon him. In his life of inconstancies, it was

a pleasure to rest upon something fixed, and the man who had no control

over himself liked logically enough to feel his control of some one

else. The fact cannot other wise be put in terms, and the attraction

which Christine Dryfoos had for him, apart from this, escapes from all

terms, as anything purely and merely passional must. He had seen from

the first that she was a cat, and so far as youth forecasts such things,

he felt that she would be a shrew. But he had a perverse sense of her

beauty, and he knew a sort of life in which her power to molest him with

her temper could be reduced to the smallest proportions, and even broken

to pieces. Then the consciousness of her money entered. It was evident

that the old man had mentioned his millions in the way of a hint to

him of what he might reasonably expect if he would turn and be his

son-in-law. Beaton did not put it to himself in those words; and in fact

his cogitations were not in words at all. It was the play of cognitions,

of sensations, formlessly tending to the effect which can only be very

clumsily interpreted in language. But when he got to this point in them,

Beaton rose to magnanimity and in a flash of dramatic reverie disposed

of a part of Dryfoos's riches in placing his father and mother, and his

brothers and sisters, beyond all pecuniary anxiety forever. He had no

shame, no scruple in this, for he had been a pensioner upon others ever

since a Syracusan amateur of the arts had detected his talent and given

him the money to go and study abroad. Beaton had always considered the

money a loan, to be repaid out of his future success; but he now never

dreamt of repaying it; as the man was rich, he had even a contempt for

the notion of repaying him; but this did not prevent him from feeling

very keenly the hardships he put his father to in borrowing money from

him, though he never repaid his father, either. In this reverie he saw

himself sacrificed in marriage with Christine Dryfoos, in a kind of

admiring self-pity, and he was melted by the spectacle of the dignity

with which he suffered all the lifelong trials ensuing from his

unselfishness. The fancy that Alma Leighton came bitterly to regret

him, contributed to soothe and flatter him, and he was not sure that

Margaret. Vance did not suffer a like loss in him.

There had been times when, as he believed, that beautiful girl's high

thoughts had tended toward him; there had been looks, gestures, even

words, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; and

Beaton saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn's confidential appeal

to him to get Margaret interested in art again as something by no means

necessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a

master of illusion. If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life

of good works to which her niece was visibly abandoning herself, Beaton

could not doubt which she would choose; the only question was how real

the danger of a life of good works was.

As he thought of these two girls, one so charming and the other so

divine, it became indefinitely difficult to renounce them for Christine

Dryfoos, with her sultry temper and her earthbound ideals. Life had been

so flattering to Beaton hitherto that he could not believe them both

finally indifferent; and if they were not indifferent, perhaps he did

not wish either of them to be very definite. What he really longed for

was their sympathy; for a man who is able to walk round quite ruthlessly

on the feelings of others often has very tender feelings of his own,

easily lacerated, and eagerly responsive to the caresses of compassion.

In this frame Beaton determined to go that afternoon, though it was not

Mrs. Horn's day, and call upon her in the hope of possibly seeing Miss

Vance alone. As he continued in it, he took this for a sign and actually

went. It did not fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs. Horn

to talking again about her niece, and Mrs. Horn again regretted that

nothing could be done by the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good

works.

“Is she at home? Will you let me see her?” asked Beacon, with something

of the scientific interest of a physician inquiring for a patient whose

symptoms have been rehearsed to him. He had not asked for her before.

“Yes, certainly,” said Mrs. Horn, and she went herself to call Margaret,

and she did not return with her. The girl entered with the gentle grace

peculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own consolation,

could not help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look.

At sight of her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquished, that

they might be something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart.

She wore black, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her

dress received a nun-like effect from the pensive absence of her face.

“Decidedly,” thought Beaton, “she is far gone in good works.”

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at

once to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt.

He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her

back upon possibilities which she ought not to neglect.

“You know very well,” she answered, “that I couldn't do anything in that

way worth the time I should waste on it. Don't talk of it, please. I

suppose my aunt has been asking you to say this, but it's no use. I'm

sorry it's no use, she wishes it so much; but I'm not sorry otherwise.

You can find the pleasure at least of doing good work in it; but I

couldn't find anything in it but a barren amusement. Mr. Wetmore is

right; for me, it's like enjoying an opera, or a ball.”

“That's one of Wetmore's phrases. He'd sacrifice anything to them.”

She put aside the whole subject with a look. “You were not at Mr.

Dryfoos's the other day. Have you seen them, any of them, lately?”

“I haven't been there for some time, no,” said Beaton, evasively. But he

thought if he was to get on to anything, he had better be candid. “Mr.

Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He's got a queer notion. He wants

me to paint his son's portrait.”

She started. “And will you--”

“No, I couldn't do such a thing. It isn't in my way. I told him so. His

son had a beautiful face an antique profile; a sort of early Christian

type; but I'm too much of a pagan for that sort of thing.”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Beaton continued, not quite liking her assent after he had

invited it. He had his pride in being a pagan, a Greek, but it failed

him in her presence, now; and he wished that she had protested he was

none. “He was a singular creature; a kind of survival; an exile in

our time and place. I don't know: we don't quite expect a saint to be

rustic; but with all his goodness Conrad Dryfoos was a country person.

If he were not dying for a cause you could imagine him milking.” Beaton

intended a contempt that came from the bitterness of having himself once

milked the family cow.

His contempt did not reach Miss Vance. “He died for a cause,” she said.

“The holiest.”

“Of labor?”

“Of peace. He was there to persuade the strikers to be quiet and go

home.”

“I haven't been quite sure,” said Beaton. “But in any case he had no

business there. The police were on hand to do the persuading.”

“I can't let you talk so!” cried the girl. “It's shocking! Oh, I know

it's the way people talk, and the worst is that in the sight of the

world it's the right way. But the blessing on the peacemakers is not for

the policemen with their clubs.”

Beaton saw that she was nervous; he made his reflection that she was

altogether too far gone in good works for the fine arts to reach her;

he began to think how he could turn her primitive Christianity to the

account of his modern heathenism. He had no deeper design than to get

flattered back into his own favor far enough to find courage for some

sort of decisive step. In his heart he was trying to will whether he

should or should not go back to Dryfoos's house. It could not be from

the caprice that had formerly taken him; it must be from a definite

purpose; again he realized this. “Of course; you are right,” he said.

“I wish I could have answered that old man differently. I fancy he was

bound up in his son, though he quarrelled with him, and crossed him. But

I couldn't do it; it wasn't possible.” He said to himself that if she

said “No,” now, he would be ruled by her agreement with him; and if she

disagreed with him, he would be ruled still by the chance, and would go

no more to the Dryfooses'. He found himself embarrassed to the point

of blushing when she said nothing, and left him, as it were, on his own

hands. “I should like to have given him that comfort; I fancy he hasn't

much comfort in life; but there seems no comfort in me.”

He dropped his head in a fit attitude for compassion; but she poured no

pity upon it.

“There is no comfort for us in ourselves,” she said. “It's hard to get

outside; but there's only despair within. When we think we have done

something for others, by some great effort, we find it's all for our own

vanity.”

“Yes,” said Beaton. “If I could paint pictures for righteousness' sake,

I should have been glad to do Conrad Dryfoos for his father. I felt

sorry for him. Did the rest seem very much broken up? You saw them all?”

“Not all. Miss Dryfoos was ill, her sister said. It's hard to tell how

much people suffer. His mother seemed bewildered. The younger sister is

a simple creature; she looks like him; I think she must have something

of his spirit.”

“Not much spirit of any kind, I imagine,” said Beaton. “But she's

amiably material. Did they say Miss Dryfoos was seriously ill?”

“No. I supposed she might be prostrated by her brother's death.”

“Does she seem that kind of person to you, Miss Vance?” asked Beaton.

“I don't know. I haven't tried to see so much of them as I might, the

past winter. I was not sure about her when I met her; I've never seen

much of people, except in my own set, and the--very poor. I have been

afraid I didn't understand her. She may have a kind of pride that would

not let her do herself justice.”

Beaton felt the unconscious dislike in the endeavor of praise. “Then she

seems to you like a person whose life--its trials, its chances--would

make more of than she is now?”

“I didn't say that. I can't judge of her at all; but where we don't

know, don't you think we ought to imagine the best?”

“Oh yes,” said Beaton. “I didn't know but what I once said of them

might have prejudiced you against them. I have accused myself of it.”

He always took a tone of conscientiousness, of self-censure, in talking

with Miss Vance; he could not help it.

“Oh no. And I never allowed myself to form any judgment of her. She is

very pretty, don't you think, in a kind of way?”

“Very.”

“She has a beautiful brunette coloring: that floury white and the

delicate pink in it. Her eyes are beautiful.”

“She's graceful, too,” said Beaton. “I've tried her in color; but I

didn't make it out.”

“I've wondered sometimes,” said Miss Vance, “whether that elusive

quality you find in some people you try to paint doesn't characterize

them all through. Miss Dryfoos might be ever so much finer and better

than we would find out in the society way that seems the only way.”

“Perhaps,” said Beaton, gloomily; and he went away profoundly

discouraged by this last analysis of Christine's character. The angelic

imperviousness of Miss Vance to properties of which his own wickedness

was so keenly aware in Christine might have made him laugh, if it had

not been such a serious affair with him. As it was, he smiled to think

how very differently Alma Leighton would have judged her from Miss

Vance's premises. He liked that clear vision of Alma's even when it

pierced his own disguises. Yes, that was the light he had let die out,

and it might have shone upon his path through life. Beaton never felt so

poignantly the disadvantage of having on any given occasion been wanting

to his own interests through his self-love as in this. He had no one

to blame but himself for what had happened, but he blamed Alma for what

might happen in the future because she shut out the way of retrieval

and return. When he thought of the attitude she had taken toward him, it

seemed incredible, and he was always longing to give her a final chance

to reverse her final judgment. It appeared to him that the time had come

for this now, if ever.

XV.

While we are still young we feel a kind of pride, a sort of fierce

pleasure, in any important experience, such as we have read of or heard

of in the lives of others, no matter how painful. It was this pride,

this pleasure, which Beaton now felt in realizing that the toils of fate

were about him, that between him and a future of which Christine Dryfoos

must be the genius there was nothing but the will, the mood, the fancy

of a girl who had not given him the hope that either could ever again

be in his favor. He had nothing to trust to, in fact, but his knowledge

that he had once had them all; she did not deny that; but neither did

she conceal that he had flung away his power over them, and she had told

him that they never could be his again. A man knows that he can love and

wholly cease to love, not once merely, but several times; he recognizes

the fact in regard to himself, both theoretically and practically; but

in regard to women he cherishes the superstition of the romances that

love is once for all, and forever. It was because Beaton would not

believe that Alma Leighton, being a woman, could put him out of her

heart after suffering him to steal into it, that he now hoped anything

from her, and she had been so explicit when they last spoke of that

affair that he did not hope much. He said to himself that he was going

to cast himself on her mercy, to take whatever chance of life, love, and

work there was in her having the smallest pity on him. If she would have

none, then there was but one thing he could do: marry Christine and go

abroad. He did not see how he could bring this alternative to bear upon

Alma; even if she knew what he would do in case of a final rejection,

he had grounds for fearing she would not care; but he brought it to bear

upon himself, and it nerved him to a desperate courage. He could hardly

wait for evening to come, before he went to see her; when it came, it

seemed to have come too soon. He had wrought himself thoroughly into the

conviction that he was in earnest, and that everything depended upon her

answer to him, but it was not till he found himself in her presence, and

alone with her, that he realized the truth of his conviction. Then the

influences of her grace, her gayety, her arch beauty, above all, her

good sense, penetrated his soul like a subtle intoxication, and he

said to himself that he was right; he could not live without her; these

attributes of hers were what he needed to win him, to cheer him, to

charm him, to guide him. He longed so to please her, to ingratiate

himself with her, that he attempted to be light like her in his talk,

but lapsed into abysmal absences and gloomy recesses of introspection.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked, suddenly starting from one of

these.

“What you are thinking of.”

“It's nothing to laugh at. Do you know what I'm thinking of?”

“Don't tell, if it's dreadful.”

“Oh, I dare say you wouldn't think it's dreadful,” he said, with

bitterness. “It's simply the case of a man who has made a fool of

himself and sees no help of retrieval in himself.”

“Can any one else help a man unmake a fool of himself?” she asked, with

a smile.

“Yes. In a case like this.”

“Dear me! This is very interesting.”

She did not ask him what the case was, but he was launched now, and he

pressed on. “I am the man who has made a fool of himself--”

“Oh!”

“And you can help me out if you will. Alma, I wish you could see me as I

really am.”

“Do you, Mr. Beacon? Perhaps I do.”

“No; you don't. You formulated me in a certain way, and you won't allow

for the change that takes place in every one. You have changed; why

shouldn't I?”

“Has this to do with your having made a fool of yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Oh! Then I don't see how you have changed.”

She laughed, and he too, ruefully. “You're cruel. Not but what I deserve

your mockery. But the change was not from the capacity of making a fool

of myself. I suppose I shall always do that more or less--unless you

help me. Alma! Why can't you have a little compassion? You know that I

must always love you.”

“Nothing makes me doubt that like your saying it, Mr. Beaton. But now

you've broken your word--”

“You are to blame for that. You knew I couldn't keep it!”

“Yes, I'm to blame. I was wrong to let you come--after that. And so I

forgive you for speaking to me in that way again. But it's perfectly

impossible and perfectly useless for me to hear you any more on that

subject; and so-good-bye!”

She rose, and he perforce with her. “And do you mean it?” he asked.

“Forever?”

“Forever. This is truly the last time I will ever see you if I can help

it. Oh, I feel sorry enough for you!” she said, with a glance at his

face. “I do believe you are in earnest. But it's too late now. Don't let

us talk about it any more! But we shall, if we meet, and so,--”

“And so good-bye! Well, I've nothing more to say, and I might as well

say that. I think you've been very good to me. It seems to me as if you

had been--shall I say it?--trying to give me a chance. Is that so?” She

dropped her eyes and did not answer.

“You found it was no use! Well, I thank you for trying. It's curious to

think that I once had your trust, your regard, and now I haven't it. You

don't mind my remembering that I had? It'll be some little consolation,

and I believe it will be some help. I know I can't retrieve the past

now. It is too late. It seems too preposterous--perfectly lurid--that I

could have been going to tell you what a tangle I'd got myself in, and

to ask you to help untangle me. I must choke in the infernal coil, but

I'd like to have the sweetness of your pity in it--whatever it is.”

She put out her hand. “Whatever it is, I do pity you; I said that.”

“Thank you.” He kissed the hand she gave him and went.

He had gone on some such terms before; was it now for the last time? She

believed it was. She felt in herself a satiety, a fatigue, in which

his good looks, his invented airs and poses, his real trouble, were all

alike repulsive. She did not acquit herself of the wrong of having let

him think she might yet have liked him as she once did; but she had been

honestly willing to see whether she could. It had mystified her to find

that when they first met in New York, after their summer in St. Barnaby,

she cared nothing for him; she had expected to punish him for his

neglect, and then fancy him as before, but she did not. More and

more she saw him selfish and mean, weak-willed, narrow-minded, and

hard-hearted; and aimless, with all his talent. She admired his talent

in proportion as she learned more of artists, and perceived how uncommon

it was; but she said to herself that if she were going to devote herself

to art, she would do it at first-hand. She was perfectly serene and

happy in her final rejection of Beaton; he had worn out not only her

fancy, but her sympathy, too.

This was what her mother would not believe when Alma reported the

interview to her; she would not believe it was the last time they should

meet; death itself can hardly convince us that it is the last time of

anything, of everything between ourselves and the dead. “Well, Alma,”

she said, “I hope you'll never regret what you've done.”

“You may be sure I shall not regret it. If ever I'm low-spirited about

anything, I'll think of giving Mr. Beaton his freedom, and that will

cheer me up.”

“And don't you expect to get married? Do you intend to be an old maid?”

demanded her mother, in the bonds of the superstition women have so long

been under to the effect that every woman must wish to get married, if

for no other purpose than to avoid being an old maid.

“Well, mamma,” said Alma, “I intend being a young one for a few years

yet; and then I'll see. If I meet the right person, all well and good;

if not, not. But I shall pick and choose, as a man does; I won't merely

be picked and chosen.”

“You can't help yourself; you may be very glad if you are picked and

chosen.”

“What nonsense, mamma! A girl can get any man she wants, if she goes

about it the right way. And when my 'fated fairy prince' comes along,

I shall just simply make furious love to him and grab him. Of course, I

shall make a decent pretence of talking in my sleep. I believe it's done

that way more than half the time. The fated fairy prince wouldn't see

the princess in nine cases out of ten if she didn't say something; he

would go mooning along after the maids of honor.”

Mrs. Leighton tried to look unspeakable horror; but she broke down and

laughed. “Well, you are a strange girl, Alma.”

“I don't know about that. But one thing I do know, mamma, and that

is that Prince Beaton isn't the F. F. P. for me. How strange you are,

mamma! Don't you think it would be perfectly disgusting to accept a

person you didn't care for, and let him go on and love you and marry

you? It's sickening.”

“Why, certainly, Alma. It's only because I know you did care for him

once--”

“And now I don't. And he didn't care for me once, and now he does. And

so we're quits.”

“If I could believe--”

“You had better brace up and try, mamma; for as Mr. Fulkerson says, it's

as sure as guns. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,

he's loathsome to me; and he keeps getting loathsomer. Ugh! Goodnight!”

XVI.

“Well, I guess she's given him the grand bounce at last,” said Fulkerson

to March in one of their moments of confidence at the office. “That's

Mad's inference from appearances--and disappearances; and some little

hints from Alma Leighton.”

“Well, I don't know that I have any criticisms to offer,” said March.

“It may be bad for Beaton, but it's a very good thing for Miss Leighton.

Upon the whole, I believe I congratulate her.”

“Well, I don't know. I always kind of hoped it would turn out the other

way. You know I always had a sneaking fondness for the fellow.”

“Miss Leighton seems not to have had.”

“It's a pity she hadn't. I tell you, March, it ain't so easy for a girl

to get married, here in the East, that she can afford to despise any

chance.”

“Isn't that rather a low view of it?”

“It's a common-sense view. Beaton has the making of a first-rate fellow

in him. He's the raw material of a great artist and a good citizen. All

he wants is somebody to take him in hand and keep him from makin' an

ass of himself and kickin' over the traces generally, and ridin' two or

three horses bareback at once.”

“It seems a simple problem, though the metaphor is rather complicated,”

said March. “But talk to Miss Leighton about it. I haven't given Beaton

the grand bounce.”

He began to turn over the manuscripts on his table, and Fulkerson went

away. But March found himself thinking of the matter from time to time

during the day, and he spoke to his wife about it when he went home. She

surprised him by taking Fulkerson's view of it.

“Yes, it's a pity she couldn't have made up her mind to have him. It's

better for a woman to be married.”

“I thought Paul only went so far as to say it was well. But what would

become of Miss Leighton's artistic career if she married?”

“Oh, her artistic career!” said Mrs. March, with matronly contempt of

it.

“But look here!” cried her husband. “Suppose she doesn't like him?”

“How can a girl of that age tell whether she likes any one or not?”

“It seems to me you were able to tell at that age, Isabel. But let's

examine this thing. (This thing! I believe Fulkerson is characterizing

my whole parlance, as well as your morals.) Why shouldn't we rejoice

as much at a non-marriage as a marriage? When we consider the enormous

risks people take in linking their lives together, after not half so

much thought as goes to an ordinary horse trade, I think we ought to be

glad whenever they don't do it. I believe that this popular demand for

the matrimony of others comes from our novel-reading. We get to

thinking that there is no other happiness or good-fortune in life except

marriage; and it's offered in fiction as the highest premium for virtue,

courage, beauty, learning, and saving human life. We all know it isn't.

We know that in reality marriage is dog cheap, and anybody can have it

for the asking--if he keeps asking enough people. By-and-by some fellow

will wake up and see that a first-class story can be written from the

anti-marriage point of view; and he'll begin with an engaged couple, and

devote his novel to disengaging them and rendering them separately happy

ever after in the denouement. It will make his everlasting fortune.”

“Why don't you write it, Basil?” she asked. “It's a delightful idea. You

could do it splendidly.”

He became fascinated with the notion. He developed it in detail; but

at the end he sighed and said: “With this 'Every Other Week' work on my

hands, of course I can't attempt a novel. But perhaps I sha'n't have it

long.”

She was instantly anxious to know what he meant, and the novel and Miss

Leighton's affair were both dropped out of their thoughts. “What do you

mean? Has Mr. Fulkerson said anything yet?”

“Not a word. He knows no more about it than I do. Dryfoos hasn't spoken,

and we're both afraid to ask him. Of course, I couldn't ask him.”

“No.”

“But it's pretty uncomfortable, to be kept hanging by the gills so, as

Fulkerson says.”

“Yes, we don't know what to do.”

March and Fulkerson said the same to each other; and Fulkerson said that

if the old man pulled out, he did not know what would happen. He had no

capital to carry the thing on, and the very fact that the old man had

pulled out would damage it so that it would be hard to get anybody else

to put it. In the mean time Fulkerson was running Conrad's office-work,

when he ought to be looking after the outside interests of the thing;

and he could not see the day when he could get married.

“I don't know which it's worse for, March: you or me. I don't know,

under the circumstances, whether it's worse to have a family or to want

to have one. Of course--of course! We can't hurry the old man up. It

wouldn't be decent, and it would be dangerous. We got to wait.”

He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos for some money; he did not need

any, but, he said maybe the demand would act as a hint upon him. One

day, about a week after Alma's final rejection of Beaton, Dryfoos came

into March's office. Fulkerson was out, but the old man seemed not to

have tried to see him.

He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after he sat down, and looked

at March awhile with his old eyes, which had the vitreous glitter of

old eyes stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said, abruptly, “Mr.

March, how would you like to take this thing off my hands?”

“I don't understand, exactly,” March began; but of course he understood

that Dryfoos was offering to let him have 'Every Other Week' on some

terms or other, and his heart leaped with hope.

The old man knew he understood, and so he did not explain. He said: “I

am going to Europe, to take my family there. The doctor thinks it might

do my wife some good; and I ain't very well myself, and my girls both

want to go; and so we're goin'. If you want to take this thing off my

hands, I reckon I can let you have it in 'most any shape you say. You're

all settled here in New York, and I don't suppose you want to break up,

much, at your time of life, and I've been thinkin' whether you wouldn't

like to take the thing.”

The word, which Dryfoos had now used three times, made March at last

think of Fulkerson; he had been filled too full of himself to think

of any one else till he had mastered the notion of such wonderful

good fortune as seemed about falling to him. But now he did think of

Fulkerson, and with some shame and confusion; for he remembered how,

when Dryfoos had last approached him there on the business of his

connection with 'Every Other Week,' he had been very haughty with him,

and told him that he did not know him in this connection. He blushed to

find how far his thoughts had now run without encountering this obstacle

of etiquette.

“Have you spoken to Mr. Fulkerson?” he asked.

“No, I hain't. It ain't a question of management. It's a question of

buying and selling. I offer the thing to you first. I reckon Fulkerson

couldn't get on very well without you.”

March saw the real difference in the two cases, and he was glad to

see it, because he could act more decisively if not hampered by an

obligation to consistency. “I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos;

extremely gratified; and it's no use pretending that I shouldn't be

happy beyond bounds to get possession of 'Every Other Week.' But I don't

feel quite free to talk about it apart from Mr. Fulkerson.”

“Oh, all right!” said the old man, with quick offence.

March hastened to say: “I feel bound to Mr. Fulkerson in every way. He

got me to come here, and I couldn't even seem to act without him.”

He put it questioningly, and the old man answered:

“Yes, I can see that. When 'll he be in? I can wait.” But he looked

impatient.

“Very soon, now,” said March, looking at his watch. “He was only to be

gone a moment,” and while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered

why the old man should have come first to speak with him, and whether

it was from some obscure wish to make him reparation for displeasures in

the past, or from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson. Whichever light he

looked at it in, it was flattering.

“Do you think of going abroad soon?” he asked.

“What? Yes--I don't know--I reckon. We got our passage engaged. It's on

one of them French boats. We're goin' to Paris.”

“Oh! That will be interesting to the young ladies.”

“Yes. I reckon we're goin' for them. 'Tain't likely my wife and me would

want to pull up stakes at our age,” said the old man, sorrowfully.

“But you may find it do you good, Mr. Dryfoos,” said March, with a

kindness that was real, mixed as it was with the selfish interest he now

had in the intended voyage.

“Well, maybe, maybe,” sighed the old man; and he dropped his head

forward. “It don't make a great deal of difference what we do or we

don't do, for the few years left.”

“I hope Mrs. Dryfoos is as well as usual,” said March, finding the

ground delicate and difficult.

“Middlin', middlin',” said the old man. “My daughter Christine, she

ain't very well.”

“Oh,” said March. It was quite impossible for him to affect a more

explicit interest in the fact. He and Dryfoos sat silent for a few

moments, and he was vainly casting about in his thought for something

else which would tide them over the interval till Fulkerson came, when

he heard his step on the stairs.

“Hello, hello!” he said. “Meeting of the clans!” It was always a meeting

of the clans, with Fulkerson, or a field day, or an extra session, or

a regular conclave, whenever he saw people of any common interest

together. “Hain't seen you here for a good while, Mr. Dryfoos. Did think

some of running away with 'Every Other Week' one while, but couldn't

seem to work March up to the point.”

He gave Dryfoos his hand, and pushed aside the papers on the corner of

March's desk, and sat down there, and went on briskly with the nonsense

he could always talk while he was waiting for another to develop any

matter of business; he told March afterward that he scented business

in the air as soon as he came into the room where he and Dryfoos were

sitting.

Dryfoos seemed determined to leave the word to March, who said, after

an inquiring look at him, “Mr. Dryfoos has been proposing to let us have

'Every Other Week,' Fulkerson.”

“Well, that's good; that suits yours truly; March & Fulkerson,

publishers and proprietors, won't pretend it don't, if the terms are all

right.”

“The terms,” said the old man, “are whatever you want 'em. I haven't got

any more use for the concern--” He gulped, and stopped; they knew what

he was thinking of, and they looked down in pity. He went on: “I won't

put any more money in it; but what I've put in a'ready can stay; and you

can pay me four per cent.”

He got upon his feet; and March and Fulkerson stood, too.

“Well, I call that pretty white,” said Fulkerson. “It's a bargain as far

as I'm concerned. I suppose you'll want to talk it over with your wife,

March?”

“Yes; I shall,” said March. “I can see that it's a great chance; but I

want to talk it over with my wife.”

“Well, that's right,” said the old man. “Let me hear from you tomorrow.”

He went out, and Fulkerson began to dance round the room. He caught

March about his stalwart girth and tried to make him waltz; the

office-boy came to the door and looked on with approval.

“Come, come, you idiot!” said March, rooting himself to the carpet.

“It's just throwing the thing into our mouths,” said Fulkerson.

“The wedding will be this day week. No cards! Teedle-lumpty-diddle!

Teedle-lumpty-dee! What do you suppose he means by it, March?” he asked,

bringing himself soberly up, of a sudden. “What is his little game?

Or is he crazy? It don't seem like the Dryfoos of my previous

acquaintance.”

“I suppose,” March suggested, “that he's got money enough, so that he

don't care for this--”

“Pshaw! You're a poet! Don't you know that the more money that kind of

man has got, the more he cares for money? It's some fancy of his--like

having Lindau's funeral at his house--By Jings, March, I believe you're

his fancy!”

“Oh, now! Don't you be a poet, Fulkerson!”

“I do! He seemed to take a kind of shine to you from the day you

wouldn't turn off old Lindau; he did, indeed. It kind of shook him

up. It made him think you had something in you. He was deceived by

appearances. Look here! I'm going round to see Mrs. March with you, and

explain the thing to her. I know Mrs. March! She wouldn't believe you

knew what you were going in for. She has a great respect for your mind,

but she don't think you've got any sense. Heigh?”

“All right,” said March, glad of the notion; and it was really a

comfort to have Fulkerson with him to develop all the points; and it was

delightful to see how clearly and quickly she seized them; it made March

proud of her. She was only angry that they had lost any time in coming

to submit so plain a case to her.

Mr. Dryfoos might change his mind in the night, and then everything

would be lost. They must go to him instantly, and tell him that they

accepted; they must telegraph him.

“Might as well send a district messenger; he'd get there next week,”

said Fulkerson. “No, no! It 'll all keep till to-morrow, and be the

better for it. If he's got this fancy for March, as I say, he ain't

agoing to change it in a single night. People don't change their fancies

for March in a lifetime. Heigh?”

When Fulkerson turned up very early at the office next morning, as March

did, he was less strenuous about Dryfoos's fancy for March. It was as

if Miss Woodburn might have blown cold upon that theory, as something

unjust to his own merit, for which she would naturally be more jealous

than he.

March told him what he had forgotten to tell him the day before, though

he had been trying, all through their excited talk, to get it in, that

the Dryfooses were going abroad.

“Oh, ho!” cried Fulkerson. “That's the milk in the cocoanut, is it?

Well, I thought there must be something.”

But this fact had not changed Mrs. March at all in her conviction that

it was Mr. Dryfoos's fancy for her husband which had moved him to make

him this extraordinary offer, and she reminded him that it had first

been made to him, without regard to Fulkerson. “And perhaps,” she went

on, “Mr. Dryfoos has been changed---softened; and doesn't find money all

in all any more. He's had enough to change him, poor old man!”

“Does anything from without change us?” her husband mused aloud. “We're

brought up to think so by the novelists, who really have the charge of

people's thinking, nowadays. But I doubt it, especially if the thing

outside is some great event, something cataclysmal, like this tremendous

sorrow of Dryfoos's.”

“Then what is it that changes us?” demanded his wife, almost angry with

him for his heresy.

“Well, it won't do to say, the Holy Spirit indwelling. That would sound

like cant at this day. But the old fellows that used to say that had

some glimpses of the truth. They knew that it is the still, small voice

that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom. I suppose I

should have to say that we didn't change at all. We develop. There's

the making of several characters in each of us; we are each several

characters, and sometimes this character has the lead in us, and

sometimes that. From what Fulkerson has told me of Dryfoos, I should say

he had always had the potentiality of better things in him than he has

ever been yet; and perhaps the time has come for the good to have its

chance. The growth in one direction has stopped; it's begun in another;

that's all. The man hasn't been changed by his son's death; it stunned,

it benumbed him; but it couldn't change him. It was an event, like any

other, and it had to happen as much as his being born. It was forecast

from the beginning of time, and was as entirely an effect of his coming

into the world--”

“Basil! Basil!” cried his wife. “This is fatalism!”

“Then you think,” he said, “that a sparrow falls to the ground without

the will of God?” and he laughed provokingly. But he went on more

soberly: “I don't know what it all means Isabel though I believe it

means good. What did Christ himself say? That if one rose from the dead

it would not avail. And yet we are always looking for the miraculous! I

believe that unhappy old man truly grieves for his son, whom he treated

cruelly without the final intention of cruelty, for he loved him and

wished to be proud of him; but I don't think his death has changed him,

any more than the smallest event in the chain of events remotely working

through his nature from the beginning. But why do you think he's changed

at all? Because he offers to sell me 'Every Other Week' on easy terms?

He says himself that he has no further use for the thing; and he knows

perfectly well that he couldn't get his money out of it now, without an

enormous shrinkage. He couldn't appear at this late day as the owner,

and sell it to anybody but Fulkerson and me for a fifth of what it's

cost him. He can sell it to us for all it's cost him; and four per cent.

is no bad interest on his money till we can pay it back. It's a good

thing for us; but we have to ask whether Dryfoos has done us the good,

or whether it's the blessing of Heaven. If it's merely the blessing of

Heaven, I don't propose being grateful for it.”

March laughed again, and his wife said, “It's disgusting.”

“It's business,” he assented. “Business is business; but I don't say it

isn't disgusting. Lindau had a low opinion of it.”

“I think that with all his faults Mr. Dryfoos is a better man than

Lindau,” she proclaimed.

“Well, he's certainly able to offer us a better thing in 'Every Other

Week,'” said March.

She knew he was enamoured of the literary finish of his cynicism, and

that at heart he was as humbly and truly grateful as she was for the

good-fortune opening to them.

XVII.

Beaton was at his best when he parted for the last time with Alma

Leighton, for he saw then that what had happened to him was the

necessary consequence of what he had been, if not what he had done.

Afterward he lost this clear vision; he began to deny the fact; he drew

upon his knowledge of life, and in arguing himself into a different

frame of mind he alleged the case of different people who had done and

been much worse things than he, and yet no such disagreeable consequence

had befallen them. Then he saw that it was all the work of blind chance,

and he said to himself that it was this that made him desperate, and

willing to call evil his good, and to take his own wherever he could

find it. There was a great deal that was literary and factitious and

tawdry in the mood in which he went to see Christine Dryfoos, the night

when the Marches sat talking their prospects over; and nothing that was

decided in his purpose. He knew what the drift of his mind was, but he

had always preferred to let chance determine his events, and now since

chance had played him such an ill turn with Alma, he left it the whole

responsibility. Not in terms, but in effect, this was his thought as

he walked on up-town to pay the first of the visits which Dryfoos had

practically invited him to resume. He had an insolent satisfaction in

having delayed it so long; if he was going back he was going back on his

own conditions, and these were to be as hard and humiliating as he could

make them. But this intention again was inchoate, floating, the stuff

of an intention, rather than intention; an expression of temperament

chiefly.

He had been expected before that. Christine had got out of Mela that her

father had been at Beaton's studio; and then she had gone at the old

man and got from him every smallest fact of the interview there. She had

flung back in his teeth the good-will toward herself with which he had

gone to Beaton. She was furious with shame and resentment; she told him

he had made bad worse, that he had made a fool of himself to no end; she

spared neither his age nor his grief-broken spirit, in which his

will could not rise against hers. She filled the house with her rage,

screaming it out upon him; but when her fury was once spent, she began

to have some hopes from what her father had done. She no longer kept her

bed; every evening she dressed herself in the dress Beaton admired the

most, and sat up till a certain hour to receive him. She had fixed a day

in her own mind before which, if he came, she would forgive him all

he had made her suffer: the mortification, the suspense, the despair.

Beyond this, she had the purpose of making her father go to Europe; she

felt that she could no longer live in America, with the double disgrace

that had been put upon her.

Beaton rang, and while the servant was coming the insolent caprice

seized him to ask for the young ladies instead of the old man, as he had

supposed of course he should do. The maid who answered the bell, in the

place of the reluctant Irishman of other days, had all his hesitation in

admitting that the young ladies were at home.

He found Mela in the drawing-room. At sight of him she looked scared;

but she seemed to be reassured by his calm. He asked if he was not

to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Dryfoos, too; and Mela said she

reckoned the girl had gone up-stairs to tell her. Mela was in black, and

Beaton noted how well the solid sable became her rich red-blonde beauty;

he wondered what the effect would be with Christine.

But she, when she appeared, was not in mourning. He fancied that she

wore the lustrous black silk, with the breadths of white Venetian lace

about the neck which he had praised, because he praised it. Her cheeks

burned with a Jacqueminot crimson; what should be white in her face

was chalky white. She carried a plumed ostrich fan, black and soft, and

after giving him her hand, sat down and waved it to and fro slowly,

as he remembered her doing the night they first met. She had no ideas,

except such as related intimately to herself, and she had no gabble,

like Mela; and she let him talk. It was past the day when she promised

herself she would forgive him; but as he talked on she felt all her

passion for him revive, and the conflict of desires, the desire to hate,

the desire to love, made a dizzying whirl in her brain. She looked at

him, half doubting whether he was really there or not. He had never

looked so handsome, with his dreamy eyes floating under his heavy

overhanging hair, and his pointed brown beard defined against his

lustrous shirtfront. His mellowly modulated, mysterious voice lulled

her; when Mela made an errand out of the room, and Beaton crossed to her

and sat down by her, she shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked, and she felt the cruel mockery and exultant

consciousness of power in his tone, as perhaps a wild thing feels

captivity in the voice of its keeper. But now, she said she would still

forgive him if he asked her.

Mela came back, and the talk fell again to the former level; but Beaton

had not said anything that really meant what she wished, and she saw

that he intended to say nothing. Her heart began to burn like a fire in

her breast.

“You been tellun' him about our goun' to Europe?” Mela asked.

“No,” said Christine, briefly, and looking at the fan spread out on her

lap.

Beaton asked when; and then he rose, and said if it was so soon, he

supposed he should not see them again, unless he saw them in Paris; he

might very likely run over during the summer. He said to himself that he

had given it a fair trial with Christine, and he could not make it go.

Christine rose, with a kind of gasp; and mechanically followed him to

the door of the drawing-room; Mela came, too; and while he was putting

on his overcoat, she gurgled and bubbled in good-humor with all the

world. Christine stood looking at him, and thinking how still handsomer

he was in his overcoat; and that fire burned fiercer in her. She felt

him more than life to her and knew him lost, and the frenzy, that makes

a woman kill the man she loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty

she cannot have for all hers, possessed her lawless soul. He gave his

hand to Mela, and said, in his wind-harp stop, “Good-bye.”

As he put out his hand to Christine, she pushed it aside with a scream

of rage; she flashed at him, and with both hands made a feline pass at

the face he bent toward her. He sprang back, and after an instant of

stupefaction he pulled open the door behind him and ran out into the

street.

“Well, Christine Dryfoos!” said Mela, “Sprang at him like a wild-cat!”

“I don't care,” Christine shrieked. “I'll tear his eyes out!” She flew

up-stairs to her own room, and left the burden of the explanation to

Mela, who did it justice.

Beaton found himself, he did not know how, in his studio, reeking with

perspiration and breathless. He must almost have run. He struck a match

with a shaking hand, and looked at his face in the glass. He expected

to see the bleeding marks of her nails on his cheeks, but he could see

nothing. He grovelled inwardly; it was all so low and coarse and vulgar;

it was all so just and apt to his deserts.

There was a pistol among the dusty bric-a-brac on the mantel which he

had kept loaded to fire at a cat in the area. He took it and sat looking

into the muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill him. It

slipped through his hand and struck the floor, and there was a report;

he sprang into the air, feeling that he had been shot. But he found

himself still alive, with only a burning line along his cheek, such as

one of Christine's finger-nails might have left.

He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact that he had got his

punishment in the right way, and that his case was not to be dignified

into tragedy.

XVIII.

The Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the Dryfooses off on the French

steamer. There was no longer any business obligation on them to be

civil, and there was greater kindness for that reason in the attention

they offered. 'Every Other Week' had been made over to the joint

ownership of March and Fulkerson, and the details arranged with a

hardness on Dryfoos's side which certainly left Mrs. March with a

sense of his incomplete regeneration. Yet when she saw him there on

the steamer, she pitied him; he looked wearied and bewildered; even

his wife, with her twitching head, and her prophecies of evil, croaked

hoarsely out, while she clung to Mrs. March's hand where they sat

together till the leave-takers were ordered ashore, was less pathetic.

Mela was looking after both of them, and trying to cheer them in a

joyful excitement. “I tell 'em it's goun' to add ten years to both their

lives,” she said. “The voyage 'll do their healths good; and then, we're

gittun' away from that miser'ble pack o' servants that was eatun' us up,

there in New York. I hate the place!” she said, as if they had already

left it. “Yes, Mrs. Mandel's goun', too,” she added, following the

direction of Mrs. March's eyes where they noted Mrs. Mandel, speaking to

Christine on the other side of the cabin. “Her and Christine had a kind

of a spat, and she was goun' to leave, but here only the other day,

Christine offered to make it up with her, and now they're as thick as

thieves. Well, I reckon we couldn't very well 'a' got along without her.

She's about the only one that speaks French in this family.”

Mrs. March's eyes still dwelt upon Christine's face; it was full of a

furtive wildness. She seemed to be keeping a watch to prevent herself

from looking as if she were looking for some one. “Do you know,”

Mrs. March said to her husband as they jingled along homeward in the

Christopher Street bob-tail car, “I thought she was in love with that

detestable Mr. Beaton of yours at one time; and that he was amusing

himself with her.”

“I can bear a good deal, Isabel,” said March, “but I wish you wouldn't

attribute Beaton to me. He's the invention of that Mr. Fulkerson of

yours.”

“Well, at any rate, I hope, now, you'll both get rid of him, in the

reforms you're going to carry out.”

These reforms were for a greater economy in the management of 'Every

Other Week;' but in their very nature they could not include the

suppression of Beaton. He had always shown himself capable and loyal to

the interests of the magazine, and both the new owners were glad to

keep him. He was glad to stay, though he made a gruff pretence of

indifference, when they came to look over the new arrangement with him.

In his heart he knew that he was a fraud; but at least he could say to

himself with truth that he had not now the shame of taking Dryfoos's

money.

March and Fulkerson retrenched at several points where it had seemed

indispensable to spend, as long as they were not spending their own:

that was only human. Fulkerson absorbed Conrad's department into his,

and March found that he could dispense with Kendricks in the place of

assistant which he had lately filled since Fulkerson had decided that

March was overworked. They reduced the number of illustrated articles,

and they systematized the payment of contributors strictly according to

the sales of each number, on their original plan of co-operation: they

had got to paying rather lavishly for material without reference to the

sales.

Fulkerson took a little time to get married, and went on his wedding

journey out to Niagara, and down the St. Lawrence to Quebec over the

line of travel that the Marches had taken on their wedding journey. He

had the pleasure of going from Montreal to Quebec on the same boat on

which he first met March.

They have continued very good friends, and their wives are almost

without the rivalry that usually embitters the wives of partners. At

first Mrs. March did not like Mrs. Fulkerson's speaking of her husband

as the Ownah, and March as the Edito'; but it appeared that this was

only a convenient method of recognizing the predominant quality in each,

and was meant neither to affirm nor to deny anything. Colonel Woodburn

offered as his contribution to the celebration of the copartnership,

which Fulkerson could not be prevented from dedicating with a little

dinner, the story of Fulkerson's magnanimous behavior in regard to

Dryfoos at that crucial moment when it was a question whether he should

give up Dryfoos or give up March. Fulkerson winced at it; but Mrs. March

told her husband that now, whatever happened, she should never have any

misgivings of Fulkerson again; and she asked him if he did not think he

ought to apologize to him for the doubts with which he had once inspired

her. March said that he did not think so.

The Fulkersons spent the summer at a seaside hotel in easy reach of the

city; but they returned early to Mrs. Leighton's, with whom they are to

board till spring, when they are going to fit up Fulkerson's bachelor

apartment for housekeeping. Mrs. March, with her Boston scruple, thinks

it will be odd, living over the 'Every Other Week' offices; but there

will be a separate street entrance to the apartment; and besides, in New

York you may do anything.

The future of the Leightons promises no immediate change. Kendricks

goes there a good deal to see the Fulkersons, and Mrs. Fulkerson says he

comes to see Alma. He has seemed taken with her ever since he first

met her at Dryfoos's, the day of Lindau's funeral, and though Fulkerson

objects to dating a fancy of that kind from an occasion of that kind,

he justly argues with March that there can be no harm in it, and that we

are liable to be struck by lightning any time. In the mean while there

is no proof that Alma returns Kendricks's interest, if he feels any.

She has got a little bit of color into the fall exhibition; but the fall

exhibition is never so good as the spring exhibition. Wetmore is rather

sorry she has succeeded in this, though he promoted her success. He says

her real hope is in black and white, and it is a pity for her to lose

sight of her original aim of drawing for illustration.

News has come from Paris of the engagement of Christine Dryfoos.

There the Dryfooses met with the success denied them in New York; many

American plutocrats must await their apotheosis in Europe, where society

has them, as it were, in a translation. Shortly after their arrival they

were celebrated in the newspapers as the first millionaire American

family of natural-gas extraction who had arrived in the capital of

civilization; and at a French watering-place Christine encountered

her fate--a nobleman full of present debts and of duels in the past.

Fulkerson says the old man can manage the debtor, and Christine can

look out for the duellist. “They say those fellows generally whip their

wives. He'd better not try it with Christine, I reckon, unless he's

practised with a panther.”

One day, shortly after their return to town in the autumn from the brief

summer outing they permitted themselves, the Marches met Margaret Vance.

At first they did not know her in the dress of the sisterhood which she

wore; but she smiled joyfully, almost gayly, on seeing them, and though

she hurried by with the sister who accompanied her, and did not stay to

speak, they felt that the peace that passeth understanding had looked at

them from her eyes.

“Well, she is at rest, there can't be any doubt of that,” he said, as

he glanced round at the drifting black robe which followed her free,

nun-like walk.

“Yes, now she can do all the good she likes,” sighed his wife. “I

wonder--I wonder if she ever told his father about her talk with poor

Conrad that day he was shot?”

“I don't know. I don't care. In any event, it would be right. She did

nothing wrong. If she unwittingly sent him to his death, she sent him to

die for God's sake, for man's sake.”

“Yes--yes. But still--”

“Well, we must trust that look of hers.”

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Affected absence of mind

Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever

Comfort of the critical attitude

Conscience weakens to the need that isn't

Death is an exile that no remorse and no love can reach

Death is peace and pardon

Did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she realized him

Does any one deserve happiness

Does anything from without change us?

Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a translation

Favorite stock of his go up and go down under the betting

Hemmed round with this eternal darkness of death

Indispensable

Love of justice hurry them into sympathy with violence

Married for no other purpose than to avoid being an old maid

Nervous woes of comfortable people

Novelists, who really have the charge of people's thinking

People that have convictions are difficult

Rejoice as much at a non-marriage as a marriage

Respect for your mind, but she don't think you've got any sense

Superstition of the romances that love is once for all

Superstition that having and shining is the chief good

To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing that one likes

Took the world as she found it, and made the best of it

What we can be if we must

When you look it--live it

Would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase

*****

THEIR SILVER WEDDING JOURNEY.

By William Dean Howells

PART I.

[NOTE: Several chapter heading numerals are out of order or missing in

this 1899 edition, however the text is all present in the three volumes.

D.W.]

I.

“You need the rest,” said the Business End; “and your wife wants you to

go, as well as your doctor. Besides, it's your Sabbatical year, and you,

could send back a lot of stuff for the magazine.”

“Is that your notion of a Sabbatical year?” asked the editor.

“No; I throw that out as a bait to your conscience. You needn't write a

line while you're gone. I wish you wouldn't for your own sake; although

every number that hasn't got you in it is a back number for me.”

“That's very nice of you, Fulkerson,” said the editor. “I suppose you

realize that it's nine years since we took 'Every Other Week' from

Dryfoos?”

“Well, that makes it all the more Sabbatical,” said Fulkerson. “The

two extra years that you've put in here, over and above the old style

Sabbatical seven, are just so much more to your credit. It was your

right to go, two years ago, and now it's your duty. Couldn't you look at

it in that light?”

“I dare say Mrs. March could,” the editor assented. “I don't believe she

could be brought to regard it as a pleasure on any other terms.”