When he got home from the 'Every Other Week' office, the afternoon of
that talk with the Business End, he wanted to laugh with his wife at
Fulkerson's notion of a Sabbatical year. She did not think it was so very
droll; she even urged it seriously against him, as if she had now the
authority of Holy Writ for forcing him abroad; she found no relish of
absurdity in the idea that it was his duty to take this rest which had
been his right before.
He abandoned himself to a fancy which had been working to the surface of
his thought. "We could call it our Silver Wedding Journey, and go round
to all the old places, and see them in the reflected light of the past."
"Oh, we could!" she responded, passionately; and he had now the delicate
responsibility of persuading her that he was joking.
He could think of nothing better than a return to Fulkerson's absurdity.
"It would be our Silver Wedding Journey just as it would be my Sabbatical
year--a good deal after date. But I suppose that would make it all the
more silvery."
She faltered in her elation. "Didn't you say a Sabbatical year yourself?"
she demanded.
"Fulkerson said it; but it was a figurative expression."
"And I suppose the Silver Wedding Journey was a figurative expression
too!"
"It was a notion that tempted me; I thought you would enjoy it. Don't you
suppose I should be glad too, if we could go over, and find ourselves
just as we were when we first met there?"
"No; I don't believe now that you care anything about it."
"Well, it couldn't be done, anyway; so that doesn't matter."
"It could be done, if you were a mind to think so. And it would be the
greatest inspiration to you. You are always longing for some chance to do
original work, to get away from your editing, but you've let the time
slip by without really trying to do anything; I don't call those little
studies of yours in the magazine anything; and now you won't take the
chance that's almost forcing itself upon you. You could write an original
book of the nicest kind; mix up travel and fiction; get some love in."
"Oh, that's the stalest kind of thing!"
"Well, but you could see it from a perfectly new point of view. You could
look at it as a sort of dispassionate witness, and treat it
humorously--of course it is ridiculous--and do something entirely fresh."
"It wouldn't work. It would be carrying water on both shoulders. The
fiction would kill the travel, the travel would kill the fiction; the
love and the humor wouldn't mingle any more than oil and vinegar."
"Well, and what is better than a salad?"
"But this would be all salad-dressing, and nothing to put it on." She was
silent, and he yielded to another fancy. "We might imagine coming upon
our former selves over there, and travelling round with them--a wedding
journey 'en partie carree'."
"Something like that. I call it a very poetical idea," she said with a
sort of provisionality, as if distrusting another ambush.
"It isn't so bad," he admitted. "How young we were, in those days!"
"Too young to know what a good time we were having," she said, relaxing
her doubt for the retrospect. "I don't feel as if I really saw Europe,
then; I was too inexperienced, too ignorant, too simple. I would like to
go, just to make sure that I had been." He was smiling again in the way
he had when anything occurred to him that amused him, and she demanded,
"What is it?"
"Nothing. I was wishing we could go in the consciousness of people who
actually hadn't been before--carry them all through Europe, and let them
see it in the old, simple-hearted American way."