The more March thought of the injustice of the New York press (which had
not, however, attacked the literary quality of the number) the more
bitterly he resented it; and his wife's indignation superheated his own.
'Every Other Week' had become a very personal affair with the whole
family; the children shared their parents' disgust; Belle was outspoken
in, her denunciations of a venal press. Mrs. March saw nothing but ruin
ahead, and began tacitly to plan a retreat to Boston, and an
establishment retrenched to the basis of two thousand a year. She shed
some secret tears in anticipation of the privations which this must
involve; but when Fulkerson came to see March rather late the night of
the publication day, she nobly told him that if the worst came to the
worst she could only have the kindliest feeling toward him, and should
not regard him as in the slightest degree responsible.
"Oh, hold on, hold on!" he protested. "You don't think we've made a
failure, do you?"
"Why, of course," she faltered, while March remained gloomily silent.
"Well, I guess we'll wait for the official count, first. Even New York
hasn't gone against us, and I guess there's a majority coming down to
Harlem River that could sweep everything before it, anyway."
"What do you mean, Fulkerson?" March demanded, sternly.
"Oh, nothing! Only, the 'News Company' has ordered ten thousand now; and
you know we had to give them the first twenty on commission."
"What do you mean?" March repeated; his wife held her breath.
"I mean that the first number is a booming success already, and that it's
going to a hundred thousand before it stops. That unanimity and variety
of censure in the morning papers, combined with the attractiveness of the
thing itself, has cleared every stand in the city, and now if the favor
of the country press doesn't turn the tide against us, our fortune's
made." The Marches remained dumb. "Why, look here! Didn't I tell you
those criticisms would be the making of us, when they first began to turn
you blue this morning, March?"
"He came home to lunch perfectly sick," said Mrs. March; "and I wouldn't
let him go back again."
"Didn't I tell you so?" Fulkerson persisted.
March could not remember that he had, or that he had been anything but
incoherently and hysterically jocose over the papers, but he said, "Yes,
yes--I think so."
"I knew it from the start," said Fulkerson. "The only other person who
took those criticisms in the right spirit was Mother Dryfoos--I've just
been bolstering up the Dryfoos family. She had them read to her by Mrs.
Mandel, and she understood them to be all the most flattering prophecies
of success. Well, I didn't read between the lines to that extent, quite;
but I saw that they were going to help us, if there was anything in us,
more than anything that could have been done. And there was something in
us! I tell you, March, that seven-shooting self-cocking donkey of a
Beaton has given us the greatest start! He's caught on like a mouse. He's
made the thing awfully chic; it's jimmy; there's lots of dog about it.
He's managed that process so that the illustrations look as expensive as
first-class wood-cuts, and they're cheaper than chromos. He's put style
into the whole thing."
"Oh yes," said March, with eager meekness, "it's Beaton that's done it."
Fulkerson read jealousy of Beaton in Mrs. March's face. "Beaton has given
us the start because his work appeals to the eye. There's no denying that
the pictures have sold this first number; but I expect the literature of
this first number to sell the pictures of the second. I've been reading
it all over, nearly, since I found how the cat was jumping; I was anxious
about it, and I tell you, old man, it's good. Yes, sir! I was afraid
maybe you had got it too good, with that Boston refinement of yours; but
I reckon you haven't. I'll risk it. I don't see how you got so much
variety into so few things, and all of them palpitant, all of 'em on the
keen jump with actuality."
The mixture of American slang with the jargon of European criticism in
Fulkerson's talk made March smile, but his wife did not seem to notice it
in her exultation. "That is just what I say," she broke in. "It's
perfectly wonderful. I never was anxious about it a moment, except, as
you say, Mr. Fulkerson, I was afraid it might be too good."
They went on in an antiphony of praise till March said: "Really, I don't
see what's left me but to strike for higher wages. I perceive that I'm
indispensable."
"Why, old man, you're coming in on the divvy, you know," said Fulkerson.
They both laughed, and when Fulkerson was gone, Mrs. March asked her
husband what a divvy was.
"It's a chicken before it's hatched."
"No! Truly?"
He explained, and she began to spend the divvy.
At Mrs. Leighton's Fulkerson gave Alma all the honor of the success; he
told her mother that the girl's design for the cover had sold every
number, and Mrs. Leighton believed him.
"Well, Ah think Ah maght have some of the glory," Miss Woodburn pouted.
"Where am Ah comin' in?"
"You're coming in on the cover of the next number," said Fulkerson.
"We're going to have your face there; Miss Leighton's going to sketch it
in." He said this reckless of the fact that he had already shown them the
design of the second number, which was Beaton's weird bit of gas-country
landscape.
"Ah don't see why you don't wrahte the fiction for your magazine, Mr.
Fulkerson," said the girl.
This served to remind Fulkerson of something. He turned to her father.
"I'll tell you what, Colonel Woodburn, I want Mr. March to see some
chapters of that book of yours. I've been talking to him about it."
"I do not think it would add to the popularity of your periodical, sir,"
said the Colonel, with a stately pleasure in being asked. "My views of a
civilization based upon responsible slavery would hardly be acceptable to
your commercialized society."
"Well, not as a practical thing, of course," Fulkerson admitted. "But as
something retrospective, speculative, I believe it would make a hit.
There's so much going on now about social questions; I guess people would
like to read it."
"I do not know that my work is intended to amuse people," said the
Colonel, with some state.
"Mah goodness! Ah only wish it WAS, then," said his daughter; and she
added: "Yes, Mr. Fulkerson, the Colonel will be very glad to submit
po'tions of his woak to yo' edito'. We want to have some of the honaw.
Perhaps we can say we helped to stop yo' magazine, if we didn't help to
stawt it."
They all laughed at her boldness, and Fulkerson said: "It'll take a good
deal more than that to stop 'Every Other Week'. The Colonel's whole book
couldn't do it." Then he looked unhappy, for Colonel Woodburn did not
seem to enjoy his reassuring words; but Miss Woodburn came to his rescue.
"You maght illustrate it with the po'trait of the awthoris daughtaw, if
it's too late for the covah."
"Going to have that in every number, Miss Woodburn!" he cried.
"Oh, mah goodness!" she said, with mock humility.
Alma sat looking at her piquant head, black, unconsciously outlined
against the lamp, as she sat working by the table. "Just keep still a
moment!"
She got her sketch-block and pencils, and began to draw; Fulkerson tilted
himself forward and looked over her shoulder; he smiled outwardly;
inwardly he was divided between admiration of Miss Woodburn's arch beauty
and appreciation of the skill which reproduced it; at the same time he
was trying to remember whether March had authorized him to go so far as
to ask for a sight of Colonel Woodburn's manuscript. He felt that he had
trenched upon March's province, and he framed one apology to the editor
for bringing him the manuscript, and another to the author for bringing
it back.
"Most Ah hold raght still like it was a photograph?" asked Miss Woodburn.
"Can Ah toak?"
"Talk all you want," said Alma, squinting her eyes. "And you needn't be
either adamantine, nor yet--wooden."
"Oh, ho' very good of you! Well, if Ah can toak--go on, Mr. Fulkerson!"
"Me talk? I can't breathe till this thing is done!" sighed Fulkerson; at
that point of his mental drama the Colonel was behaving rustily about the
return of his manuscript, and he felt that he was looking his last on
Miss Woodburn's profile.
"Is she getting it raght?" asked the girl.
"I don't know which is which," said Fulkerson.
"Oh, Ah hope Ah shall! Ah don't want to go round feelin' like a sheet of
papah half the time."
"You could rattle on, just the same," suggested Alma.
"Oh, now! Jost listen to that, Mr. Fulkerson. Do you call that any way to
toak to people?"
"You might know which you were by the color," Fulkerson began, and then
he broke off from the personal consideration with a business inspiration,
and smacked himself on the knee, "We could print it in color!"
Mrs. Leighton gathered up her sewing and held it with both hands in her
lap, while she came round, and looked critically at the sketch and the
model over her glasses. "It's very good, Alma," she said.
Colonel Woodburn remained restively on his side of the table. "Of course,
Mr. Fulkerson, you were jesting, sir, when you spoke of printing a sketch
of my daughter."
"Why, I don't know--If you object--?
"I do, sir--decidedly," said the Colonel.
"Then that settles it, of course,--I only meant--"
"Indeed it doesn't!" cried the girl. "Who's to know who it's from? Ah'm
jost set on havin' it printed! Ah'm going to appear as the head of
Slavery--in opposition to the head of Liberty."
"There'll be a revolution inside of forty-eight hours, and we'll have the
Colonel's system going wherever a copy of 'Every Other Week' circulates,"
said Fulkerson.
"This sketch belongs to me," Alma interposed. "I'm not going to let it be
printed."
"Oh, mah goodness!" said Miss Woodburn, laughing good-humoredly. "That's
becose you were brought up to hate slavery."
"I should like Mr. Beaton to see it," said Mrs. Leighton, in a sort of
absent tone. She added, to Fulkerson: "I rather expected he might be in
to-night."
"Well, if he comes we'll leave it to Beaton," Fulkerson said, with relief
in the solution, and an anxious glance at the Colonel, across the table,
to see how he took that form of the joke. Miss Woodburn intercepted his
glance and laughed, and Fulkerson laughed, too, but rather forlornly.
Alma set her lips primly and turned her head first on one side and then
on the other to look at the sketch. "I don't think we'll leave it to Mr.
Beaton, even if he comes."
"We left the other design for the cover to Beaton," Fulkerson insinuated.
"I guess you needn't be afraid of him."
"Is it a question of my being afraid?" Alma asked; she seemed coolly
intent on her drawing.
"Miss Leighton thinks he ought to be afraid of her," Miss Woodburn
explained.
"It's a question of his courage, then?" said Alma.
"Well, I don't think there are many young ladies that Beaton's afraid
of," said Fulkerson, giving himself the respite of this purely random
remark, while he interrogated the faces of Mrs. Leighton and Colonel
Woodburn for some light upon the tendency of their daughters' words.
He was not helped by Mrs. Leighton's saying, with a certain anxiety, "I
don't know what you mean, Mr. Fulkerson."
"Well, you're as much in the dark as I am myself, then," said Fulkerson.
"I suppose I meant that Beaton is rather--a--favorite, you know. The
women like him."
Mrs. Leighton sighed, and Colonel Woodburn rose and left the room.
In the silence that followed, Fulkerson looked from one lady to the other
with dismay. "I seem to have put my foot in it, somehow," he suggested,
and Miss Woodburn gave a cry of laughter.
"Poo' Mr. Fulkerson! Poo' Mr. Fulkerson! Papa thoat you wanted him to
go."
"Wanted him to go?" repeated Fulkerson.
"We always mention Mr. Beaton when we want to get rid of papa."
"Well, it seems to me that I have noticed that he didn't take much
interest in Beaton, as a general topic. But I don't know that I ever saw
it drive him out of the room before!"
"Well, he isn't always so bad," said Miss Woodburn. "But it was a case of
hate at first sight, and it seems to be growin' on papa."
"Well, I can understand that," said Fulkerson. "The impulse to destroy
Beaton is something that everybody has to struggle against at the start."
"I must say, Mr. Fulkerson," said Mrs. Leighton, in the tremor through
which she nerved herself to differ openly with any one she liked, "I
never had to struggle with anything of the kind, in regard to Mr. Beaton.
He has always been most respectful and--and--considerate, with me,
whatever he has been with others."
"Well, of course, Mrs. Leighton!" Fulkerson came back in a soothing tone.
"But you see you're the rule that proves the exception. I was speaking of
the way men felt about Beaton. It's different with ladies; I just said
so."
"Is it always different?" Alma asked, lifting her head and her hand from
her drawing, and staring at it absently.
Fulkerson pushed both his hands through his whiskers. "Look here! Look
here!" he said. "Won't somebody start some other subject? We haven't had
the weather up yet, have we? Or the opera? What is the matter with a few
remarks about politics?"
"Why, Ah thoat you lahked to toak about the staff of yo' magazine," said
Miss Woodburn.
"Oh, I do!" said Fulkerson. "But not always about the same member of it.
He gets monotonous, when he doesn't get complicated. I've just come round
from the Marches'," he added, to Mrs. Leighton.
"I suppose they've got thoroughly settled in their apartment by this
time." Mrs. Leighton said something like this whenever the Marches were
mentioned. At the bottom of her heart she had not forgiven them for not
taking her rooms; she had liked their looks so much; and she was always
hoping that they were uncomfortable or dissatisfied; she could not help
wanting them punished a little.
"Well, yes; as much as they ever will be," Fulkerson answered. "The
Boston style is pretty different, you know; and the Marches are
old-fashioned folks, and I reckon they never went in much for bric-a-brac.
They've put away nine or ten barrels of dragon candlesticks, but they
keep finding new ones."
"Their landlady has just joined our class," said Alma. "Isn't her name
Green? She happened to see my copy of 'Every Other Week', and said she
knew the editor; and told me."
"Well, it's a little world," said Fulkerson. "You seem to be touching
elbows with everybody. Just think of your having had our head translator
for a model."
"Ah think that your whole publication revolves aroand the Leighton
family," said Miss Woodburn.
"That's pretty much so," Fulkerson admitted. "Anyhow, the publisher seems
disposed to do so."
"Are you the publisher? I thought it was Mr. Dryfoos," said Alma.
"It is."
"Oh!"
The tone and the word gave Fulkerson a discomfort which he promptly
confessed. "Missed again."
The girls laughed, and he regained something of his lost spirits, and
smiled upon their gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it.
Miss Woodburn asked, "And is Mr. Dryfoos senio' anything like ouah Mr.
Dryfoos?"
"Not the least."
"But he's jost as exemplary?"
"Yes; in his way."
"Well, Ah wish Ah could see all those pinks of puffection togethah,
once."
"Why, look here! I've been thinking I'd celebrate a little, when the old
gentleman gets back. Have a little supper--something of that kind. How
would you like to let me have your parlors for it, Mrs. Leighton? You
ladies could stand on the stairs, and have a peep at us, in the bunch."
"Oh, mah! What a privilege! And will Miss Alma be there, with the othah
contributors? Ah shall jost expah of envy!"
"She won't be there in person," said Fulkerson, "but she'll be
represented by the head of the art department."
"Mah goodness! And who'll the head of the publishing department
represent?"
"He can represent you," said Alma.
"Well, Ah want to be represented, someho'."
"We'll have the banquet the night before you appear on the cover of our
fourth number," said Fulkerson.
"Ah thoat that was doubly fo'bidden," said Miss Woodburn. "By the stern
parent and the envious awtust."
"We'll get Beaton to get round them, somehow. I guess we can trust him to
manage that."
Mrs. Leighton sighed her resentment of the implication.
"I always feel that Mr. Beaton doesn't do himself justice," she began.
Fulkerson could not forego the chance of a joke. "Well, maybe he would
rather temper justice with mercy in a case like his." This made both the
younger ladies laugh. "I judge this is my chance to get off with my
life," he added, and he rose as he spoke. "Mrs. Leighton, I am about the
only man of my sex who doesn't thirst for Beaton's blood most of the
time. But I know him and I don't. He's more kinds of a good fellow than
people generally understand. He doesn't wear his heart upon his
sleeve--not his ulster sleeve, anyway. You can always count me on your
side when it's a question of finding Beaton not guilty if he'll leave the
State."
Alma set her drawing against the wall, in rising to say goodnight to
Fulkerson. He bent over on his stick to look at it. "Well, it's
beautiful," he sighed, with unconscious sincerity.