IV

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

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

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

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

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

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 She had been too far withdrawn from fashion since her marriage to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

they were of the best there. But they knew nobody, and Mrs. Mandel was so

particular that Mela was prevented from continuing the acquaintance even

of the few young men who danced with her at the Saturday-night hops. They

drove about, but they went to places without knowing why, except that the

carriage man took them, and they had all the privileges of a proud

exclusivism without desiring them. Once a motherly matron seemed to

perceive their isolation, and made overtures to them, but then desisted,

as if repelled by Christine's suspicion, or by Mela's too instant and

hilarious good-fellowship, which expressed itself in hoarse laughter and

in a flow of talk full of topical and syntactical freedom. From time to

time she offered to bet Christine that if Mr. Fulkerson was only there

they would have a good time; she wondered what they were all doing in New

York, where she wished herself; she rallied her sister about Beaton, and

asked her why she did not write and tell him to come up there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

he would not have laughed if he had known it was hers; but she felt that

she could hide better the deficiencies which were not committed to paper;

she could manage with him in talking; she was too ignorant of her

ignorance to recognize the mistakes she made then. Through her own

passion she perceived that she had some kind of fascination for him; she

was graceful, and she thought it must be that; she did not understand

that there was a kind of beauty in her small, irregular features that

piqued and haunted his artistic sense, and a look in her black eyes

beyond her intelligence and intention. Once he sketched her as they sat

together, and flattered the portrait without getting what he wanted in

it; he said he must try her some time in color; and he said things which,

when she made Mela repeat them, could only mean that he admired her more

than anybody else. He came fitfully, but he came often, and she rested

content in a girl's indefiniteness concerning the affair; if her thought

went beyond lovemaking to marriage, she believed that she could have him

if she wanted him. Her father's money counted in this; she divined that

Beaton was poor; but that made no difference; she would have enough for

both; the money would have counted as an irresistible attraction if there

had been no other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

threatened, if Mrs. Mandel would not tell her how to spell the wrong

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

that if Mr. Beaton appeared in Saratoga she would instantly take them

both home. When Mela reported this result, Christine accused her of

having mismanaged the whole business; she quarrelled with her, and they

called each other names. Christine declared that she would not stay in

Saratoga, and that if Mrs. Mandel did not go back to New York with her

she should go alone. They returned the first week in September; but by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

pleasure in figuring the jolly time Brother Conrad must have teaching

farm work among those paupers and potential reprobates. He invented

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

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

burlesque denunciation of a summer outing spent in such dissipation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

with anticipative reprisal. After these rebuffs, the editor delivered him

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

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

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

March contented himself with musing upon the contradictions of a

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

conscious and so simple.

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

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

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

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

went West again, Dryfoos had ceased to come about the office, as if,

having once worn off the novelty of the sense of owning a literary

periodical, he was no longer interested in it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republican President since then.

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

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

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

peculiarities which perhaps made this necessary. Lindau always expected

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

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

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

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

He would receive his pay only from March's hand, because he wished to be

understood as working for him, and honestly earning money honestly

earned; and sometimes March inwardly winced a little at letting the old

man share the increase of capital won by such speculation as Dryfoos's,

but he shook off the feeling. As the summer advanced, and the artists and

classes that employed Lindau as a model left town one after another, he

gave largely of his increasing leisure to the people in the office of

'Every Other Week.' It was pleasant for March to see the respect with

which Conrad Dryfoos always used him, for the sake of his hurt and his

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

nothing unkindly on Fulkerson's part in the hostilities which usually

passed between himself and Lindau. Fulkerson bore himself reverently at

times, too, but it was not in him to keep that up, especially when Lindau

appeared with more beer aboard than, as Fulkerson said, he could manage

shipshape. On these occasions Fulkerson always tried to start him on the

theme of the unduly rich; he made himself the champion of monopolies, and

enjoyed the invectives which Lindau heaped upon him as a slave of

capital; he said that it did him good.

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

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

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

his eyes flaming with excitement, "I bity you."

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

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

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

"How you mean?"

"If I was rich."

"That would tebendt," said Lindau, trying to control himself. "If you hat

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

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

if you hat mate moch, he would know--"

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

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

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

that his father left it to?"

The old man rose and struck his breast. "On Amerigan!" he roared, and, as

he went on, his accent grew more and more uncertain. "What iss Amerigan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

as you say! You ton't puy foters; you puy lechislatures and goncressmen;

you puy gourts; you puy gombetitors; you pay infentors not to infent; you

atfertise, and the gounting-room sees dat de etitorial-room toesn't

tink."

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

Fulkerson.

"Oh, I am sawry," said the old man, contritely, "I meant noting bersonal.

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

are goodt men. But gabidal"--his passion rose again--"where you find

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

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

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

whether you meet an honest man."

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

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

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

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

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

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

hear that story?"

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

talk."

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

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

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

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

gompanies."

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

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

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

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

about his pension being vetoed from Miss Leighton." He addressed these

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

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

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

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

"Lindau does himself injustice when he gets to talking in that way," said

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

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

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

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

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

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

for I had a notion that it might be a painful subject."

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

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

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

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

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

I wanted to hurt his feelings, do you?"

"Why, of course not, Fulkerson."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

friendt, and he begged my barton if he had said anything to wound me. I

tell you it was an affecting scene, March; and rats enough round in that

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

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

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

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

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

the summer in keeping Lindau smoothed up.

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

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

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

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

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

his nople gonduct.

Their relations continued to wear this irksome character of mutual

forbearance; and when Dryfoos returned in October and Fulkerson revived

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

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

the consequences.