"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."